Effects of UN Peacekeeping Missions

Of everything the United Nations does, probably one its most scrutinized programs is its peacekeeping missions across the globe. Even though humanity is experiencing an unprecedented level of peace, deadly civil wars still occur across the world, especially in developing nations. The UN has become involved in many of these conflicts, sending peacekeeping forces to the country in crisis. UN peace efforts are very important because they have the potential to save thousands of lives and preventing the further damages of war. It is for this reason that it is vital to examine the UN peacekeeping missions and evaluate the outcomes these have produced. My research into this question will briefly look at the process of peacekeeping and its results based on reports after peacekeeping missions leave the nation in question. The overall question I seek to answer is “Do UN peacekeeping forces leave a civil war-stricken country in a better or worse condition since they have arrived?”. Essentially I seek to asses the UN’s effectiveness in peacekeeping overall. In order to find an answer to this question, I will examine various scholarly debates and papers all evaluating the UN’s performance in various conflicts. These papers range in backgrounds and hypotheses but they break down these conflicts into various tests in order to identify the outcomes and come to a general conclusion. Each of these studies also highlights specific conflicts as examples in support of their argument, thus providing the research with more credibility, while still showing the vast complication of peacekeeping. UN peacekeeping forces, in the majority of cases, fail to bring about stable peace in civil wars. I believe this because, from what I have seen, there seems to be a lot of civil wars that keep occurring or fail to stop, for example, Syria. While Syria has caught quite the attention and action of the UN, its war has no end in sight. Conflicts in various African nations such as Somalia fail to end as well, thus bringing me to what I hypothesize

Contrast and Phase Combination in Binocular Vision

BACKGROUND: How the visual system combines information from the two eyes to form a unitary binocular representation of the external world is a fundamental question in vision science that has been the focus of many psychophysical and physiological investigations. Ding & Sperling (2006) measured perceived phase of the cyclopean image, and developed a binocular combination model in which each eye exerts gain control on the other eye's signal and over the other eye's gain control. Critically, the relative phase of the monocular sine-waves plays a central role. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We used the Ding-Sperling paradigm but measured both the perceived contrast and phase of cyclopean images in three hundred and eighty combinations of base contrast, interocular contrast ratio, eye origin of the probe, and interocular phase difference. We found that the perceived contrast of the cyclopean image was independent of the relative phase of the two monocular gratings, although the perceived phase depended on the relative phase and contrast ratio of the monocular images. We developed a new multi-pathway contrast-gain control model (MCM) that elaborates the Ding-Sperling binocular combination model in two ways: (1) phase and contrast of the cyclopean images are computed in separate pathways, although with shared cross-eye contrast-gain control; and (2) phase-independent local energy from the two monocular images are used in binocular contrast combination. With three free parameters, the model yielded an excellent account of data from all the experimental conditions. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Binocular phase combination depends on the relative phase and contrast ratio of the monocular images but binocular contrast combination is phase-invariant. Our findings suggest the involvement of at least two separate pathways in binocular combination

Active, but not passive cigarette smoking was inversely associated with mammographic density

The opposing carcinogenic and antiestrogenic properties of tobacco smoke may explain why epidemiologic studies have not consistently reported positive associations for active smoking and breast cancer risk. A negative relation between mammographic density, a strong breast cancer risk factor, and active smoking would lend support for an antiestrogenic mechanism. We used multivariable linear regression to assess the associations of active smoking and secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure with mammographic density in 799 pre- and early perimenopausal women in the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN). We observed that current active smoking was associated with 7.2% lower mammographic density, compared to never active smoking and no SHS exposure (p = 0.02). Starting to smoke before 18 years of age and having smoked ≥20 cigarettes/day were also associated with statistically significantly lower percent densities. Among nulliparous women having smoked ≥20 cigarettes/day was associated with 23.8% lower density, compared to having smoked ≤9 cigarettes/day (p < 0.001). Our findings support the hypothesis that tobacco smoke exerts an antiestrogenic effect on breast tissue, but counters the known increased risk of breast cancer with smoking prior to first full-term birth. Thus, our data suggest that the antiestrogenic but not the carcinogenic effects of smoking may be reflected by breast density

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability