Religion and development: Australian faith-based development organisations

Faith plays a crucial role in development, yet ‘faith-based’ organisations (FBOs) continue to face ambivalence towards their religiosity and how it may impact upon the development work they do. As a result they have undergone structural changes to ameliorate the pressures arising from mainly government related outcome oriented funding structures. This also relates to the dual role FBO legitimacy plays ensuring both public donations at home and successful outcomes in the recipient country. FBOs have significant advantages over secular organisations in their ability to harness moral will at home and abroad as well as tap into transnational religious networks and local communities in aid recipient countries. Australian faith based organisations involved in international development are a diverse and under-researched category that is difficult to define. Thus this paper seeks to make inroads into this group of organisations to better understand them and their missions, the challenges they pose to development and the challenges they face in development. By Gerhard Hoffstaedter, La Trobe University, with research assistance by Sarah Hunt. This working paper is funded under the Universities- Linkage Project, co-chaired by the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) and the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe Universit

The Effects of COVID-19 on Refugees in Peninsular Malaysia: Surveillance, Securitization, and Eviction

This paper focuses on the largest group of refugees in Malaysia, the Rohingya. Many Rohingya have made Malaysia their home over recent years, even though they have no official legal status in the country. Refugees more broadly are often tolerated as workers but treated as undocumented migrants by the law. When Covid-19 was detected in Malaysia, the government followed a strategy of suppression with targeted lockdowns in areas of Covid-19 outbreaks. As most refugees are forced to work to survive, they hold important front-line jobs. As a result, they were exposed to Covid-19 at higher rates of infection than Malaysians. In this paper we trace the way the Malaysian government, Malaysian people and refugees encountered Covid-19 and how refugees especially became the subject of enhanced securitization and surveillance based on prejudice. We show how the state enacted securitization first on the borders, before it inverted this process and focused on domestic border work, wherein neighborhoods, mosques and markets became central places of immigration control and exclusion for refugees. Based on data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in peninsular Malaysia between 2020 and 2021, we argue that the securitization of refugees and migrant workers, their surveillance and even expulsion and eviction demonstrates continued and heightened scapegoating of refugees and migrants for all Malaysia’s ills. These actions reinforced the stigma and stereotype of refugees being legally undocumented and therefore outside of and too often unwelcome in the Malaysian body politic

Personality and local brain structure: Their shared genetic basis and reproducibility

Local cortical architecture is highly heritable and distinct genes are associated with specific cortical regions. Total surface area has been shown to be genetically correlated with complex cognitive capacities, suggesting cortical brain structure is a viable endophenotype linking genes to behavior. However, to what extend local brain structure has a genetic association with cognitive and emotional functioning is incompletely understood. Here, we study the genetic correlation between personality traits and local cortical structure in a large-scale twin sample (Human Connectome Project, n ​= ​1102, 22-37y) and we evaluated whether observed associations reflect generalizable relationships between personality and local brain structure two independent age-matched samples (Brain Genomics Superstructure Project: n ​= ​925, age ​= ​19-35y, enhanced Nathan Kline Institute dataset: n ​= ​209, age: 19-39y). We found a genetic overlap between personality traits and local cortical structure in 10 of 18 observed phenotypic associations in predominantly frontal cortices. However, we only observed evidence in favor of replication for the negative association between surface area in medial prefrontal cortex and Neuroticism in both replication samples. Quantitative functional decoding indicated this region is implicated in emotional and socio-cognitive functional processes. In sum, our observations suggest that associations between local brain structure and personality are, in part, under genetic control. However, associations are weak and only the relation between frontal surface area and Neuroticism was consistently observed across three independent samples of young adults

Functional hierarchy of oculomotor and visual motion subnetworks within the human cortical optokinetic system

© 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. Optokinetic look nystagmus (look OKN) is known to engage cortical visual motion and oculomotor hubs. Their functional network hierarchy, however, and the role of the cingulate eye field (CEF) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in particular have not been investigated. We used look OKN in fMRI to identify all cortical visual motion and oculomotor hubs involved. Using these activations as seed regions, we employed hierarchical clustering in two differing resting state conditions from a separate public data set. Robust activations in the CEF highlight its functional role in OKN and involvement in higher order oculomotor control. Deactivation patterns indicate a decreased modulatory involvement of the DLPFC. The hierarchical clustering revealed a changeable organization of the eye fields, hMT, V3A, and V6 depending on the resting state condition, segregating executive from higher order visual subnetworks. Overall, hierarchical clustering seems to allow for a robust delineation of physiological cortical networks

How to start a free university: a guide by the Melbourne Free University

A partir de la identificación de la noviolencia con ciertos procesos históricos y con personajes específicos, el autor se propone establecer en qué consiste y cómo podemos definirla adecuadamente como herramienta de análisis en sí misma, y en relación con lo que se denomina cambio social en las ciencias sociales. Propone finalmente a las ciencias sociales hacerse cargo del cambio social proveniente de la noviolencia como una categoría del proceso histórico y no un evento anormal en éste.Partant de l’identification de la non-violence avec certains processus historiques et personnages spécifiques, l’auteur propose d’étudier en quoi celle-ci consiste et comment nous pouvons la définir de manière adéquate comme un outil d’analyse en soi, et en relation avec ce qui est communément  appelé changement social dans les sciences sociales. Il propose pour finir que les sciences sociales assument le changement social provenant de la non-violence comme une catégorie du processus historique et non comme un fait anormal en son sein.From the identification of nonviolence with certain historical processes and specific characters of history, the author proposes to establish what it is and how we can properly define it as an analytical tool in itself, and in relation to what is called social change in the social sciences. Finally proposes social sciences to recognize that social change springing from nonviolence is a category of historical process and not an abnormal event in it

Low bone mineral density is associated with gray matter volume decrease in UK Biobank

ObjectivesPrevious research has found an association of low bone mineral density (BMD) and regional gray matter (GM) volume loss in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We were interested whether BMD is associated with GM volume decrease in brains of a healthy elderly population from the UK Biobank.Materials and methodsT1-weighted images from 5,518 women (MAge = 70.20, SD = 3.54; age range: 65–82 years) and 7,595 men (MAge = 70.84, SD = 3.68; age range: 65–82 years) without neurological or psychiatric impairments were included in voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis in CAT12 with threshold-free-cluster-enhancement (TFCE) across the whole brain.ResultsWe found a significant decrease of GM volume in women in the superior frontal gyri, middle temporal gyri, fusiform gyri, temporal poles, cingulate gyri, precunei, right parahippocampal gyrus and right hippocampus, right ventral diencephalon, and right pre- and postcentral gyrus. Only small effects were found in men in subcallosal area, left basal forebrain and entorhinal area.ConclusionBMD is associated with low GM volume in women but less in men in regions afflicted in the early-stages of AD even in a sample without neurodegenerative diseases

What Can Computational Models Contribute to Neuroimaging Data Analytics?

Over the past years, nonlinear dynamical models have significantly contributed to the general understanding of brain activity as well as brain disorders. Appropriately validated and optimized mathematical models can be used to mechanistically explain properties of brain structure and neuronal dynamics observed from neuroimaging data. A thorough exploration of the model parameter space and hypothesis testing with the methods of nonlinear dynamical systems and statistical physics can assist in classification and prediction of brain states. On the one hand, such a detailed investigation and systematic parameter variation are hardly feasible in experiments and data analysis. On the other hand, the model-based approach can establish a link between empirically discovered phenomena and more abstract concepts of attractors, multistability, bifurcations, synchronization, noise-induced dynamics, etc. Such a mathematical description allows to compare and differentiate brain structure and dynamics in health and disease, such that model parameters and dynamical regimes may serve as additional biomarkers of brain states and behavioral modes. In this perspective paper we first provide very brief overview of the recent progress and some open problems in neuroimaging data analytics with emphasis on the resting state brain activity. We then focus on a few recent contributions of mathematical modeling to our understanding of the brain dynamics and model-based approaches in medicine. Finally, we discuss the question stated in the title. We conclude that incorporating computational models in neuroimaging data analytics as well as in translational medicine could significantly contribute to the progress in these fields