Why does Community-Based Rehabilitation fail physically disabled women in northern Thailand?

Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) has been adopted in many countries to help disabled people. This article analyses the interplay between CBR and the self-alienation of physically disabled women from their communities. In-depth interviews with 40 women with physical disabilities in northern Thailand found that CBR was barely capable of enabling women with physical disabilities to realise their sense of self within their community, because in itself CBR was unable to change the community's false impression of disability. Despite participating in CBR programmes, the self-alienation of physically disabled women from their community remained; the authors argue that this was due to the heavy reliance of CBR on medical practice, ignoring gender as a major contributing factor. In addition, CBR field workers obviously failed to grasp the magnitude of social models in disability rehabilitation.     

Thinking about terrorism and just war

Since 2001 a new urge to moralize the use of violence as an instrument of state policy has appeared in liberal democracies. The American idea of a War against Terror, and the European notion of confronting a global terrorist threat, have together merged with a discourse on humanitarian military action: the political/moral ‘responsibility to protect’ is no longer to be confined to one's own citizens. Renewed interest among academics in ‘just war’ theory, the tradition that seeks to humanize war through law, reflects this development. This article questions the assumption that there is an essential difference between war (civilized violence) and terrorism (barbaric violence). It argues that their similarity appears more clearly if we set intentions aside—such as the deliberate or accidental killing of ‘innocents’—and focus instead on three main facts: (a) modern war strategies and technologies are uniquely destructive, (b) armed hostilities increasingly occupy a single space of violence in which war and peace are not clearly demarcated, and (c) the law of war does not provide a set of ‘civilizing’ rules but a language for legal/moral argument in which the use of punitive violence is itself a central semantic element.     

Formation of Trifluoroacetylated Ephedrine During the Analysis of a Pseudoephedrine-Formaldehyde Adduct by TFAA Derivatization Followed by GC-MS

Abstract:  (+)-Pseudoephedrine reacts with formaldehyde to form (4 S ,5 S )-3,4-dimethyl-5-phenyloxazolidine. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis after the reaction of this oxazolidine with excess trifluoroacetic acid anhydride (TFAA) shows predominantly N , O- bis(trifluoroacetyl)pseudoephedrine with some of the monotrifluoroacetylated derivative. In addition, variable amounts of N , O- bis(trifluoroacetyl)ephedrine were detected by GC-MS. N , O- bis(trifluoroacetyl)ephedrine was not detected upon trifluoroacetylation of the source (+)-pseudoephedrine, and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis of the (4 S ,5 S )-3,4-dimethyl-5-phenyloxazolidine showed no evidence of the (4 R ,5 S ) isomer. This suggests that the N ,O-bis(trifluoroacetyl)ephedrine is formed by epimerization during the TFAA derivatization and GC-MS analysis of the pseudoephedrine-formaldehyde adduct.     

巴基斯坦：远景与现实，过去与未来

巴基斯坦作为一个独立的国家,它不仅仅代表着一个国家和政府,而且还是一种对当代政治中占统治地位的自由化与世俗化模式发起的挑战,它本身就构成了一种变革政治地图的努力。文章从巴基斯坦的现实分析了这个国家的过去与未来。     

Assessing Public Participation Initiatives in Local Government Decision-Making in Malaysia

Increased public participation in government decisions contributes significantly to the enhancement of grass-roots democracy. This article assesses the level of involvement of local citizens in local government decisions in Malaysia. Public participation was assessed using questionnaires on the range and extent of initiatives used by local government. The questionnaires also probed citizens’ perceptions of these initiatives and expectations for greater citizen empowerment. Data were gathered from 206 local citizens randomly selected from six local authorities in the northern region of Malaysia. The findings reveal a desire on the part of local citizens to participate in their local government decision-making process.     

Political Brand Equity Model: The Integration of Political Brands in Voter Choice

The voters’ choices about political parties have many similarities with how they make their choices about commercial brands. Therefore, political parties are now constantly applying the concept and strategies of brand management to make the political product attractive, appealable, trustable, differentiable, a source of long-term relationships, and a decision-making driver. Furthermore, the political parties have to play an active role in the community's political socialization processes, which rely heavily on branding strategies. Because, the party equity is largely based on the community's social gregariousness that has profound effect on the electorates' propensity to participate in the politics. This study has deeply explored and broadened the concept of party equity analogous to commercial brand equity typology by developing a politics-specific brand equity model. This model demonstrates the integration of political brands in voter choice. Empirically, this model has been validated by collecting 550 valid responses from the constituency of District Gujrat, Pakistan. A careful analysis of these responses through structural equation modeling methodology has revealed that political parties vary according to the outcomes of their role in the political socialization process of the communities, loyalty, and voters’ attitude. Parties that have favorable role in the socialization process have strong party knowledge and thus have high party equity as compared to competing political parties, which have a weak position of party knowledge. Similarly, this study provides the roadmap and guidelines for the political parties to manage their party equity. Similarly, the model would be able to facilitate political parties in comparing different constituencies on the basis of their diversified social dynamics and political knowledge and in the development of a constituency-based manifesto, also termed “localized manifesto,” to further enhance their vote bank.     

Misogyny in ‘post-war’ Afghanistan: the changing frames of sexual and gender-based violence

Abstract

Although the US and NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was ideologically justified under the banner of democracy and women’s rights, the latter issue has been completely forgotten within the public sphere since then. As the war has officially ended in Afghanistan, new forms of misogyny and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) have arisen. The ‘post-war’ Afghan context presents an institutional normalization of violence, favouring a culture of rape and impunity. The changing frames of violence against women are widely related to the political situation of the country: while public attention is focused on peace agreements, women’s issues are relegated to banalities and depicted as ‘everyday’ news. Meanwhile, new frames of SGBV appear as body part mutilation within marriage, forced prostitution, and increasing domestic violence, partly due to the growing consumption of opium but also to the perpetuation of powerful warlords in state structures. This article draws on gender studies to analyse the current misogynist culture in ‘post-war’ Afghanistan, framing the new forms of violence induced by successive armed conflicts. It relies on interviews conducted in 2013 in Afghanistan; and on secondary sources, mostly taken from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch reports.     

ASEAN Beyond 40

The vitality of ASEAN derives from its core. Until the mid 1990s, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand provided the dynamism of ASEAN and their national leaders the regional leadership so necessary for the Association??s existence. Entering its fifth decade, the Association seems posited at a ??mid-life crisis??. The ASEAN Charter has proposed bold ideas in community-building. Yet the ??loss?? of a strong leadership impetus has cast a shadow of uncertainty over the extent to which ASEAN may reduce the gap between the richer and poorer nations of Southeast Asia. The extant two-tiered nature of ASEAN is problematic to its cohesion as each with its defining set of characteristics and views of regionalism. Can the more structured approach make up the leadership deficit and enable ASEAN to reconcile the division in its quest for regional unity? The prolonged Myanmar embarrassment seems to suggest an unconfident ??yes?? at best.     

Assessing a novel room temperature DNA storage medium for forensic biological samples

The ability to properly collect, analyze and preserve biological stains is important to preserving the integrity of forensic evidence. Stabilization of intact biological evidence in cells and the DNA extracts from them is particularly important since testing is generally not performed immediately following collection. Furthermore, retesting of stored DNA samples may be needed in casework for replicate testing, confirmation of results, and to accommodate future testing with new technologies.A novel room temperature DNA storage medium, SampleMatrix™ (SM; Biomatrica, Inc., San Diego, CA), was evaluated for stabilizing and protecting samples. Human genomic DNA samples at varying amounts (0.0625-200 ng) were stored dry in SM for 1 day to 1 year under varying conditions that included a typical ambient laboratory environment and also through successive freeze-thaw cycles (3 cycles). In addition, spiking of 1-4× SM into samples prior to analysis was performed to determine any inhibitory effects of SM. Quantification of recovered DNA following storage was determined by quantitative PCR or by agarose gel electrophoresis, and evaluation of quantitative peak height results from multiplex short tandem repeat (STR) analyses were performed to assess the efficacy of SM for preserving DNA.Results indicate no substantial differences between the quality of samples stored frozen in liquid and those samples maintained dry at ambient temperatures protected in SM. For long-term storage and the storage of low concentration samples, SM provided a significant advantage over freezer storage through higher DNA recovery. No detectable inhibition of amplification was observed at the recommended SM concentration and complete profiles were obtained from genomic DNA samples even in the presence of higher than recommended concentrations of the SM storage medium. The ability to stabilize and protect DNA from degradation at ambient temperatures for extended time periods could have tremendous impact in simplifying and improving sample storage conditions and requirements. The current work focuses on forensics analysis; however this technology is applicable to all endeavors requiring storage of DNA.