Bocce, sometimes anglicized as bocce ball, bocci or boccie, is a ball sport belonging to the boules family related to British bowls and French pétanque, with a common ancestry from ancient games played in the Roman Empire. Developed into its present form in Italy, bocce is played around Europe and in other areas with Italian immigrants, including Australia, North America, South America. Played only by the Italian immigrants, the game has become more popular with their descendants and more broadly. Bocce is related to British bowls and French pétanque, all having developed from games played in the Roman Empire, it was developed into its present form in Italy, it is played around Europe and in regions to which Italians have migrated, such as Australia, North America, South America. The popularity of the game spread first amongst descendants of Italian migrants but has spread into the wider community; the sport is very popular on the eastern side of the Adriatic in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the sport is known in Serbo-Croatian as boćanje or balote.

In Slovenia the sport is known as bale. Bocce is traditionally played on natural soil and asphalt courts 27.5 metres in length and 2.5 to 4 metres wide. Bocce balls can be made of wood, baked clay, or various kinds of plastic. Unlike lawn bowls, bocce balls have no inbuilt bias. A game can be conducted between two teams of two, three, or four. A match is started by a randomly chosen side being given the opportunity to throw a smaller ball, the jack, from one end of the court into a zone 5 metres in length, ending 2.5 metres from the far end of the court. If the first team misses twice, the other team is awarded the opportunity to place the jack anywhere they choose within the prescribed zone. Casual play is common in reasonably flat areas of parks and yards lacking a Bocce court, but players should agree to the minimum and maximum distance the jack may be thrown before play begins; the side that first attempted to place the jack is given the opportunity to bowl first. Once the first bowl has taken place, the other side has the opportunity to bowl.

From on, the side which does not have the ball closest to the jack has a chance to bowl, up until one side or the other has used their four balls. At that point, the other side bowls its remaining balls; the team with the closest ball to the jack is the only team. The scoring team receives one point for each of their balls, closer to the jack than the closest ball of the other team; the length of a game varies by region but is from 7 to 13 points. Players are permitted to throw the ball in the air using an underarm action; this is used to knock either the jack or another ball away to attain a more favorable position. Tactics can get quite complex when players have sufficient control over the ball to throw or roll it accurately. A variation called bocce volo uses a metal ball, thrown overhand, after a run-up to the throwing line. In that latter respect, it is similar to the French boules game jeu provençal known as boule lyonnaise. A French variant of the game is called pétanque, is more similar in some respects to traditional bocce.

Another development, for persons with disabilities, is called boccia. It is a shorter-range game, played with leather balls on an smooth surface. Boccia was first introduced to the Paralympics at the 1984 New York/Stoke Mandeville Summer Games, is one of the only two Paralympic sports that do not have an Olympic counterpart. Fédération Internationale de Boules Confederation Mondiale des Sports de Boules International Bocce Federation

The North–South model, developed by Columbia University economics professor Ronald Findlay, is a model in developmental economics that explains the growth of a less developed "South" or "periphery" economy that interacts through trade with a more developed "North" or "core" economy. The North–South model is used by dependencia theorists as a theoretical economic justification for dependency theory; the model makes a few critical assumptions about the North and the South, as well as the relationship between the two. The Northern economy is operating under Solow-Swan assumptions while the Southern economy is operating under Lewis growth assumptions. However, for the purposes of simplicity of this model, the output of the traditional sector of the Lewis model is ignored, we equate output in the modern sector of the South to total output of the South; the more developed North produces manufactured goods while the less developed South produces primary goods. These are the only two goods. Both economies undergo complete specialization There are no barriers to trade, only two trading partners Income elasticity of demand equals unity in both countries, so economic growth results in a proportionate growth in demand.

The South depends on the imported goods from the North in order to produce its own goods. This is because the heavy machinery required for production of primary products comes only from the North; the relationship is nonreciprocal, however. The North–South model begins by defining the relevant equations for the economies of each country, concludes that the growth rate of the South is locked by the growth rate of the North; this conclusion relies on an analysis of the terms of trade between the two countries. The terms of trade, θ, are defined as θ = p r i c e o f p r i m a r y p r o d u c t s p r i c e o f m a n u f a c t u r e s To determine equilibrium, we need only to look at the market for one of the goods, as per Walras' law. We consider the market for the South's goods: primary products; the demand for imports, M, from the South is a positive function of per capita consumption in the North and a negative function of the terms of trade, θ. The supply side comes from export of primary products by the South, X, is a positive function of the terms of trade and the South’s aggregate consumption of primary products.

This graph makes it clear that the real terms of trade decreases when the growth rate is higher in the South than in the North. The resultant decrease in the terms of trade, means a lower growth rate for the South; this creates a negative feedback cycle in which the growth rate of the South is exogenously determined by that of the North. Note that the growth rate of the north, gn, is equal to n + m, where n is population growth and m is growth of labor-augmenting technical progress, as per the Solow-Swan model; the conclusion, which fits in with dependency theory, is that the South can never grow faster than the North, thus will never catch up. Economic theories such as the North–South model have been used to justify arguments for import substitution. Under this theory, less developed countries should use barriers to trade such as protective tariffs to shelter their industries from foreign competition and allow them to grow to the point where they will be able to compete globally, it is important to note, that the North–South model only applies to countries that are specialized.

The way around the terms of trade trap predicted by the North–South model is to produce goods that do compete with foreign goods. For example, the Asian Tigers are famous for pursuing development strategies that involved using their comparative advantage in labor to produce labor-intensive goods like textiles more efficiently than the United States and Europe. North–South divide

Remote ischemic conditioning is an experimental medical procedure that aims to reduce the severity of ischaemic injury to an organ such as the heart or the brain, most in the situation of a heart attack or a stroke, or during procedures such as heart surgery when the heart may temporary suffer ischaemia during the operation, by triggering the body's natural protection against tissue injury. Although noted to have some benefits in experimental models in animals, this is still an experimental procedure in humans and initial evidence from small studies have not been replicated in larger clinical trials. Successive clinical trials have failed to identify evidence supporting a protective role in humans; the procedure involves repeated, temporary cessation of blood flow to a limb to create ischemia in the tissue. This "conditioning" activates the body's natural protective physiology against reperfusion injury and the tissue damage caused by low oxygen levels—a protection present in many mammals.

RIC mimics the cardio-protective effects of exercise. RIC has been termed "exercise in a device" suited for patients who are unable or unwilling to work out; the phenomenon of ischemic preconditioning was discovered in 1986 by C. E. Murry and colleagues, who observed that repeated, temporary cross-clamping of the left anterior descending artery in dogs protected the LAD territory of the heart against a subsequent prolonged ischemic event, reducing infarct size by 75%; this was termed local ischemic preconditioning. The phenomenon was confirmed by other researchers in dogs, pigs and rats. In 1993, Karin Przyklenk and colleagues began using the term "remote" when they observed that cross-clamping on the right side of the heart protected the left side of the heart from ischemia: that is, the protective trigger was remote from the observed effect. Other researchers confirmed this remote effect and found that performing the preconditioning protocol on kidney or gastrointestinal tissue provided protection to the heart.

In 2002, Raj Kharbanda and Andrew Redington, working at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, showed that non-invasively stopping and starting blood flow in the arm provided the same protection as invasive preconditioning of the heart. This adaptation of the RIC protocol improved its safety and applicability, resulted in a surge of clinical interest in the technique. More than 10,000 patients worldwide have completed clinical trials involving RIC, another 20,000 are enrolled in ongoing trials; the first human clinical trial of RIC was conducted by Dr. Redington in pediatric patients undergoing heart surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children; the patients treated with RIC prior to surgery exhibited less heart damage, as measured by the biomarker troponin, as well as less need for supportive drugs. This trial was followed by others measuring the effects of RIC on rates and outcomes of heart attacks, heart failure and cardiothoracic intervention. In multiple randomized controlled trials, remote ischemic conditioning reduced infarct size in ST-elevation myocardial infarction patients when used in the ambulance or emergency department as an adjunct therapy to primary percutaneous coronary intervention, or when used with thrombolytic drugs.

In seven trials comprising 2,372 STEMI patients, infarct size—a measure of damage to the heart—was reduced by 17–30% on average, the reduction was greatest in the largest infarcts. Further analysis of a Danish study, in which patients were treated in the ambulance, showed that those who received RIC did not show a decline in myocardial salvage index when they experienced a delay in treatment, while the control group experienced a significant decline in salvage index; the RIC treatment therefore resulted in an extension of the "golden hour", the period in which medical treatment for heart attacks is most effective. Infarct size is a predictor of future cardiovascular events as well as mortality, researchers doing long-term follow-up on STEMI patients treated with RIC found that the reduction in heart damage at the time of the heart attack resulted in clinical improvement four years later: MACCE rates were reduced by 47%; this improvement resulted in mean cumulative cardiovascular medical care costs that were €2,763 lower in the RIC-treated group than in the control group —savings of 20%.

There are two large randomized controlled trials of RIC treatment in STEMI patients ongoing in Europe, both of which will examine the effects of RIC treatment on coronary death and hospitalization for heart failure after one year. Remote ischemic conditioning reduced heart damage in four randomized controlled trials involving 816 elective PCI patients; the myocardial damage and troponin elevations seen in elective PCI patients are less than that in emergency STEMI patient, because there is less acute reperfusion injury in elective PCI, damage instead results from distal embolization and side-branch occlusion. Myocardial damage during elective PCI remains a significant predictor of morbidity and mortality, as patients exhibiting any increase in troponin are at a increased risk of future cardiovascular events. Researchers at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge conducted the first large study of RIC in elective PCI patients and found that patients trea