Search Results (801)

Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains one of the most frequently diagnosed malignancies worldwide and a leading indication for major abdominal surgery, with a rising incidence among younger adults. Because CRC resection is a physiologically demanding procedure performed in a frequently comorbid, often anemic and malnourished population, the preoperative period represents a decisive window in which laboratory and diagnostic testing shapes staging, risk stratification, and optimization. This narrative review is deliberately confined to the preoperative window—from histological diagnosis to the day of elective, curative-intent colon or rectal resection—and synthesizes evidence retrieved from PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and ScienceDirect together with current society guidelines. It is organized around four themes: (i) the core laboratory workup, including the complete blood count and preoperative anemia, iron studies, metabolic and hepatic panels, coagulation testing, and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA); (ii) the diagnostic and staging workup, encompassing complete colonic evaluation, contrast-enhanced computed tomography, pelvic magnetic resonance imaging for rectal cancer, and the selective role of positron emission tomography; (iii) risk stratification and preoperative optimization, spanning patient blood management, nutritional assessment and albumin, computed-tomography-defined low skeletal muscle mass, frailty, functional capacity, prehabilitation, and glycemic control; and (iv) molecular characterization, distinguishing mismatch-repair/microsatellite-instability (MMR/MSI) testing—an established, widely recommended component of CRC evaluation—from genuinely emerging biomarkers such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and systemic inflammatory and prognostic nutritional indices. Differences between colon and rectal cancer, elective and emergency presentation, and upfront versus post-neoadjuvant surgery are signposted throughout. We further integrate these elements within contemporary guideline and Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) frameworks, including the 2025 ERAS Society recommendations for elective colorectal surgery, and distill them into a practical, evidence-based preoperative checklist specifying thresholds, timing, interventions, and strength of supporting evidence. We emphasize that the prognostic power of postoperative ctDNA does not yet translate into ctDNA-guided treatment decisions outside clinical trials. The central message is that preoperative testing in CRC should be purposeful and stage- and risk-adapted rather than reflexive: each investigation should refine staging, modify perioperative management, or enable measurable optimization. Each risk domain is paired with the intervention it should trigger, the criteria identifying candidates for extended thromboprophylaxis are specified, and the systemic inflammatory indices are framed as a trigger for optimization rather than as prognostic commentary. Full article

This paper asks two questions: What is the nature of the epigraphic traces that suggest the influence of the Haskalah’s ideology? And how do these traces depict or contribute to a portrait of Białystok’s maskilim and maskilot as remembered in their final epistolary writings—their epitaphs? The Białystok epitaphs span the entirety of the Haskalah in Russia (early 19th century to 1880) into the early decades of the 20th century. Of the approximately 50,000 Jews who died in the years 1800 to 1939 and were buried in one of Białystok’s Jewish cemeteries, only a fraction of the tombstones marking gravesites remain. The small percentage of epitaphs that are extant, however, offer such disparate features that suggest varied influences. In particular, this corpus predominantly reflects Białystok’s strong mithnagdic (traditional) community. By contrast, the impact of maskilic thought on the epitaph shifted the focus to the uniqueness of the individual, highlighting secular professional achievements and personal tragedies. Within the Białystok corpus, the following categories are used to explore the epigraphic traces of the Haskalah: (1) maskilic lexicon in the Jewish epitaph; (2) the epitaphs of known maskilim Avraham Ber Gottlober and David Tsvi Solnicki; (3) the epitaphs composed by maskil Eliezer Halberstam; (4) epitaphs focused on secular professions and vernaculars; and (5) those focused on personal tragedies. Full article

Background: Spinal epidural lipomatosis (SEL) is a rare disorder characterized by excessive epidural fat accumulation. Diagnosis may be challenging because imaging findings are frequently overlooked, and evidence-based management guidelines, particularly thoracic disease, remain limited. Case report: We present a case report of a 54-year-old male patient, who suffered from lower limb spastic paresis and associated muscle spasms (Nurick grade V). After a difficult diagnostic process, MRI of the thoracic spine confirmed dorsal/posterior spinal epidural lipomatosis (SEL; Manjila grade IIb-α) extending from Th2 to Th9, with moderate thecal sac compression. A small Th6–Th7 intervertebral disc prolapse was also present, without evidence of scoliosis, syrinx, spinal cord edema, or myelomalacia. Following bilateral thoracic decompression and complete resection of the SEL tissue, the patient’s neurological function improved markedly, from Nurick grade V preoperatively to Nurick grade II at 11 months of follow-up. Consequently, bilateral laminectomy of the thoracic region was performed with total resection of the SEL tissue. Following surgery, the patient’s neurological symptoms improved markedly (Nurick grade II; 11 months postoperatively), and histopathological examination confirmed the diagnosis of spinal epidural lipomatosis. Methods: We performed a systematic review of case reports of SEL occurring, or co-occurring in the thoracic region based on the literature identified on PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases, after using search terms: “(thoracic) AND (“spinal” OR “epidural”) AND (lipomatosis)” and filters: [English], [humans] and [year 2020–2026], with the accordance to the PRISMA guidelines. Results: We identified 21 cases of thoracic SEL from 19 articles. In 12 cases the patients were male, in 9 female. Reported etiological associations included type 1 diabetes mellitus, exogenous corticosteroid exposure, obesity/metabolic syndrome, Cushing syndrome, and CLOVES syndrome. Given the small, case-report-based sample, these findings should be considered reported associations rather than estimates of prevalence or independent risk factors. Surgical treatment of thoracic SEL can be accomplished by various techniques such as laminectomy (continuous or skip), laminoplasty, or minimally invasive procedures—including endoscopic spine surgery. Conclusions: Large-volume, multicenter studies with long-term clinico-radiological follow-up would be necessary to understand the natural history and treatment outcomes, and to form evidence-based guidelines for interventions. Our case report and findings highlight that thoracic SEL should be included in the differential diagnosis of unexplained compressive myelopathy, even when imaging studies are inconclusive. Rapid identification or possibly reversible causes of myelopathy and initiation of treatment can significantly relieve symptoms, so it is important to remember this disease in the diagnostic process. Full article

This article examines the changing social meanings of mining in Roșia Montană (Romania) from late state socialism to the period following the withdrawal of the Roșia Montană Gold Corporation (RMGC), which had proposed a large open-cast gold project there. The study uses an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. It draws on seven semi-structured interviews with local clergy of different confessions, conducted in spring 2019, and on questionnaire surveys of 282 residents and 45 resettled former residents, carried out in 2020, before the site’s inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021. Perceptions are traced across four moments: the state-socialist period; the post-1989 years before the closure of the state mine; the RMGC investment phase; and its aftermath. Treating priests as local moral authorities and interpreters of change, the article finds that mining was remembered not merely as employment but as a source of order, prestige and collective identity under state socialism; that the post-1989 transition bred moral ambivalence; and that the RMGC years polarised the community. At the time of the research, perceptions remained divided but were increasingly articulated through memory, heritage and survival rather than extraction. The article shows how religious actors mediate collective memory and local responses to economic change in post-socialist mining communities. Full article

Since 1945, the Korean Peninsula has remained territorially, politically, and ideologically divided. The South Korean Protestant Church has been profoundly shaped by this historical reality, and its anti-communist discourse has contributed to the construction and reproduction of antagonistic memory, exclusionary identities, and collective suffering. This study develops a constructive political theology that addresses the enduring historical suffering of the divided Korean Peninsula. Employing a constructive political theological approach, it first examines the historical formation and development of anti-communism within the Korean Church, arguing that it gradually developed into a political theology of division. It then interprets the collective suffering produced by this political theology through the Korean concept of han, understood in Minjung theology as the theological grammar of historical suffering. Finally, the study reconstructs Peter Scott’s concept of Eucharistic Place into three interconnected theological places—the Place of Suffering, the Place of Resurrection, and the Place of Eschatological Vision—and brings this framework into constructive dialogue with Andrew Sung Park’s theology of the resolution of han. It argues that this Eucharistic political theology provides a constructive theological framework through which the collective han may be remembered, transformed, and progressively resolved. Full article

While Ethnic Studies (ES) emerges from deep traditions of subaltern community struggles for liberatory education, the discipline’s expanding institutionalization within K-12 schools surfaces enduring barriers to community-based education. To meet California’s new ES high school graduation requirement (AB 101), some districts are launching new classes without engaging the visions and knowledges of subaltern communities. In this case, a group of enthusiastic teachers—all new to ES—volunteered to design and launch their district’s class in a predominantly white, politically liberal community in Northern California. During the course’s first year, we gathered for monthly dialogue circles to explore the tensions and possibilities of growing community-grounded ES. Teachers shared misgivings about ES institutionalization, including their role in it, and the barriers to developing “authentic,” community-rooted ES. Yet, they pushed themselves to develop curricula that brought the community “into school” and experiential learning that brought students “into the community.” Initially, teachers centered school in their visions of community and struggled to imagine growing authentic community relationships. As we worked, teachers remembered and re-engaged existing relationships, and—in dialogue with community members—began to explore education as a community praxis. Through critical dialogue about the institutionalization of ES, we traced how infrastructures of schooling and contentious political terrain preserved boundaries in the face of an educational discipline designed to dismantle them and a research project that attempted to blur them. We also surfaced moments of possibility with which to continue imagining—and enacting—the critical, humanizing education that communities deserve. Full article

The U-shaped Disassembly Line Balancing Problem (UDLBP) is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem for which efficient solution approaches remain limited. This study proposes an efficient branch-bound-and-remember (BBR) algorithm that integrates a memory-based mechanism and U-shaped dominance rules to effectively reduce the search space. Specifically, a new branching method, an additional lower bounding method, and new dominance rules are developed to suit the UDLBP, and different search strategies are developed and explored. Extensive computational experiments are conducted on a comprehensive set of benchmark instances to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed BBR algorithm can consistently identify the best-known solutions for the evaluated benchmark instances. Compared with constraint programming, mixed-integer linear programming, and several state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms, the proposed approach achieves competitive solution quality and computational efficiency, consistently matching the best-known solutions with an average recorded CPU time of 0.0199 s under the 500 s computational setting. These findings indicate that the proposed algorithm provides an efficient optimization framework for solving UDLBP, achieving high-quality solutions with substantially low computational cost. Full article

This article explores the complexities of revisiting, remembering and revising the cultural philosophies and aesthetics associated with the free festival and rave scenes of the early 1990s. The analysis here examines and comments on the rave sound system Spiral Tribe and the moral panic that resulted from their activities during the infamous rave on Castlemorton Common in May 1992. Informed by scholarship from figures such as Mark Fisher, Danny Cookney and Graham St John, the article engages in a close reading of archive footage found on YouTube. From this, a discussion regarding the complex interplay of mediation, techno aesthetics, memory and narrative emerges and develops. Viewing the footage now is both curious and uncanny. The clear and optimistic vision of the future offered by Spiral Tribe clashes and contrasts with our atomized and passive relationship with technology in the twenty-first century. As such, watching these faded versions of a potential future is a hauntological experience full of ghosts and spectres. Full article

This article offers a thematic classification of traditions attributed to the Companions (ṣaḥāba), the Successors (tābiʿūn), and early Islamic scholars and rulers concerning ring engravings, situating these inscriptions within the framework of aniconism in early Islamic culture. It should be stressed at the outset that the evidence examined here consists of later hadith compilations and ṭabaqāt (biographical) works rather than dated artefacts; the study therefore analyses how the Companions, Successors, and early authorities were remembered and portrayed within a textual tradition committed to writing in subsequent generations, not the objective material history of the earliest Muslim community. The study argues that such engravings were not merely expressions of individual preference, but rather constituted a cultural practice shaped by the aesthetic constraints generated by hadith literature’s cautious stance toward figural representation, a practice that became a shared, collective idiom. The inscriptions are examined under four thematic headings: religious expressions, reminders of death and the transience of worldly life, inscriptions conveying identity and moral counsel, and figural symbols. The expressions and symbols found on rings are then subjected to a sociological reading drawing on the concepts of collective memory, symbolic capital, and productive constraint, within the paradigm of material religion. The findings indicate that figural motifs were at least partially present in the early period, and that written inscriptions subsequently came to occupy a dominant position. This transformation demonstrates that the aniconism in hadith did not merely suppress visual imagery, but functioned as the generative force behind a distinctive symbolic idiom centered on the letter and the word. Furthermore, drawing on Birgit Meyer’s notion of sensational forms, it argues that the ring bound the sacred to sensory experience through legally regulated matter: the prophetic preference for silver over gold, copper, and iron; the Abyssinian stone; the turning of the bezel toward the palm; and the pressure of the seal into clay. Aniconism thus operated not only as a rule about images but as a regime governing the material, tactile, and even olfactory life of a wearable object. While scholarship on Islamic aniconism has focused primarily on monumental art, architecture, and manuscript illustration, this study redirects attention to ring inscriptions as an underexplored domain of material culture, showing that ring inscriptions, though largely overlooked, are informative witnesses to Islamic culture and theology at the most intimate scale of everyday devotional and political life. Full article

The current study examined judgments of learning (JOL) reactivity in social contexts. Participants studied related and unrelated cue–target word pairs. Half of the participants were asked to predict the likelihood that other people would remember the cue–target pairs on a later memory test, whereas the other half were not. All participants then completed a final cued recall test. The results show that making JOLs for others, like making JOLs for oneself, produces positive reactivity. Specifically, making JOLs for others enhanced memory for related word pairs but not unrelated pairs, supporting the cue-strengthening hypothesis. This study serves as a starting point to examine the influence of making JOLs in social contexts and to understand the impact of cue utilization on JOL reactivity. Full article

The paper is a systematic review of the sense of place construct. It aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature in the field, pointing to any gaps or inconsistencies. The concept of sense of place has long been central to the disciplines of human geography, environmental psychology, landscape studies, and heritage discourse. It has been traditionally understood as the emotional, experiential, and symbolic meanings people attach to places, places; sense of place has evolved alongside changing interpretations of landscape and heritage. This paper revisits the concept of sense of place and critically examines its interaction with landscape and heritage frameworks. By tracing theoretical developments and exploring contemporary challenges—such as globalisation, heritage commodification, and climate change—the paper argues that sense of place remains a vital, fundamental and interactive concept. It addresses how a deeper understanding of how landscapes and heritage sites are experienced, remembered, contested, and managed, is critical to sense of place. The paper concludes that recognising the dynamic and relational nature of sense of place is essential for sustainable landscape planning and inclusive heritage practices. It This study is intended to inform a wider audience, including graduate students, academics and practitioners in the various disciplines, of how sense of place cannot be objectively/quantifiably proved. Rather it results from qualitative interactions between people and places in the context of ordinary everyday places—the ordinarily sacred—and special places. Fundamental to such an approach is appreciating how intangible associations between people and places guide people’s sense of place., i.e., how and why do people react consciously to such associations. The paper does not attempt to redefine or reinvent the sense of place concept, but to inquire into how it works and for whom. Full article

Working memory (WM) capacity predicts a wide range of cognitive abilities, yet little is known about how individuals with different WM capacities regulate memory use during natural tasks in which memory use is voluntarily determined. To address this question, we conducted two experiments (N = 120) in which participants completed a copying task and a change-detection task. Experiment 1 manipulated sampling cost to increase reliance on internal memory storage, whereas Experiment 2 manipulated time pressure to increase demands for maintaining consistent memory use. Increasing sampling cost led participants to use more memory but did not make individual differences in WM capacity more apparent in mean memory usage. In contrast, time pressure revealed a reliable association between WM capacity and the consistency of memory usage across sampling episodes. Higher-capacity individuals exhibited more consistent memory use. These findings suggest that WM capacity shapes voluntary memory use not simply by increasing how much information people remember, but by influencing how consistently they regulate memory use under different task demands. Full article

The article investigates how electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is represented in the following four literary works of the 21st century: October’s Child, Store Kongensgade 23, The Parakeet, and I Am What I Remember. The article argues that electroconvulsive therapy is treated as a mnemonic metaphor that highlights not just its significance for individual experiences of memory loss following treatment and how such treatment elicits traumas that span generations, but also how ECT can be said to have a gendered bias. The article attempts to show how the practice of ECT is emblematic of a certain patriarchal tendency within psychiatry that obfuscates women’s chance of being heard. It makes the argument that ECT as a metaphor paradoxically works as a narrative catalyst that forces a practice of remembrance, and that this practice is in many ways a feminist project. As such, it offers a critical insight into psychiatric practices and shows the importance of giving voice to those who suffer from after-effects of psychiatric treatment. Finally, the article argues that ECT is a feminized metaphor that continues a figurative line of thought in Western social imagination, which entangles women, technology, and mental illness. Full article

Smart city and smart region governance increasingly relies on data-informed decision-making, stakeholder participation, digital tools, and public feedback. However, these mechanisms do not automatically create institutional learning. This article examines sustainable smart region governance as an institutional learnability problem and asks whether participation, local knowledge, and feedback are converted into adaptive action and retained as institutional memory. The study applies a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR)-informed structured evidence mapping combined with an embedded regional case diagnosis from the Tokaj Wine Region, Hungary. The analysis integrates the literature on smart governance, learning regions, higher education quality assurance, territorial resilience, and adaptive governance with regional governance observation materials, stakeholder survey data, coding tables, calculation workbooks, and analytical figures deposited in a public Figshare dataset. The results identify the Act/Remember gap as the central learning-cycle disruption. Planning, implementation, monitoring, and consultation may be present, but feedback often fails to become adaptive action, and action is weakly retained as institutional memory. The comparison with higher education quality assurance shows that structured feedback and continuous improvement principles are transferable only as learning logic, not as procedural models. The findings also show that single-profile territories are especially vulnerable to delayed learning, strategic lock-in, and weak community knowledge-building. The article contributes to smart governance research by proposing institutional learnability as a diagnostic capacity of sustainable smart regions. It argues that digital tools should function as learning infrastructure supporting traceability, feedback-to-action mechanisms, and institutional memory, rather than as substitutes for human deliberation, trust, and collective responsibility. Full article

Understanding how environmental contexts influence cognitive functioning is a key issue in cognitive science and applied ergonomics. This study examined whether everyday environmental settings modulate task performance and perceived cognitive workload during a card-matching memory task, using high-fidelity immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Participants performed the task by sequentially uncovering cards and remembering their spatial locations to identify matching pairs in two virtual scenarios: a naturalistic environment (urban park) and an artificial setting (office). The number of moves and time of execution were collected as behavioral measures. Perceived cognitive workload was assessed after task completion in each condition using the Simulation Task Load Index (SIM-TLX). Behavioral performances did not differ between environments. However, participants reported lower perceived cognitive workload when performing the task in the naturalistic environment. This effect was not uniform across individuals: the reduction in perceived cognitive workload was primarily observed among participants exhibiting high levels of task efficiency. These findings suggest that environmental context interacts with individual cognitive efficiency by modulating the perceived cognitive workload without necessarily affecting objective performance outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that naturalistic immersive virtual contexts may mitigate perceived cognitive workload during memory-based tasks, highlighting the role of contextual factors in influencing cognitive efforts under ecologically valid conditions. Full article