Complex Information and Architecture

This chapter discusses the need for a systematic framework to categorise and store the large quantity of complex information required to determine competitive advantage. The length of time necessary to collect all the relevant and complex information creates an additional problem, which can only be alleviated by having an appropriate framework to guide the project. The assessment of information means that the context and accuracy of the information must also be stored. Creating an effective information system needs to be the focus of a special project, and the idea of an information system project will be explored as part of the methodology. The concepts of information architecture and business architecture to assist in the project's design will also be reviewed. Part of the information systems project will be the project planning document which will get more complex as the project develops; therefore, the planning document requirements will also be reviewed.

Neutralizing efficacy of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 Mu variant

The rise of mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2 poses an additional problem to the existing pandemic of COVID-19. There are rising concerns about the Mu variant which can escape humoral immunity acquired from infections from previous strains or vaccines. We examined the neutralizing efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine against the Mu variant and report that the vaccine has 76% neutralizing effectiveness against the Mu compared to 96% with the original strain. We also show that Mu, similar to the Delta variant, causes cell-to-cell fusion which can be an additional factor for the variant to escape vaccine-mediated humoral immunity. Despite the rise in vaccine escape strains, the vaccine still possesses adequate ability to neutralize majority of the mutants.

Teaching Japanese Elementary School Students Programming and Computational Thinking in a CLIL Environment

In Japan there is an effort to add programming and English language to the curriculum at an earlier age so children develop an easy familiarity with both. Most programming languages use scripts based on English which presents an additional problem in teaching programming in countries where English is not the first language. Associate Professor Yuka Kazahaya, based at Okayama Prefectural University, is developing and promoting different methods of teaching both programming and English language in Japan.

Ridiculous Beliefs, Irresponsible Beliefs, and Anti-skeptical Evidence

This chapter identifies three more potential problems (in addition to the one discussed in Chapter Nine) for the commonsense intuitionist particularist response to radical skepticism laid out in Chapters Six through Eight, and argues that none of these three alleged problems constitutes an insurmountable objection to commonsense anti-skepticism. The first additional problem is the Problem of Ridiculous Beliefs, according to which noninferential anti-skepticism is committed to approving of a way of responding to skepticism even if that way of responding to skepticism were used to defend ridiculous beliefs. The second is the Problem of Irresponsible Beliefs, according to which unperturbed persistence in endorsing beliefs undefended by argument (e.g. perceptual beliefs), in the face of obvious skeptical possibilities, is epistemically irresponsible. The third is the Problem of Anti-skeptical Evidence, which objects to the view (endorsed by the intuitionist particularism laid out in Chapters Six through Eight) that many of our justified beliefs in anti-skeptical propositions are based on good evidence. The worry behind this last alleged problem is that, even if people can have justified belief in anti-skeptical propositions (i.e. propositions that assert the falsity of radical skeptical hypotheses), there are good reasons for concluding that these sorts of beliefs cannot be based on good evidence. The chapter concludes that, after careful examination of all three problems, commonsense intuitionist particularism emerges unscathed.

POPULATIONS AS DETERMINANT OF LATVIA’S SECURITY

The conducted analysis aims to indicate the real threat of the depopulation process to Latvia's national security. The aim of the analysis is to examine the pace of changes, to indicate their main determinants and potential effects. The research hypothesis assumes that in the absence of an immediate, radical change in the demographic and social policy of the state, the population of Latvia will decrease to the level of approx. 1 million in the next 40-45 years. The conducted research shows a constantly decreasing natural increase and a high, negative level of migration. The carried out extrapolation of the population number confirms the hypothesis put forward in the study. The slight effect of the measures taken so far by the Latvian government to counter the depopolation process does not allow us to put an end to the optimistic scenarios of changes in demographic processes. An additional problem of the country's security is the issue of, above all, the Russian ethnic minority and the almost 10% share of non-citizens among the country's inhabitants.

Teaching Japanese Elementary School Students Programming and Computational Thinking in a CLIL Environment

In Japan there is an effort to add programming and English language to the curriculum at an earlier age so children develop an easy familiarity with both. Most programming languages use scripts based on English which presents an additional problem in teaching programming in countries where English is not the first language. Associate Professor Yuka Kazahaya, based at Okayama Prefectural University, is developing and promoting different methods of teaching both programming and English language in Japan.

AIDS Without Metaphor: Sontag and Her Struggle With Disease

The article considers the demetaphorization strategy which Susan Sontag used in her essay AIDS and Its Metaphors. The program that Sontag put forward in Against Interpretation is readily applicable to diseases such as cancer or AIDS, which inevitably become entangled in metaphorical descriptions that encourage sermonizing and moralism. The modernist ideal of avoiding interpretation that Sontag proposed would enable thinking about a disease as a distinct etiological entity brought into sharp focus by the very process of stripping away its cloak of metaphorical layers, myths and imaginings. The article suggests that Sontag’s strategy, which is both practical and semiological, can be understood as a critique of the tradition of holistic medicine usually called “alternative” as well as a countermeasure to it. Medicine of that kind in the West harks back to ancient paradigms and in particular to Stoicism by presupposing that moral errors can be equated with diseases and sins with symptoms. Sontag believes that metaphors are not only useless but also harmful in that they impose a mistaken therapeutic program for both disease and patient, for example, by prescribing exercise or a healthy lifestyle when they are irrelevant. The article analyzes some problems in Sontag’s demetaphorization and argues in particular that the isolation and detection of a disease as such are not somehow antecedent to metaphor, even if the nature of the disease is well understood. Diseases whose nature or treatment are unknown, at least at a given point in history, are an additional problem. Sontag assumes a correlation between a disease as an isolated entity and a drug of choice or a precise therapeutic method, but that correlation cannot always be made.

Stigmatisation associated with COVID-19 in the general Colombian population

Background: As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, the fear of infection increases and, with it, the stigma-discrimination, which makes it an additional problem of the epidemic. However, studies about stigma associated with coronavirus are scarce worldwide. Aims: To determine the association between stigmatisation and fear of COVID-19 in the general population of Colombia. Method: A cross-sectional study was carried out. A total of 1,687 adults between 18 and 76 years old ( M = 36.3; SD = 12.5), 41.1% health workers, filled out an online questionnaire on Stigma-Discrimination and the COVID-5 Fear Scale, adapted by the research team. Results: The proportion of high fear of COVID-19 was 34.1%; When comparing the affirmative answers to the questionnaire on stigma-discrimination towards COVID-19, it was found that the difference was significantly higher in the general population compared to health workers in most of the questions evaluated, which indicates a high level of stigmatisation in that group. An association between high fear of COVID-19 and stigma was evidenced in 63.6% of the questions in the questionnaire. Conclusion: Stigma-discrimination towards COVID-19 is frequent in the Colombian population and is associated with high levels of fear towards said disease, mainly people who are not health workers.

Severe ME in Children

A current problem regarding Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is the large proportion of doctors that are either not trained or refuse to recognize ME/CFS as a genuine clinical entity, and as a result do not diagnose it. An additional problem is that most of the clinical and research studies currently available on ME are focused on patients who are ambulant and able to attend clinics and there is very limited data on patients who are very severe (housebound or bedbound), despite the fact that they constitute an estimated 25% of all ME/CFS cases. This author has personal experience of managing and advising on numerous cases of severe paediatric ME, and offers a series of case reports of individual cases as a means of illustrating various points regarding clinical presentation, together with general principles of appropriate management.