384 research outputs found

    Justice Beyond Borders? Australia and the International Criminal Court

    Get PDF
    The International Criminal Court (ICC) came into being on 1 July 2002. A four-person team opened an office in The Hague and will collect reports and allegations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity until judges and a prosecutor are appointed towards the end of 2003. Although the court was heralded by many states and international lawyers as the most important positive development in international law since the formation of the United Nations, it did not get off to an auspicious start. The Bush administration was concerned that US military forces operating overseas would be particularly vulnerable to what it described as 'politicised' prosecutions. It therefore insisted that not only would it not be a part of the ICC, but also that it would not sanction the continuation of UN peacekeeping operations. Closer to home, the Australian Senate only ratified the ICC's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, after a bitter debate that split both the Liberal and National parties. This was the case even though the Howard government-and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in particular-had been a leading advocate of the court and ratification of the Rome Statute had been a Liberal Party election promise in 2001. The cost that Downer, and pro-ICC Attorney-General Daryl Williams had to pay in order to appease restive conservative backbenchers, the National Party, and an increasingly reluctant (and pro-US) Prime Minister and secure the ratification was a declaration that reaffirmed the primacy of the Australian judicial system over the ICC. The declaration insisted that no Australian would be prosecuted by the court without the consent of the Attomey-General, and asserted Australia's right to define what is meant by the crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We argue that although Downer and Williams should be commended for their commitment to international justice, the declaration attached to Australia's ratification was unnecessary and unhelpful. The first and third aspects of the declaration were unnecessary: the principle of complementarity enshrined in the Rome Statute means that the ICC already recognises the primacy of domestic jurisdiction, and the crimes covered are already considered to fall under universal jurisdiction, as the Nuremberg, Tokyo and more recent Pinochet trials showed (see Weller 1999). The second is unhelpful because it contravenes both the letter and the spirit of the Rome Statute. We will begin, then, by tracing the development of the ICC debate in Australian politics. In 1998, the government was an enthusiastic advocate of the court but by 2002 an alliance of an ardently pro-US Prime Minister, vocal right-wing parliamentarians and their supporters, and The Australian (and its foreign affairs editor Greg Sheridan in particular) combined to put ratification in doubt. Contrary to Prime Minister John Howard's claims, this debate was not well informed. Instead, it was characterised by hearsay, inaccuracy and scare-mongering. The subsequent section of the article demonstrates this by focusing on the background to, and creation of, the Rome Statute

    Classical and revisionary theism on the divine as personal: a rapprochement?

    Get PDF
    To claim that the divine is a person or personal is, according to Richard Swinburne, ‘the most elementary claim of theism’ (1993, 101). I argue that, whether the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal is construed as an analogy or a metaphor, or a combination of the two, analysis necessitates qualification of that concept such that any differences between the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal and revisionary interpretations of that concept are merely superficial. Thus, either the classical theist has more in common with revisionary theism than he/she might care to admit, or classical theism is a multi-faceted position which encompasses interpretations which some might regard as revisionist. This article also explores and employs the use of a gender-neutral pronoun in talk about God

    Novel tumor suppressive function of Smad4 in serum starvation-induced cell death through PAK1–PUMA pathway

    Get PDF
    DPC4 (deleted in pancreatic cancer 4)/Smad4 is an essential factor in transforming growth factor (TGF)-β signaling and is also known as a frequently mutated tumor suppressor gene in human pancreatic and colon cancer. However, considering the fact that TGF-β can contribute to cancer progression through transcriptional target genes, such as Snail, MMPs, and epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related genes, loss of Smad4 in human cancer would be required for obtaining the TGF-β signaling-independent advantage, which should be essential for cancer cell survival. Here, we provide the evidences about novel role of Smad4, serum-deprivation-induced apoptosis. Elimination of serum can obviously increase the Smad4 expression and induces the cell death by p53-independent PUMA induction. Instead, Smad4-deficient cells show the resistance to serum starvation. Induced Smad4 suppresses the PAK1, which promotes the PUMA destabilization. We also found that Siah-1 and pVHL are involved in PAK1 destabilization and PUMA stabilization. In fact, Smad4-expressed cancer tissues not only show the elevated expression of PAK1, but also support our hypothesis that Smad4 induces PUMA-mediated cell death through PAK1 suppression. Our results strongly suggest that loss of Smad4 renders the resistance to serum-deprivation-induced cell death, which is the TGF-β-independent tumor suppressive role of Smad4

    Dengue-2 Structural Proteins Associate with Human Proteins to Produce a Coagulation and Innate Immune Response Biased Interactome

    Get PDF
    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Dengue virus infection is a public health threat to hundreds of millions of individuals in the tropical regions of the globe. Although Dengue infection usually manifests itself in its mildest, though often debilitating clinical form, dengue fever, life-threatening complications commonly arise in the form of hemorrhagic shock and encephalitis. The etiological basis for the virus-induced pathology in general, and the different clinical manifestations in particular, are not well understood. We reasoned that a detailed knowledge of the global biological processes affected by virus entry into a cell might help shed new light on this long-standing problem.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A bacterial two-hybrid screen using DENV2 structural proteins as bait was performed, and the results were used to feed a manually curated, global dengue-human protein interaction network. Gene ontology and pathway enrichment, along with network topology and microarray meta-analysis, were used to generate hypothesis regarding dengue disease biology.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Combining bioinformatic tools with two-hybrid technology, we screened human cDNA libraries to catalogue proteins physically interacting with the DENV2 virus structural proteins, Env, cap and PrM. We identified 31 interacting human proteins representing distinct biological processes that are closely related to the major clinical diagnostic feature of dengue infection: haemostatic imbalance. In addition, we found dengue-binding human proteins involved with additional key aspects, previously described as fundamental for virus entry into cells and the innate immune response to infection. Construction of a DENV2-human global protein interaction network revealed interesting biological properties suggested by simple network topology analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our experimental strategy revealed that dengue structural proteins interact with human protein targets involved in the maintenance of blood coagulation and innate anti-viral response processes, and predicts that the interaction of dengue proteins with a proposed human protein interaction network produces a modified biological outcome that may be behind the hallmark pathologies of dengue infection.</p

    Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

    Get PDF
    Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

    Horse immunization with short-chain consensus α-neurotoxin generates antibodies against broad spectrum of elapid venomous species

    Get PDF
    Antivenoms are fundamental in the therapy for snakebites. In elapid venoms, there are toxins, e.g. short-chain α-neurotoxins, which are quite abundant, highly toxic, and consequently play a major role in envenomation processes. The core problem is that such α-neurotoxins are weakly immunogenic, and many current elapid antivenoms show low reactivity towards them. We have previously developed a recombinant consensus short-chain α-neurotoxin (ScNtx) based on sequences from the most lethal elapid venoms from America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Here we report that an antivenom generated by immunizing horses with ScNtx can successfully neutralize the lethality of pure recombinant and native short-chain α-neurotoxins, as well as whole neurotoxic elapid venoms from diverse genera such as Micrurus, Dendroaspis, Naja, Walterinnesia, Ophiophagus and Hydrophis. These results provide a proof-ofprinciple for using recombinant proteins with rationally designed consensus sequences as universal immunogens for developing next-generation antivenoms with higher effectiveness and broader neutralizing capacity.Universidad de Costa Rica/[741-B7-608]/UCR/Costa RicaDireccion General de Asuntos del Personal Academico/[IN203118]/DGAPA/MéxicoDireccion General de Asuntos del Personal Academico/[IN207218]/DGAPA/MéxicoUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias de la Salud::Instituto Clodomiro Picado (ICP

    SOSORT consensus paper: school screening for scoliosis. Where are we today?

    Get PDF
    This report is the SOSORT Consensus Paper on School Screening for Scoliosis discussed at the 4th International Conference on Conservative Management of Spinal Deformities, presented by SOSORT, on May 2007. The objectives were numerous, 1) the inclusion of the existing information on the issue, 2) the analysis and discussion of the responses by the meeting attendees to the twenty six questions of the questionnaire, 3) the impact of screening on frequency of surgical treatment and of its discontinuation, 4) the reasons why these programs must be continued, 5) the evolving aim of School Screening for Scoliosis and 6) recommendations for improvement of the procedure
    corecore