Articoli di riviste sul tema "Spain Folk literature"

AbstractFolklorists, philologists and ethnomusicologists have emphasized the important role of women for the preservation of Sephardic folklore and traditional literature in the twentieth century. Many scholars accept that Sephardic women who knew and performed folklore where almost illiterate and belonged to lower classes. This article intends to show that at the beginning of the twentieth century, some bourgeois, middle-class Sephardic women, although they had a very Western, modern life style, knew and appreciated the intangible heritage of Sephardic folklore that they had received handed down from their mothers and grandmothers. Those considerations are based on the information and comments about folklore and folksongs contained in the letters of affluent Sephardic Jews who maintained correspondence with Angel Pulido, a Spanish doctor and senator who in 1904 started a political campaign to strenghten ties and relations between Spain and the Sephardic Jews.

AbstractJudah Halevi and Abraham ibn Ezra are two of the most celebrated pre-modern Jewish figures of all time. Born in late eleventh-century Spain, their lives intersected on several occasions. However, there is also an extensive web of folk narratives and traditions that have been told about them from the Middle-Ages to the present day which links them to each other through their imagined biographies. In fact, many stories were told about them separately depicting various facets of each man’s character. Here, however, we show that unlike other stories, those that bring them together revolve around a specific type of activity common to both; namely, poetry. Furthermore, their hagiographies tend to reproduce the typical milestones characteristic of biographies of saints and cultural heroes (Noy 1975): the prenatal legend, the biographical legend, the posthumous legend, events associated with the hero’s descendants, and events associated with the hero’s possessions. In this case, however, we argue that the stories not only correspond to their biographical phases, but that these stories shape their poetic endeavors as adhering to these phases as well, thus turning these two poets into a timeless couple separated in neither life or death, before their births or posthumously.

Intercultural education and the attention to diversity have become two of the most important aspects of education in recent decades. There are many areas of diversity that can be addressed in the classroom, always based on tolerance and the acceptance of difference. However, intercultural education is destined to go one step further: from an inalienable foundation of respect and tolerance for everyone, we aim to develop diversity as a positive value that must be understood and accepted. There is no doubt that we are faced with one of the great challenges of education.Literature and theatre, on the other hand, is always a meeting point, first and foremost between the author and the recipient, often separated by temporal, spatial, linguistic, and cultural factors. In this sense, as Josep Ballester (2015) reminds us that the different sets of values and worldviews presented by the different human communities, as well as certain patterns of conduct and folk wisdom developed over generations, are stored and alive in language and literature. We will focus our educational approach precisely in this capacity of literature and drama -puppets specifically- to confront different human cultures and bring them to dialogue.

This article considers the formation of hiking in the Russian Empire and Europe in the late 19th century. Its socio-cultural context is also defined. Particular attention is paid to the person of Mykhailo Bernov as one of the founders of hiking in the Russian Empire and Europe and his multifaceted activities in the development of communication between peoples, social actualization of knowledge about the world. Biography, information about popularization activity and publishing activity of Mykhailo Bernov are also given.In the first part of this study, the route of Mykhailo Bernov’s journey from France to Spain, and then through Spain, Algeria and the Sahara in 1892–1893, was reconstructed on the basis of his “travel notes” “Spain, Algeria and the Sahara” (St. Petersburg, 1899) and periodical data.Mykhailo Bernov left detailed descriptions of nature, countryside and major cities of Spain, monuments of history, culture and art, accompanied by historical excursions, interpretation of their own names. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of Spanish opera and theatrical life.It is concluded that sincere interest and respect for local traditions, thorough general training allowed Mykhailo Bernov to create in his notes a broad and colourful canvas of life of the country and people of Spain in the late 19th century, to capture the features of national culture and character. Bernov’s “travel notes” are based on direct communication with the Spanish common people, representatives of the elite and the administration, acquaintance with folk culture, examples of high art and literature. In his notes he makes comparisons of Spanish people with other nations. Bernov tried to understand Spain and its people, sought common socio-cultural features and values, and explained the features of “otherness” by nature, religion, state foundations, the course of history, and so on.Mykhailo Bernov’s notes on his travels in Spain as a source, in our opinion, contain a lot of useful and interesting information for researchers on the history of hiking, monuments, archaeology, ethnography, etc.

Human urine is currently the subject of biomedical investigations as a potential therapeutic resource and it continues to be used in remedies in different cultures and societies, including the Spanish culture. In this study we gather etnomedical knowledge about urotherapy and determine their associated symbolisms in Spain. A literature overview and a case study were carried out to compile urine-based remedies and as a direct analysis of symbolic systems. Urotherapy is widespread in Spanish folk medicine. Among the 204 collected remedies, those related to treatment of diseases or skin conditions predominate (63%). Remedies have been reported for the treatment of skin diseases such as eczema, chloasma, alopecia, etc. to treat or alleviate burns, chilblains, wounds or skin chapping, and as a treatment of venomous bites. Most of the collected remedies have an associated naturalist symbolism, based on local traditions and the transmission of empirical initial knowledge. The use of urine in Spain is a result of the interaction of two types of practice: a local and traditional urotherapy, rural and with a utilitarian purpose, and a technical urotherapy, limited to an urban environment and a naturopathic medicine.

The fate of folk genres can be completely different in different peoples and historical periods: some disappear without a trace in the manuscripts, others reach the later epochs on the pages of a small number of surviving books and others develop, go out into great stages and conquer entire countries. This is the destiny of flamenco which consists of three elements, that is music, poetry and dance and became the cultural practice of southern Spain during the 19th century. In that same century in Russia, the genre of chastushka was formed. Like the flamenco couplets, it flourished in the vulnerable and precarious social layer of the urban population formed by the peasants deprived of land who went to earn a living in the cities. The synchrony of the global socio-political processes, one of which and also the most key throughout the 19th century was industrialization, suggests that in some social groups in different countries could arise and develop similar forms of art so it is interesting to compare milestones in the history of flamenco copla and chastushka, analyze themes and their lexical content. The aim of the paper is to discover similarity and difference between two folk genres at a certain historical stage of their existence. As an analytical basis, collections of texts and scientific research in Russian and Spanish are adopted from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st one.

Among the writers of his generation, Alecsandri is the most comprehensive one, expressing not only the patriotic aspirations and desires, but also the discoveries from the universe of the private life and trying to make himself noticed in almost all the main literary genres and species. By different circumstances, Alecsandri gets to travel through Moldavia, Wallachia, Bucovina and Transylvania, to the European part of Turkey, to Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Great Britain, North of Africa, either for personal pleasure, to accompany Elena Negri, who was trying to find a more favourable climate for her fragile health, or for official business. All these travels and each of them separately are part of the development of his creation, leaving marks in his fiction and poetry and “it is printed on the screen of the human experience which defines his public and private personality”. In one of these travels, Alecsandri will discover the folk poetry, discovery which will profoundly mark his destiny as a writer and it will also have immeasurable consequences on the entire development of the Romanian literature from the last century, but also from the years to follow. As a result of the translations into French, German and English of the folk poems or of some of his original poems, Alecsandri becomes one of our first modern writers who became famous also abroad, being accessible to the foreign world.

The aim of this study is to bring the feast of San Vicente Ferrer in the city of Valencia closer to our knowledge. This festivity serves as a good example of how literature created by local folk writers is transformed into a street performance. At the same time it is one of the best examples of contemporary popular religiosity in this region of Spain. On the day of the celebration, actors perform short plays on the streets of the city. The shows are based on the life of the patron of the city and are written by local authors. The feast has a long history – the oldest altar was set in la calle del Mar in the mid-fifteenth century – and the celebrations continue into the twenty-first century with well-organised associations. These entities are an element of the utmost importance for the neighbourhood. They both preserve traditional Valencian customs and this region’s own language, and have an important role in shaping social relationships within the community.

The article aims at reviewing the rich and ambivalent Western folk ballad research tradition in terms of confluence of the oral and written traditions. Although being well-reflected in the West, this approach is hardly at all present in Lithuania. The article starts with discussing such cultural phenomenon as broadside ballads. In surveying them, the author maintains that popular publications of the 16th–19th century Europe (bibliothèque bleue, skyllingtricker, Volksbuch, pliegos de cordel, лубочная литература, etc.) were an inherent part of the folk culture. Printed sheets of folksongs and ballads used to be popular in Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and subsequently in America. However, although spread and promoted by the press, the ballads hardly ascended the field of interest of the educated elite, remaining instead in the “lower” spheres of the popular culture.The first collectors of ballads from the 18th century (the “antiquarian period”) paid little attention to the sources of their material, being instead very keen on improving and elaborating of the ballad texts, and presenting them as creative manifestations of the “original bard” or the “national muse”. After the collections by Thomas Percy and Walter Scott appeared, William Motherwell turned back to the still thriving ballad tradition. This Scottish scholar, followed by his Danish colleague Svend Grundtvig and the American Francis James Child founded the modern ballad folklore research, since their collections represented the oral folk tradition rather than engaging in search for the “original” folk ballads. The subsequent researchers, influenced by the Child’s ballad scholarship (Phillips Barry, Cecil J. Sharp, Olive D. Campbell, Louise Pound, Henry M. Belden, etc.), continued investigating the American ballad legacy. However, while collecting and encouraging to further collect the surviving ballads they increasingly realized the huge distance between their endeavors and the Child’s collection. The heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the ballads from the oral tradition was increasingly recognized and acknowledged, along with unavoidable impact of the written and printed sources.Barre J. Toelkien, the scholar belonging to even later generation, attempted methodical indexing of the oral ballads belonging to the Child’s collection. Dianne M. Dugaw in turn suggested that assuming the non-written songs, those from the oral tradition, being inherently different from the printed ones had largely affected the way in which folklore researchers perceived and interpreted folksongs. She concluded that differences devised between the written and non-written, between commercial and non-commercial forms were frequently just illusive, since commercial dissemination constituted an integral part of the folksongs development.In view of the confluence of the oral and written traditions surveyed in this article, it is reasonable to conclude that written culture, or rather the popular press, constituted a significant factor affecting the existence of folk ballads in the West; because of obvious reasons, such culture was absent in old-time Lithuania. Contrary to Lithuania, the ballad tradition of the West was nurtured by the written and printed sources. Therefore, the Lithuanian case could present a kind of thought experiment to the folklore researcher, vividly illustrating the plausible ballad tradition development in the West, if it could be unaffected by such phenomena as printed texts in native languages, readily available to the common people.

Salicornia ramosissima J. Woods (Chenopodiaceae), included in the species aggregate S. europaea agg., is an annual succulent halophyte and one of the most salt tolerant plants, broadly distributed in the salt marshes and salt pans of Ria de Aveiro and in many others of the Iberian Peninsula. Salicornia L. has been used not only as a seasoned vegetable, salad and fermented food in coastal areas of Europe and Asia, but also as folk medicine for disorders such as constipation, obesity and diabetes. To corroborate this, the literature reports immunomodulatory, antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-hyperlipidemic and antidiabetic effects. Moreover, some bioactive compounds from its aerial parts were recently isolated and identified, exhibiting also antioxidant and cytotoxic activities.Factors such as the proper botanical identification, season and harvest site, extraction and purification methods, characterisation of the active constituents and the extract effects in a dose-and time-dependent manner are crucial to assess the therapeutic potential of herbal extracts. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible hepatic and renal effects of an ethanolic extract of S. ramosissima on mice.Aerial portions of S. ramosissima were collected from a salt pan in Ria de Aveiro (Portugal). The ethanolic extract (50 mg/kg b.w.) was orally administered, during 3 weeks, to male ICR-CD1 mice, purchased from Harlan (Spain). Control group was also considered. Liver and kidney were collected and prepared for histology. Animal procedures were followed according to guidelines for ethics and animal care.Central and portal vein congestion and severe hydropic changes of the hepatocytes were noted in the liver of exposed group, compared with controls (Figs. 1A, 1B). Renal profile of control group evidenced normal features (Figs.1C, 1E). However, significant histological alterations were found in the exposed group: cortical interstitial haemorrhages (Fig. 1D), inflammatory cell infiltration and tubular cell degeneration within medulla and cortico-medullary junction (Fig. 1F).In conclusion, this pilot study has demonstrated considerable effects in the mouse metabolism of S. ramosissima ethanolic extract, with significant hepatic and renal lesions. Further studies are needed to correlate these data with isolated active constituents for a more reliable evaluation of the potential of this species.AcknowledgementsGrants were provided by CICECO, QOPNA and CESAM.

Abstract A model for the spin lattice relaxation time of the protons of dimethylammonium in the Redfield limit and common spin temperature approximation is developed. The three fold reorientations of the methyl groups, the rotation of the whole molecular group around its two fold symmetric axis and possible correlations among these motions are considered. The effect of these processes on the dipolar interactions among the protons within the same molecular group is taken into account. The resulting relaxation rate is powder averaged and used to explain the experimental data in literature on [NH2(CH3)2]3Sb2Br9 . The analysis shows that dynamically inequivalent groups exist in this compound and that the effect of proposed correlation among the different motions on the final results is negligible.

This paper enters the ongoing debate on the portrayal of old age in Ignacio Ferreras’s animated feature Arrugas (Spain, 2011). My approach to a new understanding of Ferreras’s film is two-fold: first, I engage with the often-overlooked animation to ask how it too contributes to the cinematic vision of later life; second, I aim to liberate Arrugas from the predominant binary discourses of successful aging/aging-as-decline often employed to understand the film. Drawing on theories of animation and aging, I highlight how Arrugas reflects later life as more complex, a notion central to Linn Sandberg’s theory of affirmative old age.

Abstract Objectives To develop algorithms mapping the Kidney Disease Quality of Life 36-Item Short Form Survey (KDQOL-36) onto the 3-level EQ-5D questionnaire (EQ-5D-3L) and the 5-level EQ-5D questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) for patients with end-stage renal disease requiring dialysis. Methods We used data from a cross-sectional study in Europe (France, n = 299; Germany, n = 413; Italy, n = 278; Spain, n = 225) to map onto EQ-5D-3L and data from a cross-sectional study in Singapore (n = 163) to map onto EQ-5D-5L. Direct mapping using linear regression, mixture beta regression and adjusted limited dependent variable mixture models (ALDVMMs) and response mapping using seemingly unrelated ordered probit models were performed. The KDQOL-36 subscale scores, i.e., physical component summary (PCS), mental component summary (MCS), three disease-specific subscales or their average, i.e., kidney disease component summary (KDCS), and age and sex were included as the explanatory variables. Predictive performance was assessed by mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) using 10-fold cross-validation. Results Mixture models outperformed linear regression and response mapping. When mapping to EQ-5D-3L, the ALDVMM model was the best-performing one for France, Germany and Spain while beta regression was best for Italy. When mapping to EQ-5D-5L, the ALDVMM model also demonstrated the best predictive performance. Generally, models using KDQOL-36 subscale scores showed better fit than using the KDCS. Conclusions This study adds to the growing literature suggesting the better performance of the mixture models in modelling EQ-5D and produces algorithms to map the KDQOL-36 onto EQ-5D-3L (for France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) and EQ-5D-5L (for Singapore).

Abstract Versions of the folktale Zêrka Zêra (in Kurdish)/Stērka Zerá (in Ṭuroyo) circulate throughout southeastern Anatolia. The story belongs to a widely-disseminated tale type, the ‘Bear's Wife’, which concerns a young woman who is abducted by a bear (or other wilderness creature) and is forced to spawn and rear his children before escaping or being rescued. The following Ṭuroyo version was recorded during the 2018 winter field season of the Russian expedition to Ṭur Abdin in the village of Ḥaḥ/Anıtlı from a speaker of the dialect of Bequsyone. It represents the first scholarly publication not only of the Ṭuroyo version, but of any version of this folktale. In addition to the folktale and a translation, the study includes a glossary of the vocabulary used within the text, reflecting some Ṭuroyo words that have not been documented elsewhere. The paper also discusses the motifs of the Stērka Zerá folktale according to the standard classification scheme of folk motifs.

Abstract Objective: Multiple myeloma (MM) is a rare condition, that is, one defined by the European Medicines Agency as affecting no more than 5 in 10,000 people in the EU. It is also the second most common hematologic malignancy. MM is particularly burdensome because most patients eventually relapse and develop refractory disease. To help characterize the epidemiological burden and trends associated with the condition we conducted a systematic literature review to identify published evidence on outcomes including overall incidence and prevalence and survival in patients with relapsed (R) or relapsed and refractory (RR) MM. Methods: We searched the MEDLINE and Embase databases for articles in English published between 2003 and 2013. Identified studies were initially screened using information in the title and abstract, and then by examining the full text using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. These criteria specified that to be included, studies had to have reported real-world data on the incidence or prevalence of MM or survival in patients with RMM/RRMM in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the UK. To improve generalizability, only studies with a sample size of 100 patients or more were included. Results: The review identified a total of 1,632 studies across MEDLINE and Embase. Following screening, 22 studies met the predefined selection criteria (as described above in the Methods section). Most studies (n=21) were retrospective in design, of which 10 studies reported on incidence and/or prevalence outcomes and 12 on survival. Specifically, incidence was reported for populations in Brazil (n=1), Canada (n=1), France (n=1), Germany (n=1), Italy (n=1), Korea (n=3), and Taiwan (n=2); two of these studies also reported prevalence data for populations in Brazil and Korea. The studies on survival included patients who received a range of 1 to 9 previous treatments for MM and were conducted in Canada (n=1), France (n=1), Germany (n=2), Italy (n=4), South Korea (n=1), Spain (n=1) and the UK (n=2). No published studies for any of the outcomes of interest were identified for populations in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Switzerland. In the studies that reported a crude (i.e., age-unadjusted) incidence for MM, the incidence ranged from around 1.4 to 2.1 cases per 100,000 population per year. Of note, the incidence was found to have risen in recent decades, from 1.0 case per 100,000 population in 1999 to 1.5 cases per 100,000 in 2009 in Korea (a rise of 4.1% each year; p < 0.05) and from 0.36 cases per 100,000 in the period from 1979 to 1983 to 1.6 cases per 100,000 in 2009 in Taiwan (a 4.4-fold increase between these years). The prevalence of MM was 5.7 per 100,000 population from October 2009 to March 2010 in Brazil and 5.5 per 100,000 population in January 2010 in Korea. Among patients who received chemotherapy regimens to manage RMM/RRMM, overall survival ranged from 12.4 months in those treated with bendamustine (following a median of 4 previous lines of therapy that included alkylators, steroids, an immunomodulatory drug, and bortezomib) to 26.2 months for those treated with thalidomide with or without the use of salvage therapy (following a median of 1 prior therapy). One study that explored predictors of overall survival found that this outcome was significantly worse in patients who previously receive more lines of treatment (3 or above) compared with those who received fewer lines of treatment (18.1 months compared with 38.9 months, respectively; p = 0.019). Conclusions: Recently published data on key epidemiological outcomes in MM are limited, even for several industrialized countries, perhaps reflecting the condition’s rare-disease status. The available evidence suggests that the incidence of MM has been rising in recent decades, though the overall incidence remains low enough for MM to still be considered a rare disease. Despite the range of chemotherapeutic options that are currently available, survival in patients who have RMM/RRMM is poor and worsens with each relapse and with increasing number of prior lines of treatment. This pattern of decreasing survival in later lines of treatment suggests the need for additional therapies to improve outcomes in MM and RMM/RRMM. Disclosures Rizzo: Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Amgen subsidiary: Consultancy; Evidera: Employment. Xu:Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Amgen subsidiary: Consultancy; Evidera: Employment. Iheanacho:Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Amgen subsidiary: Consultancy; Evidera: Employment. Panjabi:Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc., an Amgen subsidiary: Employment, Equity Ownership.

In the context of public administrations after COVID-19, this paper formulates and validates a digital model of tutoring (e-tutoring) for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by public administrations or PAs to help the former reduce their risks to fold in their first few years of existence and with the support of private professionals (economists, accountants, business advisors, managers, etc.). The model draws on ideas about relational administration (RA), a concept that is yet to be fully exploited or assessed in the literature. Several hypotheses derived from the model are formulated and tested using a polytomic-nominal logistic regression. A questionnaire was sent to and returned by 236 small and medium entrepreneurs in Spain facing insolvency proceedings to identify main reasons for business failure and if or how they would accept online tutoring from private professionals associated with PAs. Findings suggest that SM entrepreneurs agree with receiving selected forms of tutoring, requiring public administrations to enhance capabilities for joint information provision and decision making through the use of information and communication technologies or ICTs. These findings have important implications for the potential restructuring of public administrations, their collaborations with professionals, and the future co-design and implementation of e-government services by PAs

Abstract This review provides summary of research findings on the effects of exercise for changes in the immune system most associated with aging. Immunosenescence is identified as an immune dysregulation with aging that leaves an older adult susceptible to infections and a host of immune-related disorders. Extrinsic modulators of immunosenescence include pathogens, mental stress, nutrition, and exercise. Moderate short acute exercise over time enhances the immune system. Heavy exertion or prolonged exercise bouts may contribute to immunosenescence. In one study, a J-curve result was identified for upper respiratory tract infection. A moderate exercise workload was associated with a 40-50% decrease in upper respiratory tract infections while a 2-6-fold increase was identified among individuals consistently completing heavy exertion. Transient increases of the inflammatory markers of C-reactive protein and Interleukin-6 are noted after excessive exercise. The older adult should consider small increments of change in an exercise load to limit exercise-induced inflammation. These same inflammatory markers are chronically expressed in obese individuals in a resting state. Strategies to manage weight within recommended range to avoid obesity will limit activation of proinflammatory immune cells. In conjunction with physical activity, the lifestyle behaviors that most support immune system health include adequate sleep, nutrition, hydration, and avoidance of excessive alcohol intake. When planning a safe moderate exercise workload, additionally consider hygienic practices to lower transmission of pathogens. Transmission decreases with hand washing, limited hand-to-face contact, distance from large crowds or those with cough, avoiding spaces with poor ventilation and update vaccinations.

In teaching/learning English as a Foreign Language, one of the goals is to develop interculturally competent citizens. Consequently, culture must play a major role. As textbooks are carriers of cultural information, special attention should be paid to the cultural content of textbooks. This article compares the cultural content of six B2-level textbooks for English language teaching in Spain. The editions range from 1992 to 2013 and were distributed by well-known publishing houses. The purpose of the study is to identify whether cultural content (general, big ‘C’ and small ‘c’) has been incorporated in newer editions to answer to globalised needs and, secondly, to determine which skill is used preferably to do so. The author has adopted a culture learning model developed by Lee (2009) and design a three-fold cultural checklist. Then, content analysis methodology (Krippendorff 2004) has been used to quantify qualitative data. Data suggest that even in newer editions, products, artefacts and external behaviours are used more frequently when trying to portray a specific culture, leaving aside general cultural content and internal culture (small ‘c’). It was also found that skill usage is different depending on the type of culture learning.

-Louis Allaire, Samuel M. Wilson, Hispaniola: Caribbean chiefdoms in the age of Columbus. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990. xi + 170 pp.-Douglas Melvin Haynes, Philip D. Curtin, Death by migration: Europe's encounter with the tropical world in the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xviii + 251 pp.-Dale Tomich, J.H. Galloway, The sugar cane industry: An historical geography from its origins to 1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xii + 266 pp.-Myriam Cottias, Dale Tomich, Slavery in the circuit of sugar: Martinique and the world economy, 1830 -1848. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1990. xiv + 352 pp.-Robert Forster, Pierre Dessalles, La vie d'un colon à la Martinique au XIXe siècle. Pré-senté par Henri de Frémont. Courbevoie: s.n., 1984-1988, four volumes, 1310 pp.-Hilary Beckles, Douglas V. Armstrong, The old village and the great house: An archaeological and historical examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St Ann's Bay, Jamaica. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990. xiii + 393 pp.-John Stewart, John A. Lent, Caribbean popular culture. Bowling Green OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990. 157 pp.-W. Marvin Will, Susanne Jonas ,Democracy in Latin America: Visions and realities. New York: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1990. viii + 224 pp., Nancy Stein (eds)-Forrest D. Colburn, Kathy McAfee, Storm signals: Structural adjustment and development alternatives in the Caribbean. London: Zed books, 1991. xii + 259 pp.-Derwin S. Munroe, Peggy Antrobus ,In the shadows of the sun: Caribbean development alternatives and U.S. policy. Carmen Diana Deere (coordinator), Peter Phillips, Marcia Rivera & Helen Safa. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1990. xvii + 246 pp., Lynne Bolles, Edwin Melendez (eds)-William Roseberry, Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Lords of the mountain: Social banditry and peasant protest in Cuba, 1878-1918. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989. xvii + 267 pp.-William Roseberry, Rosalie Schwartz, Lawless liberators, political banditry and Cuban independence. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1989. x + 297 pp.-Robert L. Paquette, Robert M. Levine, Cuba in the 1850's: Through the lens of Charles DeForest Fredricks. Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1990. xv + 86 pp.-José Sánchez-Boudy, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, The Cuban condition: Translation and identity in modern Cuban literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. viii + 185 pp.-Dick Parker, Jules R. Benjamin, The United States and the origins of the Cuban revolution: An empire of liberty in an age of national liberation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. xi + 235 pp.-George Irvin, Andrew Zimbalist ,The Cuban economy: Measurement and analysis of socialist performance. 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Boulder CO: Westview, 1991. xvi + 187 pp.-Aisha Khan, Selwyn Ryan, The Muslimeen grab for power: Race, religion and revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain: Inprint Caribbean, 1991. vii + 345 pp.-Drexel G. Woodson, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1990. xxi + 217 pp.-O. Nigel Bolland, Howard Johnson, The Bahamas in slavery and freedom. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle; London: James Currey, 1991. viii + 184 pp.-Keith F. Otterbein, Charles C. Foster, Conchtown USA: Bahamian fisherfolk in Riviera beach, Florida. (with folk songs and tales collected by Veronica Huss). Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1991. x + 176 pp.-Peter van Baarle, John P. Bennett ,Kabethechino: A correspondence on Arawak. Edited by Janette Forte. Georgetown: Demerara Publishers, 1991. vi + 271 pp., Richard Hart (eds)-Fabiola Jara, Joop Vernooij, Indianen en kerken in Suriname: identiteit en autonomie in het binnenland. Paramaribo: Stichting Wetenschappelijke Informatie (SWI), 1989. 178 pp.-Jay Edwards, C.L. Temminck Groll ,Curacao: Willemstad, city of monuments. R.G. Gill. The Hague: Gary Schwartz/SDU Publishers, 1990. 123 pp., W. van Alphen, R. Apell (eds)-Mineke Schipper, Maritza Coomans-Eustatia ,Drie Curacaose schrijvers in veelvoud. Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1991. 544 pp., H.E. Coomans, Wim Rutgers (eds)-Arie Boomert, P. Wagenaar Hummelinck, De rotstekeningen van Aruba/The prehistoric rock drawings of Aruba. Utrecht: Uitgeverij Presse-Papier, 1991. 228 pp.-J.K. Brandsma, Ruben S. Gowricharn, Economische transformatie en de staat: over agrarische modernisering en economische ontwikkeling in Suriname, 1930-1960. Den Haag: Uitgeverij Ruward, 1990. 208 pp.-Henk N. Hoogendonk, M. van Schaaijk, Een macro-model van een micro-economie. Den Haag: STUSECO, 1991. 359 pp.-Bim G. Mungra, Corstiaan van der Burg ,Hindostanen in Nederland. Leuven (Belgium)/ Apeldoorn (the Netherlands): Garant Publishers, 1990. 223 pp., Theo Damsteegt, Krishna Autar (eds)-Adrienne Bruyn, J. van Donselaar, Woordenboek van het Surinaams-Nederlands. Muiderberg: Dick Coutinho, 1989. 482 pp.-Wim S. Hoogbergen, Michiel Baud ,'Cultuur in beweging': creolisering en Afro-Caraïbische cultuur. Rotterdam: Bureau Studium Generale, 1989. 93 pp., Marianne C. Ketting (eds)

There is no substantial evidence that exists in the literature to establish the link between financial advice and financial capability fully establishes, even though ‘getting help’ is identified as an important aspect of financial capability. This study sets out to fulfil a couple of objectives. Its primary goal is to investigate the effects that a combination of financial literacy elements (financial attitude, financial knowledge, and financial behaviour), financial advice as well as financial satisfaction have on individuals’ financial capability, and secondly, to test and prescribe the improved scale of financial capability measurement. This research has been administered in Spain at an individual level. Hierarchical regression method along with Z-test were used. Regressions’ outcomes reveal that financial constructs positively impact the individuals’ financial capability. From the viewpoint of policymakers, it is vital to fully comprehend the significant factors influencing financial capability to plan better strategies to empower the citizens with adequate skills, abilities, and behaviour so to succeed in dealing with financial matters in daily basis. The originality and value added to the present study is two-fold. Firstly, it comprehensively examines the wide-ranging financial indicators seen as critical in determining financial capability, which remain yet not quite covered in other studies. Second, both indicators used to measure the financial capability revealed no substantial differences, therefore an improved composite scale is prescribed as useful in measuring financial capability in future research.

In November 1960, theNew York Timesreported on the looming revolution in Northeastern Brazil, describing how Marxist social movement leaders were organizing peasants. Reporter Tad Szulc claimed that “singers andvioleiros—the traveling troubadors of the Northeast who act as human newspapers”—were spreading leader Francisco Julião's manifestos to the largely illiterate rural population and its “miserable, drought-plagued hamlets.” The human newspapers allegedly sung about agrarian reform as a form of liberation, comparing the process of revolution in Brazil with that of Cuba. Szulc wrote:[The] nomad singers who once sang of the loves and the hatreds of the proud people here, now sing of land reform and of political themes. There is this refrain: The sugar that we sell to capitalist America/ If it serves to sweeten the milk of a Franco Spain/ For sure it will serve for the wine of the Socialist world./ What harm is there in a ship/ Carrying our common Brazilian coffee/ And selling it to a China/ Where there is no Chiang Kai-shek?Although the poem suffers from a clumsy translation, it is most interesting that theNew York Timesquotedliteratura de cordel(chapbook poetry) to demonstrate the severity of the communist threat in Northeastern Brazil, suggesting that violeiros were Marxist agents indoctrinating the rural poor with their anti-American songs. Szulc's portrayal contrasts with commonly held assumptions aboutliteratura de cordelas “quaint” regional folklore, and violeiros as blind poets who performed silly stories in marginalized rural communities. In the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth,literatura de cordelwas a source of both entertainment and news for the largely illiterate rural population in the Northeast. It is a textual genre often performed or improvised by singers (repentistas, cantadores, orvioleiros), which has led scholars to define it as folk-popular culture since it is both a written and oral expression of the people.

Generating innovation with environmental impact is crucial for firms to achieve sustainable eco-innovative performance. In the reference literature on open innovation, gaps still persist at the level of scarce and limited knowledge on the use of knowledge sources and flows, for the purpose of strengthening the eco-innovative performance of the bioeconomy sector. To address these caveats, this study analyses the effects of open innovation on eco-innovation, based on inbound and outbound support practices. Specifically, it aims to analyse the effects of these practices on the eco-innovative performance of bioeconomy and non-bioeconomy firms, using secondary data gathered from the Community Innovation Survey—CIS 2010 for a sample of moderately innovative countries, namely Slovakia, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Portugal and the Czech Republic. The conceptual model proposed is tested using multivariate tobit regression models, in order to ensure the accuracy and reliability required to validate empirical tests. Overall, the empirical evidence allows the conclusion that inbound and outbound practices and public policies have a positive and significant influence on the eco-innovative performance of the firms studied. The contribution provided is two-fold: (i) in theoretical terms, an operational model of open innovation inbound and outbound practices is extended, crossing financial flows and innovation directions; and (ii) in empirical terms, new light is shed on the still limited knowledge about the positive and significant effects of open innovation outbound practices on the eco-innovative performance of companies belonging to a global strategic sector—that is, the bioeconomy sector, which has renewed strategic importance in the face of global climate change.

The history of Persian gardens goes back to a few millennia before the emergence of Islam in Iran (Persia). Designs of Persian gardens have influenced and are used extensively in the gardens of Al-Andalus in Spain, Humayun’s Tomb and the Taj Mahal in India, and many gardens in the United States and other countries around the globe. Bagh in the Persian language (Farsi) means garden and the word Baghdad (the capital city of Iraq) is rooted from the words bagh and daad (meaning “the garden of justice”). Pasargadae, the ancient Persian capital city, is the earliest example of Persian garden design known in human civilization as chahar bagh or 4-fold garden design. Bagh-e-Eram, or Garden of Eden or Eram Garden, is one the most attractive Persian gardens and is located in Shiraz, Iran. There are numerous other urban ancient gardens in Iran, including Bagh-e-Shahzadeh (Shazdeh), meaning “The Prince’s Garden” in Mahan, Golestan National Park near the Caspian Sea; Bagh-e-Fin in Kashan; Bagh-e-El-Goli in Tabriz; and Bagh-e-Golshan in Tabas. The design of each Persian garden is influenced by climate, art, beliefs, poetry, literature, and romance of the country and the region where the garden is located. In addition, each garden may have a gene bank of fruits, flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Although countless gardens were destroyed in the hands of invaders throughout the centuries, Persians have attempted either to rebuild or build new gardens generation after generation, each of which has become a favorite destination to tourists from around the world.

Purpose The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, to examine the outcomes of co-creation from a customer perspective using well-recognised customer management variables (customer satisfaction, loyalty and word-of-mouth (WOM). Secondly, to assess potential cross-cultural differences that may exist within the context of co-creation. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was completed in the banking services industry, and the final valid sample comprised individuals from the UK and Spain. Multi-sample analysis was carried out using PLS software. Findings Co-creation has a direct influence on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and WOM; co-creation activities lead to cumulative customer satisfaction, which also affects customer loyalty and positive WOM. Furthermore, the results show that the direct relationships between co-creation and loyalty and WOM are more powerful for British consumers than Spanish consumers, who need to feel satisfied prior to demonstrating loyalty and engaging in positive WOM. Practical implications Firms can use co-creation as a strategic tool if they provide trustworthy collaboration spaces. Furthermore, firms need to adapt the way they interact, listen and respond to customers in different cultural contexts. Trustworthy collaboration spaces and adapting to cultural differences can result in customers who are more satisfied, loyal to the company and more likely to carry out positive WOM, which can ultimately lead to future business. Originality/value This study provides insights into co-creation from a customer perspective. Although much service research has examined the drivers of customer co-creation, literature that analyses the consequences of customer co-creation is still scarce. Moreover, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence of cross-cultural differences within the context of co-creation.

Background Skin cancer is one of the common malignancies. There is sufficient evidence that sunlight (ultraviolet radiation) contributes to the development of skin cancer, but there is also evidence that relates adequate serum levels of vitamin D produced on the skin by the action of ultraviolet radiation with the decreased risk of various types of cancers, including skin cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of vitamin D serum levels among patients with non-melanoma skin cancers (basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma) and controls. Methods A prospective observational case-control study was conducted in a sample of 84 subjects in Extremadura (Spain). Forty-one patients with histologically diagnosed basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas and 43 healthy controls were randomly chosen to assess whether vitamin D (25(OH)D3) serum level, age and sex were related to non-melanoma skin cancer and to determine the possible risk of this type of skin cancer for these variables. Results When analysing serum vitamin D levels, we ensured that all our subjects, both cases and controls, had normal or low serum vitamin D levels, even though the samples were taken during months with the highest solar irradiance in our region. It is striking in our results that there was a higher percentage of subjects with deficits of vitamin D who did not have skin cancer (66%) than patients with deficits with these types of skin cancers (34%). When adjusting the model for age and sex, vitamin D values above 18 ng/ml increased the risk of suffering from non-melanoma skin cancer by nearly 7-fold (aOR: 6.94, 95% CI [1.55–31.11], p = 0.01). Conclusions Despite the controversial data obtained in the literature, our results suggest that lower levels of vitamin D may be related to a reduced incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer.

Abstract Societal social trust has been shown to be related to economic growth and equality. Low levels of social trust are especially consequential in aging societies and can result in low levels of social capital and greater inequality at older ages. Nordic countries are known for their greater social trust, access to education, economic productivity, and social equality. To better understand social trust promoters, we explored data from the 2012/2014 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) to examine relationships among social trust, basic skills (i.e., literacy), and non-formal education (NFE) participation for adults ages 45 to 65, in the U.S., Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Additionally, through 19 key informant interviews and a review of the literature, we investigated the structure and availability of NFE across the five nations. As compared to the U.S., adults ages 45 - 65 in Nordic countries have higher levels of social trust (all Nordic countries; p &lt; 0.001), lower rates of poor literacy skills (Finland, Norway, and Sweden; p &lt;.001), greater rates of participation in NFE (Denmark and Sweden; p &lt; 0.05). Through the availability of NFE, such as folk high schools and learning circles in Nordic countries, adults can participate in NFE at little or no cost. Similar programs are not available in the U.S. This research informs policy and practice for the provision of NFE, which is critical to increase levels of social trust, and in turn, to promote economic development, social equality and positive aging in the U.S.

e19072 Background: This study aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the evidence available on drug-induced myelosuppression in patients with MDS or AML. Methods: A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted using MEDLINE, Embase, and Cochrane to identify studies published 2002-2022 explicitly targeting drug-induced myelosuppression with current and emerging treatments used for MDS and/or AML (venetoclax [VEN], azacitidine [AZA], magrolimab, sabatolimab, decitabine [DEC], cedazuridine, lenalidomide [LEN], low-dose cytarabine [LDAC], intensive chemotherapy [IC]) in terms of drug-induced AEs, treatment discontinuation, QOL, and MRU. Article selection was based on predefined eligibility criteria (PICO+ framework), with a focus on specific geographic regions (USA, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany). Results: A total of 48 studies reporting on VEN, AZA, DEC, LEN, LDAC, and IC based regimens met the inclusion criteria. In MDS populations, myelotoxicity was reported in all blood cell lineages in association with AZA, DEC, and LEN monotherapies. In AML populations, myelosuppression was reported in all blood cell lineages in association with all regimens except LEN. In general, the reported incidence of myelosuppressive AEs was higher in studies published prior to 2010 and in studies of patients with AML or MDS who had received prior treatments vs more recent studies (2018-2022) and studies of treatment-naive patients, respectively. Differences observed between the two time periods might be explained by improved supportive care (AEs prophylaxis and management). In treatment-naive AML populations, the incidence of any-grade febrile neutropenia, leukopenia, and anemia was up to 3-fold higher with AZA combination therapy vs monotherapy, and the incidence of any-grade neutropenia and febrile neutropenia was 2-fold higher with LDAC combination regimens vs monotherapy, suggestive of an additive effect. The most common reasons for treatment discontinuation were AEs and disease progression. QOL significantly improved with AZA monotherapy; however, hematologic improvement was not explicitly mentioned as the main driver. There were no data on combination therapies to indicate whether the improvement in QOL compensated for the added drug-induced AEs. The few studies that reported on the impact of myelosuppression on MRU did not provide conclusive results. Conclusions: This SLR suggests that combining ≥2 myelosuppressive drugs may result in increased toxicity; however, the lack of evidence on the impact of myelotoxicity on QOL and MRU with ≥2 myelosuppressive drugs limits informed decision-making in routine clinical practice. Further research is needed to explore the impact of drug-induced myelosuppression in patients with MDS or AML.

Abstract While health endures as a term to describe looking after oneself, looking after loved ones, and receiving care, the added component of electronic technology has emerged to affect all levels of health care delivery. Despite the prevalence of digital health and empirical evidence strongly supporting improved outcomes--the final mile--as it is sometimes called, is the sustained patient engagement with eHealth and mHealth we have yet to achieve. This research identifies a gap in the literature for understudied characteristics of digital health adoption, use affecting the aging population in the U.S., and contributes a deeper understanding of the key barriers to use of health-related technology. A mixed-methods research approach explores prevalent barriers to digital health utilization by older adults through a pre-post data collection strategy to empirically test an educational health-related intervention rooted in the Technology Acceptance Model. This validated analytic framework represents a decision ‘core’ as a user pathway for actual use. Evaluation of score data utilized a quantitative test of group means while thematic coding was employed for qualitative analysis. The results from this study are two-fold. The work strongly suggests specific barriers to adoption and use, confirming a distrust and reluctance to engage. However, additional evidence, both quantitative and qualitative illuminates substantive skills, positive perceptions, hopeful attitudes, as well as the rationale for use of available digital resources. Findings suggest future research would benefit from expanded use of the two-pronged approach to foster health-related technology engagement.

Abstract Between 1970 and 2020, there was a three-fold increase in China’s ≥65 population, compared to less than a doubling in UK. This rapid-ageing demographic has led to a rise in age-related disabilities. At the same time, internal migration and declining fertility have shaken traditional models of care. An important policy response is to pilot differing long-term care insurance (LTCI) systems, with the aim of establishing equitable care for all. Strengths and limitations of the first set of pilot studies have been identified. In 2020, a second set of 34 pilot studies was introduced. Following PRISMA guidelines, we undertook a systematic review of literature published since introduction of the second pilot phase, to answer the question: ‘what are the key challenges to China achieving an equitable nationwide long-term care system for older people?’. Records were eligible for inclusion if published between June 2020 and June 2022 in Mandarin or English. 42 studies (n=16 Mandarin) were included. Four themes emerged: poor quality of service provision, widespread preference for family care, inequitable distribution of cost burden, and varying LTCI eligibility. Key recommendations included increasing salaries to attract and retain staff, mandatory financial contributions from employees and a unified standard of disability with regular assessment. Strengthening support for family caregivers and improving smart care capacity can support preferences to age at home. Our systematic review highlighted significant challenges in provision of equitable care which suits preferences of its users. China’s LTCI pilots will provide useful lessons for other middle-income countries with rapidly ageing populations.

e12651 Background: Achieving a pathological complete response (pCR) following neoadjuvant treatment (NAT) in HER2-positive tumors significantly enhances patient survival, resulting in a remarkable 92% reduction in mortality risk. However, it is crucial to identify biomarkers capable of predicting the NAT response, moving towards more personalized medicine. This approach would enable the identification of patients likely to respond to specific therapies, thereby facilitating the implementation of targeted treatment strategies. Our study aims to identify potential molecular biomarkers predictive of NAT response through a comprehensive analysis of differential gene expression in tissue samples from patients with HER2-positive, hormone receptor (HR)-negative breast cancer. Methods: Total RNA was extracted from FFPE tissue samples from two independent cohorts of women diagnosed with localized or locally advanced HER2-positive, HR-negative breast cancer. These patients underwent NAT in several hospitals in Andalusia, Spain. Standard chemotherapy, including taxanes and/or anthracyclines, and targeted anti-HER2 treatment such as trastuzumab and pertuzumab were administered. The patients were stratified into responders (R), achieving pCR, and non-responders (nR). In a discovery cohort (n=20), RNA hybridization using Clariom D microarray was conducted to discern differentially expressed transcripts between R and nR. Subsequently, gene expression patterns, and related pathways involved in NAT response, were analyzed using Transcriptome Analysis Console (TAC). The selected transcripts then underwent validation through quantitative PCR (qPCR) in an independent cohort (n=40). The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the genes as predictive biomarkers. Results: Microarray analysis of the discovery cohort, revealed 954 differentially expressed transcripts between R and nR, following criteria of fold change greater than 1.5 or less than -1.5 and a p-value below 0.05. Among these, 643 were upregulated, while 311 were downregulated in nR compared to R. Bioinformatic analysis and a comprehensive literature review guided the selection of genes UGT2B10, UGT2B11, UGT2B15, UGT2B17, and UGT2B28 for further investigation. Subsequent qPCR analysis in the validation cohort, demonstrated the overexpression of these genes in non-responders, with statistical significance achieved only for UGT2B15. Conclusions: The UGT2B family genes encode enzymes involved in glucuronidation and metabolic pathways associated with drug detoxification and elimination. Our findings suggest that variations in the UGT2B15 expression may impact the metabolism rate of specific drugs, underscoring the necessity for additional research in this area.

Abstract INTRODUCTION: Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are a group of myeloid neoplasms originated in hematopoietic stem cells, characterized by citopenias, dysplasia in one or more cell lines, ineffective hematopoiesis and an increased risk of progression to acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Treatment of MDS depends on subtype and prognostic category. DNA methyltranferase inhibitors are approved for high risk MDS. Over the past decade, the application of new high-throughput technologies to the study of MDS has led to the identification of several recurrently mutated genes. These include genes producing proteins involved in RNA splicing, DNA methylation, chromatin modification, transcription, DNA repair control, cohesin function, RAS pathway, and DNA replication. There is a significant overlap between the genes mutated commonly in MDS with those found in AML. Mutation status is not widely used to select treatment in MDS. The aim of this study is to define the mutational status of MDS and secondary AML (sAML) patients at diagnosis that have been treated with azacitidine (AZA) to see if it could help to discriminate which patients will respond from those who will not. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A prospective study was performed on 36 patients with MDS and sAML treated with AZA. Genomic DNA was obtained from bone marrow at diagnosis. SeqCap EZ and KAPA Library Preparation Kit (Roche) reagents have been used to enrich DNA of 83 genes implicated in myeloid neoplasm. The customized panel has been analyzed in MiSeq Illumina platform with 150bp paired-end reads. Samples were preliminary analyzed using Illumina MiSeq Reporter and Variant Studio softwares. Data from response to treatment and survival have been collected from all patients. RESULTS:The mean depth of the targeted resequencing per base was 685-fold. After filtering all the variations obtained for quality, biological consequence and discard the known SNPs, we have obtained 162 variations, including 145 single nucleotide variants (SNV) and 17 insertions/deletions. All patients harbored at least 1 alteration with a mean of 4.5 variants per sample. The average of alterations detected in each cytological category can be observed in Table 1.Table 1.Average abnormalities detected by cytological category.Nº patientsAverage of alterations detected for patient (range)sAML104,8 (1-8)RAEB-274,9 (2-8)RAEB-1123,7 (1-6)RCDM54,4 (3-7)RCDM-RS16RARs11The most frequent altered genes have been TP53, TET2 and DNMT3A. The numbers of variations detected for each gene are represented in Table 2.Complete results, including correlation with treatment response will be presented in the meeting.Table 2.Number of variations in each gene.GeneNº of variations foundNº of diferent variationsNº of patients with variationsFrequency of variationsTP5322191952,8%TET214101027,8%DNMT3A88822,2%CREBBP75719,4%SRSF271719,4%ASXL165616,7%U2AF162616,7%EP30053513,9%STAG255513,9%CUX144411,1%ETV643411,1%MLL (KMT2A)43411,1%RUNX14438,3%BCOR3338,3%CDH133338,3%CTNNA13238,3%EZH23338,3%GCAT3338,3%MLL2 (KMT2D)3338,3%NF13338,3%PDGFRB3338,3%SH2B33338,3%TGM23238,3%UMODL13338,3%CEBPA2125,6%CSF3R2225,6%GATA22125,6%PHLPP12225,6%RAD212225,6%SF3B12125,6%SUZ122225,6%TIMM502125,6%Others*1112,8%*ABL1, BCORL1, CALR, CDH3, IDH2, KRAS, LUC7L2, NPM1, NRAS, PHF6, SF3A1, SFPQ, SMC3, TERT, WT1, ZRSR2. CONCLUSIONS: Targeted deep-sequencing technique is a good tool to study mutational profile in MDS and sAML. SNV are the most frequent type of alteration found in our cohort. The patients with sAML and RAEB-2 present more variations than patients with RAEB-1. The rest of groups are less representing to be evaluated. The most affected genes match with those described in the literature, with some exceptions that need to be studied in more detail. We expect to predict in advance which patients are going to respond when we study the correlation of mutational analysis with treatment response. Acknowledgments: Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, Spain (PI 11/02519); 2014 SGR225 (GRE) Generalitat de Catalunya; Fundació Josep Carreras, Obra Social "La Caixa" and Celgene Spain. Diana Domínguez for her technical assistance Disclosures Valcarcel: Amgen: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; GSK: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Novartis: Honoraria, Speakers Bureau; Celgene: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau.

The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) was created in 2004 to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development, social inclusion and cultural vibrancy. Today, UCCN is comprised of 116 cities from 54 countries worldwide, where the cities distinguish themselves within their seven creative fields including Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts and Music. This study aims to contribute the debate over the “world gastronomy cities” concept within the scope of The UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Study provides an overview on a fashion topic “gastronomy cities” on a basis of the destination and food branding strategies. Furthermore, UNESCO creative gastronomy cities of Turkey and Spain which compete in the international tourism market and have similar food culture deriving from Mediterranean cuisine have been investigated. As a result, Gaziantep (Turkey), Dénia and Burgos (Spain) were introduced in the scope of their gastronomic prosperousness and distinctiveness. Similarities and differences with regard to cities’ food culture were handled and proposals for were drawn to the reader’s attention.

This article argues that the mariquita's subjectivity became a prevalent trope when individuals were prosecuted under charges of homosexuality in Franco's Spain. The mariquita was a liminal homosexual male who was expected to be family-oriented, devout, and involved in flamenco culture and Catholic festivals. I focus on judicial records to underscore the mariquita trope as a popular strategy for questioning the implementation of a stringent legal regime while demanding the social conformity of sexual minorities. The interventions of this article in the literature on nonconforming sexualities are twofold: (1) It contributes to the international scholarship by tracing the centrality of Catholicism and southern Spanish folk culture on mariquita subjectivity and social attitudes towards sexual minorities. This complicates the premise that liberalism has historically been the primary ideological frame informing sexual minorities’ resistance to repressive policies. In Spain, under a dictatorial regime, sexual minorities’ adaptative strategies and identities incorporated aspects of traditional rural femininity alongside modern forms of queer self-expression, such as drag shows in urban cabarets. (2) It contributes to the Spanish historiography, by revising the existing metrocentric research on homosexuality under Francoism and emphasizing the discrepancy between medico-legal discourses and recurring expressions of conditional toleration by rural communities.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Spain experienced major changes in both its population structure and housing market. Between 1998 and 2008, the country’s immigrant population increased nearly 10-fold, from half a million foreign-born residents to five million, with the share of immigrant workers jumping from 2 per cent of all working-age people to 16 per cent. During this period, immigration accounted for the vast majority of Spain’s population growth, and this was reflected in the housing market by significant increases in the construction of new dwellings. However, the situation changed dramatically after the housing crash in 2008. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the collapse of the country’s housing bubble, a massive wave of evictions made housing precariousness and displacement salient sociopolitical issues in Spain. Through multiple regression analyses of data from the Spanish Living Conditions Survey, this study shows that households headed by non-European Union citizens were significantly more likely than those headed by Spanish citizens to experience higher levels of housing precariousness and displacement pressure, net of housing arrears and other relevant factors. Non-European Union citizens were also significantly more likely to experience rent overburden and were found to pay higher rents than Spanish citizens for similar dwellings. By putting these results in dialogue with the ethnographic and theoretical literature on housing struggles and everyday bordering, this article argues that the differentially precarious citizenship status of migrants in Spain facilitates housing practices that multiply and thicken urban borders and facilitate rent extraction.

PurposeThis study focuses on the banking systems evaluation in Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (known as the PIIGS) during the financial and post-financial crisis period from 2009 to 2018.Design/methodology/approachA conditional robust nonparametric frontier analysis (order-m estimators) is used to measure banking efficiency combined with variables highlighting the effects of Non-Performing Loans. Next, a truncated regression is used to examine if institutional, macroeconomic, and financial variables affect bank performance differently. Unlike earlier studies, we use the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) as an institutional variable that affects banking sector efficiency.FindingsThis research shows that the PIIGS crisis affects each bank/country differently due to their various efficiency levels. Most of the study variables — CPI, government debt to GDP ratio, inflation, bank size — significantly affect banking efficiency measures.Originality/valueThe contribution of this article to the relevant banking literature is two-fold. First, it analyses the efficiency of the PIIGS banking system from 2009 to 2018, focusing on NPLs. Second, this is the first empirical study to use probabilistic frontier analysis (order-m estimators) to evaluate PIIGS banking systems.

The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, as an abstraction of previously proposed cryptographic protocols we propose two cryptographic primitives: homomorphic<br />shared commitments and linear secret sharing schemes with an additional multiplication property. We describe new constructions for general secure multi-party computation protocols, both in the cryptographic and the information-theoretic (or secure<br />channels) setting, based on any realizations of these primitives.<br />Second, span programs, a model of computation introduced by Karchmer and Wigderson, are used as the basis for constructing new linear secret sharing schemes, from which the two above-mentioned primitives as well as a novel verifiable secret sharing scheme can efficiently be realized. Third, note that linear secret sharing schemes can have arbitrary (as opposed to<br />threshold) access structures. If used in our construction, this yields multi-party protocols secure against general sets of active adversaries, as long as in the cryptographic (information-theoretic) model no two (no three) of these potentially misbehaving player sets cover the full player set. This is a strict generalization of the threshold-type adversaries and results previously considered in the literature. While this result is new for the cryptographic model, the result for the information-theoretic model was previously proved by Hirt and Maurer. However, in addition to providing an independent proof, our protocols are not recursive and have the potential of being more efficient.

Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) models represent fundamental tools to forecast traffic flows on road networks, assessing the effects of traffic management and transport policies. As biased models lead to incorrect predictions, which can cause inaccurate evaluations and huge social costs, the calibration of DTA models is an established and active research field. When it comes to estimating Origin-Destination (OD) demand flows, perhaps the most important input for DTA models, one algorithm suggested to outperform all the others for real-time applications: the Kalman Filter (KF). This paper introduces a non-linear Kalman Filter framework for online dynamic OD estimation that reduces the number of variables and can easily incorporate heterogeneous data sources to better explain the non-linear relationship between traffic data and time-dependent OD-flows. Specifically, we propose a model that takes advantage of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to capture spatial correlations between variables and better exploit the local nature of a specific KF recently proposed in literature, the Local Ensemble Transformed Kalman filter (LETKF). The main advantage of the LETKF is that the Kalman gain is not explicitly formulated which means that, differently from other approaches proposed in the literature, there is no need to compute the assignment matrix or its approximation. The paper shows that the LETKF can easily incorporate different data sources, such as traffic counts and link speeds. Additionally, thanks to the PCA, the model can identify local patterns within the data and better explain the correlation between variables and data. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated first through synthetic experiments where non-linear functions are used to benchmark the model in different conditions and then on the real-world network of Vitoria, Spain (2,884 nodes, 5,799 links) using the mesoscopic simulator Aimsun. Results show that the proposed method leads to better state estimation performances with respect to other Ensemble-based Kalman filters, providing improvements as high as 64% in terms of traffic data reproduction with a 17-fold problem dimensionality reduction.

BackgroundThere is limited data in the literature regarding the role of nonarthrographic MRI for detecting biceps pulley (BP) lesions.PurposeTo assess the accuracy of nonarthrographic MRI for detecting BP lesions, and to evaluate the diagnostic value of various MRI signs (superior glenohumeral ligament discontinuity/nonvisibility, long head of biceps (LHB) displacement sign or subluxation/dislocation, LHB tendinopathy, and supraspinatus and subscapularis tendon lesions) in detecting such lesions.Study TypeRetrospective.Population84 patients (32 in BP‐lesion group and 52 in BP‐intact group‐as confirmed by arthroscopy).Field Strength/Sequence1.5‐T, T1‐weighted turbo spin echo (TSE), T2‐weighted TSE, and proton density‐weighted TSE spectral attenuated inversion recovery (SPAIR) sequences.AssessmentThree radiologists independently reviewed all MRI data for the presence of BP lesions and various MRI signs. The MRI signs and final MRI diagnoses were tested for accuracy regarding detecting BP lesions using arthroscopy results as the reference standard. Furthermore, the inter‐reader agreement (IRA) between radiologists was determined.Statistical TestsStudent's t‐tests, Chi‐squared, and Fisher's exact tests, and 4‐fold table test were used. The IRA was calculated using Kappa statistics. A P‐value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsThe sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of nonarthrographic MRI for detecting BP lesions were 65.6%–78.1%, 90.4%–92.3%, and 81%–86.9%, respectively. The highest accuracy was noticed for the LHB displacement sign (84.5%–86.9%), and the highest sensitivity was registered for the LHB tendinopathy sign (87.5%). Furthermore, the highest specificity was observed for the LHB displacement sign and LHB subluxation/dislocation sign (98.1%–100%). The IRA regarding final MRI diagnosis and MRI signs of BP lesions was good to very good (κ = 0.76–0.98).Data ConclusionNonarthrographic shoulder MRI may show good diagnostic accuracy for detecting BP lesions. The LHB displacement sign could serve as the most accurate and specific sign for diagnosis of BP lesions.Level of Evidence3Technical EfficacyStage 2

Objectives: Mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) in developed countries started to decline in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and age-adjusted CHD mortality fell about 50%. This decline is attributed to favorable changes in risk factors in the general population, i.e., total cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, etc., and improved treatment of CHD. We examined recent trends in CHD mortality and its risk factors in selected developed countries. Methods: We selected Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US. Data on CHD mortality between 1980 and 2005-08 were obtained from the WHO Statistical Information System. To define CHD mortality, codes I20-25 in ICD-10 and corresponding codes in ICDs 8 and 9 were used. Data on risk factors, primarily total cholesterol and systolic blood pressure during the same period were obtained from national surveys as well as literature. Results: in 1980, there was a 2 to 3-fold difference in age-adjusted CHD mortality among these countries both in men and women, with the UK, the US and Canada being high and Japan and France being low. Although between 1980 and 2005-08, age-adjusted CHD mortality continuously declined in all these countries, a 2 to 3-fold difference in the mortality remained with the similar order among these countries. Between 1980 and 2008, age-adjusted mean levels of total cholesterol fell by 21 to 31 mg/dl in men and by 8 to 31 mg/dl in women in these countries except for Japan. Age-adjusted levels of total cholesterol in Japan have continuously increased by 16 mg/dl for both men and women during this period. Meanwhile, between 1980 and 2008 age-adjusted levels of systolic blood pressure fell by 5 to 8 mmHg in men and 6 to 13 mmHg in women in these countries without exception. In 1980, the rate of cigarette smoking in men in Japan was the highest among these countries. Although the rate of smoking in men fell in all these countries, the rates remained the higher in Japan. Conclusions: Age [[Unable to Display Character: &#8211;]]adjusted CHD mortality has continuously declined between 1980 and 2005-08 in these developed countries. The decline was accompanied by a constant decrease in population-levels of total cholesterol by 20 to 30 mg/dl except for Japan where levels of total cholesterol have increased by 16 mg/dl. The reasons for persistently low CHD mortality and its downward trend in Japan are unexplained by traditional risk factors. Identifying preventive factors that determine low CHD rates in the Japanese and implementing such factors to the US would eliminate most of CHD epidemics in the US.

Abstract Hypertension, often known as high blood pressure, is a disorder in which the pressure inside the blood arteries remain consistently high. It is a common chronic illness that often occurs along with other morbidities. Risk prediction of hypertension further contributes to the detection, development of interventions, and treatment. The current study used different machine learning models to identify the high-risk factors of developing hypertension using a large-scale survey dataset LASI. A sample of 58,757 collected through the survey aged 45 and above used for model training and testing. We identified 35 risk factors from the literature and then applied feature selection methods to identify only the important ones. Based on the selected features, three models were built i.e., random forest, decision tree, and logistic regression, and the hyper-parameters were optimized on the training set using 10-fold cross-validation. The performance of the models was measured using area under the curve value, precision, recall, and F measure. The random forest classifier outperformed the rest of the two algorithms with an AUC score of 0.64, a precision of 0.65, a recall score of 0.57, and an F1 score of 0.61. Body Mass Index, diabetes, age, type of work, parents having hypertension, and multimorbidity are the primary risk factors for hypertension. The results can be further applied to make algorithms to predict hypertension among an older individuals based on their demographic, health and behavioral factors. Predictive models for hypertension can aid in determining the degree of community interventions required, ensuring a favorable outcome.

Sarcopenia, characterized by progressive age-associated loss of skeletal muscle mass and function, has emerged as an impending public health threat. This bibliometric analysis elucidates the knowledge landscape of sarcopenia research by synthesizing growth trajectories, collaborative networks, and intellectual structures within the literature. Scientific publications spanning 1993–2023 were retrieved from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. VOSviewer, Biblioshiny, and ScientoPy software tools facilitated visualization and analysis of bibliometric trends. Results showed that after a seminal 2010 consensus definition paper, sarcopenia publications increased over 20-fold by 2021, following an initial gradual growth and then exponential expansion. China led in output volume; however, Western nations exhibited higher international collaboration. Prolific institutions clustered within Asia and Europe, although Australian and Canadian centers were also represented, reflecting expanding global networks. Core journals were dispersed across clinical medicine, gerontology, and nutrition. A co-occurrence network analysis of keywords delineated three predominant research domains: physical disability, muscle diagnostic metrics, and clinical prognostic outcomes. Keywords like “mobility” in the disability domain reflect sarcopenia's functional impacts. Debates on diagnostic cutoffs were evident in the muscle metrics domain. The prognostic domain signaled sarcopenia’s expanding value beyond geriatrics. These insights identify key areas for future research, including consolidating diagnostic methods through collaborative efforts, exploring lifestyle interventions, and investigating sarcopenia in diverse specialties. This bibliometric analysis comprehensively visualizes sarcopenia research growth, collaboration landscape, and knowledge structure, despite its limitations in the inclusion of citation trajectories and text mining, and offers data-driven advice for dealing with this expanding public health syndrome.

OPENING Welcome to this special feature of Approaches, which was inspired by the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting. Organised by the Giovanni Ferrari Music Therapy School of Padua, with the support of the Italian Association of Professional Music Therapists (AIM) and the Italian Confederation of Associations and Music Therapy Schools (CONFIAM), this event took place on 22nd September 2018 in Padua, Italy. Reflecting the theme of this meeting, Dialogue on Music Therapy Interventions for Dementia and End-of-Life Care: Voices from Beyond the Sea, this special feature aims to raise awareness and promote dialogue around music therapy in the Mediterranean region with a focus on dementia and end-of-life care settings. The special feature contains brief country reports. Although reports vary in writing style and depth of information, each report has a two-fold overall focus: to outline briefly the current state of music therapy within each country and to describe particular applications of music therapy within dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Additionally, this special feature contains a Preface by Melissa Brotons, who was the keynote speaker at the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting, as well as a conference report outlining key aspects of this meeting. THE SEA AROUND US: A NOTE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN The name of the Mediterranean Sea originates from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning “middle of the earth”. This name was first used by the Romans reflecting their perception of the sea as the middle or the centre of the earth. Interestingly, while perceived as a middle point, the Mediterranean was also experienced as something that surrounded people. Thus, both the Ancient Greeks and the Romans called the Mediterranean “our sea” or “the sea around us” (mare nostrum in Latin, orἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ’ἡμᾶς [hē thálassa hē kath’hēmâs] in Greek). The Mediterranean Sea is linked to the Atlantic Ocean. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Asia Minor, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by Western Asia. Since antiquity the Mediterranean has been a vital waterway for merchants and travellers, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region. The Mediterranean region has been the birthplace of influential civilizations on its shores, and the history of the region is crucial to understanding the origins and evolvement of the modern Western world. Throughout its history the region has been dramatically affected by conflict, war and occupation. The Roman Empire and the Arab Empire are past examples with lasting footprints in the region; while ongoing conflicts in Syria, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are contemporary examples, some of which have led to a refugee crisis in the region. As such, the history of the region has been accompanied by endeavours and struggles to define and redefine national identities, territories and borders. Interestingly, Cyprus is one of just two nations, and the first one in the world, to include its map on its flag (the second is Kosovo – a Balkan country close to the Mediterranean region). The sea touches three continents, and today the Mediterranean region can be understood, framed and divided differently based on varying geopolitical and other perspectives (see, for example, the Eastern Mediterranean Region of the World Health Organization [WHO, 2020]). For the purposes of this special feature, we understand the Mediterranean region as including 12 countries in Europe, five in Asia and five in Africa. These countries, in clockwise order, are Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Despite its relatively small geographical area, the Mediterranean region is characterised by the richness of cultures, religions and musical traditions. Likewise, there is a dramatic diversity in terms of political and socio-economic situations. This diversity is equally reflected in the development of dementia and end-of-life care in these countries. Regarding dementia care, in 2016, the Monegasque Association for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease, published the Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report where is underlined that “[in] many Mediterranean countries, there is still little knowledge about the problems surrounding Alzheimer’s disease, which remains under-estimated and insufficiently documented” (AMPA, 2016, p.7). The report identified a concerning rise in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders in the Mediterranean area, but little biomedical, fundamental and clinical research, unequal and unspecialised access to home care services, and also a general lack of training among professionals and a lack of status recognition for family carers. In terms of end-of-life care, in 2017 the first systematic attempt to map and assess the development of palliative care in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region was published (Osman et al., 2017). Results demonstrate that palliative care development in Eastern Mediterranean countries is scarce. Most countries are at the very initial stages of palliative care development, with only a small fraction of patients needing palliative care being able to access it. This situation also applies to the integration and provision of palliative care within care homes and nursing homes offering long-term care for older people (Froggatt et al., 2017). Recent reviews also demonstrate that palliative care is variable and inconsistent across the region, while various barriers exist to the development of palliative care delivery. Examples of such barriers include the lack of relevant national policies, limited palliative care training for professionals and volunteers, as well as weak public awareness around death and dying (Fadhil et al., 2017). Similar barriers around legislation, training and public awareness are met in the development of music therapy in many Mediterranean countries. Music therapy, as a contemporary profession and discipline, and indeed its applications in dementia and end-of-life care, are equally limited and characterised by diversity across the region. As such, this special feature is a modest attempt to bring together perspectives and present initial information for areas of work which are not widely developed, explored or documented so far in most Mediterranean countries. Hopefully this publication will raise further awareness and inform the future development of music therapy with specific reference to its potential applications to dementia and end-of-life care in each country. This becomes even more relevant considering the increase of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cancer, in the region (Fadhil et al., 2017). BEHIND THE SCENES Inviting authors Although the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting included speakers only from a few Mediterranean countries, this special feature attempted to include authors from every single Mediterranean country. In addition to inviting the speakers from the meeting to contribute to this special feature, we invited authors from each of the other Mediterranean countries. After listing all the countries, we tried to identify music therapists in each of them. We drew on our own professional networks, as well as information available on the websites of the European Music Therapy Confederation (EMTC) and the World Federation for Music Therapy (WFMT), along with relevant publications in the open access journals Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy and Voices: A World Forum of Music Therapy. In countries where we could not identify a music therapist (with or without direct experience of working in dementia and end-of-life care), we attempted to identify and invite other relevant professionals with an explicit interest in music therapy. When this second option was impossible, no authors were invited. There were also cases where potential authors who met the above criteria did not respond to the invitation. As such, this special feature does not include a report from every Mediterranean country. The absence of reports from some countries, however, does not necessarily reflect the lack of music therapy work in these countries. Some of the contributing authors are members or representatives of professional associations and some are not. In either case, their contribution to this special feature aims to represent their views and experiences as individuals without claiming to represent national or other professional bodies. Depending on the position of each individual author, different aspects of music therapy may be explored, prioritised, silenced or challenged in each country report. We want to be clear: these reports are not about absolute ‘truths’ and do not provide comprehensive accounts of music therapy and of its applications in dementia and end-of-life care in each country. Instead of being a ‘full stop’, we see these reports as an opening; as invitations for dialogue, debate, critique and mutual growth. We encourage readers to engage with the contents of this special feature critically; being informed by their own experiences and practices, as well as by related literature and historical trajectories in the field (e.g. De Backer et al., 2013; Dileo-Maranto, 1993; Hesser & Heinemann, 2015; Ridder & Tsiris, 2015a; Schmid, 2014; Stegemann et al., 2016). The challenge of the review process All reports were peer-reviewed. Although we strived to ensure a ‘blind’ review process, this was difficult to achieve in certain cases due to the nature of the reports and the small size of the music therapy communities in certain countries. We invited music therapists living and working in Mediterranean countries to serve as reviewers. We also invited some music therapists living in other parts of the world, given their experience and role within international music therapy bodies and initiatives. Reviewers were requested to evaluate not only the accuracy of the information provided in each report but also the reflexive stance of the authors. This comes with acknowledging that in some instances authors and reviewers came from diverse professional and disciplinary spheres, where music therapy can be understood and practised differently. This was particularly relevant to country reports where we could not identify reviewers with ‘inland’ knowledge of the music therapy field and of its relevance to local dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Towards hospitality Professionalisation issues – which seem to be a common denominator across the reports of this special feature – are often an area of controversy and conflict, where alliances and oppositions have emerged over the history of the music therapy profession within and beyond the Mediterranean region. Writing a country report, and indeed reviewing and editing a collection of such reports, can be a ‘hot potato’! Although it is impossible to remain apolitical, we argue (and we have actively tried to promote this through our editorial and reviewing work) that a constructive dialogue needs to be characterised by reflexivity. It needs to be underpinned by openness and transparency regarding our own values and assumptions, our pre-understanding, our standpoint, as well as our invested interests. Professionalisation conflicts within some Mediterranean countries have led to the development of multiple and, at times, antagonistic associations and professional bodies. In Spain, for example, there are over 40 associations (Mercadal-Brotons et al., 2015), whereas in Italy there are four main associations (Scarlata, 2015). In other countries, such as Greece (Tsiris, 2011), there are communication challenges and conflicting situations between professional association, training programmes and governmental departments. Although such challenges tend to remain unarticulated and ‘hidden’ from the professional literature and discourse, they have real implications for the development of the profession within each context and for the morale of each music therapy community. Overall, this special feature aims to promote a spirit of open dialogue and mutual respect. It is underpinned by a commitment to remain in ongoing dialogue while accepting that we can agree to disagree. As editors we tried to remain true to this commitment, and this became particularly evident in cases where reported practices and concepts were at odds with our own perspectives and understandings of music therapy and its development as a contemporary profession and discipline in Western countries. Indeed, the perspectives presented in some of the reports may sit on the edge or even outside the ‘professional canon’ of music therapy as developed in many contemporary Western countries. In line with the vision of Approaches, this special feature opens up a space where local-global tensions can be voiced (Ridder & Tsiris, 2015b), allowing multiple translations, transitions and borders to be explored. What becomes evident is that definitions of music therapy are inextricably linked to cultural, including spiritual and political, meanings and practices of music, health and illness. Mediterranean people are known for their hospitality but also for their passionate temperament. We hope that this special feature creates a hospitable and welcoming environment for professional and intercultural exchange where passion can fuel creative action and collaboration instead of conflict. We invite the readers to engage with each report in this spirit of openness and reflexivity. This special feature will hopefully be only the start of future dialogue, debate and constructive critique. To this end, we also invite people to add their voices and perspectives regarding music therapy in the Mediterranean region in relation to dementia and end-of-life care. Music therapists, palliative care practitioners and other professionals are welcome to submit their own papers in the form of articles, reports or letters to the editor. References AMPA (2016). Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report 2016: Overview – challenges – perspectives. Retrieved from https://ampa-monaco.com/files/MAA_Rapport_GB_web_sml.pdf De Backer, J., Nöcker Ribaupierre, M., & Sutton, J. (2013). Music therapy in Europe: The identity and professionalisation of European music therapy, with an overview and history of the European Music Therapy Confederation. In J. De Backer & J. Sutton (Eds.), The music in music therapy: Psychodynamic music therapy in Europe: Clinical, theoretical and research approaches (pp. 24-36). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Dileo-Maranto, C. (Ed.). (1993). Music therapy: International perspectives. Saint Louis, MI: MMB Music, Inc. Fadhil, I., Lyons, G., & Payne, S. (2017). Barriers to, and opportunities for, palliative care development in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Lancet Oncology, 18(3), e176-e184. Froggatt, K., Payne, S., Morbey, H., Edwards, M., Finne-Soveri, H., Gambassi, G., Pasman, H. R., Szczerbinska, K., & Van den Block, L. (2017). Palliative care development in European care homes and nursing homes: Application of a typology of implementation. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 18(6), 550.e7-550.e14. Hesser, B., & Heinemann, H. (Eds.). (2015). Music as a global resource: Solutions for social and economic issues (4th ed.). New York, NY: United Nations Headquarters. Mercadal-Brotons, M., Sabbatella, P. L., & Del Moral Marcos, M. T. (2017). Music therapy as a profession in Spain: Past, present and future. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 9(1), 111-119. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/mercadal-brotons-a20150509 Osman, H., Rihan, A., Garralda, E., Rhee, J.Y., Pons, J.J., de Lima, L., Tfayli, A., & Centeno, C. (2017). Atlas of palliative care in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Houston: IAHPC Press. Retrieved from https://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/43303 Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (Eds.). (2015a). Special issue on ‘Music therapy in Europe: Paths of professional development’. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1). Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (2015b). ‘Thinking globally, acting locally’: Music therapy in Europe. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 3-9. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Scarlata, E. (2015). Italy. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 161-162. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015 Schmid, J. (2014). Music therapy training courses in Europe. Thesis at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria. Stegemann, T., Schmidt, H. U., Fitzthum, E., & Timmermann, T. (Eds.). (2016). Music therapy training programmes in Europe: Theme and variations. Reichert Verlag. Tsiris, G. (2011). Music therapy in Greece. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. Retrieved from https://voices.no/community/?q=country-of-the-month/2011-music-therapy-greece World Health Organization (WHO) (2020). Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Countries. Retrieved from: http://www.emro.who.int/countries.html

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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