War Crisis Research Articles

A panel of nanobodies recognizing conserved hidden clefts of all SARS-CoV-2 spike variants including Omicron

We are amid the historic coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Imbalances in the accessibility of vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics among countries, regions, and populations, and those in war crises, have been problematic. Nanobodies are small, stable, customizable, and inexpensive to produce. Herein, we present a panel of nanobodies that can detect the spike proteins of five SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) including Omicron. Here we show via ELISA, lateral flow, kinetic, flow cytometric, microscopy, and Western blotting assays that our nanobodies can quantify the spike variants. This panel of nanobodies broadly neutralizes viral infection caused by pseudotyped and authentic SARS-CoV-2 VOCs. Structural analyses show that the P86 clone targets epitopes that are conserved yet unclassified on the receptor-binding domain (RBD) and contacts the N-terminal domain (NTD). Human antibodies rarely access both regions; consequently, the clone buries hidden crevasses of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins that go undetected by conventional antibodies.

Nordic War Stories: World War II as History, Fiction, Media, and Memory

Nordic War Stories: World War II as History, Fiction, Media, and Memory

The Conflict in Ukraine: Regional and Global Contexts

The political context of the current war crisis in Ukraine has at least three layers. To start from the bottom, the first layer is the crisis of the Minsk Accords.1 After the anti-Russia coup in Kyiv in February 2014, pro-Russia popular movements consolidated in several regions of Ukraine. In Crimea, this developed into separating from Ukraine and integrating into Russia. In several other regions like Odessa and Kharkov, such movements were forcefully suppressed. But in the two regions, Donetsk and Lugansk, they managed to survive as de facto, unrecognized states, fighting Kyiv. To stop that war, two Minsk accords were concluded with the mediation of Russia, France, and Germany. The accords provided ceasefire and political reform, including constitutional amendments, to give these pro-Russia regions special status within Ukraine. However, these accords were never fully implemented. Kyiv temporized because the nationalistic movements in Ukraine strongly opposed their implementation. One of the central elements of Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential campaign in 2019 was the promise of peaceful reintegration of Donetsk and Lugansk separatist regions, which implied implementation of the Mink accords. After his election, however, President Zelensky came to the position of denying the Minsk agreements. Now Russian officials claim that Ukraine was preparing for a military assault on the separatist regions in 2022 to reintegrate them by force rather than through the implementation of the Minsk Accords. The sabotage and finally denial of the Minsk Accords logically implied the return to warfare, which these accords put an end to in 2014.

Study on Invulnerability of Material Emergency Transportation System Based on Three-Layer Interdependent Network

The material transportation capacity under emergency conditions is an important guarantee for the country to deal with war, epidemic outbreak, and other crisis situations. Under emergency conditions, some nodes of the material transportation system may fail to work normally, which may lead to the collapse of the whole system. Based on analyzing the characteristics of the material emergency transportation system, this article builds a three-layer interdependent network model and uses the improved M-L model to describe the failure propagation mechanism of node damage in the three-layer network. Then, the network model is attacked randomly, and the relationship between invulnerability of the three-layer network and the three main indexes of network flow, average degree, and probability of interdependence are studied. Afterwards, the propagation of cascading failure among three subnetworks in the interdependent network is analyzed and compared. This article provides a theoretical basis for building an efficient and robust material emergency transportation system.

Sensitivity of Crude Oil Price Change to Major Global Factors and to Russian–Ukraine War Crisis

To assess the elasticity of crude oil price to global factors related to supply of crude oil and the US dollar exchange rate, the authors employed nonlinear models including flexible least squares, and maximum likelihood estimator, in addition to OLS regression mode; using yearly data from 1965 to 2021. The findings indicate change in oil prices due to 1% change in any of the explanatory variables, as follows: the effect of the US dollar depreciation rate, raise crude oil price/barrel by 71 US cents; and increase in OPEC production, decrease crude oil price by 82 US cents; a decrease in non-OPEC production, raise oil price by 4.78 US$. These results imply that, if a ban imposed on Russian crude oil export, and no increase in OPEC production to compensate Russian oil loss in the international markets, global crude oil price expected to rise by 88 US$ above its level before Russian–Ukraine crisis, meaning that crude oil price expected to rise at 160 US$ pbab. However, if OPEC members increase their output level by 10 million barrels per day to compensate the Russian oil loss, then global crude oil price is expected to stay at 102 US$ pb.

Sensitivity of crude oil price change to major global factors and to Russian-Ukraine war crisis

To assess the elasticity of crude oil price to global factors related to supply of crude oil and the US dollar exchange rate, we employed nonlinear models including flexible least squares (FLS), and maximum likelihood estimator (MLE), in addition to OLS regression mode; using yearly data from 1965 to 2021. Our findings indicate change in oil prices due to 1% change in any of the explanatory variables, as follows: the effect of the US dollar depreciation rate, raise crude oil price/barrel by 71 US cents; and increase in OPEC production, decrease crude oil price by 82 US cents; a decrease in non-OPEC production, raise oil price by 4.78 US$. These results imply that, if a ban imposed on Russian crude oil export, and no increase in OPEC production to compensate Russian oil loss in the international markets, global crude oil price expected to rise by 88 US$ above its level before Russian–Ukraine crisis, meaning that crude oil price expected to rise at 160 US$ pb[1][2]. However, if OPEC members increase their output level by 10 million barrels per day to compensate the Russian oil loss, then global crude oil price expected to stay at 102 US$ pb.

Prevalence of Workplace Bullying in the Syrian Graduate Medical Education System During COVID-19 Pandemic and Civil War: A National Cross-Sectional Study

AimsWorkplace Bullying (WPB) is a severe stressor that can negatively impact an individual's physical and psychological health. WPB, a type of occupational violence, is the third leading cause of death in the workplace worldwide. This study delivers an estimated prevalence of bullying among healthcare practitioners in the Syrian graduate medical education system and to explore its prevalence within socio-demographic subgroups.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Damascus, during the Syrian war crisis. A total of 478 residents and fellows fully completed the survey. Respondents completed questions regarding socio-demographic information and workplace bullying.ResultsOf 478 respondents, 267 (55.9%) were males. The majority (89%) reported being subjected to workplace bullying, and (92%) of them witnessed their colleagues being bullied. Supervisor/attendings (45%), and peer/resident (40%) were the most frequent source of perceived bullying followed by supervisor/consultant (34.5%), and Patients (33.5%). Attempts to belittle and undermine work 434 (90.7%) was the most frequently reported bullying behavior. Specific bullying behaviors were more reported by males, ＜170 cm height, ≥ 25 BMI kg/m2, and postgraduate year 1 (PGY) participants. Credible published national data regarding the number of Syrian medical residents are not available to evaluate the representativeness of our sample.ConclusionMany participants reported experiencing bullying in the Syrian graduate medical education programs. Enforcing anti-bullying policies, closely monitoring work environments, and encouraging anonymous reporting of workplace bullying, is crucial to eliminate these behaviors in the healthcare system. A longitudinal study should be conducted to gain more knowledge and insight into workplace bullying among healthcare practitioners.

버지니아 울프 소설에 나타난 타자 철학

The purpose of this paper is to throw new light on the novels of Virginia Woolf, whose fictions explore aesthetic, political, ethical, and epistemological concerns from the post-structuralist perspective. In Jacob’s Room(1922), Mrs. Dalloway(1925), and To the Lighthouse(1927), Woolf concerns herself with the issue of how another person can be understood and known. Emerging from the Great War crisis of faith in the possibility of truthful understanding and complete knowledge, a sense of unknowability shapes and saturates Woolf’s fictions. Such a failure of communication is a familiar characteristic of modernist works. However, I argue that Woolf’s novels emphasize the idea of reading such gaps as the encounter with alterity that defines the ethics of modernism. Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics based on responsibility for the absolute other enables a more complex understanding of Woolf’s experimental fictions. Reading her novels in dialogue with Levinas helps to clarify Woolf’s philosophy of the other.

Geographical distribution of the health crisis of war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia

War destroys health facilities and displaces health workers. It has a devastating impact on population health, especially in vulnerable populations. We assess the geographical distribution of the impact of war...

Informing the Leader: Bureaucracies and International Crises

Whether international crises end in conflict frequently depends on the information that leaders possess. To better explain how leaders acquire information, I develop and test an informational theory of bureaucracies during crises. Time-constrained leaders delegate information collection to advisers who lead bureaucracies. A division of labor between bureaucracies breeds comparative specialization among advisers. Some emphasize information on adversaries’ political attributes, which are harder to assess; others stress military attributes, which are easier to assess. Bureaucratic role thus affects the content and uncertainty that advisers provide. I use automated and qualitative coding to measure adviser input in 5,400 texts from US Cold War crises. As hypothesized, advisers’ positions affect the information and uncertainty they convey but not the policies they promote as canonical theories suggest. For individuals advising leaders during crises, what you know depends on where you sit. Consequently, the information leaders possess hinges on which bureaucracies have their attention.

제3세계 운동의 기원으로서 한국전쟁 - 버마의 우 누의 중립주의를 연결고리로

South Korea’s historical and social science scholarship has recently taken strong interests in the inception and development of the Third World movement. The growth of this research interest is closely tied to the end of the global Cold War order and Korea’s unique place in this historical process. It involves probing reflections on why the two states of the Korean peninsula, especially that in the southern half, were not part of the early Third World movement. This essay argues that although these state actors were outsiders to this formative internationalist movement of the mid-twentieth century in its early days, their experience of the era, notably that of the Korean War, was not. Focusing on the Bandung Conference of 1955 and the role of U Nu, the Burmese leader and strong advocate of neutralist politics, in it, the essay asks how the civil war crisis in Korea became a crucial background for the advent of the Non-aligned Movement and the rise of the Third World more broadly.

The Unspoken Agenda of Houthi Digital Poetry in Yemen’s Current War Crisis

This article examines how the Houthi rebels in Yemen use tribal poetry as a propaganda platform to influence public opinion about the current war crisis in the country. By digitalizing Yemeni oral popular poetry, zamil, in the form of motivational war songs and YouTube videos, the Houthi militia group is able to attract young supporters, and publicly denounce Saudi airstrikes and the international sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. While the study unpacks the hidden agenda of Houthi digital poetry and its multiple underpinnings, it sheds light on two important findings: 1) the understudied role of Houthi media campaign the way it’s been used as a digital weapon to advance Yemen’s Shiite militia movement, 2) how the Houthi use of social media revived a Yemeni poetic tradition, zawamil (plural of zamil) to disseminate a wide populous sentiment against the Saudi-led coalition and the United Nations Security Council in this civil conflict.

The State Conference in Moscow, 1917: class, nationality, and the building of a post-imperial community

ABSTRACT The State Conference in Moscow, a one-time quasi-parliamentary assembly of over 2,500 delegates, was intended to help the Provisional Government resolve the military, political, and economic crises of the First World War and the Russian Revolution by building a broad public consensus. Due to the inadequate representation at the conference, its duration and procedure, and the radically divergent platforms of major political forces, the assembly functioned as a political rally rather than a parliament. The attempt to resolve the crises by (re)constituting a Russian political community failed due to the conflicts formulated in terms of class and nationality and the contradictions between coercive discipline and self-organization as the principles of state- and nation-building. Even though the idea of the Russian nation prevailed at the conference, its participants did not agree if a post-imperial political community was to be homogeneous or composite, inclusive or exclusive, and if it was to be organized in a top-down or bottom-up manner.

Pozitivni finansijski aspekti migracija i dijaspore za stanovništvo i privredu Srbije

The subject of the paper is the analysis of economic and social advantages of remittance inflows from the Serbian diaspora. Remittances are important for domestic economy and people for several reasons. First and foremost, these remittances are at a high level because of a large number of Serbs that have emigrated in the decades behind us. Even though the exact amount of these remittances cannot be precisely calculated, due to the fact that a great portion of remittances comes to Serbia via informal channels, remittance inflows can have positive effects on many economic aspects of receiving countries, especially in the case of transitioning countries that have gone through difficult periods of economic and political crises, war crisis and devastations. Inflows from diaspora can affect the reduction of poverty, development of economic entities, and even the exchange rate of the country and economic development as a whole, and the diaspora can influence the improvement of political climate and economic relationships with foreign countries. In this paper, we wanted to examine the correlation and strength of the relationship (if any) between the trends of Serbia's GDP and remittances, as well as the relationship between GDP per capita in Serbia and remittances. The correlation procedure was performed in the IBM SPSS 21 program, and the World Bank data were used as a basis. It was concluded that the trend ratio of the GDP of Serbia and remittances is characterized by a positive correlation which was observed in the trend of the GDP of Serbia and remittances.

Afghanistan, War Crisis, and Gender Apartheid: A Comment on Afghan Women as War Victims and Nullified ‘Objects’ of Human Rights.

Afghanistan, War Crisis, and Gender Apartheid: A Comment on Afghan Women as War Victims and Nullified ‘Objects’ of Human Rights.

Anti-State Policy of Ossetians Residing in Georgia in 1918-1921

On May 26, 1918, adoption of the Act of Independence, which established the Democratic Republic of Georgia by the National Council, has been the most significant event in Georgia’s history. The First World War crisis and 1917 revolution incited nations, occupied by empire, to restore sovereignty. Georgia was one among these few. Georgia was declared as independent republic, governed by the national council, and soon after, most of European countries recognized its independence. Despite its short run, the first democratic republic had a fundamental impact on the history of Georgia. It was the only country from South Caucasus, where the Red Army failed to seize the power without fierce opposition. Georgians’ relentless resistance was fed by anti-Bolshevik attitude. Democratic, humanistic course, equality in development and striving to build democratic country, ethnic tolerance and acceptance of European values were reflected in the act of independence and late, in the constitution. Although Georgian government always tried to respectfully apply status of minor ethnic group - Ossetians within the legal and state framework, unfortunately state could not always manage it. Generally, Ossetians, migrated to Georgia, had never have ethno- political or ethnoterritorial entity before socialization. “South Ossetia” as a concept of Ossetian settlement in mountainous Shida Kartli was fabricated over period of time after Russian Empire had annexed Georgian Kingdom. The idea was unjustified and unacceptable but well-designed and profitable for the Russian Empire. Ossetian separatism had revealed its nature from the very first day of Georgian independence. Deep-rooted Russian threat towards the Caucasus has always endangered integration of Georgia within European family. Constant and unquenched desire to stir up conflicts in Georgia, among Caucasus countries, was generated in Russian Empire and later was successfully and methodologically inherited by Soviet Russia. This approach had been deliberately destroying Caucasus platform and becoming part of European family seemed as a disappearing dream. However, Georgia was determined to be among European countries and sometimes was winning battles. One of those wins was an election of Catholicos-patriarch in September 1917, an event, which paved the road toward independence. But in 1921, Georgia was occupied thus new era of dreadful existence had started for the country.

Sensitivity of Crude Oil Price Change to Major Global Factors and to Russian-Ukraine War Crisis

Sensitivity of Crude Oil Price Change to Major Global Factors and to Russian-Ukraine War Crisis

How Much Inflation and Unemployment Worldwide Can Generate the Russo-Ukrainian War Crisis?

How Much Inflation and Unemployment Worldwide Can Generate the Russo-Ukrainian War Crisis?

De-centralized cross border payments for global economic status quo

The recent Russia-Ukraine war crisis and the subsequent economic sanctions imposed by the US via a restriction on the SWIFT payment system have highlighted the increased reliance of global economies on a single message service for international trade. This, along with high inflation in the US and falling global economies world-wide and the struggle of the USD to maintain its dominance is bringing about a concept of dedollarisation, where economies are trying to have their reserves in alternate currencies and have global trade in other currencies of choice. This paper discusses about a Globally Backed Stablecoin (GBS) that envelopes the benefits of blockchain and tries to overcome the negatives of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) as an answer to the future of global trade where it becomes difficult to influence its value or usage by few participants and gives better transparency in the global trade. This is another step to ensure that economies are not held hostage by sanctions or threats and unlike the US Dollar or SWIFT systems, payment systems cannot be used as a weapon for economic wars.

A Civilisational Dialogue Perspective for a Global Family

Surely we live in the most exciting, fascinating and challenging, if also the most complex, frightening and confusing time in human history. Even the most affluent and comfortable people in the world now face the sudden confluence of the biggest global crises ever-in energy, finance and global warming, not to mention the continuing crises of poverty, war, ecosystem destruction, air, water and soil pollution, etc. As these great global crises converge upon us with terrifying speed and impact, we seem to be numbed to the staggering amounts of new money printed for government bailouts of banks and businesses in the West while public debt and unemployment soar. In the East we fear the loss of newly found wealth and newly created or entered markets. Everywhere we are paralyzed by the dire warnings of scientists about desertification, temperature and sea level rise that governments are reluctant to address, along with the enormous waste of massive resources in many places on warfare.