Book review: enemies and neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017 by Ian Black

In Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017, Ian Black offers a new panoramic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 up until the present day. Linking the impact of political decisions to everyday lives and experiences and drawing on a wide array of voices and perspectives, this is a beautifully written and up-to-date introduction to the development of the conflict, finds Menachem Klein. This review was originally published on the LSE Middle East Centre blog. Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017. Ian Black. Allen Lane. 2017

From splashing to bouncing: the influence of viscosity on the impact of suspension droplets on a solid surface

We experimentally investigated the splashing of dense suspension droplets impacting a solid surface, extending prior work to the regime where the viscosity of the suspending liquid becomes a significant parameter. The overall behavior can be described by a combination of two trends. The first one is that the splashing becomes favored when the kinetic energy of individual particles at the surface of a droplet overcomes the confinement produced by surface tension. This is expressed by a particle-based Weber number $We_p$. The second is that splashing is suppressed by increasing the viscosity of the solvent. This is expressed by the Stokes number $St$, which influences the effective coefficient of restitution of colliding particles. We developed a phase diagram where the splashing onset is delineated as a function of both $We_p$ and $St$. A surprising result occurs at very small Stokes number, where not only splashing is suppressed but also plastic deformation of the droplet. This leads to a situation where droplets can bounce back after impact, an observation we are able to reproduce using discrete particle numerical simulations that take into account viscous interaction between particles and elastic energy

Oslo : three decades later

Published online: 01 June 2023Contrary to the commonly held belief that the 1993 Oslo Accord was a peace treaty, this article shows that it was an imbalanced interim agreement that unsurprisingly failed. Three decades later, the Israeli-Palestinian reality is marked by a massive expansion of Israel's settlement project, a gradual erasure of the Green Line, a symbiosis between Israeli security forces and the settlers, and an authoritarian and divided Palestinian leadership, with the Palestinian Authority acting as Israel's sub-contractor. Israel's regime of control also separates between Palestinian groups, with each group given a different set of limited rights. While the Oslo process had the potential to transform a predominantly ethnic struggle into a conflict over land and borders, the ramifications of the one single regime that has replaced the Oslo order cannot be underestimated. After describing these developments, the article introduces the contributions to the special issue, which add new perspectives to the still ongoing debate on the genesis, interpretation, and implications of Oslo

Therapeutic strategies during cenobamate treatment initiation: Delphi panel recommendations

\ua9 The Author(s), 2024. The goal of epilepsy treatment is seizure freedom, typically with antiseizure medication (ASM). If patients fail to attain seizure control despite two trials of appropriately chosen ASMs at adequate doses, they are classified as having drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). Adverse events (AEs) commonly occur in people with DRE because they are typically on ⩾2 ASMs, increasing the potential for drug–drug interactions. Early emerging AEs may impact adherence, decrease quality of life, and delay achieving optimal treatment dosages. Cenobamate is an oral ASM with a long half-life which has proven to be highly effective in clinical trials. An international Delphi panel of expert epileptologists experienced in the clinical use of cenobamate and other ASMs was convened to develop consensus best practices for managing patients during and after cenobamate titration, with consideration for its known pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions, to allow patients to reach the most appropriate cenobamate dose while limiting tolerability issues. The modified Delphi process included one open-ended questionnaire and one virtual face-to-face meeting. Participants agreed that cenobamate can be prescribed for most patients experiencing focal-onset seizures. Patients initiating cenobamate therapy should have access to healthcare professionals as needed and their treatment response should be evaluated at the 100-mg dose. Patients with intellectual disabilities may need additional support to navigate the titration period. Proactive down-titration or withdrawal of sodium channel blockers (SCBs) is recommended when concomitant ASM regimens include ⩾2 SCBs. When applicable, maintaining a concomitant clobazam dose at ~5–10 mg may be beneficial. Patients taking oral contraceptives, newer oral anticoagulants, or HIV antiretroviral medications should be monitored for potential interactions. Because clinical evidence informing treatment decisions is limited, guidance regarding dose adjustments of non-ASM drugs was not developed beyond specific recommendations presented in the Summary of Product Characteristics

CCR4 is a determinant of melanoma brain metastasis.

We previously identified the chemokine receptor CCR4 as part of the molecular signature of melanoma brain metastasis. The aim of this study was to determine the functional significance of CCR4 in melanoma brain metastasis. We show that CCR4 is more highly expressed by brain metastasizing melanoma cells than by local cutaneous cells from the same melanoma. Moreover, we found that the expression of CCR4 is significantly higher in paired clinical specimens of melanoma metastases than in samples of primary tumors from the same patients. Notably, the expression of the CCR4 ligands, Ccl22 and Ccl17 is upregulated at the earliest stages of brain metastasis, and precedes the infiltration of melanoma cells to the brain. In-vitro, CCL17 induced migration and transendothelial migration of melanoma cells. Functionally, human melanoma cells over-expressing CCR4 were more tumorigenic and produced a higher load of spontaneous brain micrometastasis than control cells. Blocking CCR4 with a small molecule CCR4 antagonist in-vivo, reduced the tumorigenicity and micrometastasis formation of melanoma cells. Taken together, these findings implicate CCR4 as a driver of melanoma brain metastasis

(Putative) sex differences in neuroimmune modulation of memory

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134408/1/jnr23921.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134408/2/jnr23921_am.pd

Gene expression imputation across multiple brain regions provides insights into schizophrenia risk

Transcriptomic imputation approaches combine eQTL reference panels with large-scale genotype data in order to test associations between disease and gene expression. These genic associations could elucidate signals in complex genome-wide association study (GWAS) loci and may disentangle the role of different tissues in disease development. We used the largest eQTL reference panel for the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to create a set of gene expression predictors and demonstrate their utility. We applied DLPFC and 12 GTEx-brain predictors to 40,299 schizophrenia cases and 65,264 matched controls for a large transcriptomic imputation study of schizophrenia. We identified 413 genic associations across 13 brain regions. Stepwise conditioning identified 67 non-MHC genes, of which 14 did not fall within previous GWAS loci. We identified 36 significantly enriched pathways, including hexosaminidase-A deficiency, and multiple porphyric disorder pathways. We investigated developmental expression patterns among the 67 non-MHC genes and identified specific groups of pre- and postnatal expression

Non-Standard Errors

In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data-generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence-generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty: Non-standard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for better reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer-review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants

A review of the practical relevance of IS strategy scholarly research

While studies suggest that IS strategy is an important topic for practitioners, in-depth explorations of the potential practical relevance of this research area are lacking. In this paper, we develop a multidimensional framework of potential practical relevance and use it to conduct a multimethod descriptive review of 109 IS strategy papers published over the past 10 years in top IS journals. The framework contributes to the IS literature by synthesizing various characteristics that make a research project conducive to being practically relevant. The review highlights how IS strategy research has offered the potential for practical relevance in the past and recommends opportunities to increase this, especially in the digitalization era