'Round-table' ethical debate: is a suicide note an authoritative 'living will'?

Living wills are often considered by physicians who are faced with a dying patient. Although popular with the general public, they remain problems of authenticity and authority. It is difficult for the examining physician to know whether the patient understood the terms of the advance directive when they signed it, and whether they still consider it authoritative at the time that it is produced. Also, there is little consensus on what spectrum of instruments constitutes a binding advance directive in real life. Does a 'suicide note' constitute an authentic and authoritative 'living will'? Our panel of authorities considers this problem in a round-table discussion

Chameleon masculinity: developing the British ‘population-centred’ soldier

In this article I develop what I term chameleon masculinity as a specific form of gendered adaptation of military agency opened up by the post-9/11 shift towards ‘population-centred’ counterinsurgency and stabilisation. A gendered analysis of this carefully cultivated form of military agency is central to revealing some of the concealed embodied dynamics that challenge the hegemony of the traditional combat soldier, and in practice enables this form of war. Drawing on 18 months of anthropological fieldwork, for the most part alongside the UK’s Military Stabilisation Support Group, this research incorporates my auto-ethnography as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserves. Rather than focusing at the level of policy, strategy, and doctrine, I examine how the specialized and masculinized agency of ‘the chameleon’ translates tactically into the body of the British military stabilisation operative, showing how this is developed though intensive pre-deployment training in the UK, and embodied and practised through operational deployment in Afghanistan. This reveals the specific agency of chameleon masculinity and how its potential for inherent violence becomes deceptively ‘hidden in plain sight’

Deep Sequencing of Pyrethroid-Resistant Bed Bugs Reveals Multiple Mechanisms of Resistance within a Single Population

A frightening resurgence of bed bug infestations has occurred over the last 10 years in the U.S. and current chemical methods have been inadequate for controlling this pest due to widespread insecticide resistance. Little is known about the mechanisms of resistance present in U.S. bed bug populations, making it extremely difficult to develop intelligent strategies for their control. We have identified bed bugs collected in Richmond, VA which exhibit both kdr-type (L925I) and metabolic resistance to pyrethroid insecticides. Using LD50 bioassays, we determined that resistance ratios for Richmond strain bed bugs were ∼5200-fold to the insecticide deltamethrin. To identify metabolic genes potentially involved in the detoxification of pyrethroids, we performed deep-sequencing of the adult bed bug transcriptome, obtaining more than 2.5 million reads on the 454 titanium platform. Following assembly, analysis of newly identified gene transcripts in both Harlan (susceptible) and Richmond (resistant) bed bugs revealed several candidate cytochrome P450 and carboxylesterase genes which were significantly over-expressed in the resistant strain, consistent with the idea of increased metabolic resistance. These data will accelerate efforts to understand the biochemical basis for insecticide resistance in bed bugs, and provide molecular markers to assist in the surveillance of metabolic resistance

Sufism and Liberation across the Indo-Afghan Border: 1880-1928

How do we understand links between sufism and pro-egalitarian revolutionary activism in the early twentieth century; and how did upland compositions of self and community help constitute revolutionary activism in South Asia more broadly? Using Pashto poetry as my archive I integrate a history of radical egalitarian thought and political practice to a holistic study of self-making; of imperial spatiality; and of shifting gradients of power in the regions between Kabul and Punjab. Amid a chaotic rise of new practices of imperial and monarchic hegemony around the turn of the twentieth century, I argue, older sedimentations of ‘devotee selfhood’ in the high valleys of eastern Afghanistan gave rise, in social spaces preserved by self-reflexive poetic practice and circulation, to conscious desires for avoidance of all forms of hierarchy or sovereignty, in favour of a horizontal politics of reciprocity. Such inchoate drives for freedom later played a role in constituting anti-statist revolutionary subjectivities across great geographical and social distance. From upland sufi roots they rippled outward to intersect with the work of transnational socialist and anti-imperialist militants in Indian nationalist circles too; and even influenced scholars at the heart of the nascent Afghan nation-state

Donepezil Impairs Memory in Healthy Older Subjects: Behavioural, EEG and Simultaneous EEG/fMRI Biomarkers

Rising life expectancies coupled with an increasing awareness of age-related cognitive decline have led to the unwarranted use of psychopharmaceuticals, including acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChEIs), by significant numbers of healthy older individuals. This trend has developed despite very limited data regarding the effectiveness of such drugs on non-clinical groups and recent work indicates that AChEIs can have negative cognitive effects in healthy populations. For the first time, we use a combination of EEG and simultaneous EEG/fMRI to examine the effects of a commonly prescribed AChEI (donepezil) on cognition in healthy older participants. The short- and long-term impact of donepezil was assessed using two double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. In both cases, we utilised cognitive (paired associates learning (CPAL)) and electrophysiological measures (resting EEG power) that have demonstrated high-sensitivity to age-related cognitive decline. Experiment 1 tested the effects of 5 mg/per day dosage on cognitive and EEG markers at 6-hour, 2-week and 4-week follow-ups. In experiment 2, the same markers were further scrutinised using simultaneous EEG/fMRI after a single 5 mg dose. Experiment 1 found significant negative effects of donepezil on CPAL and resting Alpha and Beta band power. Experiment 2 replicated these results and found additional drug-related increases in the Delta band. EEG/fMRI analyses revealed that these oscillatory differences were associated with activity differences in the left hippocampus (Delta), right frontal-parietal network (Alpha), and default-mode network (Beta). We demonstrate the utility of simple cognitive and EEG measures in evaluating drug responses after acute and chronic donepezil administration. The presentation of previously established markers of age-related cognitive decline indicates that AChEIs can impair cognitive function in healthy older individuals. To our knowledge this is the first study to identify the precise neuroanatomical origins of EEG drug markers using simultaneous EEG/fMRI. The results of this study may be useful for evaluating novel drugs for cognitive enhancement

Liminal Manoeuvre and Conceptual Envelopment: Russian and Chinese Non-Conventional Responses to Western Military Dominance since 1991

This article summarises key arguments from the author’s work, in The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, on adaptive responses to Western conventional superiority since the end of the Cold War in 1991. It argues that US and Allied dominance in one particular, narrowly-defined, extremely expensive and extraordinarily technology-dependent form of battlefield manoeuvre forced all adversaries, state and non-state, to adapt in order to survive. The Russian response produced an emerging form of ambiguous warfare the author describes as ‘liminal manoeuvre’, which seeks to ride the threshold of detectability and present an ambiguous signature to Western intelligence systems and decision-makers, before launching rapid combat operations to seize key objectives, then de-escalate tension. The aim is to enable a negotiated solution, using objectives seized as bargaining chips. The Chinese response, which the author calls ‘conceptual envelopment’, expands the definition of war to include trans-military and non-military activities that Western planners may struggle to recognise as warfare at all, until too late. The implications for future inter-state warfare include greater risk of miscalculation, declining effectiveness of the Western military model, challenges in prioritisation of threats, and the need for a mix of conventional and non-conventional capabilities as part of the Western response

Feature Review: How to Defend Australia, by Hugh White

Featured review of How to Defend Australia by Hugh Whit

The Roles and Utility of Ground Forces in Counterinsurgency and Stability Operations

The conflict environment is changing, and—after almost two decades of continuous COIN, stabilisation and counterterrorism missions—government and public opinion in western and allied countries are unlikely to support continued large-scale or long-duration missions of this type. Yet history demonstrates that such missions are, and are likely to remain, some of the most frequent and geographically widespread. Likewise, ground forces are critical for success in COIN and stabilisation missions, due to the need to interact closely with local government and populations, which implies the need to establish and maintain a physical presence in the area of operations, which in turn implies the need to survive and prevail in a close combat environment, which only ground forces can do. Thus, despite their unpopularity, ground forces can expect (and must be prepared) to continue engaging in these types of operations. However, the same factors that have enhanced the threat in recent decades—in particular, connectivity and the ability to conduct collaborative and remote engagement— also create opportunities for new operating methods for ground forces conducting COIN and stabilisation. These include the ability to deploy only a small element forward on the ground, conducting SFA and FID tasks, while supporting it with a QRF and other enablers that remain offshore in a sea-base or in regionally-deployed FOBs. In such a scenario the main force might be withheld from the theatre of operations and either deploy for a brief initial period only, or not at all. For a force operating in this manner, protected mobility and communications would remain essential, as would the ability to access and deliver precision fire support when required. Deployed forces would probably be modular to a very low level, operating in a mesh of multi-role, semi-autonomous small teams supporting each other and swapping roles as needed. Traditional intelligence, engineering, civil affairs, psychological operations and military governance capabilities would remain essential, but might be called forward as needed. Ultimately, however, while ground forces will almost certainly continue to play a central role in counterinsurgency and stabilisation operations, the way they perform this role, the organisation and equipment with which they do so, and the environment in which they conduct such missions is likely to change, and keep changing, into the foreseeable future