When wounds travel

This article explores trauma as a form of ‘social wound’, entrenched in the intersections of local histories and social experiences of violence and displacement. Building on ethnographic accounts of displacement of Iraqis in Lebanon in the wake of the US occupation of Iraq (2003–2011), I ask: what happens when wounds travel across different social worlds and local histories of violence? The account presented tells the story of Hussein, an Iraqi refugee who escaped Iraq during the height of sectarian violence (2006–2007) and claimed asylum status as a torture victim in Lebanon. For displaced people like Hussein, the experiences of violence and uprooting were amplified by the uncertainties of everyday life in Beirut. His case shows that the selective sorting of refugees around questions of vulnerability and victimhood weaves further tensions into the social fabric of displaced peoples and their host communities. In contexts of layered histories of war, violence, displacement, and humanitarian interventions, which characterize much of the Middle East, wounds constitute the interstitial tissue of the social; they are what brings people together and what sets them apart. An ethnography of such ‘travelling wounds’ might account for the complex ways that discourses of trauma and histories of violence unravel in everyday encounters

A contribution to the deterministic modelling of circadian rhythms in cell proliferation activity

This paper presents a deterministic continuous model of proliferative cell activity. The classical series of connected compartments is revisited along with a simple mathematical treatment of two hypotheses: constant transit times and harmonic Ts. Several examples are presented to support these ideas, both taken from previous literature and recent experiences with the fish Carassius auratus, developed at the Junta de Energía Nuclear, Madrid, Spain

Urban warfare ecology: A study of water supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step-wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain-drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases

Blurred lines

The neutrality of medicine and health care professionals in different conflict settings in the Middle East have come under scrutiny in recent human rights reports, and should be seen as part of the broader fallout of the US-led ‘global war on terror.’ The last two decades of US military attacks on health infrastructures in Iraq and the use of polio-vaccination campaigns to track down ‘terrorists’ are acts of war that have further blurred the lines between health care and warfare. The failure of international legal processes and institutions to prevent such assaults or to prosecute those responsible raises questions about the Eurocentric system of checks and balances that shape international humanitarian law and its invocation as a ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ framework

Barriers to effective control of type 2 diabetes in outpatient clinics in Mosul: A case control study

Background: Diabetes disease is a heterogeneous disorder with distinct genetic, etiological, immunological, and pathophysiological mechanisms that result in glucose intolerance and hyperglycemia.  Barriers to effective diabetes controls are extending and interrelating with one another. Determining these hurdles is critical in enabling patients to improve their diabetes control and long-term problems. Aim: To assess barriers to effective control of type-2 diabetes in outpatient clinics in Mosul city. Patient and method: a case-control study, was done on 200 diabetic patients, 100 with uncontrolled diabetes ad 100 with controlled, who were attending Al-Wafa center for diabetes and endocrinology, and 4 other health centers in Mosul for the period between the 1st of February till the 31st of July 2019.  Barriers include communication barriers, personal, self-management, and care barriers. Oral and written consent was taken from each participant.  Data was filled by the investigator through direct interviews with the patient or relative. Results: study showed that  frequency of all barriers domains was high in patients having uncontrolled diabetes and the difference was statistically significant (OR=6.93, 95% CI= 3.50-13.68, p-value=0.0001) in communication barriers and (OR=3.46, 95% CI= 1.94-6.17, p-value=0.0001) in personal barriers (OR=1.84, 95% CI= 1.05-3.23, p=0.033), (OR=1.94, 95% CI= 1.10- 3.43, p=0.022) in self-management barriers and care barriers, respectively. Conclusion: frequency of all domains was higher in patients having uncontrolled diabetes and the highest impact on the control of diabetes mellitus type 2 from the communication barriers.Antecedentes: la diabetes es una alteración metabólica heterogéneo por distintos mecanismos genéticos, etiológicos, inmunológicos y fisiopatológicos que dan como resultado intolerancia a la glucosa e hiperglucemia. Las barreras para el control efectivo de la diabetes se están extendiendo y se interrelacionan entre sí. Determinar estos obstáculos es fundamental para permitir que los pacientes mejoren su control de la diabetes y sus problemas a largo plazo. Objetivo: evaluar las barreras para el control efectivo de la diabetes tipo 2 en las clínicas ambulatorias de la ciudad de Mosul. Paciente y método: estudio de casos y controles realizado en 200 pacientes diabéticos, 100 con diabetes no controlada y 100 con control, que asistían al centro de diabetes y endocrinología Al-Wafa, y otros 4 centros de salud en Mosul para el período comprendido entre el 1 de febrero hasta el 31 de julio de 2019. Las barreras incluyen barreras de comunicación, personales, de autogestión y de cuidado. Se tomaron los consentimientos orales y escritos de cada participante. Los datos fueron llenados por el investigador a través de entrevista directa con el paciente o familiar. Resultados: el estudio mostró que la frecuencia de todos los dominios de las barreras fue alta en pacientes con diabetes no controlada y la diferencia fue estadísticamente significativa (OR=6,93, IC del 95%= 3,50-13,68, valor de p=0,0001) en las barreras de comunicación y (OR=3,46, 95% IC= 1,94-6.17, p-value=0,0001) en barreras personales (OR=1,84, 95% IC= 1,05-3,23, p=0,033), (OR=1,94, 95% IC= 1,10-3,43, p=0.022) en barreras de autogestión y barreras de cuidado, respectivamente. Conclusión: la frecuencia de todos los dominios fue mayor en pacientes con diabetes no controlada y el mayor impacto en el control de la diabetes mellitus tipo 2 de las barreras de comunicación