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Inwardly rectifying potassium channels (KIR) in GtoPdb v.2025.4
Get PDFThe 2TM domain family of K channels are also known as the inward-rectifier K channel family. This family includes the strong inward-rectifier K channels (Kir2.x) that are constitutively active, the G protein-activated inward-rectifier K channels (Kir3.x) and the ATP-sensitive K channels (Kir6.x, which combine with sulphonylurea receptors (SUR1-3)). The pore-forming α subunits form tetramers, and heteromeric channels may be formed within subfamilies (e.g. Kir3.2 with Kir3.3)
Beyond Criminalisation: Green Criminology, Environmental Harm, and Sustainable Development Goal 15 by Lucy Sharp
Get PDFSustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 seeks to protect terrestrial ecosystems, promote sustainable land use, and halt biodiversity loss; this commentary argues that green criminology provides one of the most valuable frameworks for achieving SDG 15 in the way it shifts the focus from legalistic definitions of crime to broader ecological ‘harms’ and a harm-based perspective. Criticisms of green criminology abound and highlight the need for nuanced and contextual application, which this commentary will suggest by addressing the environmental and humanitarian consequences of rare earth mining in Myanmar and how legal penalisation could be potentially ineffective in addressing ecological degradation under military-led governance. By integrating green criminology with regionally tailored policy and intervention, this essay suggests a pathway toward more effective environmental governance and sustainable development
Enforcing Human Rights Through Conventionality Control by Jack Dias-Harrison
No full textObserving the practice of the Inter-American Court, this article will criticise the doctrinal effectiveness of conventionality control as a mode of regional enforcement of human rights. The article firstly criticises the theoretical argument that conventionality control is a more effective way to enforce state human rights compliance. Firstly, there is no actual legal basis both explicitly in the American Convention on Human Rights, and implicitly through precedent from the decision of Almonacid or by invocation of the principle of effectiveness. Without authority there is no normative reason for States to subject their own domestic law to the Inter-American Court to enforce human rights. Secondly, the article criticises the systematic illegitimacy in unjustifiably restraining the actions of democratically legitimate states. Systematic illegitimacy gives no normative reason for states to comply where their own democratic autonomy is denied and infringed, leading to non-compliance with human rights judgements. This is illustrated in the cases Gelman and Fontevecchia. Finally, this article proves these normative issues in practice through an empirical analysis of the low compliance rates in conventionality control judgements. The article then engages with the highly complied alternative friendly settlement process which by comparison proves that conventionality control is ineffective due to it’s lack of dialogue with the states. Therefore, if the states have no normative reasons to subject their domestic laws or comply with enforcement orders, and in practice conventionality control does not cause high compliance in contrast to non-maximalist dialogic mechanisms, then conventionality control is an ineffective mode of regional enforcement of human rights
Ready, Willing, and Able? Challenges Facing the Governance of Generative AI in the UK’s Legal Services Sector
Get PDFIn light of the increasing prominence of generative AI, this paper examines a number of critical challenges facing the stratified policy and governance frameworks shaping the adoption of this technology in the legal services sector. We argue that there are counterproductive tensions within the existing policy and governance framework, and that if we are to make the UK legal sector ‘ready, willing, and able’ to harness the potential of artificial intelligence, it is imperative that we set in place a new governance framework that is capable of setting, promoting, and supporting innovation across the legal sector as a whole. Furthermore, within this policy and governance framework we consider two critical factors that are relevant to state-of-the-art AI systems which present critical challenges to the development of legal AI: (1) data access issues in the domain of law and (2) knowledge, skills, and awareness of capabilities relating to the application of generative AI to legal problems
Stirling 900: Reviving Walking the Marches. The Captain’s Story
No full textIn this article, introduced by Stirling archaeologist Dr Murray Cook, McEwan presents a first-hand account of the revival of Stirling’s ancient custom of ‘Walking the Marches’. This custom, marking the historic boundaries Stirling, is unique in being a ‘perambulation’, rather than an event led by riders. McEwan, who played a key role in reviving this custom, lapsed since 1978, and in its performance in 2024, the 950th anniversary of the Royal Burgh.
 
Post - mortem privacy and digital legacy - a qualitative enquiry
Get PDFThis paper presents the results of the first qualitative empirical study on digital legacy and post-mortem privacy in the UK, shedding light on experiences, practices, perceptions, and limitations in the field. Our research confirms and extends existing theoretical and doctrinal work, validating key arguments, assumptions and ideas. The study unveils critical issues surrounding awareness, platform behaviours, and the limitations of current practices, exacerbated by the global impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Central to our findings is the overwhelming lack of awareness among users, practitioners, platforms, and regulators, highlighting a pressing need for increased engagement from the media, academics, and professional associations. The study identifies key drivers for change, emphasising the role of individual grief, high-profile cases, and technological advancements.
Legal professionals, facing obstacles in the absence of clear regulations, exhibit leadership and creativity in addressing client needs, claiming a new expertise in the evolving field of digital legacy. Contrary to the clear call for law reform among practitioners, regulators acknowledge the growing importance but prioritise other areas, necessitating a cross-cutting reform approach. Concerns about platform cooperation, jurisdictional differences, and the inadequacy of existing solutions emerge, urging a re-evaluation of technological and in-service solutions, such as Facebook or Apple Legacy Contact. Education and media literacy are identified as pivotal components, addressing the broader landscape of digital legacy and privacy.
Our findings underscore the urgent need for legal and policy reform, conceptual clarity, and a review of technological solutions. The study\u27s impact extends beyond empirical evidence, informing subsequent research on user perceptions and guiding the development of policy and law reform proposals in the underexplored realm of digital legacy and post-mortem privacy
‘The Donors are Everything’ Precarity and the Political Economy of Global Health Science
No full textBased upon an ethnography of two biomedical, scientific research institutes in Uganda funded primarily by donors in the Global North, this article examines the political economy of knowledge production in global health science. Specifically, I use the concept of precarity to illustrate the ways in which funding instabilities for scientific research shape the making of knowledge. I do this at three levels: the macro level of funding institutions, the meso level of research institutes, and the micro level of individual projects. Through analysing the experiences of researchers in these institutional environments, I elucidate the ways in which the political economy of global health science—particularly short-term, grant funding—constrains and enables knowledge production. I thus argue that for many scientists the priority of renewing or obtaining funding supersedes that of conducting research that is closely tied to local issues. Whilst I do not contend that the latter is unimportant to scientists, this article highlights the existential precarities fomented by the possibility of not being funded and argues that they play a substantial role in influencing the foci of global health science research projects, thus alienating them from the needs and interests of the people they are intended to benefit
Landscape Aesthetics of Remoteness in the Indian Himalayas
Get PDFThis paper examines the pictorial practices of landscape painting in colonial British art and the textual practice of colonial travel writing to examine the landscape aesthetics of remoteness in the Indian Himalayas. It argues that neither the ‘picturesque’ nor the ‘sublime’ genre of colonial landscape paintings can describe the representation of the marginalised geographies of the Indian Himalayas and the colonial impetus to engineer them. By offering a paradigm of the landscape aesthetics of remoteness, this paper demonstrates how remoteness is aesthetically reproduced in the colonial visual imagination, which informs the mapping, engineering and transformation of the Himalayan landscape. It examines the landscape aesthetics in the travelogue and its accompanying illustrations of aquatints in the works of James B. Fraser (1820a, b) and of the lithographs and accompanying text in the work of Thomas Daniell (c.1800) for the North-Western Himalayan region in India. The paper situates these representations of colonial landscape paintings in a broader study of ‘landscape and power’ (Mitchell 1994). It analyses the pictorial and textual practices through the dialectic of the ‘interior’ and the ‘frontier’ that produces the landscape aesthetic of remoteness and provides a new paradigm for studying landscapes and their representation