We must rethink Russia's propaganda machine in order to reset the dynamic that drives it

To understand how Russian propaganda works, we first have to discard the idea that the Kremlin is in charge of a coordinated media machine acting together with cyber-warriors to attack a single audience. Stephen Hutchings explains why Russian media discourses are much more complicated than often presented

A semiotic analysis of the short stories of Leonid Andreyev, 1900-1909

This thesis applies the techniques of semiotic analysis to a selection of short stories by Leonid Andreyev in an attempt to offer one answer to the problems of categorising Andreyev's unique art and placing it within a literary-evolutionary perspective. The semiotic method was chosen because of its ability both to assimilate literary texts to the supra-individual processes with which it works, and at the same time to delineate an author's particular contribution to these processes. Drawing on a range of literary theory from early Russian Formalism onwards, the study proceeds from one level to another according to a principle of "degree of abstraction", so that each level constitutes firstly an independent account of Andreyev's texts in itself, and secondly one stage in an overall analysis. The analysis at each level pinpoints, in its own terms, a series of semiotic tensions or clashes as being at the heart of Andreyev's literary system. Conflict within his stories between the principles of poetry and prose, metaphor and metonymy, 'discourse' and 'story' and between codes of allegory and codes of reference are among the major tensions highlighted. These tensions are in turn used to account for the fantastic element in Andreyev's stories (tension and ambiguity being the key features of Fantastic literature as defined by many literary theoreticians).The unique, Andreyevan version of the Fantastic is viewed as an index of Andreyev's position in literary evolution at a point of transition between an older, authoritative, transitive mode of narration and a more recent, non-authoritative mode which has come to dominate much twentieth-century literature. The final reference-point for all these tensions is demonstrated to be a shift in modern culture as a whole towards a more impersonal. Mythic thought-system, a shift at the centre of which the art of Leonid Andreyev can be convincingly placed. The material drawn upon includes, in addition to the corpus of Andreyev stories specified, a wide range of works by Andreyev's contemporaries and also the hitherto unexploited draft-manuscripts to a number of Andreyev stories held in the Hoover Institution, U.S.A.A Glossary of the most commonly used theoretical terms is provided at the end of the study

Faultlines in Russia's Discourse of Nation

This article analyzes Russian television news accounts of the December 2010 Manezhnaia riots that followed an ethnic Russian football fan's murder by a group of men from the North Caucasus. It focuses on the narrative struggle to reconcile official nation-building rhetoric with grassroots realities and broadcasters' own assumptions. Using the tools of media discourse analysis, Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz demonstrate that national television's conceptual apparatus consists of a multifaceted amalgam in which interpretations of the Soviet period are modified through the influences of late imperial Russian intellectual traditions and western interpretations of societal diversity. Hutchings and Tolz show how the essentialization of ethnic boundaries within this apparatus leads both to the overinterpretation of interethnic aspects of the crisis, and to their occlusion. Rather than submitting to a univocal state machine, post-Manezhnaia broadcasting reveals fault lines whose partial convergence around a single narrative reflects the restricted logic of the conceptual apparatus and a perceived need to reflect the public mood.</jats:p

Emulating Target Trials With Real-World Data to Inform Health Technology Assessment: Findings and Lessons From an Application to Emergency Surgery

Objectives: International health technology assessment (HTA) agencies recommend that real-world data (RWD) are used in some circumstances to add to the evidence base about the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of health interventions. The target trial framework applies the design principles of randomized-controlled trials to RWD and can help alleviate inevitable concerns about bias and design flaws with nonrandomized studies. This article aimed to tackle the lack of guidance and exemplar applications on how this methodology can be applied to RWD to inform HTA decision making./ Methods: We use Hospital Episode Statistics data from England on emergency hospital admissions from 2010 to 2019 to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of emergency surgery for 2 acute gastrointestinal conditions. We draw on the case study to describe the main challenges in applying the target trial framework alongside RWD and provide recommendations for how these can be addressed in practice./ Results: The 4 main challenges when applying the target trial framework to RWD are (1) defining the study population, (2) defining the treatment strategies, (3) establishing time zero (baseline), and (4) adjusting for unmeasured confounding. The recommendations for how to address these challenges, mainly around the incorporation of expert judgment and use of appropriate methods for handling unmeasured confounding, are illustrated within the case study./ Conclusions: The recommendations outlined in this study could help future studies seeking to inform HTA decision processes. These recommendations can complement checklists for economic evaluations and design tools for estimating treatment effectiveness in nonrandomized studies

NsrR from Streptomyces coelicolor is a nitric oxide-sensing [4Fe-4S] cluster protein with a specialized regulatory function

The Rrf2 family transcription factor NsrR controls expression of genes in a wide range of bacteria in response to nitric oxide (NO). The precise form of the NO-sensing module of NsrR is the subject of controversy because NsrR proteins containing either [2Fe-2S] or [4Fe-4S] clusters have been observed previously. Optical, Mössbauer, resonance Raman spectroscopies and native mass spectrometry demonstrate that Streptomyces coelicolor NsrR (ScNsrR), previously reported to contain a [2Fe-2S] cluster, can be isolated containing a [4Fe-4S] cluster. ChIP-seq experiments indicated that the ScNsrR regulon is small, consisting of only hmpA1, hmpA2, and nsrR itself. The hmpA genes encode NO-detoxifying flavohemoglobins, indicating that ScNsrR has a specialized regulatory function focused on NO detoxification and is not a global regulator like some NsrR orthologues. EMSAs and DNase I footprinting showed that the [4Fe-4S] form of ScNsrR binds specifically and tightly to an 11-bp inverted repeat sequence in the promoter regions of the identified target genes and that DNA binding is abolished following reaction with NO. Resonance Raman data were consistent with cluster coordination by three Cys residues and one oxygen-containing residue, and analysis of ScNsrR variants suggested that highly conserved Glu-85 may be the fourth ligand. Finally, we demonstrate that some low molecular weight thiols, but importantly not physiologically relevant thiols, such as cysteine and an analogue of mycothiol, bind weakly to the [4Fe-4S] cluster, and exposure of this bound form to O2 results in cluster conversion to the [2Fe-2S] form, which does not bind to DNA. These data help to account for the observation of [2Fe-2S] forms of NsrR