A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE ROLE OF CUSTOMS IN HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS

The last two decades have seen significant increase in the amount of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and droughts. Human-made disasters add to the latters with crisis resulting from political instabilities such as war, terrorism, or social factors, including religious discriminations and racism. Disaster relief operations are consequently becoming very important to assist the victims of these disasters and save human lives. Logistics activities play an important part in the relief operations in ensuring that important relief supplies arrive in due time and in the right condition where they are needed. However, the management of the logistical operations in disaster settings is challenging due to various obstacles that have to be contended with. Among the obstacles are the delays encountered during clearance processes for imported relief goods which are urgently need on the field. This study focused on the investigation of the factors at the origin of delays during completion of customs formalities for relief supplies. The research performed mainly concentrated on the analysis of qualitative data sourced from humanitarian logistics literature and the Reliefweb.int. Findings from this research show that many factors associated with difficulties created by countries’ authorities but also the inefficiency of actors in charge of the logistical operations themselves lead to the delays of relief goods in customs. These factors include, bureaucratic bottlenecks, the request for high importation charges by customs authorities, complex and inflexible customs documentation requirements, the inadequacy of customs’ physical setting and lack of resource, arrival of inappropriately and/or insufficiently documented aid shipments and delays in application for duty and tax exemption certificates. Other delay factors identified involve the excessive arrival of external relief goods to the affected country and frequent customs offices closure at the affected country side or at the transiting country level. It was further recognised that efforts are being made by countries as well as international agencies such as the WCO and the UN OCHA in order to facilitate customs processes for relief goods. Some of the initiatives include regulatory guidelines developed by the international agencies to enable governments to establish laws that favour expedited customs processes, as well as concrete measures taken by countries’ authorities to help relief goods go through customs smoothly and as quickly as possible. It was however recognised that these initiatives have some limitations which do not favour the effective reaping of the benefits they are meant to offer. The present study will therefore serve as reference for humanitarian logistics specialists and other bodies interested in the efficiency of the logistical aspects of relief operations, for the understanding of the real aspects to focus on in order to avoid unnecessary delays in customs for goods that can help save millions of lives during disaster events

Archives Off-Site: Adapting to Serve our Communities During the Pandemic and Beyond

Panelists from three institutions, one small, one medium, and one large, will share their adaptive and iterative approaches to their work while handling varying levels of access and opening between 2020 and 2021. Panelists will discuss the successes and challenges of coordinating archives projects and services in response to navigating online-only and hybrid environments in addition to physical building access limitations. Projects include finding aid migration to ArchivesSpace while working from home during the Pandemic; 'hot-wiring' SpringShare's LibAnswers to manage research and 'scan-on-demand' requests; and teaching virtually amidst new demands and the need to support synchronous and asynchronous instruction. The session will highlight the workflows and solutions each institution developed and continues to adapt. Panelists will also discuss how these solutions have and will impact archives functions moving forward

Apolipoprotein O is mitochondrial and promotes lipotoxicity in heart

Diabetic cardiomyopathy is a secondary complication of diabetes with an unclear etiology. Based on a functional genomic evaluation of obesity-associated cardiac gene expression, we previously identified and cloned the gene encoding apolipoprotein O (APOO), which is overexpressed in hearts from diabetic patients. Here, we generated APOO-Tg mice, transgenic mouse lines that expresses physiological levels of human APOO in heart tissue. APOO-Tg mice fed a high-fat diet exhibited depressed ventricular function with reduced fractional shortening and ejection fraction, and myocardial sections from APOO-Tg mice revealed mitochondrial degenerative changes. In vivo fluorescent labeling and subcellular fractionation revealed that APOO localizes with mitochondria. Furthermore, APOO enhanced mitochondrial uncoupling and respiration, both of which were reduced by deletion of the N-terminus and by targeted knockdown of APOO. Consequently, fatty acid metabolism and ROS production were enhanced, leading to increased AMPK phosphorylation and Ppara and Pgc1a expression. Finally, we demonstrated that the APOO-induced cascade of events generates a mitochondrial metabolic sink whereby accumulation of lipotoxic byproducts leads to lipoapoptosis, loss of cardiac cells, and cardiomyopathy, mimicking the diabetic heart-associated metabolic phenotypes. Our data suggest that APOO represents a link between impaired mitochondrial function and cardiomyopathy onset, and targeting APOO-dependent metabolic remodeling has potential as a strategy to adjust heart metabolism and protect the myocardium from impaired contractility