Still There: Politics, Sectarianism and the Reverberations of War in the Presences and Absences of the Syrian State

What gets displaced in war, even when people don't move? How does conflict transform and reverberate among those still there? And, what can sectarianism tell us about state power in war and in occupation? To answer, we theorize and problematize the relationship of sectarianism to the state, and explore the effects of war and occupation in everyday practice and in socio-economic and political institutions. The cases come from two Syrian Druze regions, from the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Height and from Jaramana, Damascus. In the first case, the Israeli occupation shifted the national border, and, in the second case, the war in Syria created new internal borders and checkpoints. Tracing the displacement of conflict through sectarianism allows us to think through state borders, and explore everyday life in relation to economic pressures and geopolitics. It is within these absences and presences of the state that the transformations of conflict and belonging appear

Still There. Politics, Sectarianism and the Reverberations of War in the Presences and Absences of the Syrian State

This is the final version. Available on open access from Berghahn via the DOI in this recordWhat gets displaced in war, even when people don't move? How does conflict transform and reverberate among those still there? And, what can sectarianism tell us about state power in war and in occupation? To answer, we theorize and problematize the relationship of sectarianism to the state, and explore the effects of war and occupation in everyday practice and in socio-economic and political institutions. The cases come from two Syrian Druze regions, from the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Height and from Jaramana, Damascus. In the first case, the Israeli occupation shifted the national border, and, in the second case, the war in Syria created new internal borders and checkpoints. Tracing the displacement of conflict through sectarianism allows us to think through state borders, and explore everyday life in relation to economic pressures and geopolitics. It is within these absences and presences of the state that the transformations of conflict and belonging appear

Stateless but rooted: Resistance, land and landscape in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights

Could the struggle against Israeli occupation within this rural vantage on the Middle East offer new insights into the emancipatory potential of agrarian and land-based political movements

The effectiveness of neuromuscular warm-up strategies, that require no additional equipment, for preventing lower limb injuries during sports participation: a systematic review

PMCID: PMC3408383The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/75. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

An Extension Study of PF-05280586, a Potential Rituximab Biosimilar, versus Rituximab in Subjects with Active Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective; This extension study provided continued treatment to subjects with active rheumatoid arthritis who had participated for ≥16 weeks in a pharmacokinetic similarity study of PF‐05280586 (potential rituximab biosimilar). Objectives were to evaluate overall pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, immunogenicity, safety, and tolerability of PF‐05280586 after transition from a licensed rituximab product to PF‐05280586, and followup of biomarker and efficacy assessments. Methods; Subjects were offered ≤3 additional courses of treatment of PF‐05280586, with or without a single transition from rituximab EU (rituximab‐EU) or US (rituximab‐US) to PF‐05280586. Each course comprised 2 IV infusions (1,000 mg on Days 1 and 15, separated by 24 weeks [±8 weeks)]. Results; Of 220 subjects in the parent study, 185 were randomized and included in this study. There were no notable differences in drug concentrations between groups or across courses, with little variation in depletion of CD19+ B‐cells between groups, and no apparent relationship between infusion‐related reactions and antidrug antibodies with or without single transition from licensed rituximab to PF‐05280586. Long‐term safety and tolerability of PF‐05280586 was acceptable in all groups for up to 96 weeks, with a low incidence of treatment‐emergent adverse events independent of single drug transition. The percentage of subjects with low disease activity score and disease activity score remission was similar across groups for all time points, and responses were sustained until end of study. Conclusions; This study demonstrated acceptable safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity, with or without single transition from licensed rituximab to PF‐05280586, without increased immunogenicity on single transition

D-brane potentials in the warped resolved conifold and natural inflation

In this paper we obtain a model of Natural Inflation from string theory with a Planckian decay constant. We investigate D-brane dynamics in the background of the warped resolved conifold (WRC) throat approximation of Type IIB string compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds. When we glue the throat to a compact bulk Calabi-Yau, we generate a D-brane potential which is a solution to the Laplace equation on the resolved conifold. We can exactly solve this equation, including dependence on the angular coordinates. The solutions are valid down to the tip of the resolved conifold, which is not the case for the more commonly used deformed conifold. This allows us to exploit the effect of the warping, which is strongest at the tip. We inflate near the tip using an angular coordinate of a D5-brane in the WRC which has a discrete shift symmetry, and feels a cosine potential, giving us a model of Natural Inflation, from which it is possible to get a Planckian decay constant whilst maintaining control over the backreaction. This is because the decay constant for a wrapped brane contains powers of the warp factor, and so can be made large, while the wrapping parameter can be kept small enough so that backreaction is under control.Comment: 41 pages, 3 appendices, 1 figure, PDFLaTex; various clarifications added along with a new appendix on b-axions and wrapped D5 branes;version matches the one published in JHE

Home-based music therapy - a systematic overview of settings and conditions for an innovative service in healthcare

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Almost every Western healthcare system is changing to make their services more centered around out-patient care. In particular, long-term or geriatric patients who have been discharged from the hospital often require home-based care and therapy. Therefore, several programs have been developed to continue the therapeutic process and manage the special needs of patients after discharge from hospital. Music therapy has also moved into this field of healthcare service by providing home-based music therapy (HBMT) programs. This article reviews and summarizes the settings and conditions of HBMT for the first time.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The following databases were used to find articles on home-based music therapy: AMED, CAIRSS, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsychINFO, and PSYNDEX. The search terms were "home-based music therapy" and "mobile music therapy". Included articles were analyzed with respect to participants as well as conditions and settings of HBMT. Furthermore, the date of publication, main outcomes, and the design and quality of the studies were investigated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 20 international publications, 11 clinical studies and nine reports from practice, mainly from the United States (n = 8), were finally included in the qualitative synthesis. Six studies had a randomized controlled design and included a total of 507 patients. The vast majority of clients of HBMT are elderly patients living at home and people who need hospice and palliative care. Although settings were heterogeneous, music listening programs played a predominant role with the aim to reduce symptoms like depression and pain, or to improve quality of life and the relationship between patients and caregivers as primary endpoints.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We were able to show that HBMT is an innovative service for future healthcare delivery. It fits with the changing healthcare system and its conditions but also meets the therapeutic needs of the increasing number of elderly and severely impaired people. Apart from music therapists, patients and their families HBMT is also interesting as a blueprint for home based care for other groups of caregivers.</p

A Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment Using J-PARC Neutrino Beam and Hyper-Kamiokande

Document submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresDocument submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresDocument submitted to 18th J-PARC PAC meeting in May 2014. 50 pages, 41 figuresHyper-Kamiokande will be a next generation underground water Cherenkov detector with a total (fiducial) mass of 0.99 (0.56) million metric tons, approximately 20 (25) times larger than that of Super-Kamiokande. One of the main goals of Hyper-Kamiokande is the study of $CP$ asymmetry in the lepton sector using accelerator neutrino and anti-neutrino beams. In this document, the physics potential of a long baseline neutrino experiment using the Hyper-Kamiokande detector and a neutrino beam from the J-PARC proton synchrotron is presented. The analysis has been updated from the previous Letter of Intent [K. Abe et al., arXiv:1109.3262 [hep-ex]], based on the experience gained from the ongoing T2K experiment. With a total exposure of 7.5 MW $\times$ 10$^7$ sec integrated proton beam power (corresponding to $1.56\times10^{22}$ protons on target with a 30 GeV proton beam) to a $2.5$-degree off-axis neutrino beam produced by the J-PARC proton synchrotron, it is expected that the $CP$ phase $\delta_{CP}$ can be determined to better than 19 degrees for all possible values of $\delta_{CP}$, and $CP$ violation can be established with a statistical significance of more than $3\,\sigma$ ($5\,\sigma$) for $76$ ($58$) of the $\delta_{CP}$ parameter space