Diplomacy, Globalization and Heteropolarity: The Challenge of Adaptation

Globalization is the defining historical process of our times, conditioning, if not determining, outcomes across vast swathes of human activity. At the same time, a heteropolar world is emerging, one in which various and competing sources of power and influence are based more on difference than on similarity. In the face of these transformative forces, diplomacy is struggling to evolve. To date, none of the key elements of the diplomatic ecosystem – the foreign ministry, the Foreign Service, or the diplomatic business model – have adapted well, or quickly enough. If diplomacy is to achieve its full potential as a non-violent approach to the management of international relations and global issues through political communications, then radical reform will be required. These observations are particularly apt in Canada, where diplomatic performance has in recent years been troubled. The foreign ministry (formerly DFAIT), still struggling to absorb the deep cuts contained in the federal budget of March 2012, finds itself in the midst of a complicated merger with the aid agency (formerly CIDA). This unanticipated amalgamation has resulted in significant uncertainty and dislocation in both organizations, and is reminiscent of the disastrous split, and then re-integration, of the foreign and trade ministries 2004-06. Canadian public and digital diplomacy, widely considered to represent the leading edge of diplomatic practice, have been wound down as a result of the imposition of centralized control over all communications. The Foreign Service, for its part, remains locked in a protracted and acrimonious labour dispute over pay equity. Rotating strikes and working to rule have taken a toll on business and tourist arrivals, foreign student enrolment and high-level visits. In short, Canada’s diplomatic ecosystem is in a perilous state, and Canadian interests are suffering.In the age of globalization and heteropolarity, this won’t do

Prevalence and determinants of undetected dementia in the community: a systematic literature review and a meta-analysis

Objectives Detection of dementia is essential for improving the lives of patients but the extent of underdetection worldwide and its causes are not known. This study aimed to quantify the prevalence of undetected dementia and to examine its correlates. Methods/setting/participants A systematic search was conducted until October 2016 for studies reporting the proportion of undetected dementia and/or its determinants in either the community or in residential care settings worldwide. Random-effects models calculated the pooled rate of undetected dementia and subgroup analyses were conducted to identify determinants of the variation. Primary and secondary outcome measures The outcome measures of interest were the prevalence and determinants of undetected dementia. Results 23 studies were eligible for inclusion in this review. The pooled rate of undetected dementia was 61.7% (95% CI 55.0% to 68.0%). The rate of underdetection was higher in China and India (vs Europe and North America), in the community setting (vs residential/nursing care), age of <70 years, male gender and diagnosis by general practitioner. However, it was lower in the studies using Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) diagnosis criteria. Conclusions The prevalence of undetected dementia is high globally. Wide variations in detecting dementia need to be urgently examined, particularly in populations with low socioeconomic status. Efforts are required to reduce diagnostic inequality and to improve early diagnosis in the community

Exome Sequencing Implicates Ancestry-Related Mendelian Variation at SYNE1 in Childhood-Onset Essential Hypertension

Childhood-onset essential hypertension (COEH) is an uncommon form of hypertension that manifests in childhood or adolescence and, in the United States, disproportionately affects children of African ancestry. The etiology of COEH is unknown, but its childhood onset, low prevalence, high heritability, and skewed ancestral demography suggest the potential to identify rare genetic variation segregating in a Mendelian manner among affected individuals and thereby implicate genes important to disease pathogenesis. However, no COEH genes have been reported to date. Here, we identify recessive segregation of rare and putatively damaging missense variation in the spectrin domain of spectrin repeat containing nuclear envelope protein 1 (SYNE1), a cardiovascular candidate gene, in 3 of 16 families with early-onset COEH without an antecedent family history. By leveraging exome sequence data from an additional 48 COEH families, 1,700 in-house trios, and publicly available data sets, we demonstrate that compound heterozygous SYNE1 variation in these COEH individuals occurred more often than expected by chance and that this class of biallelic rare variation was significantly enriched among individuals of African genetic ancestry. Using in vitro shRNA knockdown of SYNE1, we show that reduced SYNE1 expression resulted in a substantial decrease in the elasticity of smooth muscle vascular cells that could be rescued by pharmacological inhibition of the downstream RhoA/Rho-associated protein kinase pathway. These results provide insights into the molecular genetics and underlying pathophysiology of COEH and suggest a role for precision therapeutics in the future

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Diplomacy, Globalization and Heteropolarity: The Challenge of Adaptation

Globalization is the defining historical process of our times, conditioning, if not determining, outcomes across vast swathes of human activity. At the same time, a heteropolar world is emerging, one in which various and competing sources of power and influence are based more on difference than on similarity. In the face of these transformative forces, diplomacy is struggling to evolve. To date, none of the key elements of the diplomatic ecosystem – the foreign ministry, the Foreign Service, or the diplomatic business model – have adapted well, or quickly enough. If diplomacy is to achieve its full potential as a non-violent approach to the management of international relations and global issues through political communications, then radical reform will be required. These observations are particularly apt in Canada, where diplomatic performance has in recent years been troubled. The foreign ministry (formerly DFAIT), still struggling to absorb the deep cuts contained in the federal budget of March 2012, finds itself in the midst of a complicated merger with the aid agency (formerly CIDA). This unanticipated amalgamation has resulted in significant uncertainty and dislocation in both organizations, and is reminiscent of the disastrous split, and then re-integration, of the foreign and trade ministries 2004-06. Canadian public and digital diplomacy, widely considered to represent the leading edge of diplomatic practice, have been wound down as a result of the imposition of centralized control over all communications. The Foreign Service, for its part, remains locked in a protracted and acrimonious labour dispute over pay equity. Rotating strikes and working to rule have taken a toll on business and tourist arrivals, foreign student enrolment and high-level visits. In short, Canada’s diplomatic ecosystem is in a perilous state, and Canadian interests are suffering.In the age of globalization and heteropolarity, this won’t do

Strontium isotope evidence for landscape use by early hominins

Ranging and residence patterns among early hominins have been indirectly inferred from morphology, stone-tool sourcing, referential models and phylogenetic models. However, the highly uncertain nature of such reconstructions limits our understanding of early hominin ecology, biology, social structure and evolution. We investigated landscape use in Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus from the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans cave sites in South Africa using strontium isotope analysis, a method that can help to identify the geological substrate on which an animal lived during tooth mineralization. Here we show that a higher proportion of small hominins than large hominins had non-local strontium isotope compositions. Given the relatively high levels of sexual dimorphism in early hominins, the smaller teeth are likely to represent female individuals, thus indicating that females were more likely than males to disperse from their natal groups. This is similar to the dispersal pattern found in chimpanzees, bonobos and many human groups, but dissimilar from that of most gorillas and other primates. The small proportion of demonstrably non-local large hominin individuals could indicate that male australopiths had relatively small home ranges, or that they preferred dolomitic landscapes