Massive Attack Research Articles

Madrid train bombings: what we have learnt from that sad event

IntroductionThe Madrid train bombings consisted of a series of coordinated bombings against the commuter train system of Madrid, on the morning of Thursday 11 March 2004, killing 191 people and wounding 2000. The massive attacks on the population are always unexpected and can cause mass casualties, killed and psychologically affected. All need help. From the perspective of Hemotherapy it is desirable to have a plan already completed and validated to help in times of confusion to know what to do, how to do it and who has to manage everything. On the morning of March 11 the Community of Madrid had no such plan feature. The situation was brought under control, with the help, work and commitment of the population, but was subsequently other actions that had to be improved. For 3 years the Community of Madrid, has a plan of Transfusion in emergencies and disasters. The sad experience of 2004 served to drive us to the conception and development of this plan. The reason for this presentation is to describe the effects of the terrorist attack of 2004, from the point of view Transfusion Centre, how we handle the situation and make a note on such plan currently in place.

Multiorgan Failure Following Mass Wasp Stings

Wasp bites usually bring temporary discomfort and pain, but on occasion, they can cause serious infections and fatal allergic reactions. We report on a patient who experienced massive wasp stings and developed multiple organ failure, including acute kidney, hepatic failure, and circulatory collapse 4 days later. He was treated with aggressive fluid resuscitation, inotropic agent, intravenous injection of steroids, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and hemodialysis. After intensive treatment, his liver function recovered one month later. Recovery of renal function was delayed, and the patient needed temporary regular hemodialysis. The pathology of kidney biopsy showed acute tubulointerstitial nephritis. This case shows that toxic reactions following massive wasp attacks may happen several days after the fact and result in severe, multiorgan system dysfunction.

Truth, Illumination, and Nuclear Weapons

Truth, Illumination, and Nuclear Weapons

Peter Whitehead's Pottery

Peter Whitehead's Pottery Michael O'Brien (bio) A Lidded Bowl from Vumé ... In African villages, it is said that you make your best pots when you are slightly hungry. A small lidded bowl from Vumé,1 (see figure 12) a serving dish made for food, which Peter Whitehead had seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), was created by the English potter Michael Cardew at Vumé in Ghana. The dish fascinated Whitehead. He found himself compelled to go back to the museum again and again to confront it, to discover why it had begun to haunt him. The shape was ambiguous: in two parts. When separated, there were two separate bowls, each of which could be filled with food. The compulsion to return to this object of mystery, he had felt once, when as a student at Cambridge University he had seen a sculpture in the Fitzwilliam Museum, a head of Princess Meritaten of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaton and his wife Nefertiti. Staring at the Cardew lidded bowl, which was one pot, but also two, Whitehead sensed that if he were to become a serious potter, he would always be striving to re-create this pot—until the day he died. The number of coincidences between Whitehead and Cardew seems remarkable. Peter Whitehead was born in the slums of Liverpool and brought up in a one-parent family. He became head boy of a prestigious public school and won a scholarship to study physics at Cambridge. Cardew's two elder brothers were sent to Westminster School, but there was not enough money for Michael, so he was sent to the local grammar school, from which he won a scholarship to Oxford (almost unheard of in the 1920s) to study classics. These are the kinds of stories politicians and academics love to hear. At college, both Whitehead and Cardew discovered other things far more interesting than their studies, which they duly neglected. Both were threatened [End Page 944] with expulsion and realized that they had better make a token effort to mollify their long-suffering tutors to snatch a degree of sorts (instead of the first-class honors that had been smugly predicted for them). Forty years later, Whitehead's career had been as colorful as it had promised to be brilliant: from filming the Rolling Stones and student riots in America, to hunting falcons in the freezing wastes of Alaska (and being hunted in turn by the U.S. Army for doing so), to breeding them in Saudi Arabia. But perhaps the strangest part of the story is still to come. It is a story I tell here, even though it is one almost too improbable to command respect as a proper academic study. It tells of how Whitehead found in pottery the strength to put behind him the threat of death, when an emergency qua druple heart bypass operation after a massive heart attack failed and he became inoperable—how he coped, late in life, with the problems of trying to make serious pottery and developing exactly what he wanted in his newly chosen field. In describing what Whitehead has made and achieved in this quest to create pottery, we must return to the source of his energy, through the potters Michael Cardew and the great Japanese potter (and Whitehead's mentor) Shoji Hamada, back to the uninhibited work of peasant potters, to the basic values in the pottery made in traditional, unspoiled African villages. In some of these villages, potters today are making pottery as fine, aesthetically, as any ever made. Whitehead's work is equally original and distinctive, deriving much of its quality from inner considerations, a deliberate lack of concern for commerce. Yet given present Western attitudes, it is more than likely that what ever Whitehead makes, however unique, his work will be overlooked in the official circles of the world of ceramics. Whitehead had just finished his last novel, Girl on the Train, in 2000, when his bypass operation suddenly failed and he was rushed back to the hospital with life-threatening complications. After a prolonged, complicated angiography when he came close to having a...

Long-term psychopathology changes among the injured and members of the community after a massive terrorist attack

Background and aim To document long-term prevalence trends and changes in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Current Major Depression (MD), Agoraphobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), and Panic Disorder, in two groups of people with different levels of exposure to a massive terrorist attack. Methods Cohort study. Two random samples of people exposed to a terrorist attack, the injured ( n = 127) and community residents ( n = 485) were followed and assessed, 2 and 18 months after the event. Results Among the injured, 2 and 18 months after the attack, the prevalences were respectively, PTSD: 44.1% and 34%, MD: 31.5% and 23.7%, Agoraphobia: 23.8% and 20.7%, GAD: 13.4% and 12.4% and Panic Disorder: 9.4% and 11.3%. The corresponding figures among residents were PTSD: 12.3% and 3.5%, MD: 8.5% and 5.4%, Agoraphobia: 10.5% and 8.7%, GAD: 8.6%, and 8.2% and Panic Disorder 2.1% and 2.7%. Conclusions Two months after the event, the prevalence of mental disorders among both injured and residents was higher than expected levels at baseline conditions. Eighteen months after the event, psychopathological conditions did not change significantly among the injured but returned to the expected baseline rates among community residents.

Predicting the Loss of Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between the increased need for national security standards and the negative impact on constitutional rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens. Balance of Power Theory and Balance of Threat Theory as well as the LAMP technique were employed to develop a method for studying the relationship and for deriving results. Through the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP) technique, the study determines likely futures based on three scenarios: the U.S. faces a massive terrorist attack, the U.S. faces numerous small-scale attacks, and the U.S. faces no terrorist attack. After developing permutations for all three scenarios, the likely alternate futures support the notion that the U.S. courts, U.S. population, and U.S. national security community would not prevent alterations to current laws and Acts granting citizens constitutional rights and civil liberties if the threat of attack was imminent. The study concludes by supporting the hypothesis that national security standards will impinge on constitutional rights and civil liberties.

Will the Recession Prove to be a Turning Point in Planning and Urban Development Thinking?

The Credit Crunch of 2007–2008 turned into the Recession of 2008–2010, and has since transmogrified into a massive attack on public spending that is now working its way through the budgets of most advanced economies, threatening to depress growth for an indefinite future (assuming that it does not result in a collapse into depression). Against this background, this paper highlights some of the key features of planning that emerged in the run-up to the crash, at the levels of broad principles, and institutional structure. It argues that the ‘neoliberal turn’ was reflected in, and in turn encouraged by, the reinvention of planning as a service to special interests, especially property owners and boosterist politicians. Discursively, this led to a new orthodoxy focused on the vacuous (but politically useful) concept of ‘competitiveness’. Organizationally, it took the form of the rise of urban design as a distinct market and practice, embodying the residue of modernist physical planning in the service of private capital and fragmentary ‘development’. The likelihood of years of weak or stagnant growth, especially where it counts most – in the labour market – casts a pall over the future of planning. Although we might wish that planners and planning play a more positive role in creating new economic opportunities, and in safeguarding spaces for the growing numbers of the less-advantaged, the ideological and institutional cards are stacked the other way. Established interests (including those of the planning profession) will turn the new environment to their local advantage, as in the past. It is likely that the de facto privatization of planning will be further institutionalized, while its potential as a discourse and practice of inclusive, sustainable social advance continues to wither. In the absence of a fundamental and wide-ranging challenge to its principles and structures, planning is set to lose even more of its limited moral and practical credibility.

Acute physiopathological effects of honeybee ( Apis mellifera) envenoming by subcutaneous route in a mouse model

Bee stings are a health concern in the Americas, where fatal envenomings due to massive attacks by Africanized honeybees have been documented in the last decades. Most studies on the toxic effects of honeybee venom in experimental animals have been performed using the intravenous or intraperitoneal injection routes. The aim of this study was to develop a mouse model that would better resemble a massive honeybee attack by using the subcutaneous (s.c.) route to induce a severe, sublethal systemic envenoming. An array of acute venom effects were characterized, including biochemical, hematological, histological, and inflammatory alterations, after the s.c. injection of 0.5 median lethal dose of venom. Rapid increases in serum alanine (ALT) and aspartate (AST) transaminases, creatinine, urea nitrogen, uric acid, sodium and chloride electrolytes, and creatine kinase (CK) were recorded, indicating damage to liver, kidneys, and skeletal muscle. Also, coagulation disturbances (fibrinogen decrease, and moderate delay in prothrombin and partial thromboplastin times) were demonstrated. Circulating platelet and leukocyte numbers remained unaltered, but a hemoconcentration effect (hematocrit and hemoglobin increase) was observed. This effect might be related to the marked edema induced by the venom. In addition, this inflammatory response included a systemic increase in cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α), together with an elevation of serum malondialdehyde and nitric oxide. The myotoxic effects of venom, melittin, and phospholipase A 2 were demonstrated after injection by s.c. route. No synergistic myotoxicity between melittin and PLA 2 was observed. Moreover, these two components, when injected at equivalent concentrations to those present in venom, induced a lower increase in serum CK than venom, suggesting that other components also contribute to its strong systemic toxicity towards skeletal muscle. The model here presented may be useful in preclinical studies to assess therapeutic antivenoms developed to cope with the problem of massive bee attacks.

Moving beyond the linear model of expertise? IPCC and the test of adaptation

In early 2009, few would have expected that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would come under such massive attack. The IPCC had enjoyed a pristine reputation and had even advanced to become a role model for biodiversity and food security assessments (Loreau et al. 2006; Watson 2005). However, public trust and, with it, the organization’s credibility eroded dramatically after November 2009 with the events that became known as ‘climategate’. This article seeks to contribute to current debates about how to reform the IPCC. It argues that there are major flaws in the design of the IPCC which are rooted in the linear model of expertise and which are helping to stoke the backlash against the IPCC. The article analyzes the ways in which the IPCC’s activities conform to the linear model of expertise and considers the consequences of this for integrating adaptation into the IPCC assessments. It explains why adaptation played only a marginal role up until the IPCC Third Assessment Report. It then demonstrates why the use of the linear model of expertise constrains the scientific and political debate about adaptation and leads to proxy debates about scientific evidence, which result in depoliticizing the politics of adaptation andpoliticizing science. Finally, the article calls for the debate to be opened up to accommodate alternatives that are both politically more feasible and at the same time more appropriate to the specific needs of adaptation policies at different levels of decision-making.

SITUATION AND EVOLUTION OF SANITARY STATUS IN CHESTNUT STANDS

Hypovirulence is currently present and stable in most of the monitored Italian chestnut woods and vegetative recovery of trees is evident everywhere. The effectiveness of hypovirulence is due to the natural spread of normal, intermediate and white strains of Cryphonectria parasitica which may or may not contain dsRNA, but have different levels of virulence. This mixture of isolates enables synergies to exalt host resistance and to improve the spread of dsRNA among pathogen populations, thus overcoming any problems of vegetative incompatibility. The dynamic of ink disease, which has re-appeared in recent years and is very worrying due the severity of the damages, now seems to be more under control. Some foci appear to be exhausted and almost partially recovered, while others are still in slow expansion. For this disease micro site condition and weather behaviour appears to be determining factors even if the spread of more pathogenic lines of the parasite cannot be excluded. Other constraining factors could influence this situation as: years with arid periods in both winter and summer, new virulent lines of the parasite and the effect of massive and persistent attacks of Chinese wasp, Dryochosmus kuryphilus.

We Don't Do Google, We Do Massive Attacks: Notes on Creative R&D Collaborations

The article presents findings from an exploratory study investigating the nature of collaborative research and development in creative industries. Participants in the study are two creative SMEs with extensive experience of participating in collaborative projects. A collective case study approach is adopted with data collected on the factors impinging on the effectiveness of such collaborations. Findings are presented at the macro and micro levels of such collaborations. The paper concludes with a summary of some of the challenges faced by small creative SMEs when collaborating with other organizations during the research and development process.

Narrative Coyotes: Migration and Narrative Voice in Sandra Cisneros's <i>Caramelo</i>

And I realize with all the noise called my house, that talking that is nothing but talking, that is so much a part of my house and my past and myself you can't hear it as several conversations, but as one roar like the roar inside a shell, I realize then that this is my life, with its dragon arabesques of voices and lives intertwined, rushing like a Ganges, irrevocable and ... --Sandra Cisneros (424) We discover toward the end of Sandra Cisneros's novel Caramelo (2002) that Celaya Reyes, the novel's female adolescent narrator, tells the poignant, intricate, and at times hilarious history of her grandmother and the Reyes clan order to help her grandmother's ghost over. As Lala stands a hospital room over her father's unconscious body after he has suffered a massive heart attack, she and her grandmother's ghost argue about his destiny. (1) They eventually strike a deal: if Lala will tell her grandmother's story, one that is inextricably tied to the family's entire history, the Awful Grandmother--whose real name is Soledad--will allow her son Inocencio to live. Soledad explains to Lala that her inability to speak clearly about her own experiences, whether alive or dead, literally traps her in the middle of nowhere: [I]t's so lonely being like this, neither dead nor alive, but somewhere halfway, like an elevator between floors. You have no idea. What a barbarity! I'm the middle of nowhere. I can't cross over to the other side till I'm forgiven. And who will forgive with all the knots I've made out of my life? Help me, Celaya, you'll help cross over, won't you? --Like a who smuggles you over the border? --Well ... a manner of speaking, I suppose. --Can't you get somebody else to carry you across? --But who? You are the only one who can see me.... You'll tell my story, won't you, Celaya? (408) In this crucial conversation, Lala notes that her ability to become her grandmother's narrative surrogate depends on her understanding of the storyteller as a type of narrative coyote. A is a controversial figure who violates boundaries by smuggling individuals across the US-Mexico border. Cisneros's figurative use of the term coyote illuminates and links two of the primary concerns of the novel: migration and storytelling. Time and time again, Cisneros shows that the Reyes family's decades of migration bequeath to Lala, the family's narrator, a tangled mess (188) of family history even as she also draws attention to Lala's ability to talk: How can I explain? Talk is all I've got going for me (353). (2) Cisneros's use of coyote also underscores the illicit, transgressive, and wild properties of Lala's narrative voice. Because Lala's Mexican, Mexican American, and Chicano/a family members cross many geographical--and the case of her grandmother, supernatural--boundaries, their stories of migration demand a narrative voice that likewise has the ability to transgress boundaries. Thus, like a coyote, Lala smuggles her grandmother's story and her own family history from the past to the present, from Mexico to the US, from the dead to the living, and from one person to another. Cisneros deploys the narrative explicitly this moment and implicitly throughout the novel to represent the relationship between migration stories and narrative structure; consequently, Caramelo exemplifies Edward Said's claim that exile, immigration, and the crossing of boundaries are experiences that can therefore provide us with new narrative forms (225). In her construction of Lala as a narrative coyote, Cisneros creates a migratory narrative voice that has the ability to cross supernatural, spatial, and narrative boundaries as a means to redress the tangled mess--the partial loss of identity, knowledge, and ethnic connection--that actual physical migration enacts the Reyes family. …

Acute pulmonary edema due to stress cardiomyopathy in a patient with aortic stenosis: a case report.

IntroductionStress cardiomyopathy is a condition of chest pain, breathlessness, abnormal heart rhythms and sometimes congestive heart failure or shock precipitated by intense mental or physical stress.Case presentationA 64-year-old male with a known diagnosis of moderate-to-severe aortic stenosis and advised that valve replacement was not urgent, presented with acute pulmonary edema following extraordinary mental distress. The patient was misdiagnosed as having a "massive heart attack" and died when managed by a traditional protocol for acute myocardial infarction/coronary artery disease, irrespective of his known aortic stenosis.ConclusionIntense mental stress poses a considerable risk, particularly to patients with significant aortic stenosis. As described here, it can precipitate acute pulmonary edema. Importantly, effective management of acute pulmonary edema due to stress cardiomyopathy in patients with known aortic stenosis requires its distinction from acute pulmonary edema caused by an acute myocardial infarction. Treatment options include primarily urgent rhythm and/or rate control, as well as cautious vasodilation.

The Triplaria tree (Triplaris spp) and Pseudomyrmex ants: a symbiotic relationship with risks of attack for humans

The authors report a massive attack by Pseudomyrmex ants on a human who touched a Triplaria - novice tree (Triplaris spp). The ants naturally live in these trees and their stings cause intense pain and discrete to moderate local inflammation. The problem is common in some Brazilian regions and can be prevented by identifying the trees.

The Fallout from Israel's War on Gaza: A Turning Point in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?

In this article I argue that the Israeli War against Gaza of December 2008–January 2009 marked a historical crossroad in the annals of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The article examines four arguments: first, the war as a test for the Israeli post-Oslo strategy: Israel believed that the Palestinian Bantustans should behave as ‘protectorate regimes’, otherwise they would be under massive Israeli attack. Second, the war as the second ‘open confrontation’ that was a result of Israel's loss of its historical military deterrence. Third, some of the Arab states, including the ‘protectorate regime’ in Ramallah are part of the Israeli (and American) alliance against what is considered as the ‘rejectionist regimes’. Forth, the war in Gaza is the formal beginning of the end of the PLO as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’.

Independent responses to ultraviolet radiation and herbivore attack in broccoli.

The plant responses to ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B) and to insect herbivory are believed to be partially similar. In this study, responses to these factors were investigated in the crop species broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. convar. botrytis, Brassicaceae). Plants were first grown under three UV-B regimes (80%, 23%, and 4% transmittance of ambient UV-B) in greenhouses covered with either innovative materials (high and medium transmittance) or conventional glass (low transmittance). Half of the plants then remained under these conditions, but the other half were transferred to the field with ambient light and herbivore access for up to 3 d. The plant responses to distinct environmental conditions were examined by analysing the morphological and chemical parameters of plants kept inside and plants exposed in the field. Furthermore, suitability of field-exposed plants to naturally occurring insects was investigated in relation to UV-B pretreatment. High levels of UV-B radiation led to increased flavonoid concentrations, but to a lower biomass accumulation in broccoli. These patterns remained after outdoor exposure. However, UV-induced changes of plant traits did not alter attractiveness to herbivorous insects: thrips, whiteflies, and aphids attacked plants independently of UV-B pretreatment. A 3-fold increase of indolyl glucosinolate concentrations occurred in above-ground tissue of all the plants, most likely due to massive herbivore attack after 3 d of field exposure. The results show that plants respond with high specificity to different abiotic and biotic impacts, demonstrating the separate perception and processing of stress factors.

A temporal analysis of antioxidative defense responses in the phloem of Picea abies after attack by Ips typographus

The temporal gradation of antioxidants was investigated on the phloem tissue of Norway spruce [Picea abies (L.) Karst.] in response to weather conditions and colonization levels of Ips typographus L. (Col., Scolytidae). Two weeks after pheromone dispensers were placed on trees, the initial reaction of Norway spruce to bark beetle attack resulted in moderately lowered levels of total glutathione (tGSH) and total cysteine. Likewise, the total ascorbic acid dropped slightly below the control levels, whereas the concentration of dehydroascorbic acid increased in comparison to the first sampling date. This transient degradation and oxidation of the glutathione and ascorbate system was accompanied by moderately increased concentrations of total phenolics. One month later, the shift in antioxidant balance after moderate attack differed quantitatively from the reaction after massive attack. An intensification of antioxidant defense occurred within moderately affected bark. Total cysteine and tGSH contents were markedly raised, whereas the concentrations of total ascorbic acid and total phenolics were slightly increased by moderate attack. On the other hand, massive bark beetle colonization caused a strong decrease in tGSH and total phenolics, whereas total cysteine and total ascorbic acid values remained at control level. Dependent upon the intensity and the success of the attack, a progressive degradation of antioxidants was determined at later sampling dates, which was accompanied by an obvious oxidation of the ascorbate and glutathione pools. With an unsuccessful defense upon massive attack, the thiols and total phenolics did not reach a new steady state, but deteriorated until the end of the brood beetles' development. In contrast, the dynamic antioxidative response within the moderately affected trees indicated an acclimation stage in the middle of July. It was characterized by a higher accumulation of tGSH, total ascorbic acid and total phenolics as well as a more reduced redox state of glutathione. A sequence of changes in the endogenous levels of antioxidant defense molecules in the bark beetle-affected Norway spruce showed consistency with the general ecophysiological stress-response concept, and provided important avenues for evaluating the role and effectiveness of antioxidants in systemic acquired resistance against the complex interactive effects of bark beetle attack and environmental factors.

WiFi networks and malware epidemiology

In densely populated urban areas WiFi routers form a tightly interconnected proximity network that can be exploited as a substrate for the spreading of malware able to launch massive fraudulent attacks. In this article, we consider several scenarios for the deployment of malware that spreads over the wireless channel of major urban areas in the US. We develop an epidemiological model that takes into consideration prevalent security flaws on these routers. The spread of such a contagion is simulated on real-world data for georeferenced wireless routers. We uncover a major weakness of WiFi networks in that most of the simulated scenarios show tens of thousands of routers infected in as little as 2 weeks, with the majority of the infections occurring in the first 24-48 h. We indicate possible containment and prevention measures and provide computational estimates for the rate of encrypted routers that would stop the spreading of the epidemics by placing the system below the percolation threshold.

Modelling and simulations for Identity-Based Privacy-Protected Access Control Filter (IPACF) capability to resist massive denial of service attacks

Denial of Service (DoS)/Distributed DoS (DDoS) attack is an eminent threat to an Authentication Server (AS), which is used to guard access to firewalls, virtual private networks and resources connected by wired/wireless networks. In this paper, a new protocol called Identity-Based Privacy-Protected Access Control Filter (IPACF) is proposed to counter DoS/DDoS attacks. The IPACF is stateless for both user and AS since a user and responder must authenticate each other. The value and identity for authentication are changed in every frame. Thus, the privacy of both user and server is protected. The performance of the implementation is reported in this paper. In order to counter more DoS/DDoS attacks that issue fake requests, parallel processing technique is used to implement the AS. The performance comparison of dual server and single server is also reported. To study the capability of IPACF when facing massive DDoS attacks, simulations using OPNET for a network consisting of 1000 nodes with 10 Gbps pipe to the AS are carried out. The simulations show that the performance of AS has very little degradation in terms of packet latency and CPU utilisation for users. Queueing models are used to compare simulations and agreement between models and simulations is acceptable.

Irony's Resistance to Theorypragmatism in the text of deconstruction

Oh, I’m missing all the things I knew, Yet wish I knew nothing at all. Massive Attack, “Three” Given the resistance to theory that has helped to define pragmatism as an “American evasion of phil...