Worst Fears Research Articles

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

“A Lot of People Watching”: Understanding the Theater of Terrorism

“In Renaissance religious paintings, angels and saints, lifted by faith, float above the ground,” said Brian Michael Jenkins in 2016. “Similarly, nuclear terrorism, lifted by fear, became gravity free.” Notable because of his position as a leading defense intellectual and respected within U.S. national security circles and internationally, Jenkins was used to speaking to official and public audiences alike about terrorism. His analogy to art in addressing a gathering of security experts was not just a passing rhetorical flourish. It was constitutive of the way Jenkins understood terrorism. By the time he made this comparison to Renaissance painting, Jenkins had spent more than fifty years trying to convince his audiences to see terrorism the way he did—as not just like art but itself a kind of art. In his view, counter-terrorists, in not understanding this, were enabling “media savvy terrorists” to play upon fears that had been “freed of evidence.” But it was worse than that. “Terrorists read what we write and listen to what we say,” said Jenkins. “Then they start talking about it. In turn, we listen to them, completing a feedback loop that confirms our own worst fears.”1 Jenkins wanted counter-terrorism, as in viewing a pointillist painting, to perceive the scene with enough perspective to see more than individual dots, but rather to see the whole. And seeing the whole meant understanding the theater of terrorism.

PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL, AND EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES FACED BY THE POSTGRADUATE RESIDENTS OF GYNECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS IN PESHAWAR DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Objectives: To find out the personal, professional, and educational challenges in training by the post-graduate residents of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the three tertiary care hospitals of Peshawar during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Methods: This was a web-based cross-sectional study conducted among the postgraduate residents of Gynecology and Obstetrics in the three main teaching hospitals of Peshawar, from 1st April 2020 to 31st July 2020. A structured survey using Google forms was distributed among 98 postgraduate residents through emails and social media platforms. The challenges faced and their severity was assessed using the Likert Scale. Results were analyzed in Microsoft Excel. Results: Total number of participants was 98, with 99% being female. The mean age was 28.3±1.8 years. Their worst fear was of the family getting infected (86.7%). Their greatest challenge was the inability to practice social distancing due to the nature of their work (85%) amidst a lack of PPEs (51%). Their training suffered due to inadequate opportunities for elective surgeries (78%). Conclusion: Post-graduate residents in Gynaecology/Obstetrics faced substantial personal, professional, and educational challenges while training during the covid-19 pandemic. Keywords: training, challenges, Covid-19, postgraduate residents, Obstetrics and Gynecology

Contagion and the Body Politic: De Quincey on the 1830 Revolution in France.

Writing in the fall of 1830, in the period immediately following France's révolution de juillet, Thomas De Quincey predicts the imminent breakdown of social order in Britain. In his political writing for Blackwood's Magazine over the course of this period, he consistently frames the threat of French-style revolution in terms of the body politic and its vulnerability to contagion, often playing on the meaning of a country's "constitution." In 1831, upon the introduction of the Reform Bill, his worst fears appear to have been confirmed, and he now presents the upcoming revolution almost as a fait accompli. De Quincey's dire predictions fit into a larger framework of nineteenth-century alarmism surrounding contagion, "sympathy," and the collective action of the mob. This article examines the presence and influence of these concepts in De Quincey's political writing for Blackwood's over the period of 1830 to 1832, the year the Bill was successfully passed.

Operational approach to kernel system protection under Windows Server 2019: Optimization, QoS and Performance

Computer Sciences has become the culmination of all human activity these days, but it is also the worst fear that no epidemic has inspired today. And despite this, everyone concedes that the use of computers (especially through the Internet) now occupies the first place, even essential, in everyday life. Each of us uses a computer to work, to exchange information, to make purchases, etc. Unfortunately, malicious activity targeting computers is steadily increasing and trying to exploit vulnerabilities that are growing in number with ever-increasing complexity. In view of this, the present research has set itself the objective of mending the adequacy (optimization, dynamics and performance) of operating systems to their various deployment environments by emancipating a priori approaches, generally lacking in their capacity. to surpass future needs especially for the correction of security vulnerabilities, focusing on the functionalities of the hardware environment.

Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839

Land, Race, and the Long Road to the Córdova Rebellion in East Texas, 1826–1839 Daniel Glenn (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Map of Texas, 1835. From A Comprehensive Atlas: Geographical, Historical and Commercial (Boston: J. H. Wilkins & R.B. Carter, 1835) by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford. Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin. [End Page 160] In August 1838, eighteen men in the Nacogdoches region, including Vicente Córdova, a former alcalde of the town, issued a brief statement declaring themselves rebels against the Republic of Texas. Asserting that they were "tired of the injustice and the usurpation of their rights," these Mexican loyalists pledged to "shed the last drop of their blood" to resist the current laws, which jeopardized their "lives and property."1 The declaration came nearly a week after a skirmish over stolen horses, in which one Anglo Texan was killed, revealed the presence of a party of more than one hundred irregulars and Mexican soldiers in the area.2 When Anglos quickly mustered a militia of several hundred, the rebels retreated northwest into territory occupied by several Indian groups, including Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoo. Although rumors claimed that hundreds of Indians had joined the renegades, the chiefs professed peaceful intentions. Unable to secure a commitment of support from the Indians and with the Anglo Texan militia closing in, the rebels withdrew onto the prairie and raided outlying Anglo settlements.3 [End Page 161] The Córdova Rebellion, which is what this event came to be known as, was a poorly conceived and even more poorly executed effort to destabilize the Republic of Texas. While Vicente Córdova declared that the "Cherokee and other tribes" had promised "to unite as soon as possible for action," Mexican military leaders in Matamoros promised to "make a forced march" with reinforcements the moment the "operations are made known in Matamoros."4 Neither promise was fulfilled. Córdova had grossly overstated both the Indians' loyalty to Mexico and his ability to persuade them to risk their lives and homes in support of his adventure. Likewise, the Mexican commander spared only thirty-four soldiers to support Córdova's effort and did not launch a supporting invasion of Texas from the south.5 Each misled the other, which ensured the rebellion had no chance at success. Although the presence of the insurgents and their attacks on isolated Anglo settlements may have inspired increased hostility by neighboring Indians, the Republic of Texas did not face what it feared most, a coordinated campaign by the Mexican army, Tejano loyalists, and their Indian allies. Despite its failure, however, the Córdova Rebellion had a lasting influence on the development of Texas. The incident confirmed Anglo Texans' worst fears about the Tejanos and Indians living amongst them: that they hated the Anglos and, whatever they might say to the contrary, were waiting for the right opportunity to strike. Tejanos in the Nacogdoches region, under increasing scrutiny from their Anglo neighbors, sold their lands and headrights and moved away. The Republic of Texas instituted a removal policy for Indians in the aftermath of the uprising that it pursued through military force, which led directly to the removal of the Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, and Caddo Indians. It is worth asking why an abortive revolt would have such far-reaching consequences. The answers lay in the mindset of Anglo Texans and their expectations for their new country. In general, Anglo Texans harbored a profound distrust for American Indians and Tejanos and were discomfited by their presence in the republic. For most Anglos, Tejanos and Indians represented at best barriers to their goal of converting Texas into what they would call a civilized country, and at worst dormant enemies who would strike the moment the Anglos let down their guard. The notion that these groups might conceivably be or one day become members of the republic—that is, full and equal citizens—was beyond the imagination of even the most progressive Anglos.6 [End Page 162] This is certainly not the first essay to examine racial conflict in Texas, nor is it the first to investigate...

ML and AI Based Counseling Chatbot Application: Cafe Buddy

Abstract: As the covid outbreak sweeps across the world, the world saw their worst fear and rapid rate of increase in some unwanted medical conditions. No one is left behind by its effect, whether mentally, physically, or economically. People see a surge increase in mental health conditions among youth particularly. Since 2020 we have seen a rapid increase in suicide cases not only among ordinary people but also in every class of people. This clears the thought that only the underprivileged suffer. According to a survey conducted in the U.S., it has been seen a rapid increase in depressive disorder. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Around 75% of people with mental problems in developing nations go untreated, and nearly 1 million people commit suicide each year. Early identity of melancholy can assist to deal with the intellectual ailment and offer help to those who are affected. Detecting despair in advance may be a big step to dealing with the intellectual contamination and providing help to the human beings tormented by this horrible intellectual contamination. This depression can be effects detected inside the primary levels using the pattern searching for queries. Text assessment, owner assessment (behavior patterns like searches-per-day), temporal assessment (time of day even as people search), and seen assessment of snapshots searched could be the parameters of detecting depression. Keywords: AI, Chat-bot, Extensions, Mental-Health, Counseling

NFTs and Value

NFTs and Value

Haley's beaded journey

Haley's beaded journey

Nature Is Healing

Nature Is Healing

World economy

Since October, we have cut our global GDP growth forecast for 2022 from 4.7% to 4.2% largely due to the emergence of the Omicron variant. Although some of the initial worst fears about Omicron have proved unfounded, the unexpectedly large surge in global Covid‐19 cases is causing more cautious behaviour by individuals and greater disruption to businesses than at first envisaged.

World Economic Prospects Monthly

Overview: Covid cases surge, worsening Q1 slowdown ▀ Although some of the initial worst fears about Omicron have proved unfounded, the unexpectedly large surge in global Covid‐19 cases is causing more cautious behaviour by individuals and greater disruption to businesses than envisaged. We have cut our Q1 GDP forecast again and now expect world GDP growth of 4.2% in 2022, down from 4.3% a month ago and the 5.8% estimated for 2021. ▀ There remain plenty of unknowns regarding the Omicron variant and its health impact. But the evidence from economies such as South Africa, the UK and Denmark suggests that the Omicron wave is likely to be associated with much smaller rises in hospitalisations than earlier Covid waves. And for now, our initial assessment that there would only be a modest reimposition of mobility restrictions is correct. ▀ Nonetheless, the rise in global Covid cases to more than double the previous peak has exceeded expectations of a month ago by a large margin and points to greater economic damage via increased voluntary social distancing and disruption to businesses from staff having to self‐isolate. In response, we have lowered global GDP growth further in Q1. ▀ As with previous Covid waves, we expect activity to rebound quickly when cases start to fall back, so the downward revision to the outlook in Q1 will be largely offset by a bigger bounce in Q2. Nonetheless, the weak start to the year will dampen overall 2022 growth slightly. ▀ Meanwhile, greater disruption in the near term — especially in China where a zerotolerance approach to Covid continues to be pursued— points to slower normalisation of supply‐chain pressures and potentially a slower transition of consumer spending from goods back to services. Partly due to this, we have lifted our 2022 global CPI inflation forecast by 0.3pp to 4.5%. But inflation is still expected to fall sharply over the course of year, limiting the need for aggressive monetary policy tightening.

Our worst fears about the impact of Universal Credit cut are coming true

A month after the cut to Universal Credit, Charlotte White reflects on increasing need for the independent food bank she runs in south-west London

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

“Vote for your Bread and Butter”: Economic Intimidation of Voters in the Gilded Age

AbstractThe extent and intensity of electoral and voter fraud that took place during the U.S. Gilded Age is properly infamous. This paper explores a form of voter intimidation that has garnered comparatively little scholarly attention: economic coercion. Absent secrecy at the polls and security at work, bosses forced workingmen to choose between their job or their vote. Economic voter intimidation provoked both a real and rhetorical crisis in the 1870s and 1880s. In real terms, it disrupted hundreds of elections and damaged thousands of workers’ livelihoods. It became a nationwide crisis after 1873, however, because for the first time, employers were coercing white workingmen on a widespread basis. Reports of employers coercing their employees at the polls throughout the nation confirmed the worst fears of many labor leaders and politicians: white wage-workers were insecure possessors of the franchise whose precariousness might threaten democracy itself. Mining previously overlooked accounts of economic voter intimidation in contested congressional election case records, congressional investigations, corporate records, and newspapers, this article argues that employers’ politicized layoff threats and observation of workers at the polls undermined the political equality of even those men whose whiteness had seemingly secured their privilege.

INDEPENDENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCE: MULTIDIMENSIONALITY OF FINNISH YOUTH’S EXPERIENCES OF TRUST IN NEWS ONLINE AND VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

Young people’s relationship with the news has been a cause of concern, especially due to the role of social media as a central component of their lives, often seen as a prominent cause of declining trust in the news. This proposal features some of the results of a multi-method, interdisciplinary study of the University of Helsinki (2019-2021) that examines how Finnish audiences view the power of traditional news media and social media. The project understands trust as a four-dimensional concept: generalized trust in the media, trust in specific sources, trust in terms of specific issues, and trust determined by one’s individual disposition. Based on the results of two general surveys in Spring 2019 and Spring 2020, a survey focused on young people (18-29-year-olds), three focus group interviews, as well as a three-day online discussion of 30 participants of the same age group in Fall 2020, we analyze how young people and experience the trust in news sources online. We also discuss how the pandemic has shaped their experiences. While the most defining characteristic of Finnish audiences is a combination of both basic trust and critical approaches toward news, this is markedly true for young people. At the same time, our findings do not confirm the worst fears of moral panic about growing distrust and news avoidance by young people. Rather, they suggest a combination of independence and interdependence by young people, of both legacy news media and online and social media sources.

Evidence on Research Transparency in Economics

A decade ago, the term “research transparency” was not on economists' radar screen, but in a few short years a scholarly movement has emerged to bring new open science practices, tools and norms into the mainstream of our discipline. The goal of this article is to lay out the evidence on the adoption of these approaches – in three specific areas: open data, pre-registration and pre-analysis plans, and journal policies – and, more tentatively, begin to assess their impacts on the quality and credibility of economics research. The evidence to date indicates that economics (and related quantitative social science fields) are in a period of rapid transition toward new transparency-enhancing norms. While solid data on the benefits of these practices in economics is still limited, in part due to their relatively recent adoption, there is growing reason to believe that critics' worst fears regarding onerous adoption costs have not been realized. Finally, the article presents a set of frontier questions and potential innovations.

Russia As a Powerful Broker in Syria: Hard and Soft Aspects

The Arab Spring was regarded with suspicion by Russian decision-makers, their worst fears were seemingly confirmed with the case of Libya in 2011 when NATO was seen as abusing the UN Security Council R2P mandate for the purpose of regime change. This had a great impact on Russia’s decision to support the Syrian government, when the regime change process began there. By the summer of 2015, the world was predicting the fall of the Syrian government, it was at this point Russia became directly and overtly involved with the fighting. The West tried to project a dire scenario that Russia would become embroiled in an Afghan-scenario, they made many guesses about the ‘true’ nature of Russia’s engagement, but largely failed to comprehend or understand the actual motivation. Despite negative Western projections, Russia has been largely successful in its aims and goals. Russia has consequently emerged as an external actor of significance and influence in the MENA region, which seems to be owed somewhat to taking the decision to become directly involved in Syria as a powerful broker.
 Keywords: Syrian War, Russia, military intervention, soft power, hard power, powerful broker

Perumal MuruganEstuary by Nandini Krishnan

BOOKS IN REVIEW peers have shocked readers all over the world with monumental autobiographical provocations (Karl Ove Knausgaard and his overreaching My Struggle), enlightened them with light philosophical fare (Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World), or truly surprised them with striking panoramas that link Norway to recent world history (Johan Harstad’s Max, Mischa & Tetoffensiven, yet to be translated into English), Mytting prefers to play it safe and plain. He puts a young pastor into a desolate hamlet, driven by ambitions that are a tad larger than the small old church in which he delivers his sermons. Standing out from his lost flock is Astrid, a young woman who “has a restless mind, and her thoughts always seemed to race ahead of her.” Trying to dive deep into the geographically remote and economically backward community, Mytting simply surrenders our perspective on life back then and awkwardly embraces the language of the past to render his bucolic portrayals: “There was a strong preference for a well-built woman, wide in the beam, preferably with big breasts and with a good, strong back. Astrid was longlimbed and bony, with a thin face and dark, curly hair, and in another village she might have been reckoned pretty.” Once this predictable melodramatic arrangement has been set into play, Mytting tries to heat it up by introducing yet another suitor fascinated by Astrid who is considered “mulish and impossible to discipline .” A student of architecture, hailing from Dresden and in charge of overseeing the dismantling and transport of the village ’s church to Germany, this young man quickly will achieve what the pastor could envision only in feverish dreams. All this would be hard for the reader to bear if Astrid’s ensuing plight were not told against the intricate backdrop of her ancestor’s generous gift to commemorate the loss of conjoined twin sisters. The bells of the church that the young pastor is ready to have shipped to Germany become a powerful Dingsymbol that the author handles much more convincingly than the flat characterization of his stock characters. Revisiting life in the nineteenth century has emerged as a productive pastime in recent European fiction: Thomas Hettche’s Pfaueninsel or Andrés Neuman’s Traveler of the Century succeeded in taking the pulse of historically removed times and characters by neither sentimentalizing nor patronizing them. Mytting still has a long way to go. Thomas Nolden Wellesley College Perumal Murugan Estuary Trans. Nandini Krishnan. Hyderabad. Eka. 2020. 250 pages. IN ESTUARY, HIS LATEST NOVEL in English translation, Tamil writer Perumal Murugan depicts the predicament of the generation gap between parents and children in contemporary India. In the wake of technological advancement and the launch of a new model of a mobile phone or other gadgets every month or so, many parents find themselves entrapped in a vicious cycle of fear and ignorance. As urban India gears toward a more cosmopolitan outlook , rural and small-town people are still bound with age-old traditions and living conditions. The protagonist of the novel, Kumarasurar , is obsessively caring for his only son in a society where sons are revered as gods. Kumarasurar and his wife are left worried when their son takes a long, arduous path to find a place in an engineering college, against their wish to see him become a doctor. At times, it feels like Kumarasurar is going through a mental health crisis, which is not addressed—neither by Kumarasurar himself nor by the author. Kumarasurar is bound in a traditional marriage and a salaried middle-class life. His wife is a homemaker who prefers the confinement of her home and daily chores over anything else. Kumarasurar finds himself trapped in a vicious cycle of fear, confusion, and anger. The constantly changing world around him brings out his worst fears. He worries about the future of his son, who might go astray and become good for nothing in life. He also finds it absurd that people consume pornography, alcohol, or any such deviant pleasures. He believes in simplicity and is at times too obstinate to change himself according to the changing society. Murugan’s choice of the novel’s theme is safe and pertinent, given...

Rose-Tinted Glasses

What do we lose when we leave childhood and become adults? Is this a good thing? Can we, at least for a moment, turn back time and see the world again as a child? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Becca and Adam are members of the Fairytale Fellowship, a group of children who can still see the magic in the world and protect the world from wrong-doing magical creatures. Becca and Adam find special glasses that allow anyone, even adults, to see the invisible magical creatures around them. They rush to get the glasses to the Fellowship, but are stopped by a Faun who steals the glasses and forces them to play a game to win the glasses back. They win the game, but valuable time has passed. Becca and Adam have aged out and experienced "The Shift" all children experience into adulthood that makes them unable to see magical things. Their worst fear has happened, they have grown up.