Nexus Between Foreign Direct Investment Inflow, Renewable Energy Consumption, Ambient Air Pollution, and Human Mortality: A Public Health Perspective From Non-linear ARDL Approach

A huge foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow has been witnessed in China, though on the one hand, it brings a significant contribution to economic growth. On the other hand, it adversely affects the ambient air pollution that may affect human mortality in the country. Renewable energy (RE) usage meets the country's energy needs with no adverse effect on the environment. Therefore, this study is trying to empirically analyze the effect of FDI inflow on human morality and RE consumption in China. We used time-series data for 1998–2020 and applied a non-linear ARDL approach for the estimations. The empirical outcomes suggest that FDI inflow positively affects mortality and RE. There is also unidirectional causality running from RE and pollution to mortality. In addition, the relationship among the variable verifies the existence of a non-linear relationship. The government needs policy guidelines to further boost FDI inflow due to its positive aspects. However, to reduce the negative effect on the environment and human morality, the extensive usage of RE should be adopted. Indeed, proper legislation for foreign firms might be a good step toward quality environmental and longevity of human health in society.

Antimicrobial Applications of Nanoparticles

Human mortality due to drug-resistant infections is becoming more prevalent in our society. Antibiotics are impotent due to abuse and/or misuse, leading to new, more expensive, and more effective medicines and treatments. Therefore, it causes many short-term and long-term side effects in the patient. On the other hand, nanoparticles have exhibited antibacterial activity against various pathogens due to their small size and ability to destroy cells by various mechanisms. Unlike antibiotics for the treatment of patients' diseases and infections, nanomaterials provide an exciting way to limit the growth of microorganisms due to infections in humans. This has led to the development of a number of nanoparticles as active antibacterial agents. Therefore, the authors have carefully reviewed the recent developments in the use of nanomaterials for antibacterial applications and the mechanisms that make them an effective alternate antibacterial agent.

A GROUP REGULARISATION APPROACH FOR CONSTRUCTING GENERALISED AGE-PERIOD-COHORT MORTALITY PROJECTION MODELS

Given the rapid reductions in human mortality observed over recent decades and the uncertainty associated with their future evolution, there have been a large number of mortality projection models proposed by actuaries and demographers in recent years. Many of these, however, suffer from being overly complex, thereby producing spurious forecasts, particularly over long horizons and for small, noisy data sets. In this paper, we exploit statistical learning tools, namely group regularisation and cross-validation, to provide a robust framework to construct discrete-time mortality models by automatically selecting the most appropriate functions to best describe and forecast particular data sets. Most importantly, this approach produces bespoke models using a trade-off between complexity (to draw as much insight as possible from limited data sets) and parsimony (to prevent over-fitting to noise), with this trade-off designed to have specific regard to the forecasting horizon of interest. This is illustrated using both empirical data from the Human Mortality Database and simulated data, using code that has been made available within a user-friendly open-source R package StMoMo.

Baudelairean Empathy and the Limits of Transcendence

Inscriptions of empathy for other human beings, in Baudelaire's poetry, communicate an affective experience that has long outlived both the poet and its originator. His poems, which often give thematic prominence to the idea of an afterlife, tend therefore to have their own afterlife, even as they gesture towards both the possibility and the impossibility of the transcendence of physical limitations. The article, which begins with a brief discussion of both the history and meaning of empathy, will suggest that Baudelaire can be understood not only as an early theorist of empathy, but also as a very early theorist of an ethical, because unsettling, form of empathy. The poet anticipated the thinking of the first empathy theorists insofar as, like them, he conceived of an at least partial imaginary merging of self and object. However, he also went beyond these thinkers to the extent that at least some of his poetry describes a disquieting recognition of kinship with other human beings that anticipates far more recent thinking about empathy. The article considers the inscription of empathy in a number of poems that focus on non-human objects before giving more sustained attention to how empathy expresses itself in poems that foreground virtual, real, or imagined human beings. It is argued that Baudelaire's most dramatic evocations of empathy with other human beings foreground the idea of human mortality and the limits of human knowledge even as they hint at the possibility of the magical removal of limitations. While the notion of an ideal communication of souls is certainly present in Les Fleurs du mal, representations of interpersonal empathy in the verse poems tend to involve a recognition of both the possibility and the impossibility of human transcendence of physical limitations.

Should We Freeze Our Bodies for Future Resuscitation?

This chapter examines the ethical implications of cryopreservation. Cryopreservation is usually performed soon after the heart has stopped beating, and after the individual has been pronounced legally dead. A few hundred people in the world had been “cryopreserved” — that is, fully immerged in liquid nitrogen at -196 C — in the hope that science will eventually discover a therapy for the disease that has killed them, and that future technology will succeed in bringing them back to life. Understandably, the root of many objections to cryonics seem to be its perceived weirdness. Another major objection to cryonics is that it is a waste of money, or a scam, i.e. a way to make money by promising dying people something that cannot possibly be achieved. The chapter then considers the concepts of human mortality and immortality.

To wszystko i sto innych czynności, i sto tysięcy innych czynności. Codzienność w poezji Tadeusza Różewicza

The main topic of the article is everyday life depicted in the poetry by Tadeusz Różewicz. Its reference point is the concept of everyday life constructed by Bernhard Waldenfels. He distinguishes three ways of perceiving it – it entails regular order, embraces everything that is palpable and tangible, as well as is closed-in-itself and restricted. According to Grażyna Borkowska, everyday life is synonymic to both daunting prose of life and heart-warming familiarness. Thus, everyday life embraces a wide range of human experiences and is valuated both positively and negatively. The category of everyday life understood as above functions as a frame for interpretation of selected Różewicz’s poems which represent different topics – religion and faith, humanity, death, and writing. Everyday life functions in Różewicz’s poetry as a space for religious experience; it enables formulating diverse universal conclusions about humanity and their relations with the world, allows the subject to speak about human mortality, and is the platform for self-referential deliberation about poetry and creating. Interpreting selected poems from the perspective of everyday life lets the reader capture deeper, ambiguous meaning of faith, perceive human existence in its double sense – both ordinary and extraordinary, bind everyday life with death and present it as a space for creating poetry. Those measures make discussed issues clearer and more concrete and combine them with human experience. Showing a specific tension between them and everyday life makes the interpretation richer and opens perspectives for discovering new meanings.

On the effect of COVID-19 pandemic in the excess of human mortality. The case of Brazil and Spain

Excess of deaths is a technique used in epidemiology to assess the deaths caused by an unexpected event. For the present COVID–19 pandemic, we discuss the performance of some linear and nonlinear time series forecasting techniques widely used for modeling the actual pandemic and provide estimates for this metric from January 2020 to April 2021. We apply the results obtained to evaluate the evolution of the present pandemic in Brazil and Spain, which allows in particular to compare how well (or bad) these countries have managed the pandemic. For Brazil, our calculations refute the claim made by some officials that the present pandemic is “a little flu”. Some studies suggest that the virus could be lying dormant across the world before been detected for the first time. In that regard, our results show that there is no evidence of deaths by the virus in 2019.

4. Meaning and purpose

‘Meaning and purpose’ challenges the assumption that without religion, life’s meaning and purpose becomes impossible by arguing that many atheists do and have lived meaningful and purposeful lives. Indeed, atheists could credibly claim that life is more meaningful for them than it is for many religious people who see this world as a kind of preparation for the next. When heaven is the ultimate destination, life on Earth is not really valuable in itself. The atheist, as a naturalist, unequivocally accepts human mortality, with no belief in afterlife, reincarnation, or dissolution of the ego as the self rejoins ultimate reality. We mustn't forget the importance of hedonism.