The Implications of the B Corp Movement in the Business and Human Rights Context

For decades, human rights advocates have called for greater corporate accountability in relation to the harmful impacts business operations can, and often do, have on individuals, communities, and societies throughout the world. As high profile cases of large multinational corporations complicit in human rights abuses have increasingly come to the fore, the need to clarify both the role of States to effectively regulate multinational corporations (MNCs) and the standards of corporate responsibility and accountability with regards to human rights has become stark.The work of the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprise, John Ruggie, aimed to address this gap. Over the course of his six-year mandate, Ruggie established the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles), a three-pillared framework outlining the State duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and the need for access to remedy in relation to business related human rights harms.The Guiding Principles, comprised of thirty-one foundation and operational principles, lay out in authoritative detail,inter alia, theobligations and responsibilities of State and corporate actors in regards to business impacts on human rights. The U.N. Human Rights Council unanimously adopted the Guiding Principles in 2011 and thereafter called on countries in2014 to develop National Action Plans (NAPs) to promote further implementation of the Guiding Principles on a domestic scale.A key first step in the creation of a NAP is the completion of a National Baseline Assessment (NBA). The NBA is intended to assess, principle by principle, a State’s current implementation of the business and human rights framework, highlighting current legal and policy developments and illustrating gaps that the NAP’s content should address

The Great Sioux Nation v. the Black Snake : Native American Rights and the Keystone XL Pipeline

The Keystone XL Pipeline has been shrouded in controversy almost since its conception. As a structure intending to cross the Canadian border into the United States, the Pipeline must receive presidential approval before construction can commence. Since 2008, TransCanada has at- tempted to obtain this approval unsuccessfully. Criticism against the Pipe- line has focused largely on the negative environmental impacts that will likely accompany its construction and utilization, and it is precisely these environmental concerns that have ultimately stymied presidential approval and made international headlines. In November 2015, the U.S. government denied TransCanada\u27s application, effectively killing the Keystone XL pro- ject. While the Keystone XL project no longer poses a physical threat to the environment, an overview of the U.S. government\u27s consideration of the project reveals drastic flaws in process, specifically in regards to the human rights of a substantial portion of individuals who would be nega- tively affected by the Keystone XL Pipeline-the Sioux Nation. The Pipeline was set to run through a substantial portion of the Black Hills of South Dakota-the sovereign and treaty lands of the Great Sioux Nation. This black snake threatened not only the environment of the Sioux lands, but also sites sacred to the tribes. The Sioux Nation had risen up in defense of their lands, and their right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) before the state could undertake projects on their indige- nous lands. While the U.S. government maintains it complied with domestic standards regarding Indian consultation and with its perverse interpreta- tion of the right to FPIC protected under the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, its actions fell drastically short of those expected by the United Nations and required by the Inter-American Human Rights Sys- tem. This paper argues that under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the U.S. should have obtained the fully informed con- sent of the Sioux Nation before approving the Keystone XL Pipeline

A randomised controlled trial and cost-effectiveness evaluation of "booster" interventions to sustain increases in physical activity in middle-aged adults in deprived urban neighbourhoods

Background: Systematic reviews have identified a range of brief interventions which increase physical activity in previously sedentary people. There is an absence of evidence about whether follow up beyond three months can maintain long term physical activity. This study assesses whether it is worth providing motivational interviews, three months after giving initial advice, to those who have become more active. Methods/Design: Study candidates (n = 1500) will initially be given an interactive DVD and receive two telephone follow ups at monthly intervals checking on receipt and use of the DVD. Only those that have increased their physical activity after three months (n = 600) will be randomised into the study. These participants will receive either a "mini booster" (n = 200), "full booster" (n = 200) or no booster (n = 200). The "mini booster" consists of two telephone calls one month apart to discuss physical activity and maintenance strategies. The "full booster" consists of a face-to-face meeting with the facilitator at the same intervals. The purpose of these booster sessions is to help the individual maintain their increase in physical activity. Differences in physical activity, quality of life and costs associated with the booster interventions, will be measured three and nine months from randomisation. The research will be conducted in 20 of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Sheffield, which have large, ethnically diverse populations, high levels of economic deprivation, low levels of physical activity, poorer health and shorter life expectancy. Participants will be recruited through general practices and community groups, as well as by postal invitation, to ensure the participation of minority ethnic groups and those with lower levels of literacy. Sheffield City Council and Primary Care Trust fund a range of facilities and activities to promote physical activity and variations in access to these between neighbourhoods will make it possible to examine whether the effectiveness of the intervention is modified by access to community facilities. A one-year integrated feasibility study will confirm that recruitment targets are achievable based on a 10% sample.Discussion: The choice of study population, study interventions, brief intervention preceding the study, and outcome measure are discussed

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of clofazimine for treatment of cryptosporidiosis

Infection with Cryptosporidium spp. can cause severe diarrhea leading to long-term adverse impacts and even death in malnourished children and immunocompromised patients. The only FDA-approved drug for treating cryptosporidiosis, nitazoxanide, has limited efficacy in the populations impacted the most by the diarrheal disease, and safe, effective treatment options are urgently needed. Initially identified by a large-scale phenotypic screening campaign, the antimycobacterial therapeutic clofazimine demonstrated great promise in both in vitro and in vivo preclinical models of Cryptosporidium infection. Unfortunately, a Phase 2a clinical trial in HIV infected adults with cryptosporidiosis did not identify any clofazimine treatment effect on Cryptosporidium infection burden or clinical outcomes. To explore whether clofazimine's lack of efficacy in the Phase 2a trial may have been due to subtherapeutic clofazimine concentrations, a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling approach was undertaken to determine the relationship between clofazimine in vivo concentrations and treatment effects in multiple preclinical infection models. Exposure-response relationships were characterized using Emax and logistic models which allowed predictions of efficacious clofazimine concentrations for the control and reduction of disease burden. After establishing exposure-response relationships for clofazimine treatment of Cryptosporidium infection in our preclinical model studies, it was unmistakable that the clofazimine levels observed in the Phase 2a study participants were well below concentrations associated with anti-Cryptosporidium efficacy. Thus, despite a dosing regimen above the highest doses recommended for mycobacterial therapy, it is very likely the lack of treatment effect in the Phase 2a trial was at least partially due to clofazimine concentrations below those required for efficacy against cryptosporidiosis. It is unlikely that clofazimine will provide a remedy for the large number of cryptosporidiosis patients currently without a viable treatment option unless alternative, safe clofazimine formulations with improved oral absorption are developed

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead