European Imaging Research Articles

A Visit to the Exhibition of All Nations: The Chicago World’s Fair and the United States in Vasily Sidorov’s Travel Writing

The Chicago World’s Fair represented a continuity of the World’s Fairs as key international events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which were widely covered, including in travelogues for home readership. The Russian Empire showed considerable interest in participating, especially after Americans organized a relief campaign during its famine a year ago. While the Russian government supervised the exhibits and sent specialists to study the American economy and society, many Russians visited the Fair individually, and some published travel accounts. This article explores the account titled America. Travel Notes and Impressions (1895) written by novelist and botanist Vasily Sidorov. Traveling with a group of European tourists, he admires American nature and praises American technological progress, mobility, and freedoms that could be potentially borrowed but shows uncertainty about major cities and excesses of industrialization and technological development, to a degree repeating what was pointed out by earlier Russian visitors. He evaluated the Fair and most of what he saw through the image of Europe which was also employed to emphasize his sense of cultural superiority.

AI as a Medical Device for Ophthalmic Imaging in Europe, Australia, and the United States: Protocol for a Systematic Scoping Review of Regulated Devices.

Artificial intelligence as a medical device (AIaMD) has the potential to transform many aspects of ophthalmic care, such as improving accuracy and speed of diagnosis, addressing capacity issues in high-volume areas such as screening, and detecting novel biomarkers of systemic disease in the eye (oculomics). In order to ensure that such tools are safe for the target population and achieve their intended purpose, it is important that these AIaMD have adequate clinical evaluation to support any regulatory decision. Currently, the evidential requirements for regulatory approval are less clear for AIaMD compared to more established interventions such as drugs or medical devices. There is therefore value in understanding the level of evidence that underpins AIaMD currently on the market, as a step toward identifying what the best practices might be in this area. In this systematic scoping review, we will focus on AIaMD that contributes to clinical decision-making (relating to screening, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment) in the context of ophthalmic imaging. This study aims to identify regulator-approved AIaMD for ophthalmic imaging in Europe, Australia, and the United States; report the characteristics of these devices and their regulatory approvals; and report the available evidence underpinning these AIaMD. The Food and Drug Administration (United States), the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (Australia), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (United Kingdom), and the European Database on Medical Devices (European Union) regulatory databases will be searched for ophthalmic imaging AIaMD through a snowballing approach. PubMed and clinical trial registries will be systematically searched, and manufacturers will be directly contacted for studies investigating the effectiveness of eligible AIaMD. Preliminary regulatory database searches, evidence searches, screening, data extraction, and methodological quality assessment will be undertaken by 2 independent review authors and arbitrated by a third at each stage of the process. Preliminary searches were conducted in February 2023. Data extraction, data synthesis, and assessment of methodological quality commenced in October 2023. The review is on track to be completed and submitted for peer review by April 2024. This systematic review will provide greater clarity on ophthalmic imaging AIaMD that have achieved regulatory approval as well as the evidence that underpins them. This should help adopters understand the range of tools available and whether they can be safely incorporated into their clinical workflow, and it should also support developers in navigating regulatory approval more efficiently. DERR1-10.2196/52602.

Competence of radiologists in cardiac CT and MR imaging in Europe: insights from the ESCR Registry

RationaleTo provide an overview of the current status of cardiac multimodality imaging practices in Europe and radiologist involvement using data from the European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology (ESCR) MRCT-registry.Materials and methodsNumbers on cardiac CT and MRI examinations were extracted from the MRCT-registry of the ESCR, entered between January 2011 and October 2023 (n = 432,265). Data collection included the total/annual numbers of examinations, indications, complications, and reporting habits.ResultsThirty-two countries contributed to the MRCT-registry, including 29 European countries. Between 2011 and 2022, there was a 4.5-fold increase in annually submitted CT examinations, from 3368 to 15,267, and a 3.8-fold increase in MRI examinations, from 3445 to 13,183. The main indications for cardiac CT were suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) (59%) and transcatheter aortic valve replacement planning (21%). The number of patients with intermediate pretest probability who underwent CT for suspected CAD showed an increase from 61% in 2012 to 82% in 2022. The main MRI indications were suspected myocarditis (26%), CAD (21%), and suspected cardiomyopathy (19%). Adverse event rates were very low for CT (0.3%) and MRI (0.7%) examinations. Reporting of CT and MRI examinations was performed mainly by radiologists (respectively 76% and 71%) and, to a lesser degree, in consensus with non-radiologists (19% and 27%, respectively). The remaining examinations (4.9% CT and 1.7% MRI) were reported by non-radiological specialties or in separate readings of radiologists and non-radiologists.ConclusionsReal-life data on cardiac imaging in Europe using the largest available MRCT-registry demonstrate a considerable increase in examinations over the past years, the vast majority of which are read by radiologists. These findings indicate that radiologists contribute to meeting the increasing demands of competent and effective care in cardiac imaging to a relevant extent.Clinical relevance statementThe number of cardiac CT and MRI examinations has risen over the past years, and radiologists read the vast majority of these studies as recorded in the MRCT-registry.Key Points• The number of cardiac imaging examinations is constantly increasing.• Radiologists play a central role in providing cardiac CT and MR imaging services to a large volume of patients.• Cardiac CT and MR imaging examinations performed and read by radiologists show a good safety profile.Graphical

“Images of Europe”

“Images of Europe”

Bat wings in the devil: origin and spreading of this peculiar attribute in art

In Western culture, for centuries the figure of the bat has been associated with the forces of evil, with demons living in the dark, in the most hidden recesses of human fears. Some characteristics of demons of the pagan world (dark color of the body, wings, etc.) pass into the Christian iconography of the devil. Baltrušaitis has shown several elements that place the origin of bat-winged devils in China. From that area they spread out to the West and soon became common images in Europe starting from the 13th century. In the Middle Ages travelling was frequent and even long-range, from Europe to Central Asia, through the Silk Road network and also attested by the diffusion of the Nestorian Church as far as China, beginning from the 7th century. Some of the artistic images of devils with bat wings are shown also in contrast to the wings of angels with feathered wings. The oldest depiction in Europe of a devil with bat wings is the mosaic representing the fall of Simon Magus in the Cappella Palatina (Palatine Chapel) in Palermo (1135–1143).

European Identities and Cultural Imaginaries

"Although a geographically small continent, Europe has fostered, over the past millennia, the emergence of an impressive number of languages, cultures and civilizations. This constitutes its richness and also its challenge: how should all these local, regional and national cultural identities be harmonized and integrated, without destroying, but rather conserving and enhancing them? A seminal concept in the investigation of the cultural, literary and artistic representations is “the imaginary” (the equivalent of the French term l’imaginaire), as opposed to the traditional concepts of “imagination” and “fantasy”. Cultural imaginaries express the relations between individuals and groups, their representations of the self and the others, of the geographical and historical milieus, of the planet and the universe. The images of Europe, positive or negative, global or fragmented, define the conscious and unconscious attitudes and comportments, hopes and fears concerning the individual and common destiny of European peoples."

Beaver, Bison, Horse: The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains

In the early 1990s Grace Morgan’s PhD dissertation was a topic of considerable discussion at the University of Montana, where I had just arrived to work with students in environmental history, Native American history, and the American West. Morgan had answered a fundamental question in the history of the northern West. In the heyday of the fur trade, had the Native peoples of that region actually destroyed beaver—as so many peoples across much of America had done—to exchange for the goods of the Industrial Revolution? The answer from her research in Saskatchewan was a fairly definitive no, and the explanation, as my students and I discussed it, rested on the role beavers played in the ecology of the northern plains. Native people had long understood that in an arid landscape beavers often created and preserved the only dependable water available for travelers. No matter how much pressure European traders applied, groups like the Cree and Blackfoot bands knew better than to undermine a critical ecology that beavers alone maintained.Morgan passed away in 2016. Through the press of her career or some other inattention she never took her dissertation into print, an oversight this 2020 volume finally rectifies. One of the liabilities of Beaver, Bison, Horse, then, is that it rests largely on fieldwork and literature from the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet, reading this volume, somehow that does not seem to date it or detract significantly from it now. Because Morgan was an original thinker and a probing researcher (her field work largely focused on Qu’Appelle River Valley in Saskatchewan), this monograph from thirty years ago nonetheless is well worth spending time with and absorbing.The gist of Morgan’s insights come down to the following. Unlike First Nations peoples in the woodlands, whose absorption into the market economy via killing beaver for the fur trade is so well documented, people on the arid plains refused because of spiritual and ecological reasons. That did not mean, however, that they managed to avoid incorporation into the market. Instead, prairie groups focused their trade on wolf pelts, which in some respects is as surprising as their refusal to kill beavers. Later, when horses made it possible, bison robes pushed wolves into a secondary role. Morgan’s castigation of the lure of firearms in the trade, or even the role that luxury goods played, was not new in the early 1990s and isn’t now. But she is more negative about the transformation horses wrought on Native life than I expected. In my view her most useful addition to knowledge was her archaeological work in reconstructing the pre-horse seasonal movements of people on the northern plains as they followed bison into river valleys in the winter then used fire to lure the animals to open country advantageous for drives and jumps in the summertime. She renders that pattern vividly.James Daschuk was one of Morgan’s students and wrote the foreword here, and Cristina Eisenberg, an ecologist who identifies herself as “mixed Indigenous,” authored the afterword. They do an admirable job translating Morgan’s work into contemporary efforts on the part of both ecologists and tribes to restore beavers, bison, and wolves to twenty-first-century America. This, they argue—and I couldn’t agree more—is one of our principal modern tasks. For five centuries Old World cultures ignored American distinctiveness and moved heaven and earth trying to remake North America in the image of Europe. The myopia involved in that was epic.

Poetry of War: Ukrainian-Turkish Manifestations

The main focus of the article is on Ukrainian poetry written since February 24, 2022, as well as Turkish poetry about the war in Ukraine. The study explores the figurative palette of Ukrainian and Turkish poems, pays particular attention to the multi-vector perception of the war situation through the eyes of Ukrainians and Turkish neighbours, and also to children's poetry (poems written by Ukrainian and Turkish children). Using the comparative method and the method of microanalysis, we discovered common and different images and themes in Turkish and Ukrainian poetry, namely, the image of Europe and America, cruel Russia, the image of a bear, the president of Russia, the image of a stolen spring, the theme of courage, the theme of a crippled childhood. Human values were common to Ukrainian and Turkish poets: human life, peace on the planet, family grief, and historical memory is also similar: in both Ukrainian and Turkish poems, the theme of the aggressive character of Russia from ancient times to the present day echoes. Prayer poems deserve special attention; faith in God unites the poetic world of the Muslim and Christian worlds. Children's poetry is the most painful element of war poetry, but even here the voices of little Ukrainians sound patriotic, with a dream for a bright future, and Turkish voices – with pleas to return childhood to Ukrainian children. The presented works must necessarily have their continuation – namely, translations into different languages, in particular Turkish, for spreading part of the strong-willed spirit of Ukrainians and intercultural communication.

The Literary Politics of Mitteleuropa: Reconfiguring Spatial Memory in Austrian and Yugoslav Literature after 1945 by Yvonne Zivkovic

Reviewed by: The Literary Politics of Mitteleuropa: Reconfiguring Spatial Memory in Austrian and Yugoslav Literature after 1945 by Yvonne Zivkovic Sabine Egger The Literary Politics of Mitteleuropa: Reconfiguring Spatial Memory in Austrian and Yugoslav Literature after 1945. By Yvonne Zivkovic. Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2021. 319 pp. £95. ISBN 978–1-64014–088–2. Yvonne Zivkovic's study discusses how post-war writers in Austria and Yugoslavia have re-imagined the concept of Mitteleuropa as a cultural space between nostalgia and totalitarianism from 1945 to the present. In four chapters the book compares Central European memory spaces in the writing of Ingeborg Bachmann and Peter Handke between 1945 and the 1960s, Danilo Kiš and Aleksandar Tišma from 1960 to 1989, and Christoph Ransmayr and Dubravka Ugrešić after 1990, placing them within the framework of twentieth-century discourses on Mitteleuropa and twenty-first-century images of Europe and its potential dissolution. Chapter 1 links ideas of a transnational Mitteleuropa, put forward by politicians like Friedrich Naumann or Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and Jewish Austrian writers Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth or Ödön von Horváth, to Milan Kundera's and György Konrád's critical debate [End Page 210] of the 1980s. What emerges is a conflicted idea of Mitteleuropa, situated between hope and melancholia, utopian and dystopian visions of a multi-ethnic and pluralist territory left behind by the Habsburg Empire, and a 'mental space', following Lefebvre, shaped by the cultural heritage of the European enlightenment. Zivkovic argues that Claudio Magris's The Habsburg Myth does not capture the critical and dystopian dimension of these writings. The latter is already highlighted in Ruth Klüger's painful memory of 'Mitteleuropäer in Birkenau', which Zivkovic references in her opening (p. 1). The importance of Jewish authors in the literary politics of Mitteleuropa and the significance of the destruction of Jewish culture is brought to the fore throughout the book. Chapter 3 focuses on Kiš and Tišma, two Jewish Yugoslav writers from the Serbian border province of Vojvodina, who approach this difficult past through their distinct aesthetics. A further focus lies on the extent to which the ideas of Mitteleuropa discussed are political, even when they are represented as explicitly apolitical or 'antipolitical'. By using the latter as a term Konrád chose to distance his writing from the Soviet bloc in 1982, Ugrešić places herself within this tradition of Central European literature (p. 263). Zivkovic's comparative approach reveals surprising parallels in the ways Austrian and former Yugoslavian writers approach Mitteleuropa as a trope and mental space. Both Bachmann and Kiš reflect on the late turn towards Holocaust memory in their respective countries and historical settings. Drawing on a spectrum of literary traditions, post-communist memories and their recent experience of the fragmentation of a multi-ethnic European state in the Yugoslav wars, texts by Kiš or Ugrešić revisit and deconstruct patterns of the Habsburg myth. At the same time, Zivkovic's reading of Bachmann and Handke focuses on their Carinthian background and links to Slovenian culture, thus reversing traditional centre–periphery patterns in Austrian literature. Including Yugoslav literature in the Mitteleuropa debate revived in the 1980s by Kundera and Konrád opens up new perspectives on Europe as a cultural and political construct, as well as on the role of literature in this process. This not only applies to the widening of the Mitteleuropa discourse from a Balkan perspective. As Zivkovic points out in her conclusion, '[t]hrough an increased literary presence of Mitteleuropa in Ukrainian and Polish but also Croatian and Serbian literature over the last decade or so, the Central European margin is expanding further east and south' (p. 280). The impact of EU funding on promoting a specific vision of European collectivity is mentioned, as well as the role of exchanges with other Central European writers by means of networks, exile communities and literary festivals. It might also have been useful to discuss the role of literary awards in this context, as these play a major part in positioning authors in specific literary fields. The book also touches on what it means to write in a second language...

European consensus on patient contact shielding

Patient contact shielding has been in use for many years in radiology departments in order to reduce the effects and risks of ionising radiation on certain organs. New technologies in projection imaging and CT scanning such as digital receptors and automatic exposure control (AEC) systems have reduced doses and improved image consistency. These changes and a greater understanding of both the benefits and the risks from the use of shielding have led to a review of shielding use in radiology. A number of professional bodies have already issued guidance in this regard. This paper represents the current consensus view of the main bodies involved in radiation safety and imaging in Europe: European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics, European Federation of Radiographer Societies, European Society of Radiology, European Society of Paediatric Radiology, EuroSafe Imaging, European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS), and European Academy of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology (EADMFR). It is based on the expert recommendations of the Gonad and Patient Shielding (GAPS) Group formed with the purpose of developing consensus in this area. The recommendations are intended to be clear and easy to use. They are intended as guidance, and they are developed using a multidisciplinary team approach. It is recognised that regulations, custom and practice vary widely on the use of patient shielding in Europe and it is hoped that these recommendations will inform a change management program that will benefit patients and staff.

European consensus on patient contact shielding

Patient contact shielding has been in use for many years in radiology departments in order to reduce the effects and risks of ionising radiation on certain organs. New technologies in projection imaging and CT scanning such as digital receptors and automatic exposure control (AEC) systems have reduced doses and improved image consistency. These changes and a greater understanding of both the benefits and the risks from the use of shielding have led to a review of shielding use in radiology. A number of professional bodies have already issued guidance in this regard. This paper represents the current consensus view of the main bodies involved in radiation safety and imaging in Europe: European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics, European Federation of Radiographer Societies, European Society of Radiology, European Society of Paediatric Radiology, EuroSafe Imaging, European Radiation Dosimetry Group (EURADOS), and European Academy of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology (EADMFR). It is based on the expert recommendations of the Gonad and Patient Shielding (GAPS) Group formed with the purpose of developing consensus in this area. The recommendations are intended to be clear and easy to use. They are intended as guidance, and they are developed using a multidisciplinary team approach. It is recognised that regulations, custom and practice vary widely on the use of patient shielding in Europe and it is hoped that these recommendations will inform a change management program that will benefit patients and staff.

The image of Europe and the European Union in digital media of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (discourse analysis 2005-2019)

The image of the EU and Europe in digital mass media of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia is studied in this article using the methodology of discourse analysis. Independent digital mass media Ukrainska Pravda, Nasha Niva, Lenta.ru, Novaya Gazeta are analysed (online publications from years 2005–2019). Three images of Europe in the media are indicated as a result of the research. In Ukraine: a strong reliance on Europe as the idea is observed. The EU and its institutions are stably present in political news, but European politicians are not so popular. In Belarus: Europe doesn’t structure political discussions, however, efforts of the neighbouring EU Member States may be important in the image creation. In Russia: there is not much interest towards Europe, but some approaches to present constant clashes between Russia and the West are evident in digital mass media. The research has confirmed the main hypothesis, which supposed that the mechanisms of creating the image of Europe and the EU in post-Soviet countries’ mass media are different, and the specifics of political discourse, as well as the states’ international politics define the image.

Mykhailo Rudnytskyi vs Dmytro Dontsov: Two Visions of Europe and the West

The paper provides an overview of formation images “Europe” and the “West” in the texts of two prominent Ukrainian publicists in interwar Lviv – Mykhailo Rudnytskyi and Dmytro Dontsov. The article focuses on interwar discussions about the image of Europe, the West, and the East, liberalism, and nationalism. Given the fact that all these and related issues, having entered the Ukrainian public space at the beginning of the XX century remains relevant today, it appears reasonable to analyze these interwar discussions, which represent different ways of imaging European culture. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the sources of formation of these images, their content, and discussions around them. The author elaborated on the similarities and differences of these images in the texts of Rudnytskyi and Dontsov. The key element in Mykhailo Rudnytsky's worldview in the interwar period was liberalism or rather “cultural liberalism.” The three main ideological blocks for him were “freedom”, “individuality” and inclusiveness (openness) of cultures. Mykhailo Rudnytsky's image of “Europe” was rather amorphous, without clear boundaries, and took the liberal culture of the nineteenth century as examples of liberal figures. “East” occupied a very little place in the worldview of Michael, and was superimposed on the oriental axis “West (Europe) – civilization”, “East (Asia) – barbarism”. At the same time, geographical boundaries were not particularly important, and European movements, if they did not correspond to the ideal liberal model, could be considered barbaric and “Asian”. Dmytro Dontsov's image of Europe was focused not on the liberal Europe of the XIX century, but the radical right movements in interwar Europe. If Rudnytsky emphasized the ideas of liberalism of the XIX century, individual freedom and synthesis of cultures, and these ideas he wanted to see in the image of “Europe”, for Dontsov “Europe” and European thinkers had value in the context of ideas of expansion, struggle as the basis of the people's spirit. At the same time, in the worldview of Mykhailo Rudnytsky and Dmytro Dontsov, “The East” acted as a barbaric antithesis of the “West”, the personification of all the wild and backward, which made their worldview in this sense oriental. Given the above material, we can state that the images of “Europe” and “West” in the interwar period remained extremely ambivalent and heterogeneous, and their content depended on the worldview of the authors.

The “Europe – Russia” Dichotomy as an Invented Tradition of Modern Georgian Nationalism

In the article, the author analyzes the transformation of the dichotomy “Europe – Russia” in contemporary Georgian intellectual discourse as well as strategies and forms of positive and negative ideologization of the West and Russia. We state that the hypertrophied role of European and Russian images in the Georgian discourse has resulted from the belief of elites in the collective West as an alternative to Russian infl uence. We analyze the main strategies of forming a positive image of Europe in Georgian intellectual discourse, believing that the development of European motifs and images by several generations of Georgian intellectuals led to the emergence of a unique Georgian Europeanism and the concept of the “Non Typical European” Georgian nation. The development of European images depends on the formation and promotion of the image of Russia as a universal Other. It is assumed that the negative mythologization of Russia resulted from the historical trauma of the loss of statehood, Georgia’s forced history in the Russian Empire and the USSR, as well as the failures in the Russian-Georgian relations in the post-Soviet period. Overall, the author believes that Russian and European narratives have become invented traditions of Georgian identity that infl uence the strategies of elites in Georgian foreign policy.

Facing a ‘civilisational choice’: Images of Europe by the populist radical right in the 2019 European elections

This paper deals with the perceptions of Europe as developed by the European populist radical right over the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections. The study is based on the public communications of three leading political parties in this spectrum: France’s Rassemblement national, Italy’s Lega and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland. By applying image theory in international relations, the paper comes to the conclusion that the radical right managed to construct a relatively coherent image of the EU as a distant undemocratic actor in sharp contrast to the alternative narrative of one ‘Europe of fatherlands’ described in mostly civilisational terms.

Unreliable ally: participation of the Russia in the war of 1809 against Austria

The article reveals the problem of the participation of the Russian Empire in the war of 1809 against Austria, which is little studied in historiography. It is shown that Russia considered Austrian Galicia as its geopolitical field (historical heritage), and therefore opposed its possible inclusion in the Duchy of Warsaw. It is noted that the Russian army, despite allied commitments to France, crossed the border only with the threat of the occupation of Galicia by Polish troops. At the same time, she was passive in actions against Austria (in order to preserve good-neighborly relations), and shied away from helping the Poles. All this led to a tense relationship between the Russian and Polish troops. The article traces in detail the course of hostilities, reveals the mood in Russian army circles (discontent in the officer corps and the escape of soldier). It is shown that the events of 1809 had a significant impact on the aggravation of the situation in the western provinces of the Russian Empire. In general, it is concluded that Russia’s participation in the war against Austria has undermined its image in Europe and contributed to the strengthening of French influence, but only in the short term.

Introduction: The Eurocentric Gaze, Postcolonial Gothic, Indigenous Visions

Introduction:The Eurocentric Gaze, Postcolonial Gothic, Indigenous Visions Eva Rueschmann (bio) Introduction In keeping with Antipodes's focus on literary and other cultural texts from the Pacific region, this special section features six new essays on Australian and New Zealand fictional feature and documentary films. While Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand are separate and distinct national cinemas, this section's coverage of narrative films from both nations reflects a tradition of scholarship based on the significant cultural crossovers between them.1 Beyond the nations' common origins as former British colonies and their Pacific location, Australian and New Zealand filmmakers have both drawn on their respective settler histories and postsettler social development as multicultural nations for narrative subjects and inspiration. Ian Conrich has noted that "Australian and New Zealand cinema share a use of powerful landscapes, they also share a post-settler Gothic, a cinema of isolation and travel, similar screen representations of masculinity, and similar fictional depictions of small-town communities" (5). An expanded list of commonalities includes the important rise since the early 2000s of Indigenous film and filmmakers in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand alike, which Felicity Collins, Jane Landman, and Susan Bye called in A Companion to Australian Cinema (2019) a necessary challenge to the previously dominant "uninterrupted whiteness of Australian screen culture" (37). Discussed here are a diverse range of contemporary films including the director Christine Jeffs's Rain (2001), Richard Roxburgh's Romulus, My Father (2007), Taika Waititi's Boy (2010), Tony Krawitz's Dead Europe (2012), Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (2014), and Natalie Erika James's The Relic (2020). In addition, this section includes new critical reappraisals of notable earlier works such as Fred Schepisi's The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1989). The essays in this special section offer fresh and original critical perspectives on three facets of feature filmmaking in Australia and New Zealand: the representation of Europe as colonial metropole in the antipodean imagination, the postcolonial [End Page 233] Gothic as a film mode or genre, and Indigenous representations on-screen. The section begins with a long-neglected topic in film scholarship: the image of Europe in contemporary Australasian cinema.2 As former British settler colonies, Australia and New Zealand have had a long and complicated relationship—both politically and artistically—with Europe and specifically Great Britain. For instance, in twentieth-century Australian literature, attitudes toward imperial Britain oscillated between "a yearning for a distant Home and the rejection of the Old Country" (Bader 109). Despite this ambivalence, Australian and New Zealand writers and artists long remained intrigued and even drawn to Britain and the European continent as an imagined center of cultural sophistication. While this theme is treated in literary works depicting the journeys of Australians and New Zealanders to Europe, very few feature films focus on the return of descendants of former colonists or immigrants to their European homelands. In the first essay in this special section, Janine Hauthal discusses four films that make visible shifting perceptions of Europe in relation to antipodean cultural identities. If Australians' and New Zealanders' journey back to Europe in these works shows a sometime idealized but now more often problematic "imaginary homeland" for the descendants of white settlers, its dark mirror image can be seen in Australasian Gothic cinema, which not infrequently seems haunted by the traumatic dislocations and tragedies of European colonization. In the Gothic, protagonists perceive and experience the antipodean unfamiliar landscapes as a source of dislocation, psychological terror, melancholy, and the uncanny—an unsettling reversal of Europe as a putative homeland. In Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction, the film scholar Jonathan Rayner has called the Australian Gothic "a mode, a stance and an atmosphere, … suggesting the inclusion of horrific and fantastic materials comparable to those of Gothic literature" (25). Although Australian and New Zealand Gothic is often associated with horror and fantasy films, less generic dramas such as the well-known art house films Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Piano (1993) also draw on this Gothic mode. While the Gothic was imported to the antipodes through the eighteenth-century British Gothic novel, it adopted regional inflections as...

European overview of current practice of fetal imaging by pediatric radiologists: a new task force is launched.

A new task force dedicated to prenatal imaging was created in 2018 by the European Society of Pediatric Radiology. In order to establish a network of European prenatal imaging practice, we sent a questionnaire to radiologists practicing prenatal imaging in Europe. The questions were related to the type of institution, the local legislation for termination of pregnancy, the type of imaging modality and the following items regarding magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): magnetic field, gestational age at which it is performed, use of maternal sedation, number of examinations per year, proportion of cerebral versus body indications and proportion of repeated examinations. We collected responses from 20 European countries, 52 cities and 67 institutions (82% public). In most countries, the upper gestational age limit for termination of pregnancy is 24weeks of gestation. In some countries, it is earlier and in other countries, there is no limit. Very few radiologists practice fetal ultrasonography and computed tomography. In some countries, fetal MRI is mainly performed before 24weeks of pregnancy, while in others, it is mainly performed in the third trimester. Neurological indications are by far predominant and 30% of the institutions have access to a 3-tesla (T) unit for fetal MRI. Maternal sedation is rarely used. The number of scans per year is highly variable with an average of 140, which is not necessarily correlated to the size of the population.

La publicidad de las tiendas por departamentos de la ciudad de México en los albores del siglo XX

Este artículo expone un recorrido por las diferentes estrategias publicitarias que utilizaron las tiendas departamentales, ubicadas en la ciudad de México, a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX, para conquistar a sus posibles clientes. La premisa que atraviesa el análisis es que estos comercios fundaron una nueva tradición del consumo, al introducir elementos como los precios fijos, la exhibición de las mercancías en vitrinas y, en general, la introducción de un nuevo lenguaje publicitario. Todas, características que enmarcan la aparición de nuevas subjetividades urbanas sobre el consumo. Por medio del análisis de los documentos oficiales del ayuntamiento y de la prensa de la época, el artículo postula las transformaciones en el mensaje publicitario; dichos cambios se enmarcan dentro de un contexto de modernización porfiriana, proceso que tuvo como referente la organización de las grandes urbes, como Londres y París. Este espejo europeo es una referencia constante que ayuda a identificar las influencias externas, pero también permite señalar las particularidades propias de la capital mexicana en pleno cambio de siglo.

Amiga y enemiga: la ambivalente Europa de Carl Schmitt

Some important political theorists, Muller and McCormick among them, have tried to link Carl Schmitt’s image of Europe and different political projects (the European Union, the 2003 failed constitutional treaty). This reflections have usually understood Carl Schmitt’s image of Europe as unitary, which is an unprecise approach. In this article I propose to fully analyze Carl Schmitt’s concept of Europe. With this article, not only a bibliographical vacuum would be fulfilled, but also it would make possible to establish a more realistic and accurate dialogue between the schmittian concept of Europe and concrete projects of political organizations in Europe.