On The Threshold of Democratic Fragility

Author(s):  
Asiru Hameed Tunde ◽  
Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo

The recent events in the Nigerian political space are clear indications of a match towards the ‘unwanted'. These political events, such as the 2011 presidential elections resulted into the most violent post-elections killings in the history of Nigeria. In the light of this, media representation of that election may not be a value-free exercise but one imbued with value judgments or opinions which conveyed certain ideological leanings. It is against this background that the author examines the macrospeech acts which characterize the discourse of the 2011 post-presidential election news reports with a view to identifying and interpreting the prominent acts and their ideological imports. The study is situated within the broad frame of pragmatics and operationalises Searle Speech Act model in order to uncover the macrospeech acts in the news reports and how the acts covertly convey instances of prejudice and control.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Li ◽  
Xufei Du ◽  
Xinwei Geng ◽  
Min Zhang ◽  
Yun Zhao ◽  
...  

Abstract The epidemic of COVID-19 has now spread globally and affected over 110 countries. As of Mar 10th, using publicly available data and official news reports in Henan province, we tracked a total of 1272 cases and a retrospective study was conducted to investigate the related factors in COVID-19 spread and control. We confirmed 554 primary patients had travel or residential history of Wuhan in the recent 2 weeks. Secondary cases accounted for 77.9% (141/181) among all the patients aged 61 or older, in whom contacted with unconfirmed returnees from Wuhan was responsible for 27.0% (38/141). The median incubate period is 7 (IQR, 4-10) days by analyzing time information in 469 cases. For 442 patients with discharge dates, the duration from onset to cure is 19 (IQR, 15-23) days. The time from onset to seeking care at a hospital varied in age groups, and differed between primary and secondary cases. Patients visiting different hospitals affected the time from seeking care to cure. Thus, our results showed the spread of COVID-19 and factors associated with outcomes of patients in Henan province, which helps to understand the epidemiological features outside of the epidemic area and control the disease in other regions and countries.


Author(s):  
Camilla Toulmin

Chapter 2 sets the village of Dlonguébougou within its wider region. Long-term shifts in rainfall have shaped the landscape and societies, from prehistory through to the emergence of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires, relying on trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves. The Bambara kingdom of Ségou used warfare to exact tribute and control trade, but by the time of the French conquest, much of the region had been taken under the jihadist rule of El Hajj Oumar Tall. The colonial administration had profound, long-lasting impacts on village life, taxation, forced labour, military recruitment, and legal and political systems. Economic and political events since Independence in 1960 are described, including the growing conflict in the north and centre of the country, sparked by demands for Tuareg autonomy, but now spread into widespread instability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-312
Author(s):  
Łukasz Małecki

While misinformation and propaganda have existed since ancient times, their importance and influence nowadays – in the age of social media – is still not clear. Recent social and political events, such as the controversial Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the narrow win of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, have led to a wave of interest in the phenomenon of “fake news” – described usually as a piece of fabricated information that disseminates deceptive content or distorts actual news reports, shared on social media. Despite being a new term, “fake news” has also evolved very quickly and rapidly. The present article attempts to analyze how the term “fake news” is being developed in recent years. The article characterizes this relevant social phenomenon linked to cheating, misinformation and manipulation and also proposes its classification and definition.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a survey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowl-edgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was wide-spread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a ma-jority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.


2017 ◽  
pp. 53-58
Author(s):  
Lam Huong Le

Objectives: Molar pregnancy is the gestational trophoblastic disease and impact on the women’s health. It has several complications such as toxicity, infection, bleeding. Molar pregnancy also has high risk of choriocarcinoma which can be dead. Aim: To assess the risks of molar pregnancy. Materials and Methods: The case control study included 76 molar pregnancies and 228 pregnancies in control group at Hue Central Hospital. Results: The average age was 32.7 ± 6.7, the miximum age was 17 years old and the maximum was 46 years old. The history of abortion, miscarriage in molar group and control group acounted for 10.5% and 3.9% respectively, with the risk was higher 2.8 times; 95% CI = 1.1-7.7 (p<0.05). The history of molar pregnancy in molar pregnancy group was 9.2% and the molar pregnancy risk was 11.4 times higher than control group (95% CI = 2.3-56.4). The women having ≥ 4 times births accounted for 7.9% in molar group and 2.2% in control group, with the risk was higher 3.8 times, 95% CI= 1.1-12.9 (p<0.05). The molar risk of women < 20 and >40 years old in molar groups had 2.4 times higher than (95% CI = 1.1 to 5.2)h than control group. Low living standard was 7.9% in molar group and 1.3% in the control group with OR= 6.2; 95% CI= 1.5-25.6. Curettage twice accounted for 87.5%, there were 16 case need to curettage three times. There was no case of uterine perforation and infection after curettage. Conclusion: The high risk molar pregnancy women need a better management. Pregnant women should be antenatal cared regularly to dectect early molar pregnancy. It is nessecery to monitor and avoid the dangerous complications occuring during the pregnancy. Key words: Molar pregnancy, pregnancy women


Author(s):  
Dana Kay Nelkin ◽  
Samuel C. Rickless

Unwitting omissions pose a challenge for theories of moral responsibility. For common-sense morality holds many unwitting omitters morally responsible for their omissions, even though they appear to lack both awareness and control. People who leave dogs in their car on a hot day or forget to pick something up from the store as they promised seem to be blameworthy. If moral responsibility requires awareness of one’s omission and its moral significance, it appears that the protagonists of these cases are not morally responsible. This chapter considers and rejects a number of influential views on this problem, including a view that grounds responsibility for such omissions in previous exercises of conscious agency, and “Attributionist” views that ground responsibility for such omissions in the value judgments or other aspects of the agents’ selves. The chapter proposes a new tracing view that grounds responsibility for unwitting omissions in past opportunities to avoid them.


Author(s):  
Stephen R. Barley

The four chapters of this book summarize the results of thirty-five years dedicated to studying how technologies change work and organizations. The first chapter places current developments in artificial intelligence into the historical context of previous technological revolutions by drawing on William Faunce’s argument that the history of technology is one of progressive automation of the four components of any production system: energy, transformation, and transfer and control technologies. The second chapter lays out a role-based theory of how technologies occasion changes in organizations. The third chapter tackles the issue of how to conceptualize a more thorough approach to assessing how intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, can shape work and employment. The fourth chapter discusses what has been learned over the years about the fears that arise when one sets out to study technical work and technical workers and methods for controlling those fears.


Author(s):  
David D. Nolte

Galileo Unbound: A Path Across Life, The Universe and Everything traces the journey that brought us from Galileo’s law of free fall to today’s geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman’s dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once—setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.


Author(s):  
Alessandro Portelli

This article centers around the case study of Rome's House of Memory and History to understand the politics of memory and public institutions. This case study is about the organization and politics of public memory: the House of Memory and History, established by the city of Rome in 2006, in the framework of an ambitious program of cultural policy. It summarizes the history of the House's conception and founding, describes its activities and the role of oral history in them, and discusses some of the problems it faces. The idea of a House of Memory and History grew in this cultural and political context. This article traces several political events that led to the culmination of the politics of memory and its effect on public institutions. It says that the House of Memory and History can be considered a success. A discussion on a cultural future winds up this article.


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