What Happened Next? Hadrian’s Wall, the expeditio Britannica and the Fate of the Ninth Legion

Political trust and health compliance during a health crisis: A systematic literature review from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only fueled the explosive growth of Zoom but also led to a major privacy and security crisis in March 2020. This research examines Zoom’s response to this privacy and security crisis with the aid of a producer’s perspective that aims to direct attention to institutional and organizational actors and draws on theories of privacy management and organizational crisis communication. We primarily use data from 14 weekly Ask Eric Anything webinars from April 8 to July 15, 2020, to illustrate the strategies of Zoom’s crisis response, especially organizational representation, the contours of its analytic account acknowledging and minimizing responsibility, and patterns of corrective and preventive action for user education and product improvement. Results demonstrate the usefulness of the producer’s perspective that sheds light on how Zoom navigated the privacy and security crisis. Special attention is paid to the mobilization of networks of executives, advisors, consultants, and clients for expertise, endorsement, and collaboration. It is argued that Zoom’s response strategies have contributed to Zoom’s organizational mission and culture and reframed the crisis from a growing pain to a growth opportunity relating to privacy and security. Zoom’s nimble, reasonable, collaborative, interactive yet curated organizational response to the privacy and security crisis can be seen as an unintended consequence of its sudden rise amid a global pandemic. It offers a useful model for tech firms’ crisis response at a crucial moment for the tech industry around the world.

Management and leadership of intensive care units for the future.

This review summarizes 30 years of experience in the development and clinical use of magnetic resonance (MR) contrast agents. Despite their undisputable usefulness for disease diagnosis, gadolinium (Gd)-based contrast agents (GBCAs) have gone through 2 major safety crises. Approximately 10 years ago, the regulatory agencies decided to restrict the use of GBCAs to minimize the risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis in patients with severe renal insufficiency. Yet, following the recent discovery of Gd retention in brain, the same agencies adopted different positions ranging from suspension of marketing authorizations, changes in GBCA safety labeling, and performing preclinical and clinical studies to assess the potential long-term consequences of Gd accumulation on motor and cognitive functions. Besides, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has benefited from MR technological advances, which provide alternative solutions to increase the MR signal, generate new contrasts on MRI scans, and accelerate their acquisition and analysis. Altogether, GBCAs in combination with new MR techniques have found their place in the diagnostic pathway of various diseases. Despite the large research efforts to identify and develop alternative Gd-free MR agents, manganese- and iron-based contrast agents have failed to reach market approval. In this context, the development of next-generation MR contrast agents should focus on high-stability and high-relaxivity GBCAs, such as gadopiclenol, which offer the possibility to adapt the administered Gd dose to each indication while ensuring an optimal patient safety.

Social security is the largest US federal program and the most enduring legacy of the New Deal. The program has more than 50 million beneficiaries and generates expenditures (US$585 billion in 2007) that are significantly higher than the defence budget.1 Known as the third rail of American politics (touch it and die), social security is a popular program, which means that few politicians explicitly seek to dismantle it. Yet, because of the demographic challenge ahead, some changes are necessary to fix the anticipated long-term fiscal imbalance in social security. The current debate on social security is about the nature of the changes necessary to solve the long-term fiscal challenge stemming from demographic aging. This brief article explores the debate on the future of social security, with a focus on the Bush years (2001-09) and the ideas put forward by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITYThe modern pension system in the United States took shape during the New Deal and the post-World War II era. This system is divided into four main parts: federal old-age, survivors, and disability insurance - a centralized earnings-related scheme that covers more than 95 percent of the workforce; supplemental security income - a means-tested federal assistance program offering modest benefits to poor, disabled, and elderly citizens; voluntary, tax-subsidized private pension plans (defined-benefit and definedcontribution schemes included); and personal savings and tax-subsidized individual retirement accounts.Adopted in 1935 as a key element of the social security act, old-age, survivor, and disability insurance is widely known as social security. Now the largest social program in the United States, social security expanded in the postwar era, especially during the Nixon presidency (1969-74). In the mid1970s, the economic downturn triggered by the first oil crisis and the overly generous indexation system implemented in 1974 created the first major fiscal crisis in social security. As a response, the Carter administration sponsored the enactment of the 1977 amendments to the social security act, which raised the payroll tax and changed the indexation formula in order to reduce the anticipated benefits of future retirees. Because the 1977 amendments failed to truly solve the fiscal crisis, in 1983 congress adopted a set of seemingly technical changes aimed at solving the new fiscal crisis in social security. During the legislative process, a rise in the retirement age from 65 to 67 taking place incrementally between the years 2000 and 2022 was added to the bill, inspired by the report of a bipartisan commission on social security that President Reagan had created two years earlier. Overall, the 1983 legislation preserved the basic characteristics of the program, which remained a defined-benefit scheme.2During the 1990s, actuarial previsions became more favourable as economic growth boosted the trust fund's reserves. According to the current actuarial projections, this trust fund should accumulate surpluses until the early 2010s. In the long run, however, population aging and the retirement of baby boomers would further increase the percentage of elderly people in the US. Compared with only 4.1 percent in 1900, this percentage should increase from 12.4 to 20 between 2000 and 2030.3 In such a context, expenditures should exceed revenues, thus eroding social security reserves. According to the 2008 trustees' report, the fund would face fiscal shortfalls in 2042.4 Although liberal policy experts argue that relatively technical changes could solve this long-term fiscal challenge, many conservatives have called for a major transformation of social security.5 Although there is no evidence that such a project would help address the long-term fiscal imbalance in the program, demographic fears concerning its future are central to the campaign in favour of social security privatization. …

How do state identities and their accompanying norms affect security behaviour especially when states consider forming alliances or alignments? Are middle powers different from great powers in their security norms and preferences? This article identifiesdependencyandactivismas two ‘identity norms’ that constitute and reproduce medium-sized states asbona fidemiddle powers. This article argues that, due to the identity norms of a middle power, Japan and South Korea are reluctant to form a bilateral alliance between themselves and their efforts to socialize with China do not necessarily contradict their security relationships with the United States. The first section focuses on the norm of dependency to illustrate whether Japan and South Korea sought to strengthen bilateral alignment in the event of major security crises, provoked by China and North Korea. It argues that a middle power is not disposed to strengthen alignment with another middle power in the event of a national security crisis because of its entrenched norm of dependency on a great power. The second section elaborates the norm of middle power activism. Both Japan and South Korea have engaged in diplomatic efforts to enmesh China in a number of multilateral security mechanisms in order to hedge against the relative decline of US influences in East Asia.

It is now impossible to view the AIDS pandemic solely from the vantage point of its health ramifications. Like a tornado wreaking havoc to everything in its path AIDS has also torn the social economic and political fabric of several societies to shreds. In January 2000 while speaking at the UN Security Council Session James Wolfensohn President of the World Bank stated: "Many of us used to think of AIDS as a health issue. We were wrong... nothing we have seen is a greater challenge to the peace and stability of African societies (and much of the world) than the epidemic of AIDS... we face a major development crisis and more than that a security crisis." Four years and more than eight million deaths later an equally passionate and resolute Kofi Annan the UN Secretary General spoke to the BBC and describe AIDS as "a real weapon of mass destruction" and bemoaned the worlds relative inaction to combat this pandemic as "callousness that one would not have expected in the 21st century"... for which history would judge us all "harshly very harshly.". (excerpt)

This policy paper examines the relationship between insecurity, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, and foreign exchange market performance in selected African countries that have suffered major security crises. The Dunning’s Eclectic Paradigm provides the basis for analysis. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study explores insecurity, FDI trends, and forex market outcomes in ten countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, D.R. Congo, Somalia, Mozambique, and Cameroon. Findings show that insecurity significantly undermines both FDI and forex market performance. These nations, in varying degrees, have suffered capital flight, increased forex volatility, and economic fragmentation due to insecurity. A clear adverse relationship exists between FDI inflows and insecurity: relatively stable nations like Ethiopia (pre-war) and Kenya attract more investment than highly unstable ones such as South Sudan and Somalia. Armed conflicts discourage investment, ruin infrastructure, and disrupt economic activities, hindering human and capital growth. The study contributes uniquely by offering a comparative analysis of security crises, FDI inflows, and forex markets across diverse African economies, with actionable policy recommendations. It emphasizes that no development can flourish amid violent conflict. Even stable economies face perception risks from regional instability. Addressing insecurity is therefore both a national and continental priority for sustaining FDI and healthy forex markets. All-inclusive approaches, military, institutional, diplomatic, and developmental are needed to restore investor confidence and stability. Without deliberate policy action, African countries risk continued economic underperformance, currency crises, and reliance on emergency financial interventions.

Over the past four decades, urban scholars have paid increased attention to how private sectors pursue capital gain in and through the city, including through carving out innovation districts. While the privatization of public space is well-established in this literature, less is known about how entrepreneurial districts can further the privatization of public security. Drawing on and extending this line of work, this article examines how a private sector can leverage the local state, an anchor institution (a university), and district residents to create what we call a defended entrepreneurial district— an entrepreneurial district receiving priority public–private policing from above and heightened neighborhood vigilance from below to secure a territory for capital gain in a high-violence context. Our case study is the Distrito Tec, a private university-led innovation district launched in 2014 in Monterrey, Mexico in the aftermath of a major metropolitan security crisis. While the university removed walls from its block perimeter, we argue that it simultaneously reinstated new forms of socio-spatial enclosure at a district level. New public–private policing initiatives deepened surveillance of the 24 blocks in its vicinity favoring the concentration of capital within while prompting new divisions among unwilling residents and the exclusion of unwanted populations. Methodologically, we combine qualitative data on socio-spatial responses to violence collected 6 years apart—during the height and aftermath of this public security crisis. Our comparative analysis contributes to conversations on ethnographic revisits, while advancing research on the privatization of public security in entrepreneurial districts.

Headline ETHIOPIA: A major food security crisis is a real risk

In 2008, the snow and freeze disaster stalled transportation in south of China which led to millions of passengers were stranded in the area of Guangzhou Railway Station where formed major public security crisis. Finally, this crisis was overcame through using grid technology and control management model of grid, mobilizing the system of urban public resources, opening to public use underground space and carrying out the region linkage. However, technical system didn’t take its effects because of the lack of preparation, constricts of information communication and unclearness of interface. Therefore, trans-regional, cross-organized and cross-functional resource integration should be defined as the key application area in network technical system. The social resource also should be brought into systematic management. Except that, the ability which responds on major public security crisis should be strengthened.

This paper attempts to provide a fresh examination of some of the assumptions that underpin two theories explaining the processes of European integration – liberal intergovernmentalism and postfunctionalism – in the context of two major crises that the European Union (EU) has had to contend with over the course of the last 10 years – the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the EU and the Ukrainian crisis, which in February 2022 escalated into a full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine. It demonstrates how 1) liberal intergovernmentalism, particularly with regard to the domestic preferences formation stage and some critiques notwithstanding, is highly relevant in explaining the developments surrounding the decision to hold a referendum on the UK’s continued future in the European Union, 2) postfunctionalism then takes up the baton in accounting for the main reasons behind the pro-”Leave” result of the 2016 referendum, which eventually resulted in the country’s formal withdrawal from the EU on 31 January 2020, 3) the war in Ukraine has in both an indirect and direct fashion brought about a change (that has the potential to turn out to be a fundamental one) in the post-Brexit relations between the EU and the UK, which once again can at least partially be explained by drawing on both of the abovementioned theories of European integration.

States, organizations and individuals are becoming targets of both individual and state-sponsored cyber-attacks, by those who recognize the impact of disrupting security systems and effect to people and governments. The energy sector is seen as one of the main targets of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure, but transport, public sector services, telecommunications and critical (manufacturing) industries are also very vulnerable. One of most used example of cyber-attack is the Ukraine power grid attack in 2015 that left 230,000 people without power for up to 6 hours. Another most high profile example of a cyber-attack against critical infrastructure is the Stuxnet computer virus (first used on Iranian nuclear facility) which could be adapted to attack the SCADA systems (industrial control systems) used by many critical infrastructures in Europe.Wide range of critical infrastructure sectors are reliant on industrial control systems for monitoring processes and controlling physical devices (sensors, pumps, etc.) and for that reason, physical connected devices that support industrial processes are becoming more vulnerable. Not all critical infrastructure operators in all sectors are adequately prepared to manage protection (and raise resilience) effectively across both cyber and physical environments. Additionally there are few challenges in implementation of protection measures, such as lack of collaboration between private and public sector and low levels of awareness on existence of national key legislation.From supranational aspect, in relation to this papers topic, the European Union has took first step in defense to cyber threats in 2016 with „Directive on security of network and information systems“ (NIS Directive) by prescribing member states to adopt more rigid cyber-security standards. The aim of directive is to improve the deterrent and increase the EU’s defenses and reactions to cyber attacks by expanding the cyber security capacity, increasing collaboration at an EU level and introducing measures to prevent risk and handle cyber incidents. There are lot of other „supporting tools“ for Member States countries, such as European Union Agency for Network and Information Security – ENISA (which organize regular cyber security exercises at an EU level, including a large and comprehensive exercise every two years, raising preparedness of EU states); Network of National Coordination Centers and the European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technology and Research Competence Centre; and Coordinated response to major cyber security incidents and crises (Blueprint) with aim to ensure a rapid and coordinated response to large-scale cyber attacks by setting out suitable processes within the EU.Yet, not all Member States share the same capacities for achieving the highest level of cyber-security. They need to continuously work on enhancing the capability of defense against cyber threats as increased risk to state institutions information and communication systems but also the critical infrastructure objects. In Southeast Europe there are few additional challenges – some countries even don't have designated critical infrastructures (lower level of protection; lack of „clear vision“ of criticality) and critical infrastructures are only perceived through physical prism; non-EU countries are not obligated to follow requirements of European Union and its legislation, and there are interdependencies and transboundary cross-sector effects that needs to be taken in consideration. Critical infrastructure Protection (CIP) is the primary area of action, and for some of SEE countries (like the Republic of Croatia) the implementation of cyber security provisions just complements comprehensive activities which are focused on physical protection.This paper will analyze few segments of how SEE countries cope with new security challenges and on which level are they prepared for cyber-attacks and threats: 1. Which security mechanisms they use; 2. The existing legislation (Acts, Strategies, Plan of Action, etc.) related to cyber threats in correlation with strategic critical infrastructure protection documents. Analysis will have two perspectives: from EU member states and from non-EU member states point of view. Additionally, for EU member states it will be analyzed if there were any cyber security legislation before NIS directive that meets same aims. The aim of research is to have an overall picture of efforts in region regarding cyber-security as possibility for improvement thorough cooperation, organizational measures, etc. providing also some recommendations to reduce the gap in the level of cyber-security development with other regions of EU.

The persistent conflict between farmers and herders in Plateau State, Nigeria, has escalated into a major security and socio-economic crisis, driven by resource competition, historical grievances, religious polarization, and governance failures. This study examines community perspectives on reconciliation, confidence-building, and dispute resolution to identify viable strategies for fostering peace. Using a mixed-method approach, data were collected from farming and herding communities through structured surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions. The findings reveal a significant disparity in willingness to engage in dialogue, with herders demonstrating a higher openness to reconciliation compared to farmers, who remain deeply distrustful due to past grievances. Land disputes (79.4%) and water scarcity (69.6%) emerge as the primary causes of conflict, while lack of trust (79.6%) and fear of attack (69.4%) are identified as major barriers to peace. Despite these challenges, there is strong community support for interfaith dialogues (79.8%), joint economic projects (70.2%), and hybrid dispute resolution mechanisms that integrate both traditional and formal legal systems. The study shows the need for trauma healing programs, youth engagement initiatives, and livelihood support as essential components of sustainable peacebuilding. The findings contribute to existing literature by providing empirical insights into grassroots attitudes toward reconciliation and highlight the importance of culturally sensitive, community-driven approaches in addressing farmer-herder conflicts. By prioritizing trust-building, inclusive dialogue, and economic cooperation, locally led peace initiatives can pave the way for long-term conflict transformation and coexistence in Plateau State.

The terrorist attacks of 11th September, 2001 (9/11) triggered significant changes in the way aviation security is implemented all over the world. Despite many lessons learned in the industry, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the same as those prompted by 9/11 — the imposition of prescribed, disproportionate to risk, one-size-fits-all measures with adverse impacts on operations. Taking the learning from a major world crisis such as 9/11 has shown how an intelligence-driven, risk-based, outcome-focused regulatory model enables the industry to determine how a known threat informed by intelligence might manifest in terms of likelihood and consequence that is unique to every airport. Together, ACI and Arup have identified the top ten lessons learnt from the security experience that can be directly applied to manage health risks in aviation. The paper explores the lessons learned for airports (recommendations 1–5) before identifying those learned for regulators (recommendations 6–10).