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Sovereignism, neo-colonialism and African states’ discontent with geopolitical Europe in the era of the OACPS-EU Samoa Agreement
Full text linkEU officials have praised the Samoa Agreement as an essential partnership of equals between the European Union (EU) and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS). The Agreement is lauded for its ostensible shift away from focus on aid and trade towards ambitious shared political objectives relating to human rights, democracy, security, environmentalism and migration. Applying the concepts of sovereignism and neo-colonialism, however, the article explains how African officials remained highly anxious to defend political, cultural and economic sovereignties against perceived European intrusions during the negotiations. It then underscores two divergent African state responses to a highly flawed Agreement. First, non-alignment – understood to involve African actors’ refusal to implement the Samoa Agreement while holding out for new concessions and/or new partnerships. Second, discontent – understood to involve reluctant acquiescence to the new ‘partnership’, while engaging in discursive political
contestations of European agendas concerning human rights, aid delivery, free trade, and resource extraction in Africa. Building upon elite interviews conducted with African officials, it illustrates the discursive contours of this sovereignist discontent. The article concludes by highlighting African actors’ agency – whether inside or outside of the Samoa Agreement – to contest the ‘Geopolitical’ Commission’s neo-colonial agenda
Care stories - creating together against the hostile environment
Full text linkA collective storytelling project exploring radical care, belonging and solidarity with a group of refugees and people seeking asylum in London
Donald Trump wants to bring back plastic straws, but the world is going in another direction
No full textPaper straws aren't a viable alternative to plastic. But a single fail won't change the trajectory
Placental epigenetic clocks derived from crowdsourcing: implications for the study of accelerated aging in obstetrics
Full text linkEpigenetic gestational age acceleration has been implicated in obstetric syndromes including preeclampsia, yet robust conclusions require accurate and unbiased epigenetic age models. Herein, we curated 1,842 public placental methylomes and organized a DREAM challenge to develop models of gestational age. Participants were blinded to the test data that we generated from 384 placentas encompassing normal and complicated pregnancies. Models developed during and post-challenge compared favorably to existing models in terms of accuracy, yet they were better calibrated throughout gestation and indicated that reports of accelerated epigenetic aging in preterm preeclampsia were likely due to modeling artifacts. The models show that accelerated aging is associated with a decrease in birthweight percentiles in male neonates delivered at term. By contrast, preterm accelerated aging was protective against delivery of a small-for-gestational-age neonate regardless of fetal sex. This work informs our understanding of the fetal sex-dimorphic role of the placenta epigenome in obstetrics
Rethinking information retrieval in a re-decentralised web: exploring the feasibility and quality of search across personal online datastores
Full text linkTraditional information retrieval (IR) models, such as keyword-based and vector-based techniques, have long been used in centralized systems. However, the Web’s re-decentralization, with its focus on data ownership and privacy, calls for a re-evaluation of these methods in these settings. While standards for decentralized search enhance privacy to some extent, they also introduce computational overhead, black-box decision-making, and infrastructure complexity. Despite these challenges, traditional IR techniques remain largely unexplored in such environments. This paper presents an innovative application of traditional IR models in the decentralized Web by adapting them for Personal Online Data Stores (PODs), where search parties have varying access rights. We explore their role in source selection, document ranking, and result merging, extending them to meet decentralized search demands. Using Solid PODs and a synthetic medical dataset, we evaluate these models in a privacy-sensitive environment. Our findings demonstrate that extended IR methods provide an effective balance of performance, interpretability, and efficiency. These approaches hold strong potential as privacy-preserving alternatives for decentralized search on a re-decentralized Web. Notably, our top-performing model achieved competitive results in top-item retrieval compared to centralized search systems, maintaining high relevance scores under both limited and full data access conditions
Examining the influence of gender and ethnic diversity on bank performance: empirical insights from the USA
No full textThis research investigates the influence of boardroom gender and ethnic diversity on US banks' performance during the 2016-2021 period. Employing the GMM estimation technique, we address the pervasive issue of endogeneity that has posed challenges in previous research within this realm. Our findings suggest positive individual effects of gender and ethnic diversity on bank performance. Nonetheless, the interaction effects mitigate bank performance. Furthermore, quantile regression findings unveil that the influence of boardroom gender and ethnic heterogeneity differs in high-performing and low-performing banks. We also find that the beneficial impact of gender and ethnic diversity on bank value is attenuated during periods of uncertainty. Additionally, we report that societal factors moderate the relationship between boardroom heterogeneity and bank performance. However, setting diversity quotas does not affect the baseline results
Notes towards a management history of Ndumo Game Reserve
No full textThis paper provides a thematic summary of local historical anthropogenic impacts and interventions which have impacted on Ndumo Game Reserve. It also examines some key biophysical episodes and events. Natural scientists using long-term data collected in the reserve would do well to be aware of both kinds of impacts when drawing conclusions about its ecology and biota. The paper synthesises available evidence from the official records contained in the archive of the Natal Parks Board, in the period of its control of the reserve (1947-1988). These have been little consulted by researchers and conservation managers to date. The paper is organised into sections relating to general management; African reserve residents and their livestock, and tourists; weather and water; fauna including game counts and culling; flora including veld burning, alien invasive plants and veld assessments. A brief section notes key developments post NPB control: rhino poaching, illegal occupation and rerouting of the Usuthu River. The paper does not review the wider literature touching on the topics covered. It is not an analysis or critique of management. It shares the depth of archival material available, and reminds researchers to think holistically about the range of drivers of ecological change impacting on their research subjects and landscapes in the social-ecological context of managed protected areas
(In)security
Full text linkThis paper explores the effects of the pursuit of security in individual life and in society, from a psychoanalytic perspective. It argues that the achievement of total security is a fantasy that can have destructive consequences. Living with insecurity in a rupture-repair cycle is a more realistic and tolerable position to adopt
Preferences for treatment outcomes in rectal cancer: a discrete choice experiment among patients and healthy volunteers.
Full text linkAim: Treatment for rectal cancer can leave patients with a permanent stoma or bowel dysfunction. We examined preferences for treatment outcomes among people with and without rectal cancer.
Methods: Our discrete choice experiment examined the effect of risk of cancer recurrence, presence of a stoma, and bowel dysfunction on treatment preferences in 372 rectal cancer patients without a stoma, 269 with a stoma, and 204 people without cancer.
Results: Predictors of treatment preferences differed significantly between all groups (p<0.0001). Avoiding a stoma was more important to stoma-naïve groups, while avoiding bowel dysfunction was more important to those with superior function. Reducing risk of recurrence was valued highly, and equally, across the groups.
Conclusions: Experience of a stoma or bowel dysfunction resulted in higher tolerance of those treatment outcomes. Hearing from patients living with different treatment outcomes could help prepare newly diagnosed patients, and facilitate informed decision-making, where patients have a choice
Initial development and psychometric properties of the Gambling Disorder Test in a nationally representative sample of adults
No full textGambling Disorder (GD) is an officially recognized mental health disorder. However, its conceptualization and diagnostic criteria have changed substantially over the years due to new clinical and epidemiological research supporting its reconceptualization from an impulse control disorder to an addictive disorder. The evolving nature of GD led to changes in its diagnostic approach within the eleventh revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11). However, no updated standardized psychometric test reflecting the latest developments exists. Therefore, the goal of the study was to develop and report the psychometric properties of the Gambling Disorder Test (GDT), a brief and convenient four-item assessment instrument reflecting the current diagnostic criteria for GD in the ICD-11. A nationally representative sample of British adults was recruited (N = 1,028, meanage = 46.54 years, SDage = 15.71). The results showed a one-factor solution for the GDT and initial support for the scale’s factorial validity, population-cross validity, criterion validity, concurrent validity, and reliability. Further gender-based measurement invariance was conducted, with the GDT exhibiting full scalar invariance and the results of latent mean comparison showing that males had significantly higher GD latent means compared to females (latent mean difference = -0.156; z = -3.844, p < .001, d = -.249). The self-reported prevalence of GD in the sample was 0.49%. The GDT is a promising brief assessment instrument based on the latest conceptualization and diagnostic criteria for GD that can be employed by clinicians and researchers alike
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