scholarly journals Impact of COVID-19 on Infertility Treatments: Not Even A Global Pandemic Was Strong Enough to Hamper Successful Pregnancies

Life ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Cristina Rodríguez-Varela ◽  
Giulia Mariani ◽  
Pilar Dolz ◽  
Juan Antonio García-Velasco ◽  
Vicente Serra ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 global pandemic has meant a sanitary and social threat at every level and it was not any different for the assisted reproduction industry. This retrospective two-arm study aims to describe its impact on infertility treatments performed in our clinics (IVI Spain, Rome, and Lisbon) regarding: (1) assessment of COVID-19 impact in the amount, type, and success of infertility treatments performed during 2020 compared to 2019; and (2) description of the psychological status of women who got pregnant during the first months of the pandemic and its correlation with their final pregnancy outcome. On the one hand, this pandemic has led to a significant reduction in the total number of treatments performed, even though the proportion of the different types was almost unaltered. Additionally, its impact on pregnancy rates was not clinically relevant. On the other hand, the psychological status of pregnant women did not seem to affect their final pregnancy outcome. These results suggest that, even in the event of a negatively affected psychological status in our study population, it was not translated into an impaired pregnancy outcome. Hence, the COVID-19 global pandemic, although devastating, might not have exerted a clinically relevant negative impact on the overall pregnancy outcome in our clinics.

Author(s):  
Davorin Cimermančič ◽  
Janez Kušar ◽  
Tomaž Berlec

AbstractChanging a traditional company into a lean one is a very complex and time-consuming process that needs to be addressed in an appropriate way, otherwise the project of introduction of leanness into a company may fail on the one hand and even have a negative impact on business operations of the company on the other. When introducing a change, a step-by-step procedure leading to a progress may be of great help. The paper outlines a general procedure of leanness, an important part of which is a lean agent. A portfolio analysis is also used as a measure of leanness or as an indicator of the desired direction. The applied working methods were mainly active workshops and interviews with employees. The procedure has been tested on an example of a Slovene company; first, the existing situation is outlined, then the leanness steps taken according to the procedure and the final result after the first transition of the procedure.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soo-Hyun Mun

This article contributes to the debate between the merits of the ‘politics of presence’ versus the ‘politics of ideas’ by examining the case of the first female Korean president, Park Geun-Hye. On the one hand, Park did not represent ‘the ideas’ of feminist politics. While her gender identity was widely propagated and accepted, it did not transform into deliberate identity-based politics. On the other hand, she contributed to the elevation of women’s social status through various unintended consequences, although Park’s ‘femininity without feminism’ inevitably led to the negligence of gender politics in her government. Indeed, Park’s existence, rather than her intention, stimulated the debate on the role and status of women in Korean society and enabled the rise of a number of first females in various sectors. In sum, the ‘politics of presence’ was triggered even without overt political measures.


1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Dutton

If a catalogue were made of terms commonly used to affirm the adequacy of critical interpretations of works of art, one word certain to be included would be “plausible.” Yet this term is one which has received precious little attention in the literature of aesthetics. This is odd, inasmuch as I find the notion of plausibility central to an understanding of the nature of criticism. “Plausible” is a perplexing term because it can have radically different meanings depending on the circumstances of its employment. ln the following discussion, I will make some observations about the logic of this concept in connection with its uses in two rather different contexts: the context of scientific inquiry on the one hand, and that of aesthetic interpretation on the other. In distinguishing separate senses of “plausible,” I shall provide reason to resist the temptation to imagine that because logical aspects of two different types of inquiry—science and criticism—happen to be designated by the same term, they may to that extent be considered to have similar logical structures.


Author(s):  
Luigia Mocerino ◽  
Franco Quaranta

The scope of this work is to try to quantify the reduction of emissions due to COVID-19; an analysis covering the entire port of Naples will be presented. The explosion of the global pandemic from SARS-CoV-2 led to the adoption of local and global countermeasures aimed at containing contagions. The transportation sector, and in particular the passenger moving sector, was deeply affected; this almost total block of movements between regions and countries if, on the one hand, seriously slowed the economy, on the other, it drastically reduced the emissions on a global and local scale. In this work, the case study of the cruise ships berthed at the Maritime Station (Stazione Marittima) in the port of Naples is examined. The traffic of cruise ships during the lockdown and in the immediately following months was analysed and compared first with respect to the calendars scheduled for the same period and then with respect to the same months of 2019. The reduction in number of cruise ships and passengers were analysed and compared to the previous trends. The vessels collected, for 2019 and 2020 (both those that arrived and those that suffered the effects of the movement block) were subsequently characterized in terms of power and speed. Finally, an estimate of the emissions of NOX, SOX, CO2 produced and saved was carried out. The 2020 results will be compared with the hypothetical emissions that would have occurred in the absence of the lockdown and with those of the same period of the previous year.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariet Raedts ◽  
Irene Roozen

Consumers’ responses to product recalls with language errors Consumers’ responses to product recalls with language errors Product recall notices not only warn consumers for faulty products, they also limit the damage which may be caused to the company. But what happens when the product recall notice itself contains errors? This study investigated the effects of three different types of language errors: typographical errors, verb errors and sentence errors. Four versions of a product recall were created. The control condition contained no errors. The other three versions contained either five typos, five grammatical conjugation errors or five poorly formed sentences. Participants (N = 710) were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions. Results indicate that participants who detected the errors, had lower attitudes towards the advertisement and the company than participants in the control condition and participants who failed to detect the errors. Poorly formed sentences also had a negative impact on consumers’ brand evaluations and their future product purchase intentions. Hence, language errors in product recall notices can have negative consequences for companies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Skowron

AbstractRecent discussions (especially in the Internet) about the question whether Nietzsche was a Transhumanist or at least a forerunner of the Transhumanist movement have drawn new attention to Nietzsche’s concept of the Overhuman and the relation to the Posthuman. The article is taking a critical stance by turning suggested analogies between education and genetic manipulation of humans into an argument against the latter, by relating self-education to self-overcoming and eternal recurrence of the same (which is excluded by Transhumanists), and by reminding of Nietzsche’s distinction between ‘Overhuman’ and ‘last human’ as two different ways to the future. Linguistic analysis of the epitheta used in speaking of the different ‘types’ in question as well as structural analogies between critical considerations in Michael Sandel and Jürgen Habermas on the one hand, Nietzsche on the other are also evidence that Nietzsche would not have endorsed the technological path to perfection of the human but would emphasize his own way of self-overcoming instead.


Author(s):  
Francis L.F. Lee ◽  
Joseph M. Chan

Chapter 8 discusses the impact of digital media on collective memory. The chapter examines both the positive and negative impact of digital and social media. On the one hand, the analysis notes how digital media provided the channels for memory mobilization and the archives for memory transmission. On the other hand, the analysis examines the problematics of memory balkanization. It explicates how political forces have shaped the development of digital and social media in Hong Kong and how competing representations of the Tiananmen Incident and commemoration activities are articulated and reinforced within distinctive memory silos.


Author(s):  
Elisa Benetti ◽  
Gianluca Mazzini

Computer science and telecommunications are increasingly important in society and this leads also public administrations to take advantage of ICT, in order to communicate with citizens in a more rapid and simpler way than the complex and paper-based bureaucracy of the past. While on the one hand the use of these technologies responds to the duty of any public institution to involve the largest number of addressees, on the other hand, society must also consider the limitations of these technologies. Firstly not everybody is so familiar in their use. Moreover, the digital administration thus becomes virtual, accessible only through technological devices and not present in a physical location, and is therefore essential to ensure full coverage of the territory, which is currently not always possible. The main novelty of this paper is the implementation of an automated system capable of adapting different types of government services to multiple communication media. The joint exploitation of multiple technologies allows to use the strengths of one of them when are found the limits of another, making this multichannel modality the solution to the requirement of ICT in public administration.


Author(s):  
Omar Durrah ◽  
Monica Chaudhary ◽  
Moaz Gharib

Organizational cynicism has been a topic of discussion and debate among employees and top management. The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between organizational cynicism and organizational pride. Precisely, the objectives are to identify and measure organizational cynicism among employees in industrial organizations; to determine and measure the degree of organizational pride among employees in industrial organizations and to study the effect of organizational cynicism on the organizational pride of employees in industrial organizations. In this empirical research, the study population was employees of industrial organizations of Oman. Using a purposive sampling technique, nine industrial organizations from Oman were picked. With the help of structured questionnaire, data from 350 respondents was obtained. Structural equation modeling was used through Amos version 25.0 for data analysis. The results reveal that the two dimensions of organizational cynicism (affective cynicism and behavioral cynicism) have a significant and negative impact on emotional pride, while cognitive cynicism does not significantly effect emotional pride. The study results indicate that the one dimension of organizational cynicism (affective cynicism) has a significant impact on attitudinal pride, while the rest of the other dimensions (cognitive cynicism, behavioral cynicism) do not have a significant effect on attitudinal pride. The limitations and implications of the research are also discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 897 ◽  
pp. 166-172
Author(s):  
Zahraa Ali Jalil ◽  
Hafeth I. Naji ◽  
Mohammed Mahmood

The number of destroyed cities in Iraq has increased significantly over the last five years. It presents a negative impact on the country's economy on the one hand and on the environment on the other. Reconstruction of these cities requires substantial capital to provide building materials needed for reconstruction and this leads to depletion of natural resources. This paper aims at finding an effective management method that contributes to the investment of the remnants of the components of destroyed buildings, including reinforcing steel, using the building information modelling (BIM) technique. The results showed that the amount of steel reinforcement that can be obtained from the destroyed buildings is enormous. Therefore, these quantities must be addressed through reusing or recycling. The sale of these quantities as recycling materials can provide a large income which can be added to the capital of the project.


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