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Law, power, and criminality: discovering Thuggee and exploring the margins of Indian society ’, East India Company (Marlborough: AM, 2025).
No full textMonetary policy in open economies with production networks
Get PDFThis paper studies the design of monetary policy in small open economies with domestic and cross-border production networks and nominal rigidities. The monetary policy that closes the domestic output gap is nearly optimal and is implemented
by stabilizing the aggregate inflation index that weights sectoral inflation according to the sector’s roles as a supplier of inputs and a net exporter of products within the international production networks. To close the output gap, monetary policy should
assign large weights to inflation in sectors with small direct or indirect (i.e., via the downstream sectors) import shares and failing to account for the cross-border production networks overemphasizes inflation in sectors that export intensively directly and indirectly (i.e., via the downstream sectors). We validate our theoretical results using the World Input-Output Database and show that the monetary policy that closes the output gap outperforms alternative policies that abstract from the openness of the economy or the input-output linkages
Dal consenso al malcontento. Declino del modello keynesiano e diritto dell’economia nel Regno Unito degli anni Settanta
Get PDFThe new Brutalism in law, state, and territory: Trump and Taliban 2.0 amidst climate catastrophes
Get PDFTaking as its starting point the current upending of the post-World War II international legal order and the Transatlantic partnership that has been its backbone, this essay asks whether the changes we are witnessing constitute ‘systems change’? Are we witnessing shifts in our political, governance, and legal systems that have the potential of altering the fundamental ideas on which these ‘systems’ are based? To explore this question, we examine three contemporary examples of change: the current US Administration’s attempts to sideline some of its international legal commitments and undermine the multilateral world order; the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021; and the destruction of habitable territories in the Pacific due to climate catastrophes. We use these examples to explore the notion of ‘systems change’ and to discuss how scholars can approach systemic changes that challenge current normative consensus and the rule of law. Our aims in this commentary are to identify where further research is needed by focusing on breaking-points in international normative frameworks; consider the consequences of the decline of universalism, and examine the nexus between the climate emergency already faced by small island developing states and fragile and conflict affected states. The disparate sites and examples are deliberate – a modest effort to de-centre the tendency of the North Atlantic to absorb scholarly attention
The role of volitional reconsumption in the lives of gay men living with concealable stigmatized identities
Get PDFVolitional reconsumption involves consumers intentionally and actively seeking to relive specific consumption experiences. Various factors in consumers’ personal lives, such as identity transitions, personal crises, and different life stages, can influence their reconsumption experiences. Based on an oral history approach, our study investigates the role of volitional reconsumption among middle-aged gay men in Ireland. These men, living with concealable stigmatized identities (CSIs), have experienced severe stigma from the Irish Catholic church for most of their lives. Our study reveals that for our participants, the volitional reconsumption of specific objects and practices goes beyond simple recreation; they serve as a safeguard against the pain of stigma stemming from a homophobic church and society. Specifically, their volitional reconsumption experiences serve four main purposes: evading reality, giving a sense of permanence, providing power through contagion, and enabling identity reification. These purposes are achieved through four types of reconsumption: regressive, progressive, relational, and reflective, involving the use of specific objects and practices. The theoretical contribution of our study pertains to linking the growing field of consumer stigma, in our case concealable stigma, to volitional reconsumption and its benefits to consumers
Late Quaternary inundation and desiccation of Megalake Chad traced in dust records from the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean
Get PDFModern Lake Chad has shrunk in area by around 90 % since the 1960s under the twin pressures of climate change and increasing water demand. During the early to mid Holocene, the Chad basin featured a megalake with an area approximately 100 times larger than its modern remnant. In the mid/late Holocene (approximately 5000 years ago), this megalake dried out leaving behind vast deposits of readily deflated fine-grained sediments that are suggested to contribute ∼25 % of the annual total global atmospheric mineral dust load. Erosion has obliterated much of the evidence of earlier North African humid periods within the Lake Chad basin, limiting our understanding of the relationship between global/regional climatology, local hydrology and dust export. Here, we present new records of thorium-normalized flux estimates of mineral dust and its radiogenic isotope composition deposited at Ocean Drilling Program Site 662, situated downwind of Megalake Chad underneath the North African winter dust plume, in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean. Our records show that sediments of the Megalake Chad basin have a distinct neodymium isotopic signature that can be traced thousands of kilometers downwind from their source when the megalake basin was dry and dust-active, whereas the fingerprint of its input was strongly suppressed at times of high lake levels. Our results show that marine sedimentary archives can preserve uninterrupted proxy records of climate-driven hydrological change on the continents, in this case, a bellwether region of Africa that features the world's most active dust source, the Bodélé Depression
Shared neural correlates of interference control and response inhibition in adolescence and young adulthood
Get PDFInhibitory control (IC) is the ability to inhibit dominant or automatic behaviours, responses or thoughts, to allow for the selection of appropriate goal-directed responses. IC is a core executive function and has been associated with specific brain regions, such as the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) but also with a broader fronto-parietal network similar to the multi-demand network, which is thought to support the elaboration and maintenance of structured mental programs across a range of tasks. Here, functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected from different IC tasks within the same participants to investigate similarities and differences in brain activation between tasks and age groups. Adolescents (11–15 years-old, n = 34) and adults (18–26, n = 33) completed a numerical Stroop task and simple and complex Go/No-go (GNG) block-design tasks. Univariate analyses showed large overlapping fronto-parietal activation in the Stroop and complex GNG tasks, with more limited activation in the simple GNG task. When compared to adolescents, adults showed greater increases in activation in the right IFG in the Stroop task and in temporo-parietal and precentral clusters in the complex GNG task. High multivariate similarity was observed across fronto-parietal regions between complex GNG and Stroop tasks, and between simple and complex GNG tasks, but was much lower between Stroop and simple GNG tasks. Adults showed greater similarity between complex GNG and Stroop tasks, suggesting increased reliance on shared neural processes across tasks, rather than increased specialisation of brain networks to specific aspects of IC over development
Therapists’ experiences of working with terminal cancer patients: an interpretative phenomenological analysis
Get PDFThis study presents an in-depth qualitative investigation into therapists’ experiences of working face-to-face with a person who has received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Semistructured interviews were conducted with six qualified, experienced therapists (range: 7–26 years of experience), and the resulting verbatim transcripts were subjected to interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three interrelated experiential themes were identified: “working in a liminal space,” “being with,” and “walking a line.” Participants described their sense of a demarcation of two worlds characterizing their lived experiences and how transitioning between the two worlds related to their overall well-being. A way of being with patients in the therapeutic relationship, emphasizing person-to-person contact, and wordless presence were highlighted. The therapists described how this work had affected their emotional and physical self and how they balanced different aspects of their lives inside and outside the cancer world. The results section gives a detailed account of these processes at work. Findings are then discussed in relation to relevant constructs in the extant literature
The effects of rewards on trial-and-error learning in school-aged children
No full textHumans’ ability to rapidly identify appropriate actions in new situations is critical for functional behavior. This skill develops through trial-and-error where humans learn to choose the optimal actions through rewards from previous acts. Here, we used computerized games to test developmental changes in how rewards affect trial-and-error learning. School-aged children (5- to 15-year-olds) played online games while receiving either positive rewards, negative rewards, or no rewards. We tested how the groups differed in performance and play strategy. Children who received negative rewards had higher success rates, fewer attempts, and more efficient strategies. They also showed significant improvement with age, similar to the controls but in contrast to children who received positive rewards. Our findings demonstrate a developmental shift in how rewards affect trial and error and suggest that negative rewards emerge as a powerful cognitive reinforcer during late childhood
Disrupted visual attention relates to cognitive development in infants with Neurofibromatosis Type 1
Get PDFBackground: Neurofibromatosis Type 1 is a genetic condition diagnosed in infancy that substantially increases the likelihood of a child experiencing cognitive and developmental difficulties, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Children with NF1 show clear differences in attention, but whether these differences emerge in early development and how they relate to broader difficulties with cognitive and learning skills is unclear. To address this question requires longitudinal prospective studies from infancy, where the relation between domains of visual attention (including exogenous and endogenous shifting) and cognitive development can be mapped over time. Methods: We report data from 28 infants with NF1 tested longitudinally at 5, 10 and 14 months compared to cohorts of 29 typical likelihood infants (with no history of NF1 or ASD and/or ADHD), and 123 infants with a family history of ASD and/or ADHD. We used an eyetracking battery to measure both exogenous and endogenous control of visual attention. Results: Infants with NF1 demonstrated intact social orienting, but slower development of endogenous visual foraging. This slower development presented as prolonged engagement with a salient stimulus in a static display relative to typically developing infants. In terms of exogenous attention shifting, NF1 infants showed faster saccadic reaction times than typical likelihood infants. However, the NF1 group demonstrated a slower developmental improvement from 5 to 14 months of age. Individual differences in foraging and saccade times were concurrently related to visual reception abilities within the full infant cohort (NF1, typical likelihood and those with a family history of ASD/ADHD). Conclusions: Our results provide preliminary evidence that alterations in saccadic reaction time and visual foraging may contribute to learning difficulties in infants with NF1
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