The Association between COVID-19-Related Wellbeing with Materialism and Perceived Threat

The ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a profound impact on people’s wellbeing. Here, we proposed that an individual characteristic might be associated with wellbeing; that is, materialism. Specifically, we conducted three studies (total N = 3219) to examine whether people with high levels of materialism would experience poorer wellbeing (i.e., anxiety and depression, in the current case). The results showed that materialism was positively associated with depression (Studies 1A, 1B and 2) and anxiety (Study 2). Moreover, such a relationship was mediated by people’s perceived threat of COVID-19 (Study 2). These findings were observed in both Chinese and American people. The findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical contributions.

LA ELECCIÓN POPULAR

El tweet de Joe Biden, The people had spoke, refiriéndose al voto del pueblo americano en las recientes elecciones presidenciales, recuerda el título del célebre libro de P. F. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson y H. Gandet, The People Choice, dedicado a las elecciones de 1940. Como se sabe, la obra se centraba en la forma en que los electores del estado de Ohio decidían su voto en las elecciones del 5 de noviembre de 1940, donde el presidente saliente Franklin D. Roosevelt (demócrata), que iba por su cuarta reelección, se oponía a Wendell Willkie. Merece la pena repasar las conclusiones de esa investigación a la luz de las recientes elecciones americanas y, subsidiariamente, interrogarnos por los usos sociales de la actualidad en la construcción del directo televisivo. Abstract: Joe Biden’s tweet “The people had spoken”, referring to the vote of the American people in the recent presidential elections, recalls the title of Paul Lazarsfeld’s et alii famous book The People Choice research dedicated to the 1940 elections. As is known, the investigation focused on the way Ohio state voters decided their vote in the November 5, 1940 election that opposed outgoing President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) who was going for his fourth re-election to his challenger Wendell Willkie. It is worth reviewing the conclusions of these founding investigations in the light of the recent American elections and, alternatively, to consider the current social uses in the construction of the television direct.

Transitivity Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inaugural Address From the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar provides a new perspective and method for political discourse analysis. This paper first introduces the research status of political discourse at home and abroad, and then elaborates three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar, namely ideational function, interpersonal function as well as textual function. On this basis, this paper makes an in-depth transitivity analysis of the inaugural address of the 46th president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden. Through profound research, this paper attempts to reveal how English language is applied to hide ideology in political speeches and how president Joe Biden uses various language features to persuade and inspire American people in order to reach his political purpose; at the same time, it also verifies the practicability of Systemic Functional Grammar in the analysis of political speech discourse.

Rhetorical Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inauguration Address

The inaugural speeches mark the beginning of a new term in office for a community or government leader, such as the president. This reaction must persuade the people to believe in the government and the programs will be enacted. This research aims at finding the rhetorical appeals of President Joe Biden's inaugural address on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States. The research is based on Aristotle's theory called a rhetorical theory. The resercher employs descriptive qualitative as a methodology to analyze the data from the spoken utterances of the speech. The result shows that Joe Biden uses all of the Aristotelian rhetoric strategies in his inaugural address, which are: ethos, pathos, and logos. The data shows that Joe Biden uses pathos as 55% of his speech, followed by ethos 37%, and logos 8%.. Joe Biden skillfully used and implied Aristotle's rhetorical theory in his inauguration address to engage and build trust with the American people. From the analysis, the researcher has concluded that a good speaker can use all of the three elements of the rhetorical theory and imply them in the speech or writing.

Disaggregating Asian Race Reveals COVID-19 Disparities Among Asian American Patients at New York City’s Public Hospital System

Objectives: Data on the health burden of COVID-19 among Asian American people of various ethnic subgroups remain limited. We examined COVID-19 outcomes of people of various Asian ethnic subgroups and other racial and ethnic groups in an urban safety net hospital system. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of 85 328 adults aged ≥18 tested for COVID-19 at New York City’s public hospital system from March 1 through May 31, 2020. We examined COVID-19 positivity, hospitalization, and mortality, as well as demographic characteristics and comorbidities known to worsen COVID-19 outcomes. We conducted adjusted multivariable regression analyses examining racial and ethnic disparities in mortality. Results: Of 9971 Asian patients (11.7% of patients overall), 48.2% were South Asian, 22.2% were Chinese, and 29.6% were in other Asian ethnic groups. South Asian patients had the highest rates of COVID-19 positivity (30.8%) and hospitalization (51.6%) among Asian patients, second overall only to Hispanic (32.1% and 45.8%, respectively) and non-Hispanic Black (27.5% and 57.5%, respectively) patients. Chinese patients had a mortality rate of 35.7%, highest of all racial and ethnic groups. After adjusting for demographic characteristics and comorbidities, only Chinese patients had significantly higher odds of mortality than non-Hispanic White patients (odds ratio = 1.44; 95% CI, 1.04-2.01). Conclusions: Asian American people, particularly those of South Asian and Chinese descent, bear a substantial and disproportionate health burden of COVID-19. These findings underscore the need for improved data collection and reporting and public health efforts to mitigate disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among these groups.

Lower Limb Muscle Strength and Muscle Mass Are Associated With Incident Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis: A Longitudinal Cohort Study

Recent literature suggests that sarcopenia, often represented by low lower limbs muscle mass and strength, can be considered a potential risk factor for knee osteoarthritis (OA), but the available literature is still limited. We therefore aimed to investigate whether sarcopenia is associated with a higher risk of radiographic (ROA) and symptomatic knee OA (SxOA) in a large cohort of North American people in the context of the OA initiative. Sarcopenia at baseline was diagnosed in case of low skeletal muscle mass (i.e., lower skeletal mass index) and poor performance in the chair stands test. The outcomes of interest for this study included ROA (radiographical osteoarthritis) if a knee developed a Kellgren and Lawrence (KL) grade ≥2 at follow-up, and SxOA (symptomatic osteoarthritis) defined as new onset of a combination of painful knee OA. Altogether, 2,492 older participants (mean age: 68.4 years, 61.4% females) were included. At baseline, sarcopenia was present in 6.1% of the population. No significant difference in ROA prevalence was observed between those with and without sarcopenia (p=0.76), whilst people with sarcopenia reported a significant higher prevalence of SxOA (p<0.0001). Using a logistic regression analysis, adjusting for potential confounders at baseline and the diagnosis of sarcopenia during follow-up, sarcopenia was associated with a higher incidence of knee SxOA (odds ratio, OR=2.29; 95%CI [confidence interval]: 1.42-3.71; p=0.001), but not knee ROA (OR=1.48; 95%CI: 0.53-4.10; p=0.45). In conclusion, sarcopenia could be associated with a higher risk of negative knee OA outcomes, in particular symptomatic forms.

RUSSIAN LANGUAGE AS A REFLECTION OF THE PECULIARITIES OF NATIONAL THINKING

The article notes the interrelation of language, culture and thinking. Some stable linguistic expressions that convey the meanings of specific phenomena in Russian and English are considered and reflect the phenomena of the surrounding world through the features of the transfer of values inherent in a particular country. The analysis of influence of mentality on features of national thinking is given. The factors that determine the formation of the national mentality and mentality of the Russian people are described. Features of features of Russian people in comparison with features of the American people are resulted.

Interview with Gordon Henry

Gordon Henry is an enrolled member of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota and professor of American Indian Literature, Creative Writing and the Creative Process in Integrative Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. He is the author and co-editor of many books and collections, including The Failure of Certain Charms: And Other Disparate Signs of Life (2008). His novel The Light People (1994) won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Following some of the stages in his career and personal story, which he kindly accepted to share with me, this interview highlights some of the crucial key issues concerning Native American people and cultures, questions that still need a wider transnational space both inside and outside academia. Discrimination based on language has influenced the history of Native American people for centuries, starting from the forced education of the young in the 19th century and continuing in the 20th, in the context of Hollywood film productions. Linguicism, language-based racism (Phillipson 1992), is a topic that needs to be addressed in the light of the recent flourishing of extremist thought worldwide, which carries the abused rhetoric of ‘us vs them’ (van Dijk 2015) and, at the same time, spurs protest movements. This reflection goes hand-in-hand with the controversial topic of the appropriation of Native American cultural practices by old and new wannabes (non-people who are so much fascinated by Native American cultures that end up imitating them by, for example, choosing a Native name or emphasising certain aspects of the culture which they admire, often basing their beliefs on stereotypes), whilst people living in the Reservations are still neglected and the Native American and Alaskan Native population register extremely high suicide, homicide and alcoholism rates compared to the U.S. all races population (especially women). But, the efforts and educational programs aimed to preserve languages and cultures (like the Lakota Language Consortium or the Rosetta Stone Endangered Language programs), the vibrancy of the artistic scene in the visual, literary and music fields, the various forms of activism and community engagement projects (such as, for example, the MMIWG movement – Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls – the water protectors protest at Standing Rock, known as #NoDapl, or the prayerful journey called Run4Salmon in California) are also to be acknowledged as milestones in the process of regaining self-sovereignty by Native people. Against the background of these considerations, I am pleased and honoured to share thoughts, feelings and emotions with Gordon Henry.

What’s in a Name? The Hidden Historical Ideologies Embedded in the Black and African American Racial Labels

History can inconspicuously repeat itself through words and language. We explored the association between the “Black” and “African American” racial labels and the ideologies of the historical movements within which they gained prominence (Civil Rights and Black Power, respectively). Two content analyses and two preregistered experimental studies ( N = 1,204 White American adults) show that the associations between “Black” and “bias and discrimination” and between “African American” and “civil rights and equality” are evident in images, op-eds, and perceptions of organizations. Google Images search results for “Black people” evoke more racially victimized imagery than search results for “African American people” (Study 1), and op-eds that use the Black label contain more bias and discrimination content than those that use the African American label (Study 2). Finally, White Americans infer the ideologies of organizations by the racial label within the organization’s name (Studies 3 and 4). Consequently, these inferences guide the degree to which Whites support the organization financially.

Molecular Remodeling of Cardiac Sinus Node Associated with Acute Chagas Disease Myocarditis

Chagas disease principally affects Latin-American people, but it currently has worldwide distribution due to migration. Death among those with Chagas disease can occur suddenly and without warning, even in those who may not have evidence of clinical or structural cardiac disease and who are younger than 60 years old. HCN4 channels, one of the principal elements responsible for pacemaker currents, are associated with cardiac fetal reprogramming and supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias, but their role in chagasic arrhythmias is not clear. We found that a single-dose administration of ivabradine, which blocks HCN4, caused QTc and QRS enlargement and an increase in P-wave amplitude and was associated with ventricular and supraventricular arrhythmias in mice challenged with isoproterenol, a chronotropic/ionotropic positive agent. Continuous treatment with ivabradine did not alter the QTc interval, but P-wave morphology was deeply modified, generating supraventricular arrhythmias. In addition, we found that repolarization parameters improved with ivabradine treatment. These effects could have been caused by the high HCN4 expression observed in auricular and ventricular tissue in infected mice. Thus, we suggest, for the first time, that molecular remodeling by overexpression of HCN4 channels may be related to supraventricular arrhythmias in acute Chagas disease, causing ivabradine over-response. Thus, ivabradine treatment should be administered with caution, while HCN4 overexpression may be an indicator of heart failure and/or sudden death risk.