When schizophrenia is not schizophrenia: A premature diagnosis of mental illness can be serious malpractice

The number of diagnoses of mental illness has been increasing for years, especially in the wealthy industrialized nations. What continues to be overlooked is the massive influence of the lobby of the psychotherapeutic “industry”, which has long and steadily earned good money from hastily misdiagnosed patients. However, this can be a matter of moderate to severe malpractice.

Association of Common Zoonotic Pathogens With Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations

Animal farming has intensified significantly in recent decades, with the emergence of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in industrialized nations. The congregation of susceptible animals in CAFOs can lead to heavy environmental contamination with pathogens, promoting the emergence of hyper-transmissible, and virulent pathogens. As a result, CAFOs have been associated with emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses, hepatitis E virus, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Streptococcus suis, livestock-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and Cryptosporidium parvum in farm animals. This has led to increased transmission of zoonotic pathogens in humans and changes in disease patterns in general communities. They are exemplified by the common occurrence of outbreaks of illnesses through direct and indirect contact with farm animals, and wide occurrence of similar serotypes or subtypes in both humans and farm animals in industrialized nations. Therefore, control measures should be developed to slow down the dispersal of zoonotic pathogens associated with CAFOs and prevent the emergence of new pathogens of epidemic and pandemic potential.

Rising Global Challenges in Energy Demand and the Politics of Climate Change in Government Operations

While most governments subscribe to boosting global energy supplies since it paves the way for improved economies, which translates to better living conditions and gainful employments which in turn boost government operations, the rising global demand for energy from all human endeavors have activated unparalleled consequences on the environment, resulting to harmful repercussions for government operations and processes all over the world. Hence, scholars argue that the rising demand for global energy by industrialized nations have further increased the vulnerability of governments' operations and processes, especially in countries where these energy sources abound. Consequently, governments, multinationals, and various interest groups are divided on how best to address the quandaries resulting from rising global demand for energy and its effect on the environment and government operations. Recommendations that would enhance government operations were proposed.

Technological Transformation Processes and Resistance—On the Conflict Potential of 5G Using the Example of 5G Network Expansion in Germany

The expansion of fifth-generation wireless technology (5G) has been assigned the significance of a ‘key technology’ in connection with technological advances in the context of the digitalization of societies, which is a central goal of current governments in leading industrialized nations. As with other large-scale infrastructure projects such as the expansion of renewable energies as part of the energy transition in Germany, the plans for implementation are meeting with great resistance from the population, sometimes resulting in arson attacks on 5G transmission masts. Current research on 5G focuses primarily on technical­–economic, health-related and, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly conspiracy-theoretical aspects, while questions of acceptance or conflict potential have received little attention to date. This article aims to address this research gap and, on the basis of a conflict-theoretical perspective according to Dahrendorf combined with a socio-economic contextualization in the sense of Bourdieu, approaches the question of the extent to which social conflict has already progressed and what regulatory possibilities socio-economic contexts assume in terms of significance. For this purpose, about 70 identifiable internet presences of citizens’ initiatives against 5G were qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated.

Biotechnological approaches to develop nitrogen-fixing cereals: A review

Agricultural yields are often limited by nitrogen (N) availability, especially in countries of the developing world, whereas in industrialized nations the application of chemical N fertilizers has reached unsustainable levels that have resulted in severe environmental consequences. Finding alternatives to inorganic fertilizers is critical for sustainable and secure food production. Although gaseous nitrogen (N2) is abundant in the atmosphere, it cannot be assimilated by most living organisms. Only a selected group of microorganisms termed diazotrophs, have evolved the ability to reduce N2 to generate NH3 in a process known as biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) catalysed by nitrogenase, an oxygen-sensitive enzyme complex. This ability presents an opportunity to improve the nutrition of crop plants, through the introduction into cereal crops of either the N fixing bacteria or the nitrogenase enzyme responsible for N fixation. This review explores three potential approaches to obtain N-fixing cereals: (a) engineering the nitrogenase enzyme to function in plant cells; (b) engineering the legume symbiosis into cereals; and (c) engineering cereals with the capability to associate with N-fixing bacteria.

Biotechnological approaches to develop nitrogen-fixing cereals: A review

ricultural yields are often limited by nitrogen (N) availability, especially in countries of the developing world, whereas in industrialized nations the application of chemical N fertilizers has reached unsustainable levels that have resulted in severe environmental consequences. Finding alternatives to inorganic fertilizers is critical for sustainable and secure food production. Although gaseous nitrogen (N2) is abundant in the atmosphere, it cannot be assimilated by most living organisms. Only a selected group of microorganisms termed diazotrophs, have evolved the ability to reduce N2 to generate NH3 in a process known as biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) catalysed by nitrogenase, an oxygen-sensitive enzyme complex. This ability presents an opportunity to improve the nutrition of crop plants, through the introduction into cereal crops of either the N fixing bacteria or the nitrogenase enzyme responsible for N fixation. This review explores three potential approaches to obtain N-fixing cereals: (a) engineering the nitrogenase enzyme to function in plant cells; (b) engineering the legume symbiosis into cereals; and (c) engineering cereals with the capability to associate with N-fixing bacteria.

Estranged companions: Bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories

In recent decades, bed bugs have swept across wealthy industrialized nations. After near extirpation in North America and Northern Europe, the return of these insects has led to a significant level of public anxiety and cultural notoriety. Here, we undertake an analysis of human-bed bug relations in order to both better understand this contemporary resurgence and critically examine the concept of “companion species.” We argue for conceiving of bed bugs as “estranged companions,” and foreground the need to understand contemporary encounters between humans and the insects through distinct histories that have been shaped by the opening and closing of spaces between classed and racialized bodies and that have been dependent upon the development and deployment of particular technologies such as Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). Further, we argue that “estrangement” has wider conceptual purchase and contributes to a body of research that has countered a strain of scientism in theory that decenters “the human” by interrogating the relations between companion species, (bio)political interventions, and colonial histories. Estrangement contributes to this task by, first, foregrounding that relationships with all companion species are imbricated in situated histories and biopolitical regimes and, second, drawing attention to the differential ethico-political implications of these regimes.

The Socioeconomic Covariates of Violent and Property Crime Rates in Azerbaijan

The majority of the studies exploring the relationship between socioeconomic factors and crime levels are confined to major industrialized nations. As a post-Soviet, transitional economy with a predominantly Muslim population, Azerbaijan provides a different setting to explore how socioeconomic indicators affect police-recorded violent and property crime levels across cities and districts. This study finds a positive relationship between GRP per capita, the proportion of pupils admitted to university and population size property crime levels. The relationship was linear in all cases. The geographical units with more social benefit (pensions, disability, and family care) recipients had lower acquisitive crime levels, though the significance was marginal. The higher the number of targeted social assistance recipients for poverty alleviation is, the higher the rate of violent crime is, which differs from the findings of similar previous studies. Overall, socioeconomic predictors were significantly better in explaining variations for offences against the property (r=.481) than violent crimes (r=.073). These findings suggest that different crime types are better explained by different economic indicators in the Azerbaijani context. Furthermore, the study shows that most of the covariates function in ways which are observed in the societies covered by the literature.

State of the Art and Challenges for Occupational Health and Safety Performance Evaluation Tools

In industrialized nations, occupational health and safety (OHS) has been a growing concern in many businesses for at least two decades. Legislation, regulation, and standards have been developed in order to provide organizations with a framework for practicing accident and illness prevention and placing worker well-being at the center of production system design. However, the occurrence of several accidents continues to show that OHS performance evaluation is subject to interpretation. In this review of the literature, we outline the scope of current research on OHS status and performance evaluation and comment on the suitability of the instruments being proposed for field use. This study is based on a keyword-based bibliographical search in the largest scientific databases and OHS-related websites, which allowed us to identify 15 OHS performance evaluation tools. Our principal conclusion is that researchers in the field have shown little interest in generalizing the instruments of OHS performance evaluation and that none of the 15 tools examined is properly applicable to any real organization outside of the sector of activity, economic scale, and jurisdiction for which it was designed.

Hypertension in elderly Egyptians

Global census studies reveal that the elderly are the most rapidly growing population group in both industrialized and less industrialized nations. During 1991 and 1992, three major interventional trials dealt with hypertension in older subjects and the value of antihypertensive treatment in the elderly. These were the American Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program [SHEP], the Swedish Trial in Old Patients with Hypertension [STOP-Hypertension], and the British Medical Research Council Trial on treatment of hypertension in older adults. All three trials showed that therapy for hypertension in the elderly reduces the risk of stroke and cardiovascular events. In 1993 evidence from the Egyptian Hypertension Project highlighted hypertension as a national public health problem that must be addressed. Guidelines for primary prevention among all sectors of the community are discussed