Stillness as a Form of Imaginative Labour

This essay connects the practice of stillness to David Graeber's concepts of imaginative labour and immanent imagination. It makes the proposition that stillness should not be evaluated as lack of activity or movement, but rather attended to in its pragmatic and productive dimensions. The essay thus explores stillness as a potential mode of production of imagination and means of political transformation: in order for it to be meaningful, we need to reconfigure our relationship to stillness as one of imagination, resistance, thinking, and writing

An unusual case of suprascapular nerve neuropathy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Suprascapular nerve neuropathy constitutes an unusual cause of shoulder weakness, with the most common etiology being nerve compression from a ganglion cyst at the suprascapular or spinoglenoid notch. We present a puzzling case of a man with suprascapular nerve neuropathy that may have been associated with an appendectomy. The case was attributed to nerve injury as the most likely cause that may have occurred during improper post-operative patient mobilization.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 23-year-old Caucasian man presented to an orthopedic surgeon with a history of left shoulder weakness of several weeks' duration. The patient complained of pain and inability to lift minimal weight, such as a glass of water, following an appendectomy. His orthopedic clinical examination revealed obvious atrophy of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles and 2 of 5 muscle strength scores on flexion resistance and external rotation resistance. Magnetic resonance imaging showed diffuse high signal intensity within the supraspinatus and infraspinatus muscles and early signs of minimal fatty infiltration consistent with denervation changes. No compression of the suprascapular nerve in the suprascapular or spinoglenoid notch was noted. Electromyographic studies showed active denervation effects in the supraspinatus muscle and more prominent in the left infraspinatus muscle. The findings were compatible with damage to the suprascapular nerve, especially the part supplying the infraspinatus muscle. On the basis of the patient's history, clinical examination, and imaging studies, the diagnosis was suspected to be associated with a possible traction injury of the suprascapular nerve that could have occurred during the patient's transfer from the operating table following an appendectomy.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our case report may provide important insight into patient transfer techniques used by hospital personnel, may elucidate the clinical significance of careful movement of patients following general anesthesia, and may have important implications for patient safety techniques, including those outlined in the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist program.</p

Epidemiology of ATTRV30M neuropathy in Cyprus and the modifier effect of complement C1q on the age of disease onset.

BACKGROUND: ATTRV30M amyloidosis is a lethal autosomal dominant sensorimotor and autonomic neuropathy caused by amyloid deposition composed of aggregated misfolded TTR monomers with the V30M mutation. The age of onset in patients with ATTRV30M varies in different foci and the mechanism behind it is still unknown. METHODS: The tertiary neurology center following all ATTRV30M patients in Cyprus was used to collect demographic data to estimate; prevalence, incidence, penetrance, anticipation, time from disease onset to diagnosis and transplantation. Ocular, cardiac and leptomeningeal involvement in transplanted patients was explored. Correlation of C1q tagging SNPs with age of disease onset was carried out. RESULTS: Prevalence and incidence for ATTRV30M neuropathy in Cyprus are 5.4/100,000 and 0.3/100,000 respectively. Mean age of onset is 40.6 years and anticipation is 8.3 years. Penetrance reaches 51% and 75% by the ages of 50 and 80 years respectively. In liver transplanted patients rates of ocular, cardiac and leptomeningeal involvement were estimated to be 60%, 20% and 16%, respectively. C1q polymorphisms correlated with age of disease onset. CONCLUSIONS: ATTRV30M neuropathy has a rising prevalence in Cyprus due to improved survival of patients. Late onset complications are becoming a major problem. Complement C1q appears to be a modifier in this disease

Effect of exercise training and dopamine agonists in patients with uremic restless legs syndrome: A six-month randomized, partially double-blind, placebo-controlled comparative study

© 2013 The Authors. Published by BMC. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2369-14-194Background: Restless Legs Syndrome is very common in hemodialysis patients however there are no comparative studies assessing the effectiveness of a non-pharmacological treatment to a classical treatment on parameters related to syndromes' severity and quality of life. Methods. In this randomized, partially double blind, placebo controlled trial, thirty two hemodialysis patients with restless legs syndrome were randomly assigned into three groups: 1) the exercise training group (N = 16), 2) the dopamine agonists group (ropinirole 0.25 mg/d) (N = 8) and 3) the placebo group (N = 8). The intervention programs lasted 6 months. Restless Legs Syndrome severity was assessed using the international severity scale, physical performance by a battery of tests, muscle size and composition by computed tomography, body composition by Dual Energy X Ray Absorptiometry, while depression score, sleep quality, daily sleepiness and quality of life were assessed through questionnaires. Results: Exercise training and dopamine agonists were effective in reducing syndrome's symptoms by 46% (P = 0.009) and 54% (P = 0.001) respectively. Within group changes revealed that both approaches significantly improved quality of life (P 0.05) in various tests. Between group changes detect significant improvements with both exercise and dopamine agonists in depression score (P = 0.003), while only the dopamine agonist treatment was able to significantly improve sleep quality, compared to exercise and placebo (P = 0.016). Conclusions: A 6-month exercise training regime was as effective as a 6-month low dosage dopamine agonist treatment in reducing restless legs syndrome symptoms and improving depression score in uremic patients. Further research is needed in order to show whether a combination treatment could be more beneficial for the amelioration of RLS. Trial registration. NCT00942253. © 2013 Giannaki et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.This study was supported by the National and Community Funds of the Greek Ministry of Development-General Secretariat of Research and Technology and by the European Social Fund.Published versio

Just out of reach: an ethnographic theory of magic and rationalisation

This research has been supported by the grant “Magical thinking in contexts and situations of unbelief,” part of the Understanding Unbelief programme, funded by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF grant ID# 60624) and managed by the University of Kent.Perceived in their ideal forms, rationalisation and magic might seem to oppose one another. In this paper, however, rather than placing these forces in sterile opposition, we instead explore the social and relational dynamics through which rationalisation - the dominant epistemological force of modernity – in certain cases provides the conditions of doubt, opacity, and unknowability that makes magical thinking manifest in the everyday mundane. We explore such theoretical suggestions through ethnographic research conducted in Orkney and Cyprus. By examining connections between rationalisation and magic as these historically unfolded in these two different island settings, we initially provide a depiction of how the project of rationalisation led to the decline of magic in our two fieldsites. Then, by focusing on everyday manifestations of magical thinking, we nevertheless proceed to showcase how rationalisation and magic appear to sustain one other through an unresolved, generative tenson, emergent of the incapacity of the former to fully sublate the latter in its requirement to ‘know’ the world. The trajectory of rationalisation means that there is nothing unknowable in the world, and yet, from the position of any given person, there is no knowable whole. It remains out of reach. We conclude by discussing how the tensions inherent in the relation between rationalisation and magic allow for further theorising about the dimension of unknowing that permeates contemporary public epistemologies and subjectivities.PostprintPeer reviewe