Identities and Precariousness in the Collaborative Economy, Neither Wage-Earner, nor Self-Employed: Emergence and Consolidation of the Homo Rider, a Case Study

In recent years, courier and home delivery services have experienced extensive growth around the world. These platform companies, that operate through applications on smartphones, have experienced the benefits of the technological leap that has been produced by the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictions on traditional commerce. This business model integrates novel elements that move away from a classic contractual relationship, employer-employee. They combine a strong cooperative culture, integrated by company values and principles that make the rider assume an identity that defines him/her as a worker and a member of a community. In addition, on the other hand, precarious working conditions, in which extreme competitiveness among colleagues and dependence on high standards of service compliance are encouraged. In Spain, there is a lack of research on the identity of workers in this type of platform. By means of in-depth interviews with drivers of two different companies in the Region of Murcia (Spain), the main objective of this article is to identify and describe the figure of what we define as homo rider, understood as a prototype individual in the context of contemporary labor relations, linked to the incorporation of new technologies for the intermediation and interconnection between people, goods and services. We approach to the socioeconomic spectrum and identity imaginary of the homo rider through two dimensions, material and ideological, to construct this broad, ambiguous figure between self-employment and wage-earner that would also represent a complex relation between precarious work and new technologies.

Managing Opioid Agonist Therapy in the Post-Soviet Limbo

According to Dante, “Limbo” is the first circle of Hell located at its edge. Unlike other residents of Hell, the Limbo population suffers no torment other than their lack of hope. We argue that a lack of hope in post-Soviet Ukraine is expressed by a lack of conditions for a better future since the past is overrepresented in the present. Therefore, every movement transforms under the past’s pressure, changing its course in order to reproduce and perpetuate ghosts of what is long gone. We argue that the current state of Ukraine can be framed as “post-Soviet limbo.” If the great stability of the Soviet regime was a result of overregulation and extensive control, or of “uncertainty avoidance,” then a post-Soviet limbo is a result of “managing uncertainty” simultaneously influenced by Soviet legacies and neoliberal promises of growth, calculability, and deregulation on the part of the State. “Soviet legacies” are dominant and represent a mix of formal overregulation explicitly presented through laws and policies and informality which, according to some authors, became even more widespread in the post-Soviet period than it used to be under the Soviet rule. We do not aim to consider the past legacies as being opposite to neoliberal features and futures, but negotiate the way the two are interrelated and mutually reinforced in the present to produce the post-Soviet limbo. Ukraine’s performance of Opioid Agonist Therapy (OAT) coverage is consistently estimated as insufficient and needing further improvement. However, we argue that that there are two modes of OAT implementation in Ukraine: state-funded (formal) and privately-funded (informal). The latter’s size does not fall into official estimates since the national reports on OAT performance never include the numbers of patients involved in informal treatment. We suggest, that the informal mode of OAT implementation appeared as a result of contrasting efforts towards intensive regulation and extensive growth. To understand how these two modes are produced in the context of post-Soviet narcology, how they differ and where their paths cross, we analyze two types of texts: legal and policy documents regulating substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, mainly OAT; and qualitative data, including interviews with OAT patients and field notes reflecting the environment of OAT programs. Finally, the presented article seeks to answer how the state’s contrasting efforts to manage the uncertainty of SUD treatment through OAT regulation and implementation reproduce the post-Soviet limbo and, thus, people with SUD as “patients of the state” who are frozen in a hopeless wait for changes.

Analysis of Labor Embodied in China’s Inter-regional Trade in Value-Added: Re-Examination of Leontief’s Paradox from the Perspective of Energy Use

Based on the multi-regional input-output framework, this paper analyzed the labor and energy transfer embodied in interregional trade in China. Meanwhile, through estimating the energy intensity per unit of labor embodied in final products in each region, this study examines whether the empirical results are consistent with the theoretical hypothesis and provides relevant explanations and industrial development suggestions. Results show that east coastal region and central region are the two main participants in interregional trade. As for the labor embodied in trade, east coastal region is the largest exporter of embodied labor, though it has the highest wage among eight regions; in contrast, north coastal and southwestern region, with relatively low wage, are the two largest importer of embodied labor. As for the energy embodied in trade, northwestern region is the largest exporter of embodied energy. Further analysis indicates that the energy intensity per unit of labor in region with relatively low GRP (such as northwestern region) is the highest, whereas those in Beijing-Tianjin Region and south coastal region (with relatively high GRP) are the lowest. By analyzing the Revealed Comparative Advantage in each region, the paper finds that the main reason for this inconsistency lies in the industrial structure in northwestern and north coastal region, which are highly dependent in primary industries. Improving the infrastructure and upgrading industrial structure are important steps for these regions to transform the extensive growth mode.

Scientometric analysis of the knowledge domain in nanotoxicology

The successful development and especially the commercialization and clinical translation of nanotechnology are unthinkable without nanotoxicology. Nanotoxicology in the last ten years has become an essential branch of knowledge, emerging at the intersection of nanotechnology and toxicology. However, despite its importance, the previous scientometric analysis of nanotoxicology was carried out ten years ago and is clearly outdated. The task was to scientometrically study the domain of nanotoxicology over the past decade. More than 3000 articles and 56 journals connected with nanotoxicology were analyzed. Two different nanotoxicology domains were established. The first one is associated with green synthesis and ecotoxicology. This approach formed a separate nanotoxicology branch, primarily presented in India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and their close geographic partners. The constant search for biocompatible nanoparticles performing various functions in the body has become the focus of the USA, China, and some European countries. Cluster analysis also showed that there are two different approaches to nanotoxicology. Extensive growth of published articles relates to some of Asia's countries (India, Saudi Arabia, Iran), while intensive development is revealed for the USA, China, and Brazil. Analysis of new keywords showed possible trends in nanotoxicology for the near feature. Such keywords as biocompatibility, ecotoxicology, green synthesis, graphene oxide, and peptides can set future development directions.

Highlanders and the City: Migration, Segmentation, and the Image of the Highlander in Early Modern London, 1603-c.1750

The study of Scottish migration in the early modern period has experienced extensive growth in recent decades, but has tended to privilege overseas movement over the presence of Scots elsewhere in Britain. This is particularly true of migrants from the Scottish Highlands: much has been written about Highlanders in America or Continental Europe, but almost nothing is known about their experiences in England and Wales, and in particular in London, consistently the major destination of Scots moving southwards. This article seeks to address that gap by exploring the extent and nature of Highland migration to London during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It begins by surveying the surviving evidence for Highlanders’ presence in the English capital, suggesting that they were most readily to be found in the elite and mercantile sectors, and were comparatively rarer among the ranks of artisans, professionals, or the poor. It is also argued that Highlanders tended not to form a coherent ethnic ‘bloc’, but instead were subsumed within the wider Scottish diaspora. This, however, was paradoxical, because London was during this period developing a strong image of ‘the Highlanders’ as distinctive from ‘the Scot’. The article therefore goes on to explore the origins of Highlander imagery, and concludes that those Highlanders actually resident in London contributed very little to it. Instead, image-makers drew predominantly on pre-existing Scottish stereotypes, travellers’ reports, outlaw tales, and political discourse, for example surrounding Jacobitism. All of this suggests a degree of invisibility around the Highland community in early modern London, and that, the article suggests, underlines the fundamental blurriness of the Highland/Lowland divide within Scotland. It also indicates that a segmented, rather than ethno-cultural model of assimilation might offer the most reliable means of understanding the Scottish diaspora in early modern London.

The impact of environmental regulation on green total factor productivity: An empirical analysis

The transformation of China’s economy from extensive growth to high-quality development is essentially an increase in green total factor productivity (GTFP). China currently has a range of environmental regulation tools, and the question of whether environmental regulation can promote improvement in China’s GTFP requires theoretical and empirical analysis. This article first divides environmental regulation into three types: administrative, market-based and information-based. It then builds an empirical model of the effect of environmental regulation on GTFP. Slacks based measure-data envelope analysis (SBM-DEA) and the Malmquist index are used to measure the GTFP of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2018, and a measurement model of the impact of environmental regulation on GTFP is established. The results show that: (1) there are significant differences in GTFP in eastern, central and western China; (2) there is a non-linear relationship between environmental regulations and GTFP.

EVALUATION OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC RESULTS OF UKRAINIAN ECONOMY MANAGEMENT

The paper was focused on researching the evolution and the reasons for the crisis in the economy of Ukraine for the period of independence. It was determined that the changes in the social and economic nature of the country’s development were followed by discrepancy in power and resources relations as well as in opposition between political forces and business elite. We analyzed the dynamics of changes in the main macroeconomic indicators in the development of the Ukrainian economy. The results showed that large-scale changes had different effects on the development of the national economy, which was characterized by long periods of crisis and short periods of extensive growth. Three main crises in the economical development have been characterized and the reasons for this were identified. We performed an assessment of the multiple indicators dynamics that characterise the outcomes of the economical governance. Specifically, the level of GDP per capita using purchasing power parity, the dynamics of export, import and balance of foreign trade as well as the dynamics of changes in the index of capital investment and the index of economic freedom. It has been established that the presence of effective structural changes in the economy of the country has caused the accumulation of internal and external economic imbalances. The results of the analysis of the rating assessment of the economy of Ukraine by international organizations showed consistently low positions of the country. We concluded that ineffective economic development became one of the main reasons for the deterioration of the social development of the country. Negative indicators of such development were a sharp decline in population, life expectancy, low wages and social security compared to other European countries.

A Review Article on Various Ayuvedic Approaches in The Management of Sthaulya (Obesity)”

A person having heaviness and bulkiness of the body due to extensive growth especially in Udaradi region is termed as "Sthula" and the state (Bhava) of Sthula is called "Sthaulya". Sthaulya or Medorog (obesity) is commonest metabolic disorders in affluent societies caused by irregular diet and sleep patterns, lack of physical activities, stress etc, and it is a direct result of modernization combined with lifestyle changes by exposing oneself to these factors. we unknowingly invited several diseases out of which Sthaulya is one which affects someone’s social, physical, and mental features. Acharya Charaka has mentioned Sthaulya under Santarpanajanya Vyadhi. The present study deals with all the details of Sthaulya according to ayurvedic classics and its preventive methods like Nidan Parivarjan, therapeutic management along with medicine, diet, Pathya and Apathya.

An author’s guide to mastering academic writing skills: Discussion of a medical manuscript

Skilled scientific or academic writing is of great importance to research communication and journal publication ultimately. The four fundamental sections of a scholarly manuscript are introduction, methods, results and discussion. The discussion serves to interpret and analyze the study results in view of the existing body of evidence. Moreover, it serves to transform the usually rigid numerical statistical data of the results section into practical and clinically utilizable information. A well-formulated discussion can provide readers with informed decisions on the validity of the results and their exact generalizability to the broader community. It can also isolate shortcomings of the existing literature. Despite the extensive growth in biomedical publications lately, little attention has been paid to the importance of medical writing in general and to the discussion section of a medical manuscript in specific. This applies to curricular education and medical literature. The implications of well-executed studies with important findings can go unnoticed if authors are less skilled at writing a comprehensive discussion and conclusion among other manuscript sections. I intended to convey the experience I have accumulated in authoring and peer-reviewing for leading society journals and supervising in-house academic theses and dissertations. The objective of this article was to help authors present and communicate their research findings methodically, efficiently and impartially. Orthopedic research was taken as a practical example.