Major flaws in conflict prevention policies towards Africa : the conceptual deficits of international actors’ approaches and how to overcome them

Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these frequently do not distinguish with sufficient clarity between the ‘root causes’ of a conflict, its aggravating factors and its triggers. Specifically, a correct assessment of conflict prolonging (or sustaining) factors is of vital importance in Africa’s lingering confrontations. Broader approaches (e.g. “structural stability”) offer a better analytical framework than familiar one-dimensional explanations. Moreover, for explaining and dealing with violent conflicts a shift of attention from the nation-state towards the local and sub-regional level is needed.Aktuelle Analysen afrikanischer Gewaltkonflikte sind häufig voller Fehlinterpretationen (Mangel an Differenzierung, Genauigkeit und konzeptioneller Klarheit, Staatszentriertheit, fehlende mittelfristige Zielvorstellungen). Breitere Ansätze (z. B. das Modell der Strukturellen Stabilität) könnten die Grundlage für bessere Analyseraster und Politiken sein als eindimensionale Erklärungen. häufig differenzieren Erklärungsansätze nicht mit ausreichender Klarheit zwischen Ursachen, verschärfenden und auslösenden Faktoren. Insbesondere die richtige Einordnung konfliktverlängernder Faktoren ist in den jahrzehntelangen gewaltsamen Auseinandersetzungen in Afrika von zentraler Bedeutung. Das Diskussionspapier stellt die große Variationsbreite dominanter Erklärungsmuster der wichtigsten internationalen Geber und Akteure gegenüber und fordert einen Perspektivenwechsel zum Einbezug der lokalen und der subregionalen Ebene für die Erklärung und Bearbeitung gewaltsamer Konflikte

Mapping Morality with a Compass: Testing the theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ with a new questionnaire

Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) is the theory that morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC uses game theory to identify distinct types of cooperation, and predicts that each will be considered morally relevant, and each will give rise to a distinct moral domain. Here we test MAC's predictions by developing a new self-report measure of morality, the Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q), and comparing its psychometric properties to those of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). Over four studies, the results support MAC's seven-factor model of morality, but not the MFQ's five-factor model. Thus MAC emerges as the best available compass with which to explore the moral landscape

The Interrelationship of Tinnitus and Hearing Loss Secondary to Age, Noise Exposure, and Traumatic Brain Injury

ObjectiveTinnitus has been the No. 1 disability at the Veteran Administration for the last 15 years, yet its interaction with hearing loss secondary to etiologies such as age, noise trauma, and traumatic brain injuries remains poorly characterized. Our objective was to analyze hearing loss and tinnitus, including audiogram data, of the Million Veteran Program within the context of military exposures in an aging population.DesignHealth records, questionnaires, audiograms, and military data were aggregated for 758,005 Veteran participants in the Million Veteran Program 2011 to 2020, with relative risks (RR) calculated for ancestries, sex, hearing loss and military exposures such as combat, blast, and military era served. A multivariate model with significant demographic measures and exposures was then analyzed. Next, audiogram data stratified by sex were compared for those with and without tinnitus by two methods: first, mean thresholds at standard frequencies were compared to thresholds adjusted per ISO 7029:2000E age and sex formulae. Second, levels for those ≤40 years of age were compared with those 41 and older. Finally, a proportional hazards model was examined to ascertain the timing between the onset of tinnitus and hearing loss, calculated separately for electronic health record diagnoses (ICD) and self-report.ResultsTinnitus was either self-reported, diagnosed, or both in 37.5% (95% CI, 37.4 to 37.6), mean age 61.5 (95% CI, 61.4 to 61.5), range 18 to 112 years. Those with hearing loss were 4.15 times (95% CI, 4.12 to 4.15) as likely to have tinnitus. Americans of African descent were less likely to manifest tinnitus (RR 0.61, 95% CI, 0.60 to 0.61), as were women (RR 0.65, 95% CI, 0.64 to 0.65). A multivariate model indicated a higher RR of 1.73 for traumatic brain injury (95% CI, 1.71 to 1.73) and daily combat noise exposure (1.17, 95% CI, 1.14 to 1.17) than age (0.998, 95% CI, 0.997 to 0.998). Subjects ≤40 years of age had small but significantly elevated hearing thresholds through all standard frequencies compared to Veterans without tinnitus, and the effect of tinnitus on hearing thresholds diminished with age. In the hazard model, those >40 with new onset of tinnitus were at risk for hearing loss sooner and with greater incidence than those who were younger. The rate of hearing loss following tinnitus approached 100%. In contrast, only approximately 50% of those who self-reported hearing loss initially were at risk for later hearing loss, in contrast to ICD comparison, where those with ICD of hearing loss were more likely to sustain an ICD of tinnitus subsequently.ConclusionsEvidence suggests that the occurrence of tinnitus in the military is more closely related to environmental exposures than to aging. The finding that tinnitus affects hearing frequencies across the audiogram spectrum suggests an acoustic injury independent of tonotopicity. Particularly for males >40, tinnitus may be a harbinger of audiologic damage predictive of later hearing loss

The Genomic Basis of Noise-induced Hearing Loss: A Literature Review Organized by Cellular Pathways

OBJECTIVE:Using Reactome, a curated Internet database, noise-induced hearing loss studies were aggregated into cellular pathways for organization of the emerging genomic and epigenetic data in the literature. DATA SOURCES:PubMed and Reactome.org, a relational data base program systematizing biological processes into interactive pathways and subpathways based on ontology, cellular constituents, gene expression, and molecular components. STUDY SELECTION:Peer-reviewed population and laboratory studies for the previous 15 years relating genomics and noise and hearing loss were identified in PubMed. Criteria included p values 1.5, or duplicated studies. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS:One-hundred fifty-eight unique HGNC identifiers from 77 articles met the selection criteria, and were uploaded into the analysis program at http://reactome.org. These genes participated in a total of 621 cellular interactions in 21 of 23 pathways. Cellular response to stress with its attenuation phase, particularly in response to heat stress, detoxification of ROS, and specific areas of the immune system are predominant pathways identified as significantly 'overrepresented' (p values <0.1e-5 and false discovery rates <0.01). CONCLUSION:Twenty-one of 23 of the designated pathways in Reactome have significant influence on noise-induced hearing loss, signifying a confluence of molecular pathways in reaction to acoustic trauma; however, cellular response to stress, including heat shock response, and other small areas of immune response were highly overrepresented. Yet-to-be-explored genomics areas include miRNA, lncRNA, copy number variations, RNA sequencing, and human genome-wide association study

Hearing loss and tinnitus: association studies for complex-hearing disorders in mouse and man

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) provide an unbiased first look at genetic loci involved in aging and noise-induced sensorineural hearing loss and tinnitus. The hearing phenotype, whether audiogram-based or self-report, is regressed against genotyped information at representative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome. Findings include the fact that both hearing loss and tinnitus are polygenic disorders, with up to thousands of genes, each of effect size of &lt; 0.02. Smaller human GWAS' were able to use objective measures and identified a few loci; however, hundreds of thousands of participants have been required for the statistical power to identify significant variants, and GWAS is unable to assess rare variants with mean allele frequency &lt; 1%. Animal studies are required as well because of inability to access the human cochlea. Mouse GWAS builds on linkage techniques and the known phenotypic differences in auditory function between inbred strains. With the advantage that the laboratory environment can be controlled for noise and aging, the Hybrid Mouse Diversity Panel (HDMP) combines 100 strains sequenced at high resolution. Lift-over regions between mice and humans have identified over 17,000 homologous genes. Since most significant SNPs are either intergenic or in introns, and binding sites between species are poorly preserved between species, expression quantitative trait locus information is required to bring humans and mice into agreement. Transcriptome-wide analysis studies (TWAS) can prioritize putative causal genes and tissues. Diverse species, each making a distinct contribution, carry a synergistic advantage in the quest for treatment and ultimate cure of sensorineural hearing difficulties

Genome-Wide Association Study of Chronic Dizziness in the Elderly Identifies Loci Implicating MLLT10, BPTF, LINC01224, and ROS1

PurposeChronic age-related imbalance is a common cause of falls and subsequent death in the elderly and can arise from dysfunction of the vestibular system, an elegant neuroanatomical group of pathways that mediates human perception of acceleration, gravity, and angular head motion. Studies indicate that 27-46% of the risk of age-related chronic imbalance is genetic; nevertheless, the underlying genes remain unknown.MethodsThe cohort consisted of 50,339 cases and 366,900 controls in the Million Veteran Program. The phenotype comprised cases with two ICD diagnoses of vertigo or dizziness at least 6&nbsp;months apart, excluding acute or recurrent vertiginous syndromes and other non-vestibular disorders. Genome-wide association studies were performed as individual logistic regressions on European, African American, and Hispanic ancestries followed by trans-ancestry meta-analysis. Downstream analysis included case-case-GWAS, fine mapping, probabilistic colocalization of significant variants and genes with eQTLs, and functional analysis of significant hits.ResultsTwo significant loci were identified in Europeans, another in the Hispanic population, and two additional in trans-ancestry meta-analysis, including three novel loci. Fine mapping revealed credible sets of intronic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in MLLT10&nbsp;- a histone methyl transferase cofactor, BPTF&nbsp;- a subunit of a nucleosome remodeling complex implicated in neurodevelopment, and LINC01224&nbsp;- a proto-oncogene receptor tyrosine kinase.ConclusionDespite the difficulties of phenotyping the nature of chronic imbalance, we replicated two loci from previous vertigo GWAS studies and identified three novel loci. Findings suggest candidates for further study and ultimate treatment of this common elderly disorder

Summary statistics from <i>Novel Risk Loci in Tinnitus and Causal Inference With Neuropsychiatric Disorders Among Adults of European Ancestry</i>

Summary statistics from Clifford et al., 2020 (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2020.2920).Please refer to original publication for detailed study information and phenotype definitions.</p