Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city

Bos, D. (2020). Popular geopolitics ‘beyond the screen’: Bringing Modern Warfare to the city. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 39(1), 94-113. Copyright © 2020 (Copyright Holder). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.Popular culture – in this case military-themed videogames – has been argued to mould and shape popular understandings of the geopolitics of the ‘war on terror’. To date, most attention has been focused on the geopolitical representations of a ‘final’ popular cultural text or object. Less attention has been paid to how popular understandings of geopolitics and military violence have been constructed and commodified prior to, and ‘beyond the screen’. Empirically, the paper examines the marketing campaign of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Through the use of experiential marketing, I show how the game’s launch night incorporated spectacular displays, performances and consumer interactions to sell the pleasures of virtual war by drawing on geopolitical fears of terrorism and military violence within major Western cities. Firstly, I demonstrate how marketing engaged with and transformed urban spaces extending the popular geopolitics of virtual war. Secondly, the paper reveals how experiential marketing targeted and encouraged connections with and between attendees’ bodies. Thirdly, I demonstrate how such events promote geopolitical encounters which extend beyond the temporal and the spatial confines of the marketing event itself. Ultimately, the paper reveals how urban fears surrounding the global ‘war on terror’ were employed to sell the pleasures and geopolitics of virtual war

Playful Encounters: Games for Geopolitical Change

Bringing together literatures on play, (video) games, and alter- (native) geopolitics this paper explores how digital games offer playful encounters that challenge popular understandings of geopolitics. While geographical scholarship has exposed the ways video games promote geopolitical and militaristic cultures, this paper concentrates on the disruptive qualities of play. More specifically, the paper focuses on This War of Mine (2014), a game which fosters playful encounters that encourage the player to reflect on the everyday consequences of conflict in urban spaces and their civilian populations. Drawing on an analysis of player reviews of the game, this paper demonstrates how play shapes imaginaries of the geopolitical context(s) of urban conflict and stimulates players to reflect on their attitudes towards violence. In doing so, the paper critically demonstrates how digital games offer important cultural outlets in encountering alternative understandings of geopolitics

Atherosclerotic Calcification: Determinants and Clinical Neurological Consequences

__Abstract__ Atherosclerosis is a highly frequent vascular disease that exerts huge influence on the health care system. Major clinical conditions caused by atherosclerosis are ischemic heart disease (myocardial infarction) and stroke, both top causes of global morbidity and mortality in middle-aged and elderly persons. Due to the aging of the population, the global burden of atherosclerosis, and thereby of its clinical consequences, will continue to rise in the coming decades. The purpose of my thesis is to expand the knowledge on determinants - or risk factors - and neurological consequences of atherosclerosis, with a specific focus on differences across vessel beds. The research described in my thesis was performed within the framework of the Rotterdam Study;21 a large prospective, population-based cohort study aimed at investigating determinants of various chronic diseases in the elderly. Using CT-imaging in this population-based setting, I studied atherosclerosis in four major vessel beds: the coronary arteries, aortic arch and the extracranial and intracranial part of the internal carotid arteries

Leveraging the coronary calcium scan beyond the coronary calcium score

Abstract: Non-contrast cardiac computed tomography in order to obtain the coronary artery calcium score has become an established diagnostic procedure in the clinical setting, and is commonly employed in clinical and population-based research. This state-of-the-art review paper highlights the potential gain in information that can be obtained from the non-contrast coronary calcium scans without any necessary modifications to the scan protocol. This includes markers of cardio-metabolic health, such as the amount of epicardial fat and liver fat, but also markers of general health including bone density and lung density. Finally, this paper addresses the importance of incidental findings and of radiation exposure accompanying imaging with non-contrast cardiac computed tomography. Despite the fact that coronary calcium scan protocols have been optimized for the visualization of coronary calcification in terms image quality and radiation exposure, it is important for radiologists, cardiologists and medical specialists in the field of preventive medicine to acknowledge that numerous additional markers of cardio-metabolic health and general health can be readily identified on a coronary calcium scan. Key Points: • The coronary artery calcium score substantially increased the use of cardiac CT.• Cardio-metabolic and general health markers may be derived without changes to the scan protocol.• Those include epicardial fat, aortic valve calcifications, liver fat, bone density, and lung density.• Clinicians must be aware of this potential additional yield from non-contrast cardiac CT