Paradoxically, many governments that persistently violate human rights have also ratified international human rights treaties that empower their citizens to file grievances against them at the United ...Nations. Therefore, citizens in rights-repressing regimes find themselves with the potentially invaluable opportunity to challenge their government's abuses. Why would rights-violating governments ratify these treaties and thus afford their citizens this right? Can the mechanisms provided in these treaties actually help promote positive changes in human rights?Insincere Commitmentsuses both quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the factors contributing to commitment and compliance among post-Soviet states such as Slovakia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Heather Smith-Cannoy argues that governments ratify these treaties insincerely in response to domestic economic pressures. Signing the treaties is a way to at least temporarily keep critics of their human rights record at bay while they secure international economic assistance or more favorable trade terms. However, she finds that through the specific protocols in the treaties that grant individuals the right to petition the UN, even the most insincere state commitments to human rights can give previously powerless individuals-and the nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations that partner with them-an important opportunity that they would otherwise not have to challenge patterns of government repression on the global stage.This insightful book will be of interest to human rights scholars, students, and practitioners, as well as anyone interested in the UN, international relations, treaties, and governance.
Bringing together a multidisciplinary conversation about the entanglement of nature and society in the Korean peninsula, Forces of Nature aims to define and develop the field of the Korean ...environmental humanities. At its core, the volume works to foreground non-human agents that have long been marginalized in Korean studies, placing flora, fauna, mineral deposits, and climatic conditions that have hitherto been confined to footnotes front and center. In the process, the authors blaze new trails through Korea's social and physical landscapes. What emerges is a deeper appreciation of the environmental conflicts that have animated life in Korea. The authors show how natural processes have continually shaped the course of events on the peninsula—how floods, droughts, famines, fires, and pests have inexorably impinged on human affairs—and how different forces have been mobilized by the state to variously, control, extract, modernize, and showcase the Korean landscape. Forces of Nature suggestively reveals Korea's physical landscape to be not so much a passive context to Korea's history, but an active agent in its transformation and reinvention across centuries.
The Middle Ages was a critical and formative time for Western approaches to our natural surroundings. An Environmental History of the Middle Ages is a unique and unprecedented cultural survey of ...attitudes towards the environment during this period. Humankind's relationship with the environment shifted gradually over time from a predominantly adversarial approach to something more overtly collaborative, until a series of ecological crises in the late Middle Ages. With the advent of shattering events such as the Great Famine and the Black Death, considered efflorescences of the climate downturn known as the Little Ice Age that is comparable to our present global warming predicament, medieval people began to think of and relate to their natural environment in new and more nuanced ways. They now were made to be acutely aware of the consequences of human impacts upon the environment, anticipating the cyclical, "new ecology" approach of the modern world.
Exploring the entire medieval period from 500 to 1500, and ranging across the whole of Europe, from England and Spain to the Baltic and Eastern Europe, John Aberth focuses his study on three key areas: the natural elements of air, water, and earth; the forest; and wild and domestic animals. Through this multi-faceted lens, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages sheds fascinating new light on the medieval environmental mindset. It will be essential reading for students, scholars and all those interested in the Middle Ages
Display omitted
•Open-MiChroM is a fast and accurate computational tool for simulating chromosomes dynamics.•Open-MiChroM scales up the chromosomes’ simulation size and speed by using OpenMM running ...on GPUs.•Open-MiChroM is freely available at the Nucleome Data Bank (https://ndb.rice.edu).
Significant efforts have been recently made to obtain the three-dimensional (3D) structure of the genome with the goal of understanding how structures may affect gene regulation and expression. Chromosome conformational capture techniques such as Hi-C, have been key in uncovering the quantitative information needed to determine chromatin organization. Complementing these experimental tools, co-polymers theoretical methods are necessary to determine the ensemble of three-dimensional structures associated to the experimental data provided by Hi-C maps. Going beyond just structural information, these theoretical advances also start to provide an understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing genome assembly and function. Recent theoretical work, however, has been focused on single chromosome structures, missing the fact that, in the full nucleus, interactions between chromosomes play a central role in their organization. To overcome this limitation, MiChroM (Minimal Chromatin Model) has been modified to become capable of performing these multi-chromosome simulations. It has been upgraded into a fast and scalable software version, which is able to perform chromosome simulations using GPUs via OpenMM Python API, called Open-MiChroM. To validate the efficiency of this new version, analyses for GM12878 individual autosomes were performed and compared to earlier studies. This validation was followed by multi-chain simulations including the four largest human chromosomes (C1-C4). These simulations demonstrated the full power of this new approach. Comparison to Hi-C data shows that these multiple chromosome interactions are essential for a more accurate agreement with experimental results. Without any changes to the original MiChroM potential, it is now possible to predict experimentally observed inter-chromosome contacts. This scalability of Open-MiChroM allow for more audacious investigations, looking at interactions of multiple chains as well as moving towards higher resolution chromosomes models.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Sites of transcription of polyadenylated and nonpolyadenylated RNAs for 10 human chromosomes were mapped at 5-base pair resolution in eight cell lines. Unannotated, nonpolyadenylated transcripts ...comprise the major proportion of the transcriptional output of the human genome. Of all transcribed sequences, 19.4, 43.7, and 36.9% were observed to be polyadenylated, nonpolyadenylated, and bimorphic, respectively. Half of all transcribed sequences are found only in the nucleus and for the most part are unannotated. Overall, the transcribed portions of the human genome are predominantly composed of interlaced networks of both poly A+ and poly A- annotated transcripts and unannotated transcripts of unknown function. This organization has important implications for interpreting genotype-phenotype associations, regulation of gene expression, and the definition of a gene.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
earrings.ai is an AI design app platform that lets you create your dream earrings simply from describing it – and AR try them on Chang 2018 and even participate in a virtual and real world ...marketplace Chang 2016 to have artisan creators make them, or a network of 3D printers fab them!
Acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), is characterized by an acute onset of limb weakness. In the post‐polio era, other enterovirus (EV) serotypes ...associated with AFP may become more prominent. This study aims to collate the data on the non‐polio enteroviruses (NPEV) associated with AFP. A systematic review of published case reports, case series, and surveillance studies of AFP from 1960 through 2017 was undertaken. Data were collected including the country of the study, number of specimens positive for NPEV and available clinical data. The majority of studies originated from Asia. In surveillance studies, EV 71 (a serotype of Enterovirus A) was the most commonly detected serotype with AFP, followed by Enterovirus B serotype echovirus 11 and then Enterovirus B serotype echovirus 11. In case studies and case reports, EV 71 and EV 68 (a serotype of Enterovirus D), were the most commonly detected NPEV. As poliovirus eradication continues, there is a need to ensure that AFP surveillance will also detect other potentially vaccine preventable viruses.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's ...past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.
Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education.
By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience.
For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/
Since the first fertilization of a human egg in the laboratory in 1968, scientific and technological breakthroughs have raised ethical dilemmas and generated policy controversies on both sides of the ...Atlantic. Embryo, stem cell, and cloning research have provoked impassioned political debate about their religious, moral, legal, and practical implications. National governments make rules that govern the creation, destruction, and use of embryos in the laboratory-but they do so in profoundly different ways.
InEmbryo Politics, Thomas Banchoff provides a comprehensive overview of political struggles aboutembryo research during four decades in four countries-the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Banchoff's book, the first of its kind, demonstrates the impact of particular national histories and institutions on very different patterns of national governance. Over time, he argues, partisan debate and religious-secular polarization have come to overshadow ethical reflection and political deliberation on the moral status of the embryo and the promise of biomedical research. Only by recovering a robust and public ethical debate will we be able to govern revolutionary life-science technologies effectively and responsibly into the future.
PDF