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The Scope For Agency And The Role Of Individuals In UN Peace Operations
No full textPeacekeeping, often portrayed as a collective endeavour governed by the United Nations Security Council, is, in practice, deeply contingent on the agency of individuals, who must interpret and implement complex mandates. Academic recognition of the role played by individuals has grown recently, and existing research has gone some way to showing how the effects of individuals can be assessed empirically. Yet work in this area is relatively nascent. Significant gaps remain in our understanding of how micro-level dynamics interact with structural forces, and of the overall scope for individual agency in peace operations. An emphasis on individual agency raises a series of pressing questions, which animate the contributions to this special section. These include questions about the effects of personal attributes, like nationality or level of education, on behaviour; the impact of individuals on strategic culture and operational norms within a mission; individuals’ capacity to bring about change amid structural constraints; and questions about methodological challenges that arise when studying these micro-level dynamics. In addressing these questions, the special section contributes to ongoing scholarly debates and to contemporary peacekeeping practice, embedding the study of individual agency within broader analytical frameworks and exploring its critical role in shaping peacekeeping outcomes
Strengths-Based Resilience: A Practitioner’s Manual For The SBR Program
No full textIn a world full of stress and uncertainty, educators and clinicians are pivotal in fostering resilience — the capacity to thrive amid life\u27s challenges. Strengths-Based Resilience: A Practitioner’s Manual for the SBR Program offers more than mere knowledge; it is a practical guide for embarking on a transformative journey. This book empowers readers to teach resilience skills that help people grow and flourish. Integrating scientific insights with the art of applied practice, this manual draws from the trio of positive psychology, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and mindfulness. With 14 carefully designed modules, facilitators can translate theoretical principles into actionable steps that help participants navigate life\u27s obstacles with agility and cultivate an approach to life that harnesses and honors their personal strengths. The SBR program helps to realize a future where resentment gives way to appreciation, connections are strengthened through positive interactions, and families and communities collaborate for the collective good. This color-illustrated manual is an essential resource for mental health practitioners and educators aiming to help craft a more resilient world for tomorrow
Be Careful What You Wish For: The Dark Side Of Freedom
No full textCitizens of most affluent, democratic societies live in an economic, political, social, and historical context that advances personal freedom and self-determination above all else. Contemporary psychology has embraced this emphasis on self-determination as the key to healthy psychological functioning. However, the enormous opportunity for growth and self-advancement that flows from unlimited freedom of choice may diminish rather than enhance subjective well-being. This chapter argues that the unprecedented freedom thrust onto modern citizens of affluent democracies has occasionally produced numbing personal uncertainty rather personal enlightenment and empowerment. It has also raised the stakes for even trivial decisions, turning them into statements about the self. Increasingly, we are what we eat, what we wear, where we vacation, and how we amuse ourselves. Citizens of affluent democracies are challenged to strike a balance between constraint and freedom to facilitate healthy psychological functioning in the uncertainty, freedom, and abundance of modern life
Validation Of Non-Invasive Methods For The Measurement Of Gonadal And Inter-Renal Steroid Hormones In A Desert-Adapted Amphibian (\u3cem\u3eScaphiopus couchii\u3c/em\u3e)
No full textFor aquatic and semi-aquatic vertebrates like amphibians, it is possible to estimate excreted hormone levels using non-invasive methods such as waterborne and salivary sampling. These techniques allow monitoring of endocrine activity over varying, repeated and simultaneous integration periods while minimizing handling-related stress that can ‘contaminate’ hormone estimates, including estimates of baseline glucocorticoids. Here we have validated the extraction and quantification of three steroid hormones (corticosterone, CORT; 17-b estradiol, E₂; testosterone, TST) in Couch’s spadefoots (Scaphiopus couchii)—a desert-adapted anuran of special interest for physiology, evolution and conservation—using non-invasive waterborne and minimally invasive salivary hormone methods. We combined extraction and enzyme immunoassay methods to conduct conventional technical validations of parallelism, recovery and time-course. Next, we carried out biological validations by testing the correlation between excreted and circulating concentrations and conducting pharmacological challenges. We found that all three hormones can be precisely estimated from 60-min water baths, exhibit robust parallelism, and have high recoveries. Further, we demonstrated that secretory responses to pharmacological challenges can be detected in waterborne CORT in male and female frogs; in TST and E₂ in male frogs, but not consistently for TST or E₂ in female frogs. Lastly, plasma hormone concentrations were consistently correlated with their waterborne complements for CORT (both sexes), as well as TST and E₂ in males (but not females). Plasma CORT was also positively correlated with salivary CORT. Together, our findings suggest that sampling waterborne and salivary hormones offers a minimally invasive method that field endocrinologists and conservation physiologists can use to obtain biologically informative endocrine estimates from desert-adapted amphibians
The Anlagen Of Evo-Devo In Fritz Müller\u27s \u3cem\u3eFür Darwin (1864)\u3c/em\u3e
No full textFür Darwin, written in the early 1860s by the German zoologist and Darwinist Fritz Müller, articulates many of the concepts foundational to the contemporary field of evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo. Working on the Brazilian coast offered him refuge from both religious conservatism and the “great market of Prussian academic science. Here, Müller studied the developmental stages of crustacea and used these meticulous observations to critique the extant literature on classification. In so doing, he both provided evidence for Darwin\u27s theory, and extended it to larval forms. In this essay, we situate Für Darwin, published in English as Facts and Arguments for Darwin in 1869, within the landscape of nineteenth century biology. We propose that Für Darwin is a remarkably prophetic text in the history of developmental biology given its sharp insight into the relationship between development and evolution (ontogeny and phylogeny), its many contributions to crustacean biology, and Müller\u27s deep appreciation of the danger of scientific dogma
The Heart Of Africa In The Shadow Of Early Zionism: Pauline Hopkins\u27s \u3cem\u3eOf One Blood\u3c/em\u3e
No full textThis essay reads Telassar, the hidden Ethiopian city at the heart of Pauline Hopkins\u27s psychological-historical-occult mystery Of One Blood (1902–3), in relation to a better-known contemporaneous project for the regeneration of a diasporic people: Zionism. I argue that in Of One Blood, Hopkins, whose wide-ranging writing made her a key figure of early twentieth-century Black literary history, reworks elements of George Eliot\u27s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda, which famously ends with its protagonist discovering his Jewish identity and setting off to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Yet even as she adapts Daniel Deronda, Hopkins strikingly rejects its Zionist logic. Demurring from Zionism\u27s colonizing project and its equation between Jewish community and the construction of a nation-state, Hopkins depicts Telassar less as a homeland than as a battery that will galvanize connections between Black people around the world. By excavating the presence of Zionism in Of One Blood, we glimpse how Hopkins made Zionist ideology a foil over and against which to formulate a countervailing vision of Blackness, deepening the history of American anti-Zionism and indicating its generative political possibilities
Beyond Interdisciplinarity: How \u3cem\u3eRosine 2.0\u3c/em\u3e Created Social Structures Of Community Care
No full textHow might we learn from history in ways that help us imagine a better future? And what role might academic institutions play in making those futures imaginable? These questions informed Rosine Association 2.0, a socially engaged art project out of Swarthmore College active from 2021 to 2023. Inspired by a nineteenth-century social project in Philadelphia, Rosine 2.0 formed an interdisciplinary collective of artists, harm reduction organizers, archivists, and activists to co-imagine how harm reduction and mutual aid reduce stigma and increase community care in Philadelphia. We believe that Rosine 2.0 exemplifies the possibilities of public humanities projects that are truly collaborative and transformative. The project went beyond interdisciplinarity by bringing together the fields of archiving, history, and community engagement with communities outside of the College, including curators, artists, and individuals with lived experience. While Swarthmore was the organizing institution, the project existed outside of traditional academic frameworks, creating alternative modes of relationality between and among campus and community members. Each contributed a vital set of skills and perspectives in a networked series of collaborations. The project allowed for rethinking relationships between past and present; between the college and community partners; as well as between faculty, staff, and students in the building of social structures of community care
Biofeedback System for Shoulder Rehabilitation
No full textShoulder pain affects a large percentage of the US population, and while many seek physical therapy as rehabilitation, there are still problems that arise. Shoulder rehabilitation often suffers from muscle compensation and limited quantitative feedback, and additionally, a primary concern of a physical therapist is ensuring that the patients are performing the exercises correctly without the supervision of the clinician. Therefore, this project developed a dual-system electromyography (EMG) biofeedback platform to improve muscle awareness and tracking during shoulder exercises. The first system uses a Delsys Trigno EMG setup with a custom Python GUI for in-clinic use. The second system, built with Arduino Uno and MyoWare sensors, provides a low-cost, portable solution for at-home use. Both systems deliver real-time EMG signal visual feedback to patients, with the Arduino Unit achieving a sub-second latency and a total cost of under $200. This work offers a foundation for future clinical integration of EMG-based feedback systems for shoulder rehabilitation
Israel/Palestine: Political Futures
No full textThis discussion forum inquires into different visions for the political future of Israel Palestine, covering, for example, one-state, two-state, and confederational models
Ronald Reagan and the Politics of Tuition
No full textThis paper explores how Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, justified imposing tuition at the University of California, despite a near one hundred-year tradition of tuition-free education, by connecting tuition to the student protest movement of the 1960s. This paper argues that Reagan made the case for tuition by claiming that tuition would restore law and order on college campuses. Specifically, he contended that tuition would deter rabble-rousing individuals from attending college and improve the moral character of students. Consequently, this argument proved appealing for the majority of Californians, who expressed concern about the student protests, and thus the public rallied behind tuition. Previous scholarship has examined the role that the student protest movement played in Reagan’s 1966 gubernatorial victory, but little has been said of how the student protest movement continued to dominate Reagan’s education policy upon taking office or the political rhetoric he used to justify the imposition of tuition. This paper seeks to add to the research by offering an in-depth investigation of Reagan’s public rhetoric surrounding tuition, using primary source evidence that includes transcripts of speeches and press conferences as well as newspaper evidence