Civil Society, Conflicts, and the Politicization of Human Rights

Civil Society, Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights explores violent conflict and peace. The contributors examine how violence is generated, managed, exploited and eradicated in ethno-political conflicts, and how societies can be dragged out of conflict onto the transition towards peace. The usual take on these phenomena focuses on the role of governmental actors, both national and international. While official actors remain important, Civil Society, Conflicts and the Politicization of Human Rights examines the other side of the coin: the non-governmental component in ethno-political conflicts. Civil society actors, or as they are defined in this book, \u201cconflict society organizations\u201d (CoSOs), are increasingly central in view of the high degree of complexity of contemporary ethno-political conflicts. CoSOs have become key players in ethno-political conflicts, both as violators and as promoters of human rights. Nevertheless, the precise relationships underpinning the human rights\u2013civil society\u2013conflict nexus have not been fully examined. This volume analyses the impact of civil society on ethno-political conflicts through their human rights-related activities, and identifies the means to strengthen the complementarity between civil society and international governmental actors in promoting peace. These aims are addressed by examining four case studies in the European neighbourhood: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Turkey\u2019s Kurdish question and Israel\u2013Palestine

Energy spectrum and Landau levels in bilayer graphene with spin-orbit interaction

We present a theoretical study of the bandstructure and Landau levels in bilayer graphene at low energies in the presence of a transverse magnetic field and Rashba spin-orbit interaction in the regime of negligible trigonal distortion. Within an effective low energy approach (L\"owdin partitioning theory) we derive an effective Hamiltonian for bilayer graphene that incorporates the influence of the Zeeman effect, the Rashba spin-orbit interaction, and inclusively, the role of the intrinsic spin-orbit interaction on the same footing. Particular attention is spent to the energy spectrum and Landau levels. Our modeling unveil the strong influence of the Rashba coupling $\lambda_R$ in the spin-splitting of the electron and hole bands. Graphene bilayers with weak Rashba spin-orbit interaction show a spin-splitting linear in momentum and proportional to $\lambda_R$, but scales inversely proportional to the interlayer hopping energy $\gamma_1$. However, at robust spin-orbit coupling $\lambda_R$ the energy spectrum shows a strong warping behavior near the Dirac points. We find the bias-induced gap in bilayer graphene to be decreasing with increasing Rashba coupling, a behavior resembling a topological insulator transition. We further predict an unexpected assymetric spin-splitting and crossings of the Landau levels due to the interplay between the Rashba interaction and the external bias voltage. Our results are of relevance for interpreting magnetotransport and infrared cyclotron resonance measurements, including also situations of comparatively weak spin-orbit coupling.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Taxonomic Novelty and Distinctive Genomic Features of Hot Spring Cyanobacteria

Several cyanobacterial species are dominant primary producers in hot spring microbial mats. To date, hot spring cyanobacterial taxonomy, as well as the evolution of their genomic adaptations to high temperatures, are poorly understood, with genomic information currently available for only a few dominant genera, including Fischerella and Synechococcus. To address this knowledge gap, the present study expands the genomic landscape of hot spring cyanobacteria and traces the phylum-wide genomic consequences of evolution in high temperature environments. From 21 globally distributed hot spring metagenomes, with temperatures between 32 and 75 degrees C, 57 medium- and high-quality cyanobacterial metagenome-assembled genomes were recovered, representing taxonomic novelty for 1 order, 3 families, 15 genera and 36 species. Comparative genomics of 93 hot spring genomes (including the 57 metagenome-assembled genomes) and 66 non-thermal genomes, showed that the former have smaller genomes and a higher GC content, as well as shorter proteins that are more hydrophilic and basic, when compared to the non-thermal genomes. Additionally, the core accessory orthogroups from the hot spring genomes of some genera had a greater abundance of functional categories, such as inorganic ion metabolism, translation and post-translational modifications. Moreover, hot spring genomes showed increased abundances of inorganic ion transport and amino acid metabolism, as well as less replication and transcription functions in the protein coding sequences. Furthermore, they showed a higher dependence on the CRISPR-Cas defense system against exogenous nucleic acids, and a reduction in secondary metabolism biosynthetic gene clusters. This suggests differences in the cyanobacterial response to environment-specific microbial communities. This phylum-wide study provides new insights into cyanobacterial genomic adaptations to a specific niche where they are dominant, which could be essential to trace bacterial evolution pathways in a warmer world, such as the current global warming scenario

Pruritus is a common feature in sheep infected with the BSE agent.

BACKGROUND: The variability in the clinical or pathological presentation of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) in sheep, such as scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), has been attributed to prion protein genotype, strain, breed, clinical duration, dose, route and type of inoculum and the age at infection. The study aimed to describe the clinical signs in sheep infected with the BSE agent throughout its clinical course to determine whether the clinical signs were as variable as described for classical scrapie in sheep. The clinical signs were compared to BSE-negative sheep to assess if disease-specific clinical markers exist. RESULTS: Forty-seven (34%) of 139 sheep, which comprised 123 challenged sheep and 16 undosed controls, were positive for BSE. Affected sheep belonged to five different breeds and three different genotypes (ARQ/ARQ, VRQ/VRQ and AHQ/AHQ). None of the controls or BSE exposed sheep with ARR alleles were positive. Pruritus was present in 41 (87%) BSE positive sheep; the remaining six were judged to be pre-clinically infected. Testing of the response to scratching along the dorsum of a sheep proved to be a good indicator of clinical disease with a test sensitivity of 85% and specificity of 98% and usually coincided with weight loss. Clinical signs that were displayed significantly earlier in BSE positive cases compared to negative cases were behavioural changes, pruritic behaviour, a positive scratch test, alopecia, skin lesions, teeth grinding, tremor, ataxia, loss of weight and loss of body condition. The frequency and severity of each specific clinical sign usually increased with the progression of disease over a period of 16-20 weeks. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that BSE in sheep presents with relatively uniform clinical signs, with pruritus of increased severity and abnormalities in behaviour or movement as the disease progressed. Based on the studied sheep, these clinical features appear to be independent of breed, affected genotype, dose, route of inoculation and whether BSE was passed into sheep from cattle or from other sheep, suggesting that the clinical phenotype of BSE is influenced by the TSE strain more than by other factors. The clinical phenotype of BSE in the genotypes and breed studied was indistinguishable from that described for classical scrapie cases

Movements, connectivity, and space use of immature green turtles within coastal habitats of the Culebra Archipelago, Puerto Rico: implications for conservation

Juvenile green turtles occupy coastal marine habitats important for their ontogeny; however, the details of their movement, connectivity, and space use in these developmental habitats are still poorly understood. Given that these areas are often threatened by human disturbance, additional information on green turtle spatial ecology is needed to meet conservation end- points for this endangered species. For this study, we used fixed passive acoustic telemetry to (1) describe movement patterns and connectivity of immature green turtles within, outside, and across 2 bays, Manglar and Tortuga bays, on Culebra and Culebrita islands, Puerto Rico; and (2) determine spatio-temporal drivers of the presence and absence of turtles within Manglar Bay. Network analysis used to quantify movement patterns showed that turtles in our study exhibited differential space use with little to no connectivity across the 2 bays. In addition, turtles exhibited high site fidelity, with larger turtles leaving on brief trips. We applied a presence−absence Bayesian binomial model on a subset of 9 turtles at an hourly temporal scale and showed that turtles within Manglar Bay occupied areas of lagoon and seagrass habitats at night and were rarely using areas of macroalgae habitat. The parameter estimates from the model enabled us to predict the space use of turtles across Manglar Bay, and the hourly probability distributions highlighted predictive diel movement patterns across the bay. Considering the importance of juvenile and subadult life stages for population viability, we recommend continued protection of these critical juvenile turtle developmental habitats to ensure recruitment into the adult life stage

No. 07: The Urban Food System of Mexico City, Mexico

This report provides an overview of Greater Mexico City and its food system. The city’s history, demographic characteristics, geography and economy are first discussed. The city’s urban food system and urban food security are then examined with a particular focus on formal and informal food retail, food expenditure patterns, and policies to combat hunger and food insecurity. Meeting the daily food demands of Mexico City’s over 20 million inhabitants requires the agricultural production of Mexico’s rural areas, its fishing industry and food imports. Food products arrive in the city from around the country in a combination of traditional and highly sophisticated modern systems of food supply and distribution. Structural changes in recent decades have led to modifications in the systems of supply, distribution and food consumption with vertically integrated companies now controlling aspects of the food chain. The system of supply and marketing of food products is also characterized by competition between public markets, large wholesale and retail companies, and neighbourhood convenience stores. While levels of household food insecurity (undernutrition) are lower than in other global cities of the South, Mexico City faces an epidemic of overnutrition, obesity and non-communicable diseases

Exploring variations in childhood stunting in Nigeria using league table, control chart and spatial analysis

Background: Stunting, linear growth retardation is the best measure of child health inequalities as it captures multiple dimensions of children’s health, development and environment where they live. The developmental priorities and socially acceptable health norms and practices in various regions and states within Nigeria remains disaggregated and with this, comes the challenge of being able to ascertain which of the regions and states identifies with either high or low childhood stunting to further investigate the risk factors and make recommendations for action oriented policy decisions. Methods: We used data from the birth histories included in the 2008 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to estimate childhood stunting. Stunting was defined as height for age below minus two standard deviations from the median height for age of the standard World Health Organization reference population. We plotted control charts of the proportion of childhood stunting for the 37 states (including federal capital, Abuja) in Nigeria. The Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) were used as a measure of the overall clustering and is assessed by a test of a null hypothesis. Results: Childhood stunting is high in Nigeria with an average of about 39%. The percentage of children with stunting ranged from 11.5% in Anambra state to as high as 60% in Kebbi State. Ranking of states with respect to childhood stunting is as follows: Anambra and Lagos states had the least numbers with 11.5% and 16.8% respectively while Yobe, Zamfara, Katsina, Plateau and Kebbi had the highest (with more than 50% of their underfives having stunted growth). Conclusions: Childhood stunting is high in Nigeria and varied significantly across the states. The northern states have a higher proportion than the southern states. There is an urgent need for studies to explore factors that may be responsible for these special cause variations in childhood stunting in Nigeria

Towards a formal description of the collapse approach to the inflationary origin of the seeds of cosmic structure

Inflation plays a central role in our current understanding of the universe. According to the standard viewpoint, the homogeneous and isotropic mode of the inflaton field drove an early phase of nearly exponential expansion of the universe, while the quantum fluctuations (uncertainties) of the other modes gave rise to the seeds of cosmic structure. However, if we accept that the accelerated expansion led the universe into an essentially homogeneous and isotropic space-time, with the state of all the matter fields in their vacuum (except for the zero mode of the inflaton field), we can not escape the conclusion that the state of the universe as a whole would remain always homogeneous and isotropic. It was recently proposed in [A. Perez, H. Sahlmann and D. Sudarsky, "On the quantum origin of the seeds of cosmic structure," Class. Quant. Grav. 23, 2317-2354 (2006)] that a collapse (representing physics beyond the established paradigm, and presumably associated with a quantum-gravity effect a la Penrose) of the state function of the inflaton field might be the missing element, and thus would be responsible for the emergence of the primordial inhomogeneities. Here we will discuss a formalism that relies strongly on quantum field theory on curved space-times, and within which we can implement a detailed description of such a process. The picture that emerges clarifies many aspects of the problem, and is conceptually quite transparent. Nonetheless, we will find that the results lead us to argue that the resulting picture is not fully compatible with a purely geometric description of space-time.Comment: 53 pages, no figures. Revision to match the published versio