Rethinking justice beyond human rights. Anti-colonialism and intersectionality in the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement

This article discusses the politics of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) – a contemporary social movement operating across a number of Arab and western countries. Unlike analysis on the Arab Uprisings which focused on the national dimension of youth activism, we explore how the PYM politics fosters and upholds an explicitly transnational anti-colonial and intersectional solidarity framework, which foregrounds a radical critique of conventional notions of self-determination based on state-framed human rights discourses and international law paradigms. The struggle becomes instead framed as an issue of justice, freedom and liberation from interlocking forms and hierarchies of oppression. KEYWORDS: Palestine, transnational social movements, intersectionality, human rights, anti-colonialis

Use of a trabecular metal implant in ankle arthrodesis after failed total ankle replacement: A short-term follow-up of 13 patients

Patients and methods 13 patients with a migrated or loose total ankle implant underwent arthrodesis with the use of a retrograde intramedullary nail through a trabecular metal Tibial Cone. The mean follow-up time was 1.4 (0.6-3.4) years. Results At the last examination, 7 patients were pain-free, while 5 had some residual pain but were satisfied with the procedure. 1 patient was dissatisfied and experienced pain and swelling when walking. The implant-bone interfaces showed no radiographic zones or gaps in any patient, indicating union. Interpretation The method is a new way of simplifying and overcoming some of the problems of performing arthrodesis after failed total ankle replacement

Building safer robots: Safety driven control

In recent years there has been a concerted effort to address many of the safety issues associated with physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). However, a number of challenges remain. For personal robots, and those intended to operate in unstructured environments, the problem of safety is compounded. In this paper we argue that traditional system design techniques fail to capture the complexities associated with dynamic environments. We present an overview of our safety-driven control system and its implementation methodology. The methodology builds on traditional functional hazard analysis, with the addition of processes aimed at improving the safety of autonomous personal robots. This will be achieved with the use of a safety system developed during the hazard analysis stage. This safety system, called the safety protection system, will initially be used to verify that safety constraints, identified during hazard analysis, have been implemented appropriately. Subsequently it will serve as a high-level safety enforcer, by governing the actions of the robot and preventing the control layer from performing unsafe operations. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the design, a series of experiments have been conducted using a MobileRobots PeopleBot. Finally, results are presented demonstrating how faults injected into a controller can be consistently identified and handled by the safety protection system. © The Author(s) 2012

Climate change litigation: a review of research on courts and litigants in climate government

Studies of climate change litigation have proliferated over the past two decades, as lawsuits across the world increasingly bring policy debates about climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as climate change‐related loss and damage to the attention of courts. We systematically identify 130 articles on climate change litigation published in English in the law and social sciences between 2000 and 2018 to identify research trajectories. In addition to a budding interdisciplinarity in scholarly interest in climate change litigation we also document a growing understanding of the full spectrum of actors involved and implicated in climate lawsuits and the range of motivations and/or strategic imperatives underpinning their engagement with the law. Situating this within the broader academic literature on the topic we then highlight a number of cutting edge trends and opportunities for future research. Four emerging themes are explored in detail: the relationship between litigation and governance; how time and scale feature in climate litigation; the role of science; and what has been coined the “human rights turn” in climate change litigation. We highlight the limits of existing work and the need for future research—not limited to legal scholarship—to evaluate the impact of both regulatory and anti‐regulatory climate‐related lawsuits, and to explore a wider set of jurisdictions, actors and themes. Addressing these issues and questions will help to develop a deeper understanding of the conditions under which litigation will strengthen or undermine climate governance. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governanc

CUBES: a UV spectrograph for the future

In spite of the advent of extremely large telescopes in the UV/optical/NIR range, the current generation of 8-10m facilities is likely to remain competitive at ground-UV wavelengths for the foreseeable future. The Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) has been designed to provide high-efficiency (>40%) observations in the near UV (305-400 nm requirement, 300-420 nm goal) at a spectral resolving power of R>20,000, although a lower-resolution, sky-limited mode of R ~ 7,000 is also planned. CUBES will offer new possibilities in many fields of astrophysics, providing access to key lines of stellar spectra: a tremendous diversity of iron-peak and heavy elements, lighter elements (in particular Beryllium) and light-element molecules (CO, CN, OH), as well as Balmer lines and the Balmer jump (particularly important for young stellar objects). The UV range is also critical in extragalactic studies: the circumgalactic medium of distant galaxies, the contribution of different types of sources to the cosmic UV background, the measurement of H2 and primordial Deuterium in a regime of relatively transparent intergalactic medium, and follow-up of explosive transients. The CUBES project completed a Phase A conceptual design in June 2021 and has now entered the Phase B dedicated to detailed design and construction. First science operations are planned for 2028. In this paper, we briefly describe the CUBES project development and goals, the main science cases, the instrument design and the project organization and management

4MOST: Project overview and information for the First Call for Proposals

We introduce the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), a new high-multiplex, wide-field spectroscopic survey facility under development for the four-metre-class Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at Paranal. Its key specifications are: a large field of view (FoV) of 4.2 square degrees and a high multiplex capability, with 1624 fibres feeding two low-resolution spectrographs ($R = \lambda/\Delta\lambda \sim 6500$), and 812 fibres transferring light to the high-resolution spectrograph ($R \sim 20\,000$). After a description of the instrument and its expected performance, a short overview is given of its operational scheme and planned 4MOST Consortium science; these aspects are covered in more detail in other articles in this edition of The Messenger. Finally, the processes, schedules, and policies concerning the selection of ESO Community Surveys are presented, commencing with a singular opportunity to submit Letters of Intent for Public Surveys during the first five years of 4MOST operations