Abstract
Even as a growing body of literature has in recent years revealed the ubiquity of racialized violence within Western colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, another historical ...narrative remains insistent that the British Empire constituted a notable exception to the rule. This nostalgic narrative of a uniquely British ‘soft approach’ rests in part on the belief that colonial officers possessed a deep cultural understanding of the people and societies they dealt with, which allowed them to manoeuvre skilfully throughout the Empire without having to resort to the sort of atrocities that characterized German and Belgian colonies in Africa. The result is an implicitly sanitized account of the British Empire and of British military practice as exemplary and even humane. This article critically examines those assumptions, focusing in particular on the cultural knowledge that was weaponized during colonial conflicts in the decades preceding the First World War. The forms and functions of what became known as ‘savage warfare’ were not simply shaped by the tactical necessities of asymmetric fighting in the peripheries of Empire. Colonial military violence and the development of new technologies, such as the expanding Dum-Dum bullet, were based on deeply encoded assumptions concerning the inherent difference of local opponents and as such were underwritten by both imperial ideologies and a specific body of colonial expertise. The rule of colonial difference dictated and justified techniques of violence that were by the same token considered unacceptable in conflicts between so-called ‘civilized’ nations and, in many instances, slaughter was in fact the ‘British Way’ – in theory and in practice.
Britain had emerged victorious from the First World War only to be plunged into a global crisis that radically transformed the very nature of its empire. Unrest in India, Egypt, Ireland and ...Mesopotamia, and the opening of the Third Anglo-Afghan War, coincided with a period of profound international destabilization. In India the continuation of repressive wartime measures, coercive recruitment practices and economic hardship caused widespread disillusionment among the population in Punjab, many of whom had initially supported the British war effort. Here, Wagner asks people to re-envision in a novel fashion the way people think about colonial violence across imperial formations.
Studies have shown that podocyturia, i.e., urinary loss of viable podocytes (glomerular epithelial cells), is associated with proteinuria in preeclampsia. We postulated that urinary podocyte loss may ...persist after preeclamptic pregnancies, thus resulting in renal injury. This may lead to future chronic renal injury. In addition, we compared the postpartum levels of the angiogenic factors, which previously have been associated with preeclampsia, between normotensive versus preeclamptic pregnancies.
The diagnosis of preeclampsia was confirmed using standard clinical criteria. Random blood and urine samples were obtained within 24 hours prior to delivery and 5 to 8 weeks postpartum. Urine sediments were cultured for 24 hours to select for viable cells and staining for podocin was used to identify podocytes. Serum samples were analyzed for the levels of angiogenic markers using ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) methodology.
At delivery, preeclamptic patients (n = 10) had significantly higher proteinuria (p = 0.006) and podocyturia (p<0.001) than normotensive pregnant patients (n = 18). Postpartum proteinuria was similar between these two groups (p = 0.37), while podocyturia was present in 3 of 10 women with preeclampsia and in none of the normotensive controls (p = 0.037). Angiogenic marker levels, including placental growth factor, soluble vascular endothelial growth factor receptor fms-like tyrosine kinase receptor-1 and endoglin, were not significantly different between women with preeclampsia and women with a normotensive pregnancy, either at delivery or postpartum.
Persistent urinary podocyte loss after preeclamptic pregnancies may constitute a marker of ongoing, subclinical renal injury.
Here, the argument advanced by Wagner constitutes a development, rather than a corrective, of C A Bayly's concept of information panics in colonial India. Panics and anxieties, as conceptual ...frameworks, are not incompatible but stand in the same relation as event and structure; information panics were transient but recurring episodes in the long-term pattern of systemic anxieties within the colonial sphere. Intelligence failure in British India, which he maintains was endemic, was not simply caused by a breakdown of the information order or the absence of reliable information, but rather, it was a function of structural anxieties, which were nurtured by the received wisdom of colonial knowledge. The production of intelligence was furthermore not merely the prerogative of specially trained officers and personnel; it was a far more open and negotiable process, which involved planters and politicians, native informants and old 'India hands', as well as the wider public. The colonial culture of fear found its expression at the convergence of the colonial imagination and colonial information, effectively blurring the lines between public opinion and government policy in times of crisis.
Spondylometaphyseal dysplasia with cone-rod dystrophy is a rare autosomal-recessive disorder characterized by severe short stature, progressive lower-limb bowing, flattened vertebral bodies, ...metaphyseal involvement, and visual impairment caused by cone-rod dystrophy. Whole-exome sequencing of four individuals affected by this disorder from two Brazilian families identified two previously unreported homozygous mutations in PCYT1A. This gene encodes the alpha isoform of the phosphate cytidylyltransferase 1 choline enzyme, which is responsible for converting phosphocholine into cytidine diphosphate-choline, a key intermediate step in the phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis pathway. A different enzymatic defect in this pathway has been previously associated with a muscular dystrophy with mitochondrial structural abnormalities that does not have cartilage and/or bone or retinal involvement. Thus, the deregulation of the phosphatidylcholine pathway may play a role in multiple genetic diseases in humans, and further studies are necessary to uncover its precise pathogenic mechanisms and the entirety of its phenotypic spectrum.
Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions
, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process
. In April 2020, an influential paper
proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') ...detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms 'physical distancing' and 'social distancing'. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.
British rule in India was entirely reliant on local troops, and the mobilization and recruitment of Indian communities gave rise to a multiplicity of discourses, traditions and identities reflecting ...the peculiar relationship between colonial power and indigenous military labour. Through the late nineteenth century, these discourses became increasingly racialized: only certain native communities were deemed to possess the 'spirit' necessary for military service. These so-called 'martial races'-including Nepalese Gurkhas, Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims from the northern and frontier provinces-provided the backbone of the imperial military and played a vital role in defending and extending colonial authority. By the early twentieth century, the racialized nature of soldiering in India was invoked to explain the composition of imperial forces and to legitimize the preservation of colonial rule. While the theory of 'martial races' is the subject of an increasingly diverse literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the practice-and practical origins-of restricted recruitment. In this article Rand and Wagner seek to re-examine the role of martial-race theories in British recruitment policies and practices in colonial India, drawing attention to the incoherence and complexity that marked the relationship between ideas of race and the practicalities of colonial military administration. They focus in particular on long-term patterns of continuities, rather than neat periodizations, and suggest that racialized discourses regarding soldiering have to be considered within the context of mutually advantageous relationships between the colonial state and its indigenous allies.
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