Posthuman identity and the human–animal divide in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Hawks and the Sparrows and Pigsty

In this article, Ferrara puts forward the first analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s films The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) and Pigsty (1969) through the lens of posthumanist theory. She contends that by placing animal characters (raven and pigs) in close interaction with humans, Pasolini encouraged viewers to explore and overcome the human–animal divide. In doing so, he aimed to expose the faulty binary premises of Marxist ideology and construct a posthumanist identity that recognized the illusory separation between body and mind, and between the human and its related others. Drawing on concepts such as Marchesini’s ‘mimesis’, Cronin’s ‘tradosphere’, Nancy’s ‘co-ontology’ and Braidotti’s ‘becoming animal’, this article shows how Pasolini considers an exit from anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism via trans-species solidarity. Eventually, in Pigsty, animality turns into a metaphor for all alterity. As humans are silenced by pigs, a new powerful language of ‘otherness’ gives birth to the posthuman human.

Quantum Mechanics in Terms of Consciousness Theory

Attempts to explain consciousness through quantum mechanics lead to quantum theories of consciousness that are hard to accept as successful. Their main flaw is that they a priori consider the reality studied by quantum mechanics to be the cause of consciousness. We will look at this reality from a different perspective and show that it exists only in the mind, and is a product, not a cause of consciousness. If so, then the wave function, the measuring object, and the measurement results are the content of an understanding that behaves in a certain way. This opens up possibilities for close interaction between quantum mechanics and the theory of consciousness in solving related problems.

Top-level diplomacy in the relations between Russia and the UAE

Multi-faceted partnership is developing between Russia and the UAE - in the trade, economic, political, humanitarian spheres, as well as in the field of high technologies. The positions of both countries on pressing international problems are close to each other particularly on security issues, fighting against terrorism, and the conflict settlement in the Middle East. There is a tendency for the establishing of the close bilateral relations in strategically important areas. The historical visit of President Putin to the UAE on October 15, 2019 was a clear proof of the development of friendly relations and close interaction between the two countries.

A Technological Phenomenon. Humanitarian Aspects

The authors of the article reflect on the processes of technical modernization of modern culture and on the modern reflection on the increasingly active introduction of new technologies in the field of art and art researches. There is an increasingly widespread nature of creativity and the inevitability of a long-term adaptation of a person to the results of his own creativity — which is another round of the eternal conflict between the creator and the creation. The article also examines the era of the 1920s, when art was intensively turning to the motives of machine, technical, and automatic world, giving rise to various interpretations of the interaction of man and machine, man and automaton. The theme continues with an appeal to the images of the robot child in American cinema of the second half of the 20th — beginning of the 21th century and to the vast field of modern science fiction art, which analyzes the current problems of civilization and, above all, communication systems — including the possibility of mass infections, the phenomenon of parasitic organisms, dystopian patterns of social relations. The scientific and artistic discourses are in close interaction.

Digital Technologies as a Tool for the State Regulation of Conflicts in the Economic Sphere of Social Life

The study aims at determining the main directions for the development and application of digital technologies in the regulation of economic conflicts. Within digital space, such conflicts are difficult to regulate due to the lack of close interaction among organizations and different interests. The negative consequences of conflicts can have an impact on the economy of a particular country or world community as a whole. Therefore, it is necessary to study tools that can prevent and resolve such conflicts. The state is of great importance in the regulation of economic conflicts as Its toolkit comprises legal and organizational mechanisms to resolve conflicts.

The general noun-modifying clause construction beyond Eurasia

I aim to provide a typological investigation of the General Noun-modifying Clause Construction (NMCC) in languages other than those of Eurasia. I show that the five properties proposed by Matsumoto et al. as potentially correlating with the General NMCC are rather areal features which are falsified by the data of languages from Africa and Europe. The semantic interpretability condition and the syntactic licensing condition of the General Noun-modifying Clause Construction need reconsidering. Semantically, I argue that the interpretability of the General NMCC depends both on the semantics of the head noun and that of the modifying clause because they show close interaction with each other. Syntactically, I propose three general syntactic properties of the languages with the General NMCC, i.e. (1) no relative pronouns or relative pronouns in competition with a general clause marker, (2) complex subordinate locutions composed of the general clause marker(s) (and a head noun), and (3) unified verb forms in subordination.

Impact of the Covid-19 epidemic and related social distancing regulations on social contact and SARS-CoV-2 transmission potential in rural South Africa: analysis of repeated cross-sectional surveys

Background South Africa implemented rapid and strict physical distancing regulations to minimize SARS-CoV-2 epidemic spread. Evidence on the impact of such measures on interpersonal contact in rural and lower-income settings is limited. Methods We compared population-representative social contact surveys conducted in the same rural KwaZulu-Natal location once in 2019 and twice in mid-2020. Respondents reported characteristics of physical and conversational (‘close interaction’) contacts over 24 hours. We built age-mixing matrices and estimated the proportional change in the SARS-CoV-2 reproduction number (R0). Respondents also reported counts of others present at locations visited and transport used, from which we evaluated change in potential exposure to airborne infection due to shared indoor space (‘shared air’). Results Respondents in March–December 2019 (n = 1704) reported a mean of 7.4 close interaction contacts and 196 shared air person-hours beyond their homes. Respondents in June-July 2020 (n = 216), as the epidemic peaked locally, reported 4.1 close interaction contacts and 21 shared air person-hours outside their home, with significant declines in others’ homes and public spaces. Adults aged over 50 had fewer close contacts with others over 50, but little change in contact with 15–29 year olds, reflecting ongoing contact within multigenerational households. We estimate potential R0 fell by 42% (95% plausible range 14–59%) between 2019 and June-July 2020. Conclusions Extra-household social contact fell substantially following imposition of Covid-19 distancing regulations in rural South Africa. Ongoing contact within intergenerational households highlighted a potential limitation of social distancing measures in protecting older adults.

Wearable IoTs and Geo-Fencing Based Framework for COVID-19 Remote Patient Health Monitoring and Quarantine Management to Control the Pandemic

The epidemic disease of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) called COVID-19 has become a more frequently active disease. Managing and monitoring COVID-19 patients is still a challenging issue for advanced technologies. The first and foremost critical issue in COVID-19 is to diagnose it timely and cut off the chain of transmission by isolating the susceptible and patients. COVID-19 spreads through close interaction and contact with an infected person. It has affected the entire world, and every country is facing the challenges of having adequate medical facilities along with the availability of medical staff in rural and urban areas that have a high number of patients due to the pandemic. Due to the invasive method of treatment, SARS-COVID is spreading swiftly. In this paper, we propose an intelligent health monitoring framework using wearable Internet of Things (IoT) and Geo-fencing for COVID-19 susceptible and patient monitoring, and isolation and quarantine management to control the pandemic. The proposed system consists of four layers, and each layer has different functionality: a wearable sensors layer, IoT gateway layer, cloud server layer, and client application layer for visualization and analysis. The wearable sensors layer consists of wearable biomedical and GPS sensors for physiological parameters, and GPS and Wi-Fi Received Signal Strength Indicator acquisition for health monitoring and user Geo-fencing. The IoT gateway layer provides a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi based wireless body area network and IoT environment for data transmission anytime and anywhere. Cloud servers use Raspberry Pi and ThingSpeak cloud for data analysis and web-based application layers for remote monitoring based on user consent. The susceptible and patient conditions, real-time sensor’s data, and Geo-fencing enables minimizing the spread through close interaction. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

SPREADING OF CORONA VIRUS (COVID-19) ACROSS THE GLOBE: NURSING PROTOCOLS FOR HANDLING POSITIVE PATIENT

Corona virus causes influenza, vomiting, sneezing, respiratory disease and coughing while diarrhea and upper respiratory diseases are found in animals. The corona virus was transmitted by airborne droplets to humans or primates. Corona virus reaches the human cell through an exo-peptidase receptor with membrane ACE-2. WHO and ECDC also recommended the avoidance of public spaces and close interaction with contagious individuals and pets. Firstly, on 7 January 2020, Corona virus (2019-nCoV) was isolated from the Chinese Wuhan market.

Investigation of Orthopedic Prosthesis Socket Management after Transfemoral Amputation by Expert Survey

Prosthesis treatment requires the close interaction of different actors. In fitting prostheses to patients, special attention is given to the manufacturing of the socket. The continuous development of the technologies involved in the fitting and optimization of prostheses is shown in the literature. The assessment of orthopedic technicians and their influence in the process is thus far largely unexplored. Ten orthopedic technicians were interviewed about the socket fitting process after transfemoral amputation. The research goal was to clarify the socket treatment process with regards to the German context. The results showed that the orthopedic technicians focussing on the patient during the fitting process. This study underlines the importance of interaction and empathy. Volume fluctuations are decisive within the treatment process and are interactively influenced by various factors. Furthermore, the research emphasizes the need for appropriate assistive technologies and the potential for the further development of existing systems.