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Transnational Armed Conflicts: IAC or NIAC – The Lesser of Two Evils? By Shriya Maini and Raima Singh
Get PDFCharacterization of ‘transnational armed conflicts’ as non-international armed conflicts [“NIAC”] or international armed conflicts [“IAC”] often makes more for an interesting oxonian corridor debate, especially when you’ve been taught by Prof. Dapo Akande and Judge Theodor Meron. For the purposes of international humanitarian law, I argue that transnational armed conflicts may be characterized as a classic NIAC. The factual model that I examine is as follows: A belligerent state [B] uses force against a non-state actor [N] on the territory of a territorial state [T]. Armed forces of T are not involved in the conflict and actions of N are not attributable to T. This argument hinges on four grounds: (1) Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions; (2) Rationale for separate legal regimes; (3) Consequential Reasons; and (4) Examination of counter-arguments.
Zabyelina, Yuliya. Between Immunity and Impunity: External Accountability of Political Elites for Transnational Crime (Book Review) by Miles Ratcliffe & Caroline McKenna
No full textIn Between Immunity and Impunity, Yuliya Zabyelina explores the challenges relating to accountability for profit-driven transnational crimes that destabilise global order. She provides a compelling account of the nature of these crimes and the impact that immunity has on victims’ ability to seek justice. By relying on a wide array of literature, jurisprudence, and governmental and non-governmental reports, Dr. Zabyelina both makes the case for the need for accountability and introduces the reader to various external accountability mechanisms. This book lays the groundwork for future research as it relates to policy considerations for immunity exceptions and the theorisation of how legal and political structures engender impunity for criminal elites
Unveiling the Immaterial: The Premier Building Restoration Project At The Hope Waddell Institution
No full textThe Premier Building Restoration Project at the Hope Waddell Institution sought to explore architecture as a dynamic process that transcends mere physical reconstruction, engaging deeply with the immaterial aspects that shape and define built environments. This project was set against the backdrop of the Venice Charter to address pressing environmental, spiritual and cultural concerns, yet it equally emphasizes the importance of \u27weightless\u27 elements—narratives, memories, and cultural significances—that often remain hidden beneath the surface.
Hope Waddell Institution, a historical educational complex with deep roots in Calabar, Nigeria’s socio-cultural fabric, serves as a case study for investigating the interplay between tangible and intangible heritage. The restoration project of the Premier Building is not merely about preserving the Scottish prefabricated wooden structure but about uncovering and reintegrating the institution’s rich traditional materiality,cultural heritage, stories, and historical figures that have shaped its legacy.
By utilizing an inter/multi/transdisciplinary methodology, the project incorporates archival research, community narratives, and traditional use restorative analysis to reveal the hidden layers of the Premier building’s past. This includes understanding the socio-political contexts of its establishment, the evolving educational paradigms, and the community’s ongoing relationship with the space. The project challenges traditional restoration methods, proposing a more holistic view that considers the immaterial as equally crucial to the institution’s heritage.
The Premier Building Restoration Project thus serves as a model for contemporary architectural practice, emphasizing the need to approach the built environment as a repository of hidden memories and stories. This approach not only enriches our understanding of architectural heritage but also fosters a more inclusive and reflective process of architectural (re)making, where the unseen and unheard narratives are brought to the forefront, expanding the discipline beyond its conventional boundaries
Bio-imaginaries: ‘Biologics’, Bricolage, and the Making of Pharmaceutical Knowledge
No full textWhat does it mean when pharmaceuticals are called ‘biologics’? This article follows a pregnant person who has been hospitalised on a Norwegian rheumatology ward after being taken off her monoclonal antibody (mab) medication. She is painfully trapped in a crisis that is medical and existential, but also epistemological. Weighing the debilitating consequences of her disease against concerns about pharmaceutical risks for herself and her unborn child, she creates and adapts her own knowledge of mabs as ‘biologics’. Far from being passively receptive, she thus becomes part of a complex project of semantics where analogies and oppositions of biologic and chemical, natural and man-made, health and unhealth work to render some knowledge plausible and some implausible. Placing the individual and the pharmaceutical label at the centre of this semantic economy, the article suggests that pharmaceutical labels play an important albeit unacknowledged role in the making of pharmaceuticals as safe and efficacious
Making ‘Setgel’s Creature’ Mindful: Conceptual Change in Contemporary Mongolia
No full textAs globally circulating understandings of mental health and mindfulness practices gain popularity in Mongolia, they articulate with setgel, a localised concept that has been shaped by a constellation of historical forces. Loosely translated as ‘mind’ in English, setgel has remained central to Mongolian notions of personhood, health, and civic duty, even as the meanings associated with those ideas have changed. As progressivist forces, Tibetan Buddhism and the dominant Soviet political culture of much of the 20th century have held and shaped values in public life. This Position Piece explores the role of power relations and political economy in changing associations of setgel through the example of a recent state-sponsored, Buddhist-inflected mindfulness promotional event for Mongolian influencers. It asks broader questions about how anthropologists as generators of ‘cultural’ knowledge attend to expectations from institutional hosts in the field while also maintaining fidelity to historical change in our work. 
Synergies: The Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, MAT, and a Shared Vision
No full textEditorial for the April issue, 2024
Rain as a Singular Object with Multiple Ontologies among the Gurung in the Nhāson Valley
Get PDFRain, a droplet of water that comes from the sky, appears as a singular object with multiple ontologies among Gurung, an indigenous people of Nepal dwelling in the mountain region. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the relationships between society and the environment through the names of rains among the Gurung based on the nine months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2018. In the article, Gurung’s nomenclature for rains strongly raises the question of universal and quantitative scaling to nature and natural phenomena, particularly a water droplet from the sky. For the Gurung, names for rain, which are grounded on land and expressed autochthonously, have cultural meanings that play an important role in comprehending the indigenous notion of the environment. However, global climate change is not only affecting the precipitation pattern in the Himalayan region but also uprooting the nomenclature of rain that is rooted in ancestral thick and insightful observation of the environment.
Review of Three Fruits: Nepali Ayurvedic Doctors on Health, Nature, and Social Change by Mary M. Cameron : Reviewed by Mary Bannister
Get PDFFrom practice to policy: how open research is changing research culture in cultural heritage
Get PDFThe role of the museum (to preserve, interpret and make accessible collections and heritage) means that open access, in the broadest sense, has always been part of our purpose. Organisational research culture at National Museums Scotland has been guided by a longstanding academic tradition, the Nolan principles of public life and, since gaining Independent Research Organisation (IRO) status in 2016, UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) rules and regulations on research. To this end, since 2012, our public-facing research repository has encouraged the depositing of research outputs predominantly in traditional formats (journal articles etc.) produced by curators and research-associated staff. Open research is also embedded in many areas of our practice; for example, researchers within the museum are expected, often as part of public engagement, to share methods and make associated data freely available. These can be found in non-traditional formats such as talks, podcasts and blog posts. Since 2017, the museum has taken steps towards being more consistent in its application of open research principles. The academic open research agenda is providing impetus and focus to modernise this practice from analogue to digital to FAIR.
In line with the Museum’s new research strategy, we have recently formulated and communicated new guidance for what range of outputs, and range of authors, should be included in our Research Repository. An interdepartmental Open Access Steering Group, initially formed in 2018 to look at image provision, has been reframed to include the embedding of Open Research principles. This shift in outlook has raised issues not least regarding copyright and complicated rights structures, but also raised debates as to what counts as a research output, what counts as research data, and, ultimately, what is research.
This talk outlined the road so far towards embedding open research at National Museums Scotland, and will discuss how open research policies, external to the museum, are impacting research culture and practice. It acknowledged where the experience in a museum and Independent Research Organisation may echo, and may differ from, related journeys within Higher Education Institutions
A Systems-Level Analysis of 2-[18F]FDG PET in Pigs Reveals Complex Skeletal Metabolism Networks in vivo which are altered with Osteomyelitis
Get PDFOur understanding of complex tissue interactions at a systems level remains rudimentary, limiting our ability to dissect mechanisms underlying diseases and develop novel therapeutics. Skeletal research has focused on the pathogenicity of obesity and diabetes mellitus on the skeleton; however, it has been recently revealed that the skeleton is not merely an endocrine target but also a secretory organ, modulating systemic energy homeostasis1,2. We recently discovered that different bones within the murine skeleton have a unique glucose metabolism and form a complex metabolic network3. Thus, we hypothesised that different bones within the porcine skeleton would have unique molecular signatures and form a distinct metabolic network, and these networks would be altered by osteomyelitis, an inflammatory condition of the bone.
Five healthy mini and three Danish Landrace-Yorkshire pigs (inoculated with S. aureus to induce osteomyelitis) underwent static 2-[18F]FDG PET/CT and were analysed to measure bone and bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) glucose metabolism. Analyze was used for image analysis and processing. Bone and bone marrow volumes of interest were segmented in CT images using Hounsfield Unit (HU) > 300 (bone) and HU -200 to 115 (BMAT; Fig1). PET images were used to extract average standard uptake values. Network analysis was performed using Graphia.
Osteomyelitis pigs had a lower bone density and increased BMAT volume compared to healthy controls. There was an increased incorporation of 2-[18F]FDG into the bone and BMAT of osteomyelitis pigs. Similar to what has previously been observed in the mouse3 and human4, there was an increased incorporation of 2-[18F]FDG in the axial skeleton compared to the appendicular skeleton. Network analysis indicated a shift in bone metabolic profiles between healthy and osteomyelitis pigs.
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