Suchergebnisse

The purpose of the research is to substantiate the specificity of male singing skills as the first and leading in the history of musical and cultural events and to formulate the fundamental methodological and singing differences in religious-ritual and theatrical-opera detections. The methodological basis is the intonation approach as an idea of the genetic commonality of musical thinking and speech in the traditions of the concepts of B. Asafiev and B. Yavorskyi in Ukraine, which is presented in the works of D. Androsova, O. Kozarenko, O. Markova, O. Ohanezova, O. Roshchenko, O. Sokolova, V. Shulhina. Scientific novelty is manifested in the independence of classification developments regarding the characteristics of male singers in the ritual-religious and theatre-opera spheres, for the first time in the musicology of Ukraine and China, it is pointed out the fundamental difference between the religious and ritual detection of singing, mostly male, in register-interval indicators, which are incompatible with speech detections as signs of materially-real sound experience. Conclusions. From the ritual-religious primacy comes the practice of focusing on the voice detection within the framework of ritual-religious actions of sounds associated with supernatural abilities of contact with the extra-human world, the basis of which is the male voice, able to master the registers accessible to women's vocal expression, which is later fixed in the falsetto singing of men, although the distinctive side of sacredness both in the West and in the East is the skill of male fables. The transcendental meaning of such ritual sound expression is reinforced by interval-register measures, among which either "drumming" on one or two sounds or interval-register "jumps" that remove the respiratory-speech "wave" line of pitch sequences prevail. Theatrically, the operatic approach, relying on the artificiality of vocals (as a legacy of European church practice) or its analogies in the Chinese singing tradition, metaphorically and consistently combines that singing artificiality with speech-pathetic inflections, i.e. compensatingly combining the experience of addressing the superphysical world with speech-physical sound signs.

BACKGROUND: Driven by the government's firm commitment to promoting maternal health, maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in China has achieved a remarkable reduction over the past 25 years. Paralleled with the decline of MMR has been the expansion of hospital bed supply as well as substantial reduction in hospital bed distribution inequalities, which were thought to be significant contributors to the reduction in MMR. However, evidences on the impact of hospital bed supply as well as how its distribution inequality has affected MMR remains scarce in China. Addressing this uncertainty is essential to understand whether efforts made on the expansion of healthcare resource supply as well as on improving its distribution inequality from a geographical perspective has the potential to produce measurable population health improvements. METHODS: Panel data of 31 provinces in China between 2004 and 2016 were extracted from the national statistical data, including China Statistical Yearbooks, China Health Statistical Yearbooks and other national publications. We firstly described the changes in hospital bed density as well as its distribution inequality from a geographical perspective. Then, a linear mixed model was employed to evaluate the impact of hospital bed supply as well as its distribution inequality on MMR at the provincial level. RESULTS: The MMR decreased substantially from 48.3 to 19.9 deaths per 100,000 live births between 2004 and 2016. The average hospital bed density increased from 2.28 per 1000 population in 2004 to 4.54 per 1000 population in 2016, with the average Gini coefficient reducing from 0.32 to 0.25. As indicated by the adjusted mixed-effects regressions, hospital bed density had a negative association with MMR (β = − 0.112, 95% CI: − 0.210--0.013) while every 0.1-unit reduction of Gini coefficient suggested 14.50% decline in MMR on average (β = 1.354, 95% CI: 0.123–2.584). Based on the mediation analysis, the association between hospital bed density or Gini coefficient with MMR was found to be ...

China boasts prolonged history of relations with Afghanistan. Throughout the 2010s, China has seen Afghanistan as a key part of what can be described the dynamically transnational "Belt-Road-Initiative". Now with the Taliban takeover of the country, the question arises how China would be able to play a premier role in the post-war Afghanistan while trying to shun itself to be embroiled into the geopolitical mire as the superpowers did in history? The current study addresses two questions through an analytical-empirical approach to how China will realize its geostrategic design in Afghanistan. First, what are China's objectives which are supposed to differ from those of the USSR and the USA? Second, why would China likely succeed in the country where the superpowers had failed before? Over the past decades, China has geared up its strategic ties with Russia, Pakistan, Iran, known as the Eurasian partners on the Afghan issue, and Central Asian states which are either the neighbors of Afghanistan or the member states of the SCO. Since Beijing endorses multilateralism and inclusive partnership in foreign affairs, it will unlikely act alone on the issue of Afghanistan. Rather, China is supposed to work on it through triple-level platforms–the Eurasian partners, SCO member states with border proximity of Afghanistan and the multilateral organizations such as the U.N. and the G-20–to fulfill its geostrategic designs in Afghanistan.