Connect with us

Technology

The Sigourney Award-2024 Recipients Honored For Outstanding Work Advancing Psychoanalytic Principles Globally

Published

on

Four Recipients’ Work From Israel, Sweden, Canada and South Africa Earns The Sigourney Award-2024

SEATTLE, Nov. 12, 2024 /CNW/ — The Sigourney Award Trust annually recognizes outstanding work that advances psychoanalytic thought and principles throughout the world. Robin A. Deutsch, PhD and Analyst Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust, today announces three individuals and one organization whose work of the past decade earns The Sigourney Award-2024 and a substantial cash prize. Recipients include: Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel); Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden); Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada); and The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, South Africa).

“The 2024 recipients’ work has uniquely and positively impacted populations, including the youngest among us, by expanding access and understanding of psychoanalysis as well as psychotherapy’s benefits to professionals and the general public,” says Dr. Deutsch. “The anonymous judges, who likewise conduct exemplary professional careers, evaluated work from 10 countries to select work that most closely aligned with Mary Sigourney’s original intent.”

Founded by Mary Sigourney in 1989, The Sigourney Award was established to recognize and promote exceptional work that advances psychoanalytic principles and their ability to better humankind.

Work Meriting The Sigourney Award-2024 (Alphabetical order)

Merav Roth, PhD (Tel Aviv, Israel)
Prof. Merav Roth’s exceptional interdisciplinary work included an unparalleled approach to psychoanalysis and literature, which gave readers a better understanding of the deep psychic processes involved in reading and earned her a reputation as a pioneering psychoanalytic thinker. Her notable work also expands to her impactful role as a writer and activist on trauma, ethics and culture in Israel and abroad.  Accomplishments in the past decade include her first book, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature – Reading the Reader (Routledge, 2020), where she described the unconscious processes involved in reading literature. As the former chair of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, Roth established and still chairs “The Clinic For All” which provides pro-bono psychotherapy for deprived or disadvantaged populations. As a professor at the University of Haifa, Roth established a new philanthropic initiative, “Interweaving,” a culturally sensitive clinic for disadvantaged populations. Following the events of October 7 in Israel, Roth’s psychoanalytic work with trauma was swiftly employed to provide guidance and wide-reaching help, including establishing with two colleagues a philanthropic network of 450 psychoanalysts who provide long-term pro-bono support to survivors and their family members.

Björn Salomonsson, MD (Stockholm, Sweden)
Dr. Björn Salomonsson’s work has profoundly amplified psychoanalytic knowledge and infant caretaking techniques, and engaged non-psychoanalytic healthcare professionals participating in pre-, peri-, and post-natal care of mothers and infants. An Associate Professor at Swedish Psychoanalytic Institute, Salomonsson combined training in psychoanalysis and research to improve the early life of distressed babies by wholly refining Psychoanalytic Parent-Infant Psychotherapy (PIP) methodology. He also co-founded The A Primo Foundation, with successful courses for nurses, midwives and psychologists in Maternity Units and Child Health Centers. His work pioneered psychoanalytic techniques for working directly with child health nurses who had little to no prior psychoanalytic exposure. Nurses used the techniques to address perturbed infant-parent relationships and creatively and respectfully bring a psychoanalytic understanding of the infant’s and parents’ experience of troubled relationships. In his book Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy (2018), Salomonsson systematically describes how a therapist can practice treatment beyond the one-to-one model and deliver a multi-relationship-based psychoanalytic therapy model by actively engaging the infant during psychoanalytic therapy. Today, PIP is viewed as highly relevant for every analyst.

Dominique Scarfone, MD (Montreal, Canada)  
Prof. Dominique Scarfone’s influential work has advanced a veritable renaissance in the study and transmission of French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche’s work and produced essential theoretical contributions in unconscious communication, temporality, and the translational model of the psyche. Providing a new approach to Freudian thinking, his endeavors bridge French, British and North American psychoanalytic culture. Scarfone’s work demonstrates how the marriage of tradition with radical thinking can expand the field of psychoanalysis. While maintaining a solid belief that Freud’s foundational method offers a common ground between these cultures, he has urged persistent questioning and reconsidering of Freud’s methods to liberate new thinking. Scarfone has illuminated a modern approach to how the psychosexual enters all these domains through work addressing clinical matters, questions of transference and repetition, one’s relationship to art and ethics, and the deep complexity of what it means to be human. Within the past ten years Scarfone has published three significant books including Laplanche (2014), The Unpast (2015), and The Reality of the Message: Psychoanalysis in the Wake of Jean Laplanche (2023).

The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust (Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa)
The Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust’s outstanding work addresses the country’s traumatic past and current uncertainties, major challenges to personal relationships, mental-health challenges related to poverty, unemployment, poor infrastructure, and other crises by ingeniously magnifying the accessibility and efficacy of psychoanalytic treatment in South Africa. Ububele’s approach is rooted in the lived experiences of Johannesburg and Alexandra’s community of over 500,000 people overburdened by harsh poverty, serious crime, corruption and the lesser recognized but lasting impact of apartheid. An essential awareness and acknowledgement of transference and the influence of the unconscious informs unique initiatives centered on promoting healthy parent-child attachment through the development of low-cost, replicable models of psychoanalytically informed interventions. Two examples include the Ububele Umdlezane Parent-Infant Programs focused on the first thousand days of life and the Therapy and Assessment Clinic which conducts psychoeducational assessments and psychotherapy services. Ububele’s capacity building methods offer initial and continuing training emphasizing the transference relationship and the necessity of working beyond the surface. The training provides youth and caregivers the psychoanalytically informed psycho-emotional support needed to succeed in breaking inter-generational cycles of emotional poverty and mental health despair. 

“The Sigourney Award’s canons are unwavering and the Trust works tirelessly to ensure that Mary Sigourney’s intent is honored with a wholly independent assessment of exceptional work with each year’s Awards. We are fortunate to attract applications and nominations from around the world representing ground-breaking work that has advanced psychoanalytic thought and principles,” says Michael J. Harrington, JD, Attorney Co-Trustee of The Sigourney Award Trust.

Visit The Sigourney Award to review all recipients’ announcements. Applications for The Sigourney Award-2025 open March 1, 2025 for qualifying work completed between 2015-2024. Follow social platforms on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn @SigourneyAward, and X @sigourney_the.

About The Sigourney Award
The Sigourney Award Trust, a wholly independent nonprofit organization established by Mary Sigourney in 1989, annually bestows The Sigourney Award as international recognition and reward for outstanding work that has advanced psychoanalytic principles. Ms. Sigourney was a psychotherapist, publisher, and community activist who had a passionate interest in psychoanalysis and understood its ability to benefit and extend human conversation across various disciplines. Since 1990, The Sigourney Award has rewarded and promoted outstanding work. To date, 149 Award recipients from 22 countries represent her global vision. Judges of The Sigourney Award remain anonymous to ensure an unbiased and thorough evaluation practice. Work honored by The Sigourney Award has significantly contributed to human affairs on topics ranging from clinical psychoanalysis, neuroscience, feminism, and political oppression.

Media Contact: Kelly Wisecarver, kelly@wisecarverpr.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-sigourney-award-2024-recipients-honored-for-outstanding-work-advancing-psychoanalytic-principles-globally-302300657.html

SOURCE The Sigourney Award

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

BOE continues to launch new products and solutions in the field of high-end displays

Published

on

By

LOS ANGELES, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — 

1、Redefine Visual Experience with Scientific Standards! BOE Releases Core Research Findings on OLED Display Clarity-Legibility Index, Paving the Way for the Industry’s First Transparent Pro Standard to Deliver Supreme Visual Experience

With the rapid popularization of OLED display technology, basic screen indicators including resolution, color gamut and brightness keep improving. Meanwhile, display transparency — a core experience metric that determines visual comfort , image authenticity and premium visual quality — has drawn growing attention across the industry.

Recently, BOE has empowered the launch of the industry’s first flagship high-transparency OLED display panel, setting an industry-leading benchmark in four key dimensions: color, depth , clarity and dynamic range. It ushers high-end display into a new era, shifting from purely numerical technical specifications to ultimate user-centric visual experience.

In addition, BOE officially unveiled its in-depth research achievements on OLED display transparency. It has identified the core underlying factors affecting visual transparency through scientific research, pioneered the industry’s first display transparency index formula, and facilitated the release of the first authoritative evaluation standard for OLED display transparency. This marks an industry’s transformation from specs-oriented to experience-driven development. This marks a full-process breakthrough covering underlying technical analysis, scientifically guided image quality development and mass production application.

At present, the group standard 《Standard of Associations Organic light emitting diode display —Evaluation method for display clarity》, led and formulated by BOE based on relevant research outcomes, has been officially issued. As the world’s first dedicated evaluation standard focusing on OLED display transparency, it fills the long-standing industry gap in correlating subjective visual perception with objective image quality parameters.

Leveraging this standard and transparency research results, BOE has assisted partners in developing the industry’s first flagship high-transparency OLED screen. The company has built a comprehensive technical system for OLED visual transparency. Supported by cutting-edge technologies such as tandem, LTPO and high-precision Demura crosstalk optimization algorithms, BOE and its partners have carried out full-link optimization from display panels to end devices.

Going forward, BOE will continue to deepen research on display human factors engineering and visual experience. Through technological innovation and standard leadership, it will bring more ultimate, high-transparency premium display experiences to users worldwide.

2、BOE Beneficial “Natural” Light Technology (BNL): Solving Visual Health Pain Points and Leading the Display Industry Trend

In an era of ubiquitous displays, users are spending increasingly longer hours on screens. Nevertheless, the luminous properties of conventional displays poorly align with the human visual system, sparking widespread consumer concerns over visual health. To address such challenges, BOE draws inspiration from natural light. By deeply analyzing natural light and extracting beneficial features highly consistent with health and comfort, BOE established the Beneficial “Natural” Light Technology (BNL) architecture. Evolving from single technical upgrades to a systematic solution, BNL replicates the merits of natural light across four core dimensions: Depolarization Adjustment, Spectrum Optimization, Light Profile Optimization and Time-varying Adaptation, advancing display technology toward healthy viewing.

BNL & Visual Health

Depolarization Adjustment: The linearly polarized light of traditional displays causes targeted stimulation to retinal lutein, resulting in dry eyes, eyelid redness and other discomforts. Based on the mainstream Circular Polarization (QWP) solution, BOE BNL has developed a series of technologies like BSF/RDF Random Depolarization technology and un-Polarization,which convert linearly polarized light into randomly polarized light, enabling balanced lutein utilization across the entire visual field, and deliver natural-light-level eye protection.

Spectrum Optimization: Conventional narrow-band RGB spectra feature poor continuity and imbalanced energy distribution, with excessive high-energy blue light that induces eye strain and increases risks of macular damage. Beyond Low Blue Light solutions, BOE BNL has developed Natural-like Spectrum, Beneficial Red Light, Infrared Light and Circadian Rhythm technologies. Multiple clinical studies have verified that Beneficial Red Light and Infrared Light can effectively inhibit axial elongation and accelerate eye microcirculation.  BOE takes the lead in integrating such optics into displays,achieving a spectral distribution matching degree of over 60%, an energy ratio of Beneficial Red Light (650–670 nm) exceeding 50%, and independent on/off switching and energy adjustment of Infrared Light. Meanwhile, Circadian Rhythm technology regulates melatonin secretion to safeguard sleep quality. Shifting from passive harm reduction to active eye benefits, BOE BNL delivers all-round visual health protection.

Light Profile Optimization: Conventional screens are prone to surface reflection and glare, which interfere with visual recognition and cause cumulative eye fatigue. Powered by industry-leading Anti-Glare, Low Reflection and Wide Viewing Angle technologies, BOE BNL accurately simulates the diffuse reflection of natural light to deliver consistent visual comfort across diverse viewing angles. For instance, BOE UB Cell technology achieves a DGR value below 5 with negligible glare and reflection, ensuring sustained visual comfort.

Time-varying Adaptation: Conventional displays tend to produce low-frequency flicker and fixed brightness and color temperature that fail to adapt to ambient changes, forcing frequent eye muscle adjustments and leading to discomfort. By adopting Flicker Free and Light Self-adaptive technologies, BOE BNL delivers stable, ultra-smooth visuals that replicate the comfort of natural light.

SID 2026: BOE Launches New BNL Display Products

At SID Display Week 2026, BOE launched new BNL health display products. The highlight product is the industry’s first 13.8-inch BNL health display tablet. It integrates all four core dimensions,supported by 7 core BNL technologies, to deliver a healthy and comfortable visual experience.

As a global leader in the display industry, BOE has led the development and officially issued the world’s first “Natural Light” display standard via the Zhongguancun Standardization Association,and has jointly issued the White Paper on Natural Light Display Technologies (Engineering Considerations, Application Value and Challenges) with TÜV Rheinland to drive standardized and high-quality industrial development. In the future, BOE will continue to iterate on technologies, diversify product forms and application scenarios, advance the grading standards for Beneficial “Natural” Light displays, and protect users’ visual health.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/boe-continues-to-launch-new-products-and-solutions-in-the-field-of-high-end-displays-302767491.html

SOURCE BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd.

Continue Reading

Technology

BitradeX BXC First Two Subscription Rounds Sell Out, Total Subscriptions Exceed 14M USDT

Published

on

By

LONDON, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — BitradeX Capital’s ecosystem equity token, BXC, has completed its first and second subscription rounds, selling a total of 50 million BXC with subscriptions exceeding 14 million USDT. The first round sold out in 90 seconds, while the second closed within 48 hours.

While the fundraising size is not unusually large by crypto standards, the structure of the sale has attracted market attention. The first two rounds were not open to the public, but limited to high-tier BitradeX users. The first round was available only to V5 users and above, while the second round expanded access to V3 users and above.

According to BitradeX’s tier system, V3+ users typically have higher recurring investment activity through AiBot, longer platform usage history, and stronger ecosystem participation. This means the early BXC allocation was absorbed mainly by the platform’s internal high-value user base, rather than short-term speculative participants.

This approach differs from many token fundraising campaigns that prioritize broad public participation and market hype. BitradeX instead adopted a more selective, staged model, gradually lowering the participation threshold while keeping the sale within its active ecosystem community.

BXC is positioned as more than a standard platform token. Its value framework is linked to BitradeX Capital’s broader ecosystem, including its exchange business, AiBot quantitative strategies, BTX Card payments, and Labs incubation platform. Public information indicates that BXC holders may receive staking rewards, benefit from ecosystem buybacks and burns, and gain priority access to Launchpad projects and governance participation.

The third subscription round is launched on April 30 at $0.35 USDT per BXC, with a total supply of 100 million BXC. It is now open to users participating in AiBot recurring investment. The fourth round price is expected to rise to $0.45 USDT.

The long-term value of BXC will ultimately depend on the growth of BitradeX’s underlying businesses, including exchange profitability, AiBot user expansion, and BTX Card adoption. However, the rapid sellout of the first two rounds suggests that BitradeX’s core user base has already shown strong confidence in the ecosystem’s future.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitradex-bxc-first-two-subscription-rounds-sell-out-total-subscriptions-exceed-14m-usdt-302767467.html

SOURCE BitradeX Capital

Continue Reading

Technology

South and East Asia identified as hotspots of global warming related impacts on male fertility

Published

on

By

BEIJING, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A major new study has shown that South and East Asia dominate patterns of global warming related decline in male fertility with the strongest and most consistent evidence coming from India, Pakistan and the southern parts of China.

The effects of increased environmental temperatures on male reproductive health include declining sperm concentration and motility and increased sperm DNA fragmentation, or genetic damage that can hinder fertilisation and embryo development.

Male related factors account for around 50 per cent of infertility cases around the world and the impact of rising ambient heat on semen parameters raises serious implications across wide areas of Asia where total fertility rates are in serious decline.

Outcomes of the study undertaken by the Taiwan IVF Group and Ton Yen General Hospital, Taiwan (China) in collaboration with Stanford University (USA) are being presented at the 2026 Congress of the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) in Beijing.

Research principal and Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University, Dr Jack Yu Jen Huang, MD, PhD, FACOG said: “Given the temperature sensitivity of spermatogenesis, even modest increases in ambient temperature could have cumulative, population-level effects over time.

“As global warming accelerates, male reproductive health may represent an emerging climate sensitive public health concern.”

The testes function optimally at temperatures lower than the internal body heat level, and previous studies have shown elevated scrotal or ambient temperatures can impair sperm production.

The latest research explored global patterns to reveal comparative data across regions. It is based on a systematic review of international studies on temperature exposure and semen parameter trends between 2000 and 2024. Artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning tools were applied to extract key variables including geographic regions and semen outcomes.

Dr Huang said studies examining occupational heat exposure alone were excluded from the analysis as they reflected localised, job-specific conditions rather than broader climatic trends.

“Our findings therefore represent population level climate associated temperature effects including consistent seasonal variations showing poor semen quality parameters in warmer periods.”

The global patterns on temperature associated lower sperm concentration and motility show South and East Asia as major hot spots of concern followed by the Middle East, Europe and North America.

“South and East Asia are likely more affected due to a combination of factors including higher baseline ambient temperatures and rapid urbanisation that contribute to greater cumulative heat stress on spermatogenesis,” Dr Huang explained.

“With ongoing global warming, chronic heat exposure may increasingly impact male reproductive health.”

Dr Huang said potential approaches to address the issue include:

increasing public awareness of heat exposure and reproductive health;encouraging protective behaviours;expanding research integrating climate and reproductive health data; andexploring clinical and lifestyle interventions to mitigate heat-related effects.

The research team was assisted by research intern Jeffrey Zi Kang Huang from Taipei American School, particularly in the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical research including AI-assisted data analysis and pattern recognition across global datasets.

“Further longitudinal and mechanistic studies will be important to better define causality and guide interventions,” he added.

The ASPIRE Congress is being held at the China National Convention Centre in Beijing. More than 3,000 scientists, clinicians, nurses and counsellors in assisted reproduction from around the world are attending the Congress.

For further information, go to https://www.aspire2026.com

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/south-and-east-asia-identified-as-hotspots-of-global-warming-related-impacts-on-male-fertility-302767469.html

SOURCE ASPIRE

Continue Reading

Trending