Ancient rhetoric as a hermeneutical tool for the analysis of characterization in narrative literature

This article argues that the conceptualization of the notions of character and characterization in ancient rhetorical treatises can serve as a hermeneutical tool for the analysis of characterization in narrative literature. It offers an analysis of ancient rhetorical loci and techniques of character depiction and points out that ancient rhetorical theory discusses direct, metaphorical, and metonymical techniques of characterization. Ultimately, it provides the modern scholar with a paradigm for the analysis of characterization in (ancient) narrative literature

Why Do Mothers Die? The Silent Tragedy of Maternal Mortality

More than two decades after the launch of the Safe Motherhood Initiative, maternal health in many developing countries has shown little or no improvement. Year after year, more than half a million mothers continue to die in silence. The specificities of the complex cross-cutting issue only partly explain why tireless efforts have led to insufficient progress so far. While some success stories prove that results can be obtained quickly, the dissensions and deficiencies the Initiative has encountered have strongly weakened its impact. However, recent developments over the past 3 years allow us to foresee the silence will soon be broken. While advocacy begins to subsequently raise awareness, more financial means are mobilized. As a consensus on the priority interventions has finally been reached (Women Deliver conference, London, October 2007), more coordinated actions and initiatives are being developed. The strive for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals helps to create the political momentum the cause strongly needs to generate new leadership, develop and implement the adequate strategies. Sensible focus on resources and structure as well as innovative management will be crucial in that process

Commentary: Actions to end violence against women : a multi-sector approach

Many forms of violence affect women and girls, such as physical and sexual abuse, trafficking, female genital mutilation, early and forced marriage, murders in the name of honour or dowry, and sexual harassment and abuse by authority figures. Prevention is imperative, and promising programmes exist that need to be tested and scaled up. The UN’s post-2015 global agenda, currently under discussion, must include a target to eliminate violence against women and girls, which supports the actions outlined in this article

Wüsteria

The last two decades have seen considerable efforts directed towards making Electronic Health Records interoperable through improvements in medical ontologies, terminologies and coding systems. Unfortunately, these efforts have been hampered by a number of influential ideas inherited from the work of Eugen Wüster, the father of terminology standardization and the founder of ISO TC 37. We here survey Wüster’s ideas – which see terminology work as being focused on the classification of concepts in people’s minds – and we argue that they serve still as the basis for a series of influential confusions. We argue further that an ontology based unambiguously, not on concepts, but on the classification of entities in reality can, by removing these confusions, make a vital contribution to ensuring the interoperability of coding systems and healthcare records in the future

Free products in the unit group of the integral group ring of a finite group

Let $G$ be a finite group and let $p$ be a prime. We continue the search for generic constructions of free products and free monoids in the unit group $\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{Z}G)$ of the integral group ring $\mathbb{Z}G$. For a nilpotent group $G$ with a non-central element $g$ of order $p$, explicit generic constructions are given of two periodic units $b_1$ and $b_2$ in $\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{Z}G)$ such that $\langle b_1 , b_2\rangle =\langle b_1\rangle \star \langle b_2 \rangle \cong \mathbb{Z}_p \star \mathbb{Z}_{p}$, a free product of two cyclic groups of prime order. Moreover, if $G$ is nilpotent of class $2$ and $g$ has order $p^n$, then also concrete generators for free products $\mathbb{Z}_{p^k} \star \mathbb{Z}_{p^m}$ are constructed (with $1\leq k,m\leq n$). As an application, for finite nilpotent groups, we obtain earlier results of Marciniak-Sehgal and Gon{\c{c}}alves-Passman. Further, for an arbitrary finite group $G$ we give generic constructions of free monoids in $\mathcal{U}(\mathbb{Z}G)$ that generate an infinite solvable subgroup.Comment: 10 page

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Refugee Women in Europe: rights, policies, status and needs. Literature review

B