Avian influenza, ‘viral sovereignty’, and the politics of health security in Indonesia

Abstract

In December 2006, Indonesian Health Minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, shocked the world when announcing her government would no longer be sharing samples of the H5N1 avian flu virus, collected from Indonesian patients, with the World Health Organization, at a time when global fears of a deadly influenza pandemic were running high. For observers of Southeast Asian politics, the decision reinforced the view of the region as made up of states determined to protect their national sovereignty, at almost all costs. This established view of the region, however, generally neglects the variable and selective manner in which sovereignty has been invoked by Southeast Asian governments, or parts thereof, and fails to identify the conditions shaping the deployment of sovereignty. In this paper, it is argued that Siti's action was designed to harness claims of sovereignty to a domestic political struggle. It was a response to the growing fragmentation and, in some cases, denationalisation of the governance apparatus dealing with public health in Indonesia, along with the ‘securitisation’ of H5N1 internationally. The examination of the virus-sharing dispute demonstrates that in Southeast Asia sovereignty is not so much the ends of government action, but the means utilised by government actors for advancing particular political goals.     

Kosovo: Statebuilding Utopia and Reality

ABSTRACT

Twenty years of international statebuilding have made little impact on the ‘stateness’ of Kosovo. This article puts this failure in the broader context of the shift from the liberal internationalist assumptions of the late 1990s to the pragmatic realism of today. It does this through the lenses of E H Carr’s classic work The Twenty Years’ Crisis, UN policy thinking on the problematic assumptions of international statebuilding and the diagnoses in David Lake’s 2016 book The Statebuilder’s Dilemma, which sets out three pragmatic alternatives. The article concludes that all three of these alternatives can be seen in practice in Kosovo.     

中国(辽宁地区)汉族人群血清H因子多型性分布的研究

应用超薄层聚丙烯酸胶凝胶等电聚焦电泳结合免疫印迹技术，首次报导中国（辽宁地区）汉族人群血清中H因子遗传多型性的分布。HF的基因频率：HFA=0．4828，HFB=0．5172，按Hardy-Weinberg法则进行吻合度检验，其观察值与期望值一致，并对中国（辽宁地区）与其它人群HF等位基因的差异性做了比较。     

西南地区汉族男性CT颅面径线与身高的关系

目的通过CT测量西南地区汉族男性颅面径线,建立该地区汉族男性颅面径线与身高的回归模型,为法医人类学研究积累数据。方法收集273例西南地区汉族男性头部CT资料,确定颅面部7条径线,运用图像后处理软件进行多平面重建和容积再现,对所选径线进行测量。对各测量指标与身高的相关性运用SPSS 21.0进行分析,建立推断身高的回归方程,并重新选取50例样本代入该数学模型进行检验。结果建立了7条径线的线性回归方程(P0.05);一元线性回归方程相关系数为0.190~0.439,标准估计误差(SEE)为4.597~5.023 cm;多元线性回归方程复相关系数为0.494~0.524,SEE为4.418~4.458 cm。回代检验得y=83.959+3.589 x_6+2.573 x_2,±1SEE准确率最高,为30%;y=72.646+3.316 x6+1.586 x_2+1.553 x_4+2.211 x_3,±2SEE准确率最高,为92%。结论本研究所选取的7条径线与身高均有明显的直线相关性,所建立的多元回归方程适用于推断西南地区汉族男性身高。     

Evaluating digital video transcoding for forensic derivative results

Video data received for analysis often come in a variety of file formats and compression schemes. These data are often transcoded to a consistent file format for forensic examination and/or ingesting into a video analytic system. The file format often requested is an MP4 file format. The MP4 file format is a very common and a universally accepted file format. The practical application of this transcoding process, across the analytical community, has generated differences in video quality. This study sought to explore possible origins of the differences and assist the practitioner by defining minimum recommendations to ensure that quality of the video data is maintained through the transcoding process. This study sought to generate real world data by asking participants to transcode provided video files to an MP4 file format using programs they would typically utilize to perform this task. The transcoded results were evaluated based on measurable metrics of quality. As the results were analyzed, determining why these differences might have occurred became less about a particular software application and more about the settings employed by the practitioner or of the capabilities of the program. This study supports the need for any video examiner who is transcoding video data to be cognizant of the settings utilized by the programs employed for transcoding video data, as loss of video quality can affect analytics as well as further analysis.     

Testing the performance of mtSNP minisequencing in forensic samples

There is a growing interest among forensic geneticists in developing efficient protocols for genotyping coding region mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) SNPs (mtSNPs). Minisequencing is becoming a popular method for SNP genotyping, but it is still used by few forensic laboratories. In part, this is due to the lack of studies testing its efficiency and reproducibility when applied to real and complex forensic samples. Here we tested a minisequencing design that consists of 71 mtSNPs (in three multiplexes) that are diagnostic of known branches of the R0 phylogeny, in real forensic samples, including degraded bones and teeth, hair shafts, and serial dilutions. The fact that amplicons are short coupled with the natural efficiency of the minisequencing technique allow these assays to perform well with all the samples tested either degraded and/or those containing low DNA amount. We did not observe phylogenetic inconsistencies in the 71 mtSNP haplotypes generated, indicating that the technique is robust against potential artefacts that could arise from unintended contamination and/or spurious amplification of nuclear mtDNA pseudogenes (NUMTs).     

安徽几种香茶菜属植物显微鉴别研究

目的 研究安徽几种香茶菜属植物叶表面的毛茸和气孔的显微特征差异。方法 应用表面制片法对4种香茶菜属植物香茶菜、歧伞香茶菜、大萼香茶菜、显脉香茶菜的叶表面特征进行显微观察。结果 4种香茶菜属植物叶表面特征有显著差异：香茶菜具有长短两种腺毛,歧伞香茶菜和大萼香茶菜仅具短腺毛,显脉香茶菜仅具长腺毛且腺头较大;歧伞香茶菜的非腺毛最长,细胞数最多;大萼香茶菜气孔密度高且较大。结论 可从叶表面毛茸和气孔的特征鉴别4种香茶菜。     

Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Pastor’s Wife: A Reassessment

Abstract

The Pastor’s Wife (1914) may seem at first reading simply another depiction of a woman struggling for liberation in the decades following the work of Thomas Hardy and Henrik Ibsen, being the story of how Ingeborg Bullivant escapes from an English patriarchal home, only to find herself trapped in another one in Germany. The novel, however, marks a turning point in Elizabeth von Arnim’s career; it is a novel that looks back to previous themes while anticipating those to come. It demonstrates, with comedy and bitterness, themes of alienation and exile; satirizes German codes and class; and provides a lyrical Romantic vision of the natural world. It also presents the married woman as a prisoner in a way that anticipates Vera (1921). The novel can also stand alone as an underrated classic that plays an important part in the history of English literature. Published at the beginning of high modernism, it shows, unlike the work of some canonized writers of the time, a fusion of realism and modernism. This essay argues that the novel is a proto-feminist work that is radical in its portrayal of women’s experience and influenced by literary naturalism in its childbirth scenes, but pessimistic about possibilities for change. The essay shows how the novel is modernist in its depiction of the alienated experience of the city; uses nineteenth-century realism in its narrative structure and comedy; and yet is forward-looking in its use of endings. A book that begins as a comedy but ends as a tragedy, The Pastor’s Wife deserves equal recognition with the work of H. G. Wells and E. M. Forster, writers with whom von Arnim was connected and by whom she was influenced.     

Effects of ACA Medicaid Expansions on Health Insurance Coverage and Labor Supply

We examined the effect of the expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act on health insurance coverage and labor supply of low‐educated and low‐income adults. We found that the Medicaid expansions were associated with large increases in Medicaid coverage, for example, 50 percent among childless adults, and corresponding decreases in the proportion uninsured. There was relatively little change in private insurance coverage, although the expansions tended to decrease such coverage slightly. In terms of labor supply, estimates indicated that the Medicaid expansions had little effect on work effort despite the substantial changes in health insurance coverage. Most estimates suggested that the expansions increased work effort, although not significantly.