Conditions Of Duress Research Articles

A tale of two towns: Water provision and management in the towns of Beaufort West and Vanrhynsdorp, c. 1900–1970

The Karoo region of South Africa receives some of the lowest annual precipitation in South Africa. The towns of Beaufort West and Vanrhynsdorp share a history of unreliable water supplies, coupled with extreme poverty that left a large section of the population of these towns with little to no access to safe water and sanitation infrastructure. Vanrhynsdorp and Beaufort West had low populations and limited permanent infrastructure during the 19th century. As the 20th century progressed, agricultural market price drops, droughts, the opening of railway lines and the promise of better living conditions spurred on by local business pushed larger numbers of people towards the rural towns. This led to the rapid expansion of populations in rural towns that lacked the financial and practical means to accommodate the rising need for larger permanent water sources and supply infrastructure (often in the form of groundwater). This article will compare how Beaufort West and Vanrhynsdorp developed divergent water provision systems between 1900 and 1970. These two case studies represent a glimpse into the history of water provision struggles of towns in the arid interior during the first half of the 20th century.Contribution: This article focusses on South African water history, and specifically on the problematics of water procurement to towns and communities in the arid Karoo region amid failing water infrastructure and recurring droughts. It augments the historical knowledge on strategies to provide water to rural communities under conditions of duress. The article falls within the scope of New Contree’s scientific focus as it throws more light on the historical infrastructure challenges that two rural communities faced and what strategies they have implemented to overcome such challenges.

Re-examining provider perceptions of best pre-war practices: what elements can help opiate agonist therapy programs in Ukraine successfully survive the crisis?

This paper seeks to explore and understand what constitutes successful opioid agonist therapy (OAT) programs from the views of Ukrainian OAT providers in their context-specific accounts. Prior to the ongoing war the Ukrainian addiction treatment system made great strides to expand its OAT program and increase the number of patients. Since the beginning of the war there has been much alarm that those hard-earned successes will be destroyed. However, emerging evidence suggests that the Ukrainian OAT programs have shown signs of resilience in the face of adversity albeit at great cost. What aspects of the OAT programs developed prior to the crisis have been helpful to allow them to weather the storm? Using the data from 24 addiction treatment providers, this paper describes the essential elements of the OAT programs that preceded the current crisis which made them robust over time. By examining the narratives of the participants interviewed pre-war and pre-COVID-19 the paper reveals structural and cultural elements of the OAT programs before the perfect storm that are likely to endure. To the best of our knowledge, no one else has investigated OAT providers perspectives in Ukraine prior to the crisis which makes this paper extremely salient to understand both the robustness and the vulnerability of MAT programs in Ukraine during the war and going forward. The data come from qualitative semi-structured interviews with 24 OAT providers throughout 5 regions of Ukraine. Participants included front-line clinicians, head narcologists, and chief doctors from TB clinics, district hospitals and drug addiction centers. Using a coding scheme of 103 inductively developed categories we explored participants' perceptions of their OAT program. In the stories shared by clinicians pre crisis, three major interconnected themes focused on economic uncertainty at the institutional level (leading to under-staffing), structural capacity of the program, and clinicians' professional identity, shaping differing views on application of rules for administrative discharge, take-home dosing, and the potential for scale-up. Knowing the data collection was completely unbiased to the current crisis, interpreting the findings helps us understand that OAT clinicians have had "years" of training under conditions of duress in Ukraine to overcome barriers, find creative solutions and form a support network that became indispensable in surviving the current humanitarian catastrophe. In the discussion we point out that the current crisis magnified the pre-existing challenges as the providers approach toward overcoming them was already largely present before the crisis (just on a different scale). The underlying fragility of resources was a constant since OAT inception in Ukraine. Historically, providers in Ukraine operated in a system that was under-funded in the absence of solid governmental funding for OAT programs, yet they came up with solutions which required ingenuity that they took pride in. This gives hope that addiction treatment in Ukraine and OAT programs will not be casualties of this humanitarian crisis and providers and their patients will persevere.

Peritoneal Dialysis for Acute Kidney Injury Treatment in the United States: Brought to You by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created unprecedented strain on health care resources in the United States. Initial reports of AKI rates from Wuhan, China ranged between 3% and 9%, although rates as high as 15% have been reported (1,2). For AKI requiring RRT, intermittent hemodialysis (HD) and continuous RRT (CRRT) have been mainstays of therapy in the United States. However, shortages in supplies, staffing, and available equipment among critically ill patients with COVID-19, particularly in the New York City area, have demanded alternative strategies such as acute peritoneal dialysis treatment for AKI (AKI-PD) that are being implemented. Here, we will review the rationale for the use of AKI-PD and describe potential advantages, criteria for patient selection, and practical considerations on the basis of initial experiences to consider when prescribing and delivering peritoneal dialysis (PD). PD was routine for AKI treatment worldwide well into the 1980s. However, by the 1990s with the development of the central venous catheter for HD and the advent of CRRT, PD became rarely used in higher-resource countries to treat adult patients with AKI (3). The utility and efficacy of PD to treat patients with AKI were re-examined after the publication of a series of articles from Brazil, including a randomized trial, demonstrating that PD provided acceptable care, was not inferior to daily HD in treating acutely ill patients with AKI in terms of patient mortality, and was associated with a shorter duration of AKI and need for RRT (4,5). These findings were confirmed in a randomized trial from Saudi Arabia comparing PD with hemodiafiltration (6). AKI-PD expanded dramatically in lower-resource countries with the advent of the Saving Young Lives Program in 2012, which promoted the use of PD because of minimal infrastructural requirements, including a lack of need for water …

Foreign Maids and Beauty Queens

Every Sunday is ‘maids’ day off’ in Hong Kong, when Filipina domestic workers gather en masse in the city’s Central District. These public gatherings have become a well-known phenomenon in Hong Kong, with thousands of migrant women occupying the financial district from morning till sundown, sprawling out in front of high-end boutiques and building makeshift temporary houses from cardboard boxes. The weekly event is at the centre of social life for migrant workers and has given rise to a wide range of amateur performance practice, including choreographed dances, street catwalks and beauty pageants. For Hong Kong residents, however, such leisure activities contradict the rationale for tolerating the presence of foreign maids, whose labour is needed but needed out of sight. The excess of Filipinas performing out in the open is a highly visible transgression for a Hong Kong public that would prefer these undesirable bodies to remain invisible.In the context of Hong Kong’s exclusionary politics of labour migration, the amateur performances of Filipina domestic workers are a cultural and a site-specific practice of diasporic identity that create a public presence for an otherwise invisible migrant workforce. As amateur performers, every Sunday Filipinas counter their common experiences of servitude and contest racialized conceptions of Filipina identity as naturally inclined towards domestic work. The amateur labour that such performances entail offers a different experience of work and time for Filipinas, producing distinct embodied ways of doing politics that claim a place outside the domestic realm. These cultural practices invite us to consider the stakes of amateur performance under conditions of duress and prompt us to examine the link between amateur performance and domestic work as particular forms of labour affected by relations of value production.

The construction of social identity in newly recruited nuclear engineering staff: A longitudinal study

This study examines the process by which newly recruited nuclear engineering and technical staff came to understand, define, think, feel and behave within a distinct group that has a direct contribution to the organization׳s overall emphasis on a culture of reliability and system safety. In the field of organizational behavior the interactive model of social identity formation has been recently proposed to explain the process by which the internalization of shared norms and values occurs, an element critical in identity formation. Using this rich model of organizational behavior we analyzed multiple sources of data from nine new hires over a period of three years. This was done from the time they were employed to investigate the construction of social identity by new entrants entering into a complex organizational setting reflected in the context of a nuclear facility. Informed by our data analyses, we found support for the interactive model of social identity development and report the unexpected finding that a newly appointed member׳s age and level of experience appears to influence the manner in which they adapt, and assimilate into their surroundings. This study represents an important contribution to the safety and reliability literature as it provides a rich insight into the way newly recruited employees enact the process by which their identities are formed and hence act, particularly under conditions of duress or significant organizational disruption in complex organizational settings.

Introduction: Universities under Conditions of Duress

Hans-Peter Krueger introduces Session III: Universities Under Conditions of Duress. After outlining four points of the first session, he posits two personal lessons learned as an East German intellectual - the function of a prior primacy of economy in the Western world and the continuity of bureaucratic increase. He finishes with a commentary on the Bologna process.

Universities under Conditions of Duress: Question and Answer Session

ALAN RYAN: Because the Protestant God is the one that said every man was to be his own priest, was to read the Bible for himself, and was to make his own way to salvation. Out of that comes the whole Lockean story about toleration, and the idea that unless you question your own favorite ideas and inclinations, you are not being entirely serious. Self-criticism. The failure to really understand this is, if I may say so, the one drawback of what is otherwise the immense pleasure to be had from teaching in the United States. All the kids are taught at the age of about seven to distinguish between facts and opinions. So they write essays in which they painfully copy out whatever it is they are copying out, and you say, Where is the criticism of what you've read? Oh, you want my opinion. You don't want their opin-

Introduction: Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress

Introduction: Free Inquiry under Conditions of Duress

Ethical challenges in neonatal research: Summary report of the ethics group of the newborn drug development initiative

Background: The Newborn Drug Development Initiative (NDDI) was established to address the lack of substantive data supporting efficacy and safety of drugs in the neonate. Objective: This commentary summarizes some of the ethical issues involved in neonatal drug development. Methods: At the NDDI workshop held March 29 and 30, 2004, in Baltimore, Maryland, members of the Ethics Group were dispersed among the subspecialty groups before convening to discuss common ethical themes. The Ethics Group then met together to identify and discuss those ethical themes that were both important and shared among the groups. These themes are discussed and illustrated with the other NDDI group reports. This workshop was cosponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the US Food and Drug Administration. Results: Neonatal drug research is scientifically and ethically necessary to establish the efficacy and safety of drugs widely used in newborn medicine. However, research involving neonates must be carefully designed to balance potential risks and benefits, with consideration given to the component analysis of risk. The protocols proposed by the NDDI groups would be considered greater than minimal risk and offering prospect for direct benefit, thus adhering to the Department of Health and Human Services' pediatric research regulations (Subpart D). The NDDI groups all proposed randomized controlled clinical trials, with careful attention to scientifically and ethically appropriate control groups. Multiple regulatory bodies have affirmed that in the absence of proven effective treatment or when a proven treatment offers marginal benefits, study designs with placebo controls are ethical. Obtaining parental permission is a complex issue, with a paucity of evidence describing the feasibility of informed and voluntary consent under conditions of duress and a short therapeutic window. The Subpart D regulations offer sufficient protection to critically ill neonates. The application of the revised Subpart B regulations would restrict the use of a waiver of consent for minimal risk research and for emergency research, and would not allow research that offers no direct benefit and no more than a minor increase over minimal risk. Conclusions: Multisite collaboration involving standards of care and institutional review board procedures may be important for establishing scientific and ethical consistency. Ongoing dialogue among researchers, clinicians, parents, and other interested parties is essential to promoting ethically and scientifically sound neonatal clinical research.

Understanding Tourism Crisis: Case Studies of Bali and Phuket

With the scale and abundance of recent crises, effective destination management has become a highly topical issue within the tourism industry. Risk management is generally promoted as a valuable method of hazard reduction, yet the planning capability of any destination is only truly determined in real conditions of duress. An integrated crisis management approach extends beyond strategies of prevention and preparation to actively facilitate comprehensive response, recovery, and resilience strategies. Case studies of authentic tourism crisis can assist in understanding and providing practical lessons for reducing vulnerability and sustained adversity. Although the recent tourism crises experienced by both Bali and Phuket were "triggered" by separate and distinctive events, analysis of the subsequent issues and concerns demonstrate the benefits of a more proactive and integrated approach to destination management strategies.

The forces of matter

And to me too, who loves life, it seems that butterflies and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them among men, know most about happiness. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra The unique properties of the soap bubble, long a focus of science, demonstrated the potential for an air-supported architecture: even under conditions of duress, the bubble enclosed the maximum space with the minimum boundary and required no upright supports. While pneumatic architecture would never attain mainstream acceptability, for those who wished the profession to keep up with the cultural changes of the 1960s, air-supported structures had particular significance. Inflatables not only suggested a democratic alternative to conventional construction, but everything about the air-supported enclosure spoke of continuous change, from its constant adjustment to climatic conditions to the ease of its transportability. Moreover, British scientists had used the soap film to demonstrate that nature was not a series of abstract physical forms but rather a dynamic, biological system; after the second world war this insight came to inflect the understanding of structure within the innovative contingent of the architectural community. Metamorphosis, or ability of structure to adapt and change, was declared the true destiny of the modernist project. The old modernism had celebrated the products of industrial technology and was built of hard angles and cool surfaces. By contrast, the rounded contours and flexible materials of pneumatics suggested the emergent technology of the system. The bubble itself contained the duality of being a model of formal perfection under ideal circumstances while having the capacity to represent process through its optimal adaptation to environmental change. Under jobsite conditions, the desire to do away with the duality of form and formlessness in favour of the continuum of process relied on distinctions being drawn between abstract and organic forms, permanence and instability, ‘hardware’ and ‘software’. By allowing for the component of time to be introduced into structure, the flexible membranes of pneumatic software approximated the dynamic system of organic life. Such elisions, however, would bring with them their own binary obfuscations, as the ‘Suitaloon’, a proposal for an inflatable suit by Archigram's Mike Webb, demonstrates. The confusions over the domain of acquiescent materials and compliant technology that was pervasive in the translation from bubble to building would linger on in the following generations of so-called virtual architectures.

Environmental stress and individual decision-making: Implications for the patient

While many of today's judgments and decisions are made under conditions of duress, empirical evidence is lacking for the effects that environmental stressors have on decision-making. Results of two laboratory studies suggest that stress exerts its effects on decision-making after, rather than during, exposure to the stressor. After-effects of stress include both increases in the use of heuristics (shortcutting strategies) and increased confidence in the decisions that are made. Future research questions raised by the present research, as well as practical implications for patient decision-making, are discussed.