Clinical Legal Education in Malta: Learning from experience and identifying the challenges

This paper introduces the reader to clinical legal education in Malta by: 1) outlining how the internal hybridity of the Maltese legal system and the juxtaposition of English and Continental models in Maltese legal education have influenced the development of the Law Clinic at the University of Malta; 2) describing how the Maltese clinical model operates currently; 3) reviewing the experiences of students involved in clinical work

Возвращение жанра: тенденции развития современного травелога

Travelogue as a personal journey suggests a high degree of reflection. The writers have re­ferred to this genre at all times. However, at the turn of the 20th - 21st centuries, it has become extremely popular due to its transformation into a multi-level, syncretic genre. A travelogue author fixes his personal experience of movements in the external space, creates the model of the world and broadcasts an individual concept of the spiritual journey. The genre of travelogue gets definite ethnic and gender-related overtones in much of today's Russian-language literature, helping the latter get across to a wider range of readers and transforming it into a mass culture phenomenon.В статье рассматривается жанр травелога и его становление в современной русской литературе

Российская и британская "новая драма" рубежа XX–XXI вв.: главные концепты, смыслы и представления

At the turn of the 21st century, Russian “new drama” manifests the British playwright tradition (mainly of the British Royal Court Theater). Choosing the most relevant themes, Russian and British playwrights strive not just to shock and challenge the audience with the cruelty of what is happening on the stage, but to make the reader/viewer tackle the problems, understand the characters who are often imperfect and marginalized humans. These texts form a single artistic space that integrates various shades of pain, fear, and suffering having no geographical, political, social, and humanitarian borders. Thus, destroying the criteria of rationality, demonstrating the infinite nightmare of everyday life, the British and Russian playwrights make some international project. After the rise that characterized the British theater in the 1950s and 1960s, there came a period of some passive interest to the theater culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, at the turn of the 21st century, a new generation of playwrights came to literature. Mark Ravenhill (1966), Sarah Kane (1971– 1999), Anthony Neilson (1967), Philip Ridley (1964), Martin McDonagh (1970), Joe Penhall (1967) manifested the artistic principles of the so-called “angry young people” and the traditions of Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty”. Antonin Artaud saw the possibility of human liberation by magnifying cruelty and placing it in the foreground in the existing picture of the world. Freedom of choice and complete disregard for morality and traditional values lead to violence, and a person becomes a professional buyer or seller, a victim or an executioner. In the world where the main purpose of life is buying and selling, a person lives according to the laws of free market and can be both a buyer and a commodity. Human cruelty is determined by the desire to humiliate others, which can lead to serious consequences. The central theme of Mark Ravenhill’s drama is the idea of consumerism – a distorted value system that has become dominant in a consumer society with a pronounced market philosophy. In the universe of infinite buying and selling, even events related to the death of people turn into commodity. As for the Russian “new drama” with its everyday nightmares and “communicative violence” (the term introduced by Mark Lipovetsky), we rather mean an artistic phenomenon that is characteristic of the global social and cultural situation at the turn of the millennium – the period of destructing one society and creating another. The Russian audience has never been jaded, cynical, and bored. Thus, rather offensive and unjustifiably cruel drama images perform the primary function of depicting the surrounding reality, which has become too familiar, and therefore often not properly realized. Consequently, the Russian playwrights of the turn of the 21st century aim to make the person with locked consciousness, the one, who tries not to notice the horrors of reality, “look back in anger”

Specifics of motivation of volunteers participating in in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine

Background. The pandemic coronavirus infection has contributed to the development of effective preventive methods to slow the spread of the virus. Mass vaccination is the only way to protect oneself from infection. The development of drugs, including vaccines, involves clinical trials (CT). The problem of conducting a CT is recruiting the necessary number of volunteers. Goal: to identify specifics of motivation of patients participating in the clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccines, as it is a very important medical and sociological issue requiring more detailed study. Materials and Methods. The results of an anonymous questionnaire survey of volunteers participating in the “EpiVacCorona” vaccine CT are presented. Overall, 203 questionnaires were analyzed, containing 19 questions answered by the residents of Kaliningrad, aged 20 to 84 years. At the stage of completion of participation in the clinical trial, information was obtained about the respondent’s attitudes to the trial, the main factors of motivation or demotivation to participate, the degree of their trust in the trial. Results. Information disseminated through the employer was an effective way to organize patient recruitment for the vaccine CT; the effectiveness of using the media was quite low. The positives of participation in the CT for volunteers were ethical considerations. Negatives for participants were the risks associated with adverse reactions or receiving a placebo. Relatives had the greatest influence on the volunteers’ decision to participate in the CT, and medical professionals, media personalities, and scientists had less influence. Conclusion. The results will help to improve patient recruitment, patient awareness of the CT, and the benefits to medicine and society. Motivating and demotivating factors will improve patient recruitment

StopCOVID cohort : An observational study of 3,480 patients admitted to the Sechenov University hospital network in Moscow city for suspected COVID-19 infection

© 2020 Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Clinical Infectious Diseases following peer review. The version of record is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1535.BACKGROUND: The epidemiology, clinical course, and outcomes of COVID-19 patients in the Russian population are unknown. Information on the differences between laboratory-confirmed and clinically-diagnosed COVID-19 in real-life settings is lacking. METHODS: We extracted data from the medical records of adult patients who were consecutively admitted for suspected COVID-19 infection in Moscow, between April 8 and May 28, 2020. RESULTS: Of the 4261 patients hospitalised for suspected COVID-19, outcomes were available for 3480 patients (median age 56 years (interquartile range 45-66). The commonest comorbidities were hypertension, obesity, chronic cardiac disease and diabetes. Half of the patients (n=1728) had a positive RT-PCR while 1748 were negative on RT-PCR but had clinical symptoms and characteristic CT signs suggestive of COVID-19 infection.No significant differences in frequency of symptoms, laboratory test results and risk factors for in-hospital mortality were found between those exclusively clinically diagnosed or with positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR.In a multivariable logistic regression model the following were associated with in-hospital mortality; older age (per 1 year increase) odds ratio [OR] 1.05 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03 - 1.06); male sex (OR 1.71, 1.24 - 2.37); chronic kidney disease (OR 2.99, 1.89 - 4.64); diabetes (OR 2.1, 1.46 - 2.99); chronic cardiac disease (OR 1.78, 1.24 - 2.57) and dementia (OR 2.73, 1.34 - 5.47). CONCLUSIONS: Age, male sex, and chronic comorbidities were risk factors for in-hospital mortality. The combination of clinical features were sufficient to diagnoseCOVID-19 infection indicating that laboratory testing is not critical in real-life clinical practice.Peer reviewe

La dimensione politica dello spazio domestico: cultura materiale e consumo nella Russia moscovita

The paper focuses on consumer culture and domestic sphere in Russia from an anthropological point of view. The authors' attention is reserved on the rules that things and spaces play on the creation of individual identity. Starting to an anthropological and historical methodology (Appadurai, Bourdieu, Kopytoff, Roche) the authors study the rule of the objects in the domestic life. As a place of presentation of self, home informs us on the political national values and the relations between Russian and western consumer culture. The analysis of domestic things is very important to understand the cultural history of Russia, for example to rethink the byt, which encourages a Russian way of life in opposition to western world

Electrical characterization of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) nanocrystals embedded in porous alumina matrix

In this work, the study of dielectric properties of composite structures on the base of poly(vinylidene fluoride-triflouroethylene) copolymer P(VDF-TrFE) and porous aluminum oxide layers produced by the melt-impregnation is presented. Frequency dependences of dielectric characteristics of the composite samples were determined. The dielectric dispersion and ferroelectric switching processes in the composite structures were discussed