Humanitarian Intervention in the 19th Century: The Heyday of a Controversial Concept

This article dwells on the state of play of armed humanitarian intervention in the long 19^th century. It starts with the birth of the idea in previous centuries by jurists of the naturalist school. It then presents the behaviour of the great powers in three celebrated humanitarian cases of the 19^th century (the Greek independence struggle, the Lebanon-Syria massacres and the Bulgarian atrocities)with emphasis on their initial reluctance to intervene and their motives for intervening, as well as the role of public opinion in spurring intervention. The overall situation will be appraised with emphasis on the Christian bias and the Orientalist approach towards the Ottoman Empire. Then the views of international jurists (publicists) will be presented, followed by the attitude of major political philosophers. The overall picture that emerges in the 19^th century is one of striking relevance to today's concerns as seen by six concluding propositions.     

Peace building with the body: resonance and reflexivity in Colombia’s Legion del Afecto

ABSTRACT

Youth in Medellín, Colombia have been recognized as potential peacebuilders through initiatives for urban peace and non-violence, including the initiative Legión del Afecto. This paper explores the development of the Legión del Afecto in order to ask questions about the peace building potential of specific frames (e.g. coexistence) and specific strategies of mobilization (e.g. embodied). We describe how differences between the earlier and later years of the Legión have come to highlight tensions between affective versus market-based relationships in motivating youth. These tensions may be productive, but without serious attention to reflexivity, may also derail peacebuilding efforts.     

A Small Population Study on Friction Skin Ridges: Differences in Ridge Widths Between Latent and Inked Fingerprints

Morphological changes in the width of latent fingermark ridges occur naturally over time. This could be used to examine the aging process of latents and eventually estimate time of deposition. In a crime context, it is common practice to compare a questioned (aged) fingermark with a database of known (inked) prints. Therefore, in the absence of fresh fingermarks for aging purposes, it is of interest to reveal correlations between these two categories of fingerprints with regard to the widths of their ridges. The present study explores correlations of ridge widths between flat and rolled inked prints with latent fingermarks visualized with carbon black (CB) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂)-based powders among a small population of ten donors. Results revealed consistent differences between the ridge widths of latent and inked prints as well as flat and rolled impressions. Latent fingermarks visualized with CB and TiO₂ powders showed ridges with comparable widths.     

Intentional overdose of glargine insulin: Determination of the parent compound in postmortem blood by LC-HRMS

Insulin glargine is a long-acting insulin analog that is converted after enzymatic cleavage of the arginine pair of the β-chain into its main metabolite M1 (21^A-Gly-insulin), which is responsible for the hypoglycemic activity. In all the overdose cases described in the literature, only M1 concentrations have been reported, whereas insulin glargine was always absent or below the limit of quantitation. In this study, we present a case of suicide of a young nurse by injection of insulin glargine in which the parent molecule was found at a toxic concentration in blood. The determination and the discrimination of insulin glargine from human insulin and other synthetic analogs in the blood specimen were performed by liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (Waters XEVO G2-XS QToF) and extraction after precipitation in the presence of bovine insulin (internal standard), with a mixture of acetonitrile/methanol +1% formic acid followed by purification on solid phase extraction cartridges C18. Glargine insulin tested highly positive in the blood with a concentration of 1.06 mg/L. Due to the difficulty in obtaining a M1 pure standard, the metabolite could not be dosed. This unique presence of the parent molecule, reported for the first time, can be explained by inter-individual variability in the rate of conversion to metabolite. Intravenous injection versus subcutaneous injection can also explain the presence of insulin glargine. Finally, the dose injected may have been so high that saturation of the proteolytic enzymes responsible for conversion to M1 should have occurred.     

Assessing the credibility of how climate adaptation aid projects are categorised

This article presents the findings of a re-evaluation of all 5,200 aid projects that OECD donors reported for 2012 as “climate change adaptation”-related, based on the “Rio marker” classification system. The findings confirm those from the academic and grey literature that the absence of independent quality control makes the adaptation Rio marker data almost entirely unreliable. This lack of credibility impedes meaningful assessments of progress toward the mainstreaming of adaptation in development cooperation activities. It also erodes trust in international climate negotiations, given that these data are frequently used in the financial reporting of developed countries to the UNFCCC.     

Acculturation Strategies and Mental Health in Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth

In this article, we examine the impact of acculturation strategies on minority stress and mental health in lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) youth in Flanders, Belgium. Building on previous identity minority studies and on the social stress model, we investigate how LGB youth acculturate within both the LGB subculture and mainstream society and how this correlates with their mental health. Our sample is taken from an online survey and represents 561 LGB youth aged 14 through 21. The four traditional acculturation strategies are represented in this population (integration, separation, marginalization, assimilation). Bisexual boys are mostly absent from separation and integration strategies; gay and lesbian youth in middle adolescence are significantly more represented in the separation strategy compared to their late adolescence counterparts. Further, our findings suggest the relevance of identification with the LGB community, especially for internalized negative attitudes toward homosexuality. LGB youth who identify with the LGB community score significantly lower on this internalized homonegativity.     

Bericht über die Demokratie in der Schweiz

Zusammenfassung Alexis de Tocqueville hielt den Vortrag „Rapport sur la démocratie en Suisse“ am 15. Januar 1848 in der Académie des sciences morales et politiques im unmittelbaren Vorfeld der europaweiten politischen Revolutionen von 1848. ?u?erlich geht es in dem Bericht um Antoine élisée Cherbuliez’ Buch „De la démocratie en Suisse“ (Band 1 und 2, Paris 1843). Cherbuliez (1797–1869) war Anwalt und Professor für politische ?konomie und Staatsrecht in Genf. Aus einer konservativen Sichtweise hat er eine kritische Darstellung der Demokratie in der Schweiz in ihrer ganzen Breite gegeben, angefangen von den Kantonen, Institutionen, über Sitten und Moral bis zur Religion. Tocqueville geht weit über die Vorlage hinaus und entwickelt einige grunds?tzliche demokratietheoretische überlegungen. Der Vortrag besteht aus fünf Abschnitten: einer historischen Einbettung und Deutung des Wandels in der Schweiz als demokratischer Revolution, einer Skizze der Demokratie in den Kantonen, gefolgt von einer Darlegung der modernen Idee der Judikative mit einem Vergleich ihrer Realisierung in der Schweiz und New York, einer institutionellen Analyse der f?deralen Regierung der Eidgenossenschaft und einem abschlie?enden Ausblick auf anstehende Ver?nderungen. Diese Abschnitte sind redaktionell durch Abs?tze gekennzeichnet. Tocqueville unterscheidet ?ltere direkte Formen der Demokratie, die er als überbleibsel des Mittelalters bewertet, von neuen Institutionen repr?sentativer Demokratie. Die politischen Umw?lzungen in der Schweiz sind ihm ein Exempel für die These der unaufhaltsamen Durchsetzung demokratischer Verh?ltnisse. Dennoch kritisiert er das Schweizer Institutionensystem als unentschieden und ineffizient. Allerdings wird die direktdemokratisch-f?derative Verfasstheit, so Tocqueville, durch die Zentralisierung zwangsl?ufig zu repr?sentativ-bundesstaatlichen Strukturen gedr?ngt. Diese Prognosen werden schon im Frühjahr 1848 bei der Ausarbeitung einer bundesstaatlichen Verfassung der Schweiz, die im September in Kraft tritt, best?tigt.

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Summary Alexis de Tocqueville held this speech on January 15, 1848, at the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, shortly before the Europe-wide political revolutions of 1848. It is presented as a report on Cherbuliez’ book De la démocratie en Suisse (2 Vols., Paris 1843), however, Tocqueville does not merely report, but develops some fundamental considerations for democratic theory.

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Résumé Alexis de Tocqueville pronon?a ce discours devant l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques le 15 janvier 1848, peu de temps avant la vague de révolutions politiques qui traversa l’Europe en 1848. Dans ce discours qui se présente comme le compte-rendu du livre de Cherbuliez De la démocratie en Suisse (2 vol., Paris 1843), Tocqueville ne se contente cependant pas de rendre compte mais développe des considérations fondamentales pour la théorie de la démocratie.

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„Séances et travaux de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, 1^er semestre 1848“, S. 97–119. Unsere deutsche Erstübersetzung folgt dem Text der „Œuvre complètes Bd. XVI“, Paris 1989 (Gallimard), S. 203-220. Tocqueville hat diesen Bericht als Anhang in die 12. Auflage von “La Démocratie en Amérique“, Paris 1848, aufgenommen. Er wurde auch in der von Gustave de Beaumont edierten Werkausgabe (Bd. IX, 1866, S. 85–111) publiziert. Die hier pr?sentierte übersetzung ist ein Vorabdruck aus dem 2006 erscheinenden Band „Alexis de Tocqueville: Kleine politische Schriften“, herausgegebenvon Harald Bluhm, Akademie Verlag Berlin. Wir danken der Robert-Bosch-Stiftung für die F?rderung dieses Projektes.     

Can Cephalometrics Discriminate Between the Sexes in a Diverse Juvenile Sample?

A critical component of the biological profile is sex estimation. Methods commonly used for sex estimation in adults do not work well for juveniles. Population‐specific studies have used cephalometrics to estimate juvenile sex with 80–90% accuracy. Our study attempts to estimate sex in individuals less than 18 years of age using a sample of 1618 lateral cephalograms incorporating all three Angle Class occlusions as well as population diversity. For the sample as a whole, 10 skeletal cephalometrics were found to have significant differences between the sexes. Males and females classify correctly about 50% of the time. Dividing the sample by age groups and race/ethnicity improves results for older age groups and Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Our results indicate that cephalometrics are not useful in determining sex of unidentified juveniles when age and race are not known.