Land, Memory, and Identity: The Palestinian Internal Refugees in Israel

This article describes and analyzes the processes the Internal Refugees have experienced since the establishment of the state till this day from the perspective of the struggle over the “refugee identity.” While the state has tried to undermine this identity as part of its policy against the Right of Return, activists from the refugees’ communities have done their best to preserve it. In the late 1980s it looked as if the state’s goal of uprooting the refugee identity was achieved, but the last decade witnessed an awakening of this identity. This has a lot to do with the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but also, it is suggested here, with the very nature of “refugee identity,” which has two components, of which one is positive (“my roots are there”) and one is negative (“I am not from here”).Cet article décrit et analyse les processus vécus les réfugiés internes depuis l’établissement de l’État (d’Israël), jusqu’à aujourd’hui et ce, à travers de leur lutte pour leur « identité comme réfugié ». Bien que l’État se soit efforcé de saper cette identité dans le cadre de sa politique contre le Droit au retour, les militants des camps de réfugiés ont tout fait pour la préserver. Vers la fin des années 80, il a semblé que l’État avait effectivement réussi à atteindre son but, soit de déraciner l’identité des réfugiés; mais la dernière décennie a vu une renaissance de cette identité. Les négociations de paix israélo-palestiniennes ont grandement contribué à cet état de chose, mais l’article suggère, qu’en plus, cela se rapporte à la nature même de « l’identité du réfugié », qui comporte deux aspects, l’un positif (« mes racines sont ici ») et l’autre négatif (« je ne suis pas d’ici »)

Fine-Grain Checkpointing with In-Cache-Line Logging

Non-Volatile Memory offers the possibility of implementing high-performance, durable data structures. However, achieving performance comparable to well-designed data structures in non-persistent (transient) memory is difficult, primarily because of the cost of ensuring the order in which memory writes reach NVM. Often, this requires flushing data to NVM and waiting a full memory round-trip time. In this paper, we introduce two new techniques: Fine-Grained Checkpointing, which ensures a consistent, quickly recoverable data structure in NVM after a system failure, and In-Cache-Line Logging, an undo-logging technique that enables recovery of earlier state without requiring cache-line flushes in the normal case. We implemented these techniques in the Masstree data structure, making it persistent and demonstrating the ease of applying them to a highly optimized system and their low (5.9-15.4\%) runtime overhead cost.Comment: In 2019 Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS 19), April 13, 2019, Providence, RI, US

CEREBRAL SOMATOSENSORY POTENTIALS EVOKED BY MUSCLE STRETCH, CUTANEOUS TAPS AND ELECTRICAL STIMULATION OF PERIPHERAL NERVES IN THE LOWER LIMBS IN MAN

Somatosensory cerebral evoked potentials were recorded in man to natural forms of somatosensory stimulation of the lower extremity including stretching of the muscle tendons, tapping on muscle bellies and tapping on cutaneous surfaces. These potentials were compared with those evoked by electrical stimulation of peripheral nerves measuring the amplitudes and latencies of the evoked potential components and defining the effects of stimulus variables on these parameters. Spinal cord potentials could only be detected to electrical stimuli. Mechanical stimulation of tendons and muscle bellies evoked scalp potentials at latencies earlier than those evoked by electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerve and by cutaneous stimulation at the same level of the leg. Muscle receptors, most probably muscle spindles, are the source of the short latency components obtained by the stretching of tendons and tapping on muscle bellies. The proximal location of these receptors as well as very rapid spinal conduction account for the latency difference. The potentials were larger to electrical stimulation of nerve trunks than to mechanical stimulation of tendons or skin, suggesting the asynchronous activation of a smaller number of fibres by the latter. Individuals with the largest potentials to one form of stimulation usually had the largest potentials to the other modes of stimulation. The use of physiological stimuli such as muscle stretch to test the transmission in specific neural pathways might be useful in investigating the processing of relatively selective afferent volleys using noninvasive evoked potential recordings

Obesity, hyperglycemia and endothelial function in inner city Bronx adolescents: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: Along with the rise in obesity, cardiovascular disease (CVD) has become the major cause of death in developed countries. Although overt coronary heart disease rarely manifests during childhood, atherosclerosis can begin by the second decade of life. Therefore, identifying reliable risk markers of early vascular disease in childhood could be important. Alteration in endothelial function (EF) is an early preclinical marker of the atherosclerotic process and can be assessed non-invasively using reactive hyperemia peripheral arterial tonometry (RH-PAT). The purpose of this study was to investigate if obesity in children is associated with lower EF as measured with RH-PAT, and if obese children with impaired glucose regulation have further impairment in RH-PAT measured EF compared to obese children with normal glucose tolerance. METHODS: Cardiovascular risk factors, adipocytokines and EF using RH-PAT were evaluated in lean (n = 14) and obese (n = 37) adolescents (age 12–18 years). Based on an oral glucose tolerance test, the obese group was subdivided into: obese with normal (NGT, n = 22) and obese with impaired glucose regulation (IGR, n = 15). RESULTS: RH-PAT score was lower in obese subjects compared to lean controls (1.70 ± 0.02 vs. 1.98 ± 0.09, P = 0.02), indicating worse EF. This difference remained significant when adjusted for age, sex and ethnicity (P = 0.02). We observed a pattern of worsening EF with increasing metabolic burden, with RH-PAT scores of 1.98 ± 0.09,1.73 ± 0.08 and 1.65 ± 0.12 in the lean, obese-NGT and obese-IGR groups, respectively, p(trend) = 0.03. Obese subjects were more insulin resistant [higher HOMA] (p = 0.03), and had higher levels of leptin (p = 0.004), hsCRP (p = 0.0004), and TNF-α (p = 0.03) compared to lean subjects. Adjusting for insulin resistance and adipocytokines substantially attenuated the obesity association with RH-PAT, suggesting that insulin resistance and inflammation may mediate the association of EF with obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Risk factors for adult cardiovascular disease, including impaired EF, insulin resistance and inflammation, are evident in obese adolescents. Whether early detection of these cardiovascular risk factors will be useful for informing interventions to prevent disease progression needs further study. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials Identifier: NCT0187903

Utility of the modified ATP III defined metabolic syndrome and severe obesity as predictors of insulin resistance in overweight children and adolescents: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The rising prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome (MetS) has received increased attention since both place individuals at risk for Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Insulin resistance (IR) has been implicated in the pathogenesis of obesity and MetS in both children and adults and is a known independent cardiovascular risk factor. However measures of IR are not routinely performed in children while MetS or severe obesity when present, are considered as clinical markers for IR. OBJECTIVE: The study was undertaken to assess the utility of ATPIII defined metabolic syndrome (MetS) and severe obesity as predictors of insulin resistance (IR) in a group of 576 overweight children and adolescents attending a pediatric obesity clinic in Brooklyn. METHODS: Inclusion criteria were children ages 3–19, and body mass index > 95th percentile for age. MetS was defined using ATP III criteria, modified for age. IR was defined as upper tertile of homeostasis model assessment (HOMA) within 3 age groups (3–8, n = 122; 9–11, n = 164; 12–19, n = 290). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values and odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated within age groups for predicting IR using MetS and severe obesity respectively. RESULTS: MetS was present in 45%, 48% and 42% of the respective age groups and significantly predicted IR only in the oldest group (OR = 2.0, 95% CI 1.2, 3.4; p = .006). Sensitivities were <55%; specificities <63% and positive predictive values ≤ 42% in all groups. Severe obesity was significantly associated with IR in both the 9–11 (p = .002) and 12–18 (p = .01) groups but positive predictive values were nonetheless ≤ 51% for all groups. CONCLUSION: The expression of IR in overweight children and adolescents is heterogeneous and MetS or severe obesity may not be sufficiently sensitive and specific indicators of insulin resistance. In addition to screening for MetS in overweight children markers for IR should be routinely performed. Further research is needed to establish threshold values of insulin measures in overweight children who may be at greater associated risk of adverse outcomes whether or not MetS is present

Police overestimation of criminal career homogeneity

Police presumptions about criminal career trajectories have been little studied. The exploratory study reported here involved 42 police staff of varying rank and experience. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire which asked them to predict the type of offence that an individual with specified prior record was most likely to commit next. Participating police personnel substantially overstated the homogeneity of criminal careers, i.e. the nature of prior offences determined their prediction of their next offence more than available official data would deem reasonable. An incidental finding was that officers who rated the probability of further offending highest were also those who thought criminal careers most specialised. Theimplications for operational police decision making are discussed and held to be profound

Cardiovascular Disease Risk of Abdominal Obesity vs. Metabolic Abnormalities

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93656/1/oby.2010.168.pd