HIV/AIDS, Security and Conflict: New Realities, New Responses

Ten years after the HIV/AIDS epidemic itself was identified as a threat to international peace and security, findings from the three-year AIDS, Security and Conflict Initiative (ASCI)(1) present evidence of the mutually reinforcing dynamics linking HIV/AIDS, conflict and security

High level of treatment failure with commonly used anthelmintics on Irish sheep farms

peer-reviewedBackground: In 2013 a Technology Adoption Program for sheep farmers was established to encourage the implementation of best management practices on sheep farms in Ireland. There were 4,500 participants in this programme in 2013. As part of this programme, farmers had the option to carry out a drench test to establish the efficacy of their anthelmintic treatment. Results: Flock faecal samples were collected before and after treatment administration and gastrointestinal nematode eggs enumerated. In total there were 1,893 participants in the task, however only 1,585 included both a pre- and post-treatment faecal sample. Of those, 1,308 provided information on the anthelmintic product that they used with 46%, 23% and 28% using a benzimidazole (BZ), levamisole (LEV) and macrocyclic lactone (ML) product respectively. The remaining farmers used a product inapplicable for inclusion in the task such as a flukicide or BZ/LEV combination product. Samples were included for analysis of drench efficacy if the pre-treatment flock egg count was ≥200 eggs per gram and the interval post-sampling was 10–14 days for BZ products, 4–7 days for LEV products and 14–18 days for ML products. These criteria reduced the number of valid tests to 369, 19.5% of all tests conducted. If the reduction post-treatment was ≥95% the treatment was considered effective. Only 51% of treatments were considered effective using this criterion. There was a significant difference in efficacy between the anthelmintic drug classes with BZ effective in only 30% of treatments, LEV effective in 52% of cases and ML effective in 76% of cases. Conclusions: Gastrointestinal nematode anthelmintic treatments, as practiced on Irish farms, have a high failure rate. There was a significant difference between the efficacies of the anthelmintic classes with BZ the least effective and ML the most effective

Exploration for magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide deposits : a review of recent advances in the use of geochemical tools, and their application to some South African ores

Most major magmatic Cu-Ni-PGE sulphide deposits are thought to have formed by segregation of an immiscible sulphide melt from a silicate host magma, in response to processes such as magma mixing, rapid cooling, differentiation, and contamination. The metal content of the sulphides is governed by the concentration of the metals in the silicate host magma, the sulphide melt/silicate melt partition coefficients (D values) of the metals, and the R-factor during sulphide segregation. Fractionation between the metals occurs during partial melting of the upper mantle source, crystallization of oxides, platinum-group minerals (PGM), and silicates (mainly olivine and less so orthopyroxene), segregation of sulphide melt, and crystallization of the sulphide melt. The latter process may yield zoned ore bodies consisting of Os, Ir, Ru, Rh, Fe, (Ni)-rich monosulphide solid solution (mss) cumulate ore and fractionated sulphide ore rich in Cu, Pt, and Pd. It is possible to model these processes and thereby to estimate the potential of a magmatic body to host economic Cu-Ni-PGE sulphide deposits. The location of Cu-Ni-PGE sulphide ores may be facilitated by applying a number of geochemical tools. PGE-rich horizons within layered intrusions are particularly difficult to locate because the ore zones are generally thin compared to the thickness of the intrusions. Variation in Cu/Pd ratios of the silicate rocks may delineate the position of some of these horizons, since the strongly chalcophile Pd is preferentially depleted during sulphide segregation, resulting in an increase in Cu/Pd of the subsequently crystallizing overlying cumulates. Cu/Pd ratios may also be applied in sill-like bodies such as the Uitkomst intrusion, Mpumalanga, to estimate the potential for conduit-type deposits, and in lavas where they may help to locate possible Noril'sk-type mineralized feeder zones to basalt flows. Other methods of determining whether igneous bodies have experienced magma mixing and sulphide segregation are based on Ni contents of olivines, Ti contents, and Cr/Fe ratios of spinels, and petrographic features such as the presence of plagioclase inclusions within ferromagnesian phases. Se/S ratios may help to determine whether magmatic sulphide ores underwent post-magmatic (metamorphic or hydrothermal) sulphur loss. They may also discriminate between a magmatic or sedimentary source of the S, and between a magmatic or hydrothermal origin of the metals. Hydrothermal sulphide ores may further be distinguished from magmatic ores by means of significantly higher Cu/Ni and Pd/Ir ratios of the former. Such distinction is important because it would be futile to investigate hydrothermal deposits for magmatic ore zonation

De opkomst van de strafstaat: Neo-liberalisering of een nieuwe politieke cultuur?

Dat in westerse landen steeds meer mensen in de gevangenis lijken te zitten is volgens een invloedrijke theorie het gevolg van economische neo-liberalisering. In dit artikel formuleren we een alternatieve verklaring gebaseerd op de opkomst van een nieuwe politieke cultuur. Na een analyse van de vermeende groei van gevangenispopulaties toetsen we de houdbaarheid van beide theorieën

The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalisation or New Political Culture?

Imprisonment rates are presumed to have risen in the west, and it is argued by certain social scientists that this can be explained by a comprehensive process of economic neoliberalisation. In this paper, we develop an alternative explanation, focussing on the rise of a ‘new political culture’. Longitudinal cross-national analyses are performed to test the tenability of these theories. First, it is demonstrated that some countries have been witnessing a trend of penalisation, but that there is no overall trend. Second, economic explanations for variations in imprisonment rates prove to be untenable. Third, it is shown that a new-rightist demand for social order, which is not found to be inspired by economic neo-liberalisation, provides a better explanation. This leads to the conclusion that high incarceration rates can be understood as being part of a right-authoritarian politico-cultural complex

Charge distribution in two-dimensional electrostatics

We examine the stability of ringlike configurations of N charges on a plane interacting through the potential $V(z_1,...,z_N)=\sum_i |z_i|^2-\sum_{i<j} ln|z_i-z_j|^2$. We interpret the equilibrium distributions in terms of a shell model and compare predictions of the model with the results of numerical simulations for systems with up to 100 particles.Comment: LaTe

Van God los: Post-Christelijk cultureel conflict in Nederland.

Internationale waarnemers verbazen zich al tijden over het verhitte integratiedebat dat in Nederland woedt. Ze vragen zich af hoe zoiets mogelijk is in een land dat bekendstaat als baken van seculiere tolerantie. Dit roept de vraag op hoe etnische tolerantie en afwijzing van traditionele christelijke stellingnamen over morele vraagstukken zich tot elkaar verhouden. In dit artikel onderzoeken we daarom of en waarom het aanhangen van een post-Christelijke moraal voor sommigen leidt tot etnische intolerantie, terwijl het voor anderen samengaat met etnische tolerantie

‘Sommigen zijn gelijker dan anderen’: Economisch egalitarisme en verzorgingsstaatschauvinisme in Nederland.

Laagopgeleiden zijn meer dan hoogopgeleiden geneigd om voorkeur voor economische herverdeling gepaard te laten gaan met afkeer van sociale voorzieningen ten bate van etnische minderheden. Waarom zijn zij van mening dat sommigen gelijker zijn dan anderen? In dit artikel wordt onderzocht of hun opmerkelijke combinatie van economisch egalitarisme en ‘verzorgingsstaatschauvinisme’ voortkomt uit gebrekkige politieke competentie, hun zwakke economische positie of hun geringe cultureel kapitaal en de culturele onzekerheid die daarmee gepaard gaat

Social network analysis shows direct evidence for social transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees

The authors are grateful to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland for providing core funding for the Budongo Conservation Field Station. The fieldwork of CH was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Lucie Burgers Stichting, and the British Academy. TP was funded by the Canadian Research Chair in Continental Ecosystem Ecology, and received computational support from the Theoretical Ecosystem Ecology group at UQAR. The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) and from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) REA grant agreement n°329197 awarded to TG, ERC grant agreement n° 283871 awarded to KZ. WH was funded by a BBSRC grant (BB/I007997/1).Social network analysis methods have made it possible to test whether novel behaviors in animals spread through individual or social learning. To date, however, social network analysis of wild populations has been limited to static models that cannot precisely reflect the dynamics of learning, for instance, the impact of multiple observations across time. Here, we present a novel dynamic version of network analysis that is capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition-that is, how successive observations by an individual influence its acquisition of the novel behavior. We apply this model to studying the spread of two novel tool-use variants, "moss-sponging'' and "leaf-sponge re-use,'' in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Chimpanzees are widely considered the most "cultural'' of all animal species, with 39 behaviors suspected as socially acquired, most of them in the domain of tool-use. The cultural hypothesis is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzees and a range of observational data. However, for wild groups, there is still no direct experimental evidence for social learning, nor has there been any direct observation of social diffusion of behavioral innovations. Here, we tested both a static and a dynamic network model and found strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, were significantly better explained by social than individual learning. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounted for 85% of observed events, with an estimated 15-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in wild chimpanzees can be socially learned, adding to the evidence that this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe