The Nordic Countries

This chapter discusses the descriptive premises of the notion of a distinctive Nordic welfare model. It asks in what sense the Nordic welfare states constitute a distinctive type, and whether its core features have remained stable in recent decades. The global interest in the Nordic model is best explained by Nordic countries’ long record of good economic and social performance, as well as its anticipated ideological foundations of egalitarianism and universalism. Despite the continuous challenges of past decades, and in part differing welfare policy responses to those, the Nordic countries still bear some ‘family resemblance’, especially when viewed in a broader comparative framework. The empirical assessment provided in this chapter shows that the strong emphasis on public services and social investment still distinguishes the Nordic welfare states from others. The inbuilt emphasis on labour market participation of the Nordic countries lays the foundation and continuity for the tax-based welfare state.

Dysregulated Immune Responses in COVID-19 Patients Correlating With Disease Severity and Invasive Oxygen Requirements

The prognosis of severe COVID-19 patients has motivated research communities to uncover mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis also on a regional level. In this work, we aimed to understand the immunological dynamics of severe COVID-19 patients with different degrees of illness, and upon long-term recovery. We analyzed immune cellular subsets and SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody isotypes of 66 COVID-19 patients admitted to the Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile, which were categorized according to the WHO ten-point clinical progression score. These included 29 moderate patients (score 4-5) and 37 severe patients under either high flow oxygen nasal cannula (18 patients, score 6), or invasive mechanical ventilation (19 patients, score 7-9), plus 28 convalescent patients and 28 healthy controls. Furthermore, six severe patients that recovered from the disease were longitudinally followed over 300 days. Our data indicate that severe COVID-19 patients display increased frequencies of plasmablasts, activated T cells and SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies compared to moderate and convalescent patients. Remarkably, within the severe COVID-19 group, patients rapidly progressing into invasive mechanical ventilation show higher frequencies of plasmablasts, monocytes, eosinophils, Th1 cells and SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG than patients under high flow oxygen nasal cannula. These findings demonstrate that severe COVID-19 patients progressing into invasive mechanical ventilation show a distinctive type of immunity. In addition, patients that recover from severe COVID-19 begin to regain normal proportions of immune cells 100 days after hospital discharge and maintain high levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG throughout the study, which is an indicative sign of immunological memory. Thus, this work can provide useful information to better understand the diverse outcomes of severe COVID-19 pathogenesis.

Dysregulated immune responses in COVID-19 patients correlating with disease severity and invasive oxygen requirements

The prognosis of severe COVID-19 patients has motivated research communities to uncover mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis also on a regional level. In this work, we aimed to understand the immunological dynamics of severe COVID-19 patients with different degrees of illness, and upon long-term recovery.We analyzed immune cellular subsets and SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody isotypes of 66 COVID-19 patients admitted to the Hospital Clínico Universidad de Chile, which were categorized according to the WHO ten-point clinical progression score. These included 29 moderate patients (score 4-5) and 37 severe patients under either high flow oxygen nasal cannula (18 patients, score 6), or invasive mechanical ventilation (19 patients, score 7-9), plus 28 convalescent patients and 28 healthy controls. Furthermore, six severe patients that recovered from the disease were longitudinally followed over 300 days.Our data indicate that severe COVID-19 patients display increased frequencies of plasmablasts, activated T cells and SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies compared to moderate and convalescent patients. Remarkably, within the severe COVID-19 group, patients rapidly progressing into invasive mechanical ventilation show higher frequencies of plasmablasts, monocytes, eosinophils, Th1 cells and SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG than patients under high flow oxygen nasal cannula. These findings demonstrate that severe COVID-19 patients progressing into invasive mechanical ventilation show a distinctive type of immunity. In addition, patients that recover from severe COVID-19 begin to regain normal proportions of immune cells 100 days after hospital discharge and maintain high levels of SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG throughout the study, which is an indicative sign of immunological memory. Thus, this work can provide a useful benchmark for improvement of disease outcomes.

Anthropocene nostalgia for the 1980s in Netflix’s Stranger Things

Expressions of nostalgia for the 1980s in contemporary American culture are diverse. The most interesting of them go beyond a wistful longing for the past. A complex ‘nostalgia trip’ offered by Netflix’s Stranger Things serves as a notable case study of a distinctive type of this sentiment. Instead of yearning for the restoration of previous times, it plays with past aesthetics in a critically articulate manner, effectively demythologizing the depicted decade. I argue that this significant alteration of the traditional sentiment stems largely from the recent acknowledgment of the Anthropocene and its irreversibility. This article aims to examine the peculiar, self-aware, paradoxical nostalgia, which is coloured by the current, Anthropocene-induced fears for the environment and, thus, our future. The analysis of Stranger Things – its thematics, genre, visuals and the meticulously reconstructed image of the presented era – draws parallels to the techniques employed by the ‘novel nostalgia’: bitter, ironic depiction of the past and references to natural phenomena. The study thus investigates the show at the intersection of contemporary nostalgia for the 1980s and the cultural repercussions of the Anthropocene. In so doing, it will unravel the innovation in the programme’s discourse on the 1980s decade in American culture.

LESS CARE, MORE STRESS: A RHYTHMIC POEM FROM THE ROMAN EMPIRE

This article considers a short text that was widely circulated in the mid- Roman Empire, in both a four-line and a six-line version, usually on gemstones. The text is a poem of sorts, but of a quite distinctive type. Part of it can be scanned according to the rules of classical (quantitative) metre, but more striking is the consistent rhythmic (stressed) pattern. Stressed poetry is not otherwise attested so early; this text may point to a substrate, now largely hidden from view, of popular verse that preceded the metrical revolutions of late antiquity and the Byzantine world. The poem is also a piece of visual artistry, designed to be looked at (particularly in its gemstone format). This hybrid status, between high art and popular culture, can also be detected in the content of the poem, which gestures towards both the poetics of intellectual elitism (using intertextual allusion, and dismissing the views of the masses) and a level of sexually aggressive assertion of embodied selfhood. It is a valuable witness to a form of middling literature (and a middling demographic), caught between aspirations to elite-style individuality and the mimetic imperative of an empire-wide consumer culture.

‘Flash houses’: Public houses and geographies of moral contagion in 19th-century London

‘Flash houses’, a distinctive type of public house associated with criminal activity, are a shadowy and little-studied aspect of early 19th-century London. This article situates flash houses within a wide perspective, arguing that the discourses on flash houses were part of concerns about the threat of the urban environment to the moral character of its inhabitants. The article draws on an original synthesis of a range of sources that refer to flash houses, including contemporary literature, newspapers, court documents, and government papers. It demonstrates that flash houses were part of both popular intrigue about the perceived ‘criminal underworld’ and official concerns about the collusion between police officers and suspected offenders, since police officers allegedly frequented flash houses to gather criminal information. A detailed examination of this term reveals anxieties about the state of the metropolis, poverty, and criminality that were central to the early 19th-century consciousness. However, the discussion of flash houses in this context also demonstrates a powerful connection in contemporary minds between the physical spaces of the city and the risks that they posed to inhabitants' morals. While associations between the physical environment and morality have been drawn throughout history, flash houses represent a paradigmatic moment in this dialogue. This is because different moral concerns coalesced around the discourse on flash houses: anxieties about the criminal underworld, the potential for moral degradation of young people who frequented these spaces, and the corruption of police officers through contact with known or suspected offenders.

Dissecting the experience of space as peripersonal

Are we aware of peripersonal space as peripersonal? Is there a distinctive way that peripersonal space is perceptually experienced that differs from the perceptual experience of other parts of space? I explore two ways of thinking about peripersonal experience. A substantial view takes the content of experience of peripersonal space to effectively represent that space as peripersonal while a deflationary view understands peripersonal experience to be constituted by specific sensory-motor links and implicates a distinctive role for attention. In both, there is a distinctive type of peripersonal experience, but only on the substantial view does the perceptual system speak in terms of the peripersonal. By examining the role of attention in peripersonal experience, I argue that we should not endorse a substantive conception of peripersonal experience over a deflationary conception. I explore what a deflationary account of peripersonal experience might be.

The T-shaped “axe” from Northeast Honduras: Observations on chronology and function of a pre Columbian stone tool

This paper provides a description and analysis of a distinctive type of pre-Columbian stone tool, usually termed a T-shaped axe, found almost exclusively in Northeast Honduras, Central America. There have been very few detailed or technical studies of lithics from Honduras. Early archaeological research and the current understanding of the regional prehistory are included, with Northeast Honduras viewed as a frontier zone located between the Mesoamerican and Isthmo-Columbian culture areas. Our study examines, in particular, a collection of these tools curated today at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA). The 39 (whole and fragmentary) specimens were collected between 1937 and 1939, from the Bay Islands, Northeast Honduras, but have never been published. This paper classifies the collection specimens into five varieties, based on morphology, with sample statistics, form dimensions, and illustrations provided for each. Manufacturing technology is primarily percussion flaking. The tool type is compared with similar specimens excavated and described from the Bay Islands and adjacent Honduran mainland, and with similar appearing implements from elsewhere in Central America. Insights about the possible age and function of these unusual, and distinctive, lithics are included. Based on preliminary macroscopic and microscopic analyses, it is concluded that the tools may have been employed as agricultural implements (hoes or spades), primarily for digging activities, rather than as axes or weapons used for cutting and slicing. It is most likely that these implements first appeared about 800 CE, and continued in use until at least 1400 CE. The tool type is most probably a local (not imported) product. More functional analysis is encouraged.

The switching mechanisms of social network densification

Densification and sparsification of social networks are attributed to two fundamental mechanisms: a change in the population in the system, and/or a change in the chances that people in the system are connected. In theory, each of these mechanisms generates a distinctive type of densification scaling, but in reality both types are generally mixed. Here, we develop a Bayesian statistical method to identify the extent to which each of these mechanisms is at play at a given point in time, taking the mixed densification scaling as input. We apply the method to networks of face-to-face interactions of individuals and reveal that the main mechanism that causes densification and sparsification occasionally switches, the frequency of which depending on the social context. The proposed method uncovers an inherent regime-switching property of network dynamics, which will provide a new insight into the mechanics behind evolving social interactions.

The Origin of Transparent and Non-Transparent White Pumice: A Case Study of the 52ka Maninjau Caldera Forming Eruption, Indonesia

The 52ka eruption of Maninjau caldera produced two distinctive type of white pumices: transparent (TWP) and non-transparent (NTWP). Both pumice types are crystal-poor (avg. 3.3 %), having similar mineralogy (pl > qz > bt > px > opq), similar glass compositions (avg. 78.5 wt. % SiO2), and similar plagioclase core compositions (avg. An20-30). We found that the abundance of TWP decrease towards the upper stratigraphic positions, together with the increase in NTWP, grey pumice, banded pumice, and lithic contents. Vesicles in TWP are typically dominated by large vesicles, while NTWP is characterized by abundant-small vesicles. Large vesicle corresponds to the preexisting bubble which formed in magma chamber (pheno-bubble, > 0.1 mm). On the other hand, small vesicle in groundmass (matrix-bubble, < 0.1 mm) is attributed to second nucleation in the conduit during the eruption. We performed quantitative comparison using pheno- and matrix-bubble number densities (PBND and MBND) for these two white pumice types. The correlation between PBND and MBND result in two regimes: (1) decompression-controlled regime, showing nearly constant-PBND correlation for TWP, and (2) phenobubble-controlled regime, showing steeply-decreasing PBND correlation for NTWP. In the first regime, MBNDs value varies dramatically, suggesting the variation of decompression rate by two to three orders of magnitudes. While in the second regime, the slight increase of MBNDs is considered as the effect of the decrease in PBND within the nearly constant decompression rate.