Journal articles on the topic 'Legal muting'

AbstractThis article proposes the “muting” of the SGP, the framework of rules that the EU has implemented since the coming into being of the European Monetary Union in the fiscal domain. It is argued herein that the system is far from being credible, from the perspective of the law-as-credibility paradigm. Therefore, the legal condition of the SGP should be “muted”. Three proposals to legally mute the SGP are examined in this article. The Open Method of Coordination is used as a useful model that could be followed from now on in the EU fiscal field. The gains in terms of legal credibility would argue in favour of the muting of the SGP and its correlative conversion into an OMC-like system.

AbstractLaw and society scholars have long studied rights mobilization and gender inequality from the vantage point of complainants in private workplaces. This article pursues a new direction in this line of inquiry to explore, for the first time, mobilization from the vantage points of complainants and those accused of violating the rights of others in public-school workplaces in the United States. We conceptualize rights mobilization as legal, quasilegal, and/or extralegal processes. Based on a national random survey of teachers and administrators, and in-depth interviews with educators in California, New York, and North Carolina, we find an integral relationship between gender inequality and experiencing rights violations, choices about rights mobilization, and obstacles to formal mobilization. Compared to complainants, those accused of rights violations – especially male administrators – are more likely to use quasilegal and legal mobilization to defend themselves or to engage in anticipatory mobilization. Actors in less powerful status positions (teachers) most often pursue extralegal mobilization to complain about rights violations during which they engage in rights muting as a means of self-protection; when in more powerful status positions, actors use rights muting as a means of self-protection and to suppress the rights claims of others. This paper concludes with implications for future research on rights mobilization in school workplaces amidst changing political and demographic conditions.

This qualitative, phenomenological study conducted in Israel consisted of interviews with 14 close relatives of murder victims whose cases generated media interest. The research offers a comprehensive view of the endeavors of the participants to be heard in both the criminal justice system and the media. The findings indicate that despite the growing recognition of co-victims’ rights and media attention to their narratives, both the justice system and the media disappoint these victims and largely fail to respond to their need to convey their messages. The participants experienced ‘lingual injury:’ the repudiation and muting of their own language in favor of professional jargon. Lingual injury is an innovative concept that describes particular aspects of secondary victimization; it contributes to the existing literature by enabling a detailed mapping of co-victims’ simultaneous difficulties in the interplay between the criminal justice system and the media. It highlights the need for developing professional tools, both legal and victimological, to alleviate this situation.

Abstract This article offers a new interpretation of mutiny, and of the ways in which this concept was defined and implemented in maritime law during the seventeenth century. It particularly focuses on British seafarers and the evidence surviving in the papers of the English High Court of Admiralty, placed in a comparative perspective with reference to other states’ legal provision. Scholars of maritime social history have been particularly preoccupied with the idea of mutiny but have rarely provided a precise decision of it, or explored its legal intricacies, while generally basing their ideas on the increasingly punitive regulations issued by state navies. Some have presented mutiny as an essentially responsive action by which mariners expressed grievances and appealed to shared ideas of patriarchal justice. Others have found in mutiny the stirrings of a distinctively maritime tradition of political radicalism which fermented throughout the early modern period and ultimately contributed to the age of revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Across this divide, most historians have concurred in presenting it as an extreme, and often violent, act of resistance to constituted authority. This article shifts our attention to the supposed origins of this authoritarian system in the seventeenth century and expands our analysis beyond the martial law of state navies, which applied only in a specific and limited number of ships. It begins by considering the fragmented nature of the multiple systems of national, municipal, military, and customary maritime laws which governed seafaring, arguing that even in naval law there was no consistent definition or prosecution of mutiny, and that the provisions of customary law (much more ubiquitous than naval law) were far less draconian than popular myth would suggest. The article then turns to the depositions of mariners presented in admiralty court cases to explore how seafarers themselves delivered narratives about their conduct at sea, countering accusations of mutiny levied by their employers. It is particularly important to take into account the legal purpose and context of these sources, which highlight disputes and divisions and where statements were strategically crafted – on both sides – to pursue certain objectives. Through this analysis of both legal codes and legal practice, this article demonstrates that authority and law at sea were not a simple matter of unconfined power meeting radical resistance, nor of acquiescence to established hierarchies. While conflict, mistreatment, and asymmetries of power were undoubtedly present in early modern seafaring, the evidence from the High Court of Admiralty shows that, even at sea, shipmasters’ and their crews’ actions were shaped by knowledge of maritime law. Moreover, seafarers and their employers (whether commercial or imperial) shared expectations about the limits of commanders’ power and about consensus and compromise aboard ship. Discussion and protest were only considered mutinous when a voyage failed and provoked recriminations over who should bear the fault and the cost: the consequences, more than the act itself, defined its legal status. This article therefore provides novel reflections on the social dimensions of maritime labour and the agency of early modern seafarers within imperial and legal systems.

This article examines the East India Company's Bengal Regulation 10 of 1804, a legal statute that enabled martial law to be enforced by the in British colonial India. The use made of this little studied yet significant emergency regulation, its perceived legal deficiencies, and in particular, the discord that arose between the military and civil authorities over how and who should be administer it will be discussed with reference to the promulgation of martial law by the British during the Cuttack Uprising of 1857, the Indian “Mutiny” or Revolt of 1857, and in response to the civil unrest in the Punjab during 1919. While martial law was itself ring fenced by legislation that determined the legal grounds for its inauguration and for its cessation, the implementation of martial law by the British military forces in India was marked by the absence of law.

AbstractThis essay explores the Amistad rebellion of 1839, in which fifty-three Africans seized a slave schooner, sailed it to Long Island, New York, made an alliance with American abolitionists, and won their freedom in a protracted legal battle. Asking how and why the rebels succeeded, it emphasizes the African background and experience, as well as the “fictive kinship” that grew out of many incarcerations, as sources of solidarity that made the uprising possible. The essay concludes by discussing the process of mutiny, suggesting a six-phase model for understanding the dynamics of shipboard revolt, and showing how such events can have powerful historical consequences.

In 1763, a regiment of mercenary soldiers stationed on the border of Suriname and Berbice in South America, rebelled. The men had been sent to help subdue a large slave rebellion. Instead, they mutinied and joined the rebelling slaves. This paper reconstructs the mutiny from Dutch records and uses it to look at the role of soldiers as border crosser in the Atlantic world. Colonial historians have usually studied soldiers in their capacity of border enforcers, men who maintained the cultural and legal divisions that supported colonial authority. However, as I show, soldiers with great regularity crossed those same borders, threatening the very foundations of colonialism.

Musha>rakah Mutana>qis}ah (MMQ) is one of the developments of Musyarakah’s contract-based products. MMQ can be applied as an Islamic banking financing product where the portion of the share of one of the partners is diminished due to the gradual purchase or commercial transfer to the other partner. The articles aims to investigate the regulatory frameworks pertaining to MMQ in Indonesia and Malaysia. It also compares the associated institutions with the authority to issue regulations and policies surrounding the practice of MMQ. Furthermore, it analyzes and investigates a number of critical issues concerning the implementation of MMQ in both countries. This study is doctrinal legal research. It comprises on principle of law, legal systematic, synchronization of law, and legal history. The author also used statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches. The result of the study shows that the regulatory framework in both countries was quite sufficient to accommodate the needs of MMQ costumers and practitioners. Therefore, The study's novelty lies in its comprehensive comparative analysis of the regulatory frameworks and practices surrounding MMQ in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Ernest Renan argued over a century ago that belonging to a nation entails forgetting just as much as it required remembering past events. Certainly this is the case in East Central Europe, where not infrequently different nationalities create out of a single historical event utterly opposing historical memories. In the western borderlands of the Russian Empire, one historical event that has been variously interpreted by different nationalities is the Insurrection of 1863. To simplify somewhat, prerevolutionary Russian historians generally interpreted this key event as a mutiny against the established legal order—the term miatezh (mutiny) was always used in such accounts—while the Poles interpreted the uprising as perhaps naive and foolish, but in any case a noble attempt to regain rights usurped by the Russian occupiers. With such a sharply opposed memory of the uprising as a whole, it comes as no surprise that the figure who did the most to crush the insurrection in the Northwest (Lithuanian and Belarusian) provinces, Count M. N. Muraviev, should also be a controversial figure, praised by conservative Russians and demonized by Poles, Lithuanians, and liberals of all nationalities.

Al iniciar nuestras investigaciones en ´África e interesarnos particularmente en el fenómeno de la comunicación social pensamos que existía la posibilidad de que algún día encontrásemos algún sistema de "escritura" entre las numerosas sociedades tradicionales ágrafas del Zaire

This article uses evidence from the English High Court of Admiralty to examine the problem of mutiny and indiscipline among seafarers in the transatlantic trades during the 1680s and 1690s. It focuses on a venture of 1688, which is of particular interest not only for the light it sheds on maritime conditions, but also because it involved Daniel Defoe, a young and ambitious trader who was trying to establish a commercial opening in Chesapeake Bay. The article contextualizes this previously unknown venture, relating it to the development of the tobacco trade and its dependence on an expanding market and widening patterns of consumption. The failure of the voyage, in association with other business problems, had serious consequences for Defoe, leading to bankruptcy in 1692 and his withdrawal from direct involvement in overseas trade. Against a broader background of other voyages, the legal testimony heard by the court draws attention to the wider problem of mutinous conduct at sea. These cases were provoked by a range of grievances including pay, labour conditions and discipline. Repeatedly they raise questions about the conduct of masters at sea, including their rights and responsibilities. At the same time, the article argues that the upsurge in mutiny and indiscipline at sea, while revealing the inexorable tension between pay and productivity, also exposed deeper issues regarding seafaring custom and contract.

In 1816, the mostly-American crew of a slaving brig bound from Cuba staged a mutiny before reaching West Africa, and then sailed on (without a captive cargo) to the antislavery republic of Haiti. Their voyage culminated in a remarkable prize case before the admiralty court at Port-au-Prince. The sailors claimed indignation at the “diabolical” slave trade, hoping to win profits from the condemnation of the vessel and to avoid future prosecution for enlisting in a slaving voyage that was illegal under U.S. federal law. Haitian prosecutors invoked the agreements of the Congress of Vienna, arguing that the trade had been prohibited by the laws of nations. It fell to the admiralty court to reconcile such aspirational claims with Haiti's ongoing struggle for political survival. The brig's journey between the United States, Cuba, Spanish Florida, Cape Verde, and finally Haiti reveals the ways in which slave traders calculated the relative risks of legal penalties against the possible gains from the trade. The records of the adjudication of the case show how Haitian officials developed their own legal strategies for the suppression of the trade, laying the foundations for an escalating campaign to police slaving traffic off of their shores.

In a futuristic, dystopian Australia, Max Rockatansky is a lone warrior struggling against the forces that have ripped his family, and society as a whole, to shreds. From rogue motorcycle gangs to violencebased legal systems, the Mad Max films depict a world in which the most toxic aspects of masculinity have poisoned society, mutating into something far more dangerous — something monstrous. The series presents a version of monstrosity that has sunk its claws into the very masculinity it usually serves to validate; in light of these subversions, this analysis utilizes monster theory in conjunction with gender studies to examine toxic masculinity in the Mad Max franchise

In the 21st century, it is inappropriate to have to ask whether criticising a political regime or exercising freedom of speech could lead to criminal charges and criminal punishment. In contrast, a hundred years ago the restriction of people’s freedom of speech, especially in relation to political matters, was quite extensive, both in autocratic Russia and elsewhere. The article addresses the legal situation in the Estonian territory of the Russian Empire until 1918, when insubordination to state authority and inciting mutiny were punishable by law. On 17 April 1905, the so-called Freedom Manifesto gave people freedom of speech, and the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire entered into force one year later, wherein fundamental rights were enumerated, among them the right to express one’s convictions, both orally and in writing. At the same time, however, restrictions continued to apply to the fundamental rights declared, which at times were very strict in the tsarist state and rendered the space for exercise of those rights extremely narrow. The article provides an overview of the penal legislation that was applicable within the Estonian territory at the dawn of the 20th century, which set boundaries to freedom of speech and of the press. Considered separately is the case law of the Tallinn Circuit Court pertaining to charges of instigation of mutiny, with the aim of showing how these provisions were applied in judicial practice and the context in which the state restricted people’s fundamental rights. In the Tallinn Circuit Court, it was primarily newspaper editors who were charged with incitement to mutiny, because they allowed the publishing of various calls to action in relation to workers’ movement propaganda and demands for better conditions and rights for workers. At the beginning of the 20th century, class warfare was considered a crime against the state, and the case law demonstrates how the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press were restricted via strict penal-law measures.

Part I compares the nineteenth century cases of the Antelope and the Amistad to identify why they resulted in different outcomes despite having similar fact patterns. The Antelope concerned the fate of approximately 280 African captives discovered on a slave trade ship upon its interception by a U.S. revenue cutter. Since the slave trade in the United States was illegal at the time, the captives were transported to Savannah for trial through which their status—free or slave—would be determined. After a lengthy trial and appeals process in which Spain and Portugal laid claim to the captives, the Supreme Court determined that those captives claimed by a non-U.S. nation were slaves. The Court reasons that however “abhorrent” the slave trade was, the United States was obligated to recognize the rights of other nations to participate in it. In comparison, the Amistad concerned the fate of captives aboard a slave trade ship in which the captives committed mutiny, attempted to sail to Africa, but were captured by a U.S. vessel. The Supreme Court ordered them free despite the Spanish government’s claim that the captives were its property. Part I explores these different outcomes and argues that the absence of Antelope captives’ stories in the litigation process was partly due to the decision to isolate captives in slavery before their status was determined. In particular, it argues that this isolation affected the outcome of the Antelope by preventing captives from sharing their anecdotes and translating them to a format that would resonate with their legal counsel, the public, and judges. In contrast, the Amistad captives, while also detained, were situated close to those who could help them. They were able to transform their truths into a winning narrative for the court by understanding and leveraging the talents and expertise of counsel, and the biases of judges and the public. Part II argues that 200 years later, a similar environment of isolation suppresses the stories of another group with undetermined legal status: asylum seekers. Although slave ship captives were forced into the country with chains, while asylum seekers are driven into the country by fear, the legal status of both groups in their respective time periods was undetermined upon their arrival. Both groups deserved, by legal and moral standards, the opportunity to present the truth behind their arrival and to prove their legal status. Part II argues that the detention of asylum seekers mirrors the isolation of the Antelope captives by removing detainees from those most able to help them develop a persuasive narrative truth. Detention silences important voices, aggravates ineffective representation, damages public perception, and ultimately harms case outcomes.

Abstract It is often argued that courts avoid foreign laws because they prefer local law. It would make sense if they did—after all, foreign law can be hard to understand and complicated to employ, and it is also . . . foreign. Aiming to investigate this assumption through a qualitative analysis of all available cases on one question and comparing the findings with the approach towards local matrimonial property cases in Israel, this Article finds something rather different. At least as regards Israeli judges discussing matrimonial property, it appears that sometimes judges do not prefer the lex fori but something else. The Article discusses one case that reveals what could be described as a judicial mutiny, where judges chose to apply neither foreign law nor local law per se. In the case of matrimonial property, a particular legal norm seems particularly close to the judges’ hearts. So much so that despite legislative intervention designed to change the judicially-shaped law, the courts continue to apply their own, judicially created law.

Researchers summoned a Baltimore County woman to an office at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health last spring to tell her the bad news. They had found a genetic threat lurking in her 7-year-old son's DNA—a mutant gene that almost always triggers a rare form of colon cancer. It was the same illness that led surgeons to remove her colon in 1979. While the boy, Michael, now 8, is still perfectly healthy, without surgery he is almost certain to develop cancer by age 40.This genetic fortune-telling was no parlor trick. It was the product of astonishing advances in recent decades in understanding how genes build and regulate our bodies. And as scientists pinpoint new genes and learn to forecast the onset of more inherited disorders, millions of people are likely to demand their medical prognosis.

Supranational executive power is mutating at the level of the EU political system through a growing array of institutions, (new) agencies and other actors who exercise in one way or another executive powers. One of the less visible though no less crucial executive powers is the management of access to official information. At the supranational level we have seen a growth in specific secrecy arrangements. An important way for building those secrecy arrangements is through the establishment of systems of classification of documents. These security rules have received little academic attention, both in terms of the legal framework and in terms of the empirical practice. This article aims to fill that gap in the existing literature by examining the intersection of internal institutional "security" rulemaking by the plural EU executive with legislative and Treaty requirements and in particular with parliamentary and public oversight mechanisms applied specifically to recent practice of negotiations on international agreements. Do the existing legal and political responses in the area of the negotiation of international agreements in particular indicate the existence of robust checks and balances by the EP to counteract the internal rulemaking power of the executive in the context of the EU? Is the EU executive "unbound" in a more general sense or adequately held in check by the EP in collaboration with other oversight institutions and the public?

Background: Since the introduction of criminal policy on victims of drug abuse in Indonesia in Law No. 35 of 2009 on Narcotic Drugs, the current legislation does not give room to the use of criminal means (tax and action), which extends both its content and benefits as contained in Article 127 paragraphs (1), (2), and (3), Jo. Article 103 Jo. Art. 54 is the punishment of criminal imprisonment, and the sentence of medical rehabilitation or social rehabilitation only tends to be rigid, So in legal practice, it still tends to position victims of drug abuse as being treated equally as perpetrators of drug offenses in general, without regard to justice for the protection of the victim of narcotics abuse itself. Adopting good concepts for the formulation of the Narcotics Act in the future is necessary as a reflection of the values of justice for the victims of drug abuse who are distributed to Indonesians based on Pancasila with a more flexible system of punishment. (flexible on sentencing). Objective: Analyzing to a great extent the innovative ideas of re-formulating criminal drug policy in Indonesia with a comparative study of criminal policy on victims of drug abuse in other countries. By using the method of doctrinal approach that analyzes the law as it is written in the books or the law as it is decided by the judge through the judicial process. Theoretical framework: Prison sentences for narcotics abuse have proved to be unable to reduce the number of narcotics abuses. The Law on Narcotic Drugs, in its development, has been updated with the enactment of Law No. 35 of 2009 on Drugs. There has been a legal revision of the provisions of this law, with the decriminalization of drug abuse perpetrators. Narcotics addicts and victims of drug abuse must undergo medical and social rehabilitation. Van Boven, a United Nations special rapporteur, puts the rights of victims of human rights violations in a comprehensive way that is not only limited to the right to know and to continued justice but also the right to reparation (Theo Van Boven, 2002). Method: This study uses the method of normative jurisprudence, or doctrinal law research, that analyzes both laws as they are written in the books and laws as they are decided by the judge through the judicial process. The use of skunder data as a source or material of information can be primary legal material, skunder legal material, or third-tier legal material. Results: The results of the study suggest that there is a need to re-formulate the criminal policy of legal protection of victims as perpetrators of crimes in the future drug law enforcement system, including articles on the use of non-criminal means in drug law in the future as a measure of prevention of the adverse influence of the black traffic of narcotics in Indonesia. To this end, it is necessary to encourage the support of the government by using all its powers to provide the budget, resources, and human resources for both the security and defense of the country, such as the Indonesian National Army/Police of the Republic of Indonesia/National Narcotics Agency, other law enforcement agencies, and the apparatus of government within the scope of the state administration, so that the presence and existence of a state in protecting citizens in a safe, comfortable, and realization of a divine, just, and civilized society with a sense of unity, settlement with mutiny, and justice in society will be felt.

The story of the journal "Precision Nanomedicine" started back in December 2015 when the contract of the Editor-in-chief of "Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine" was not renewed by Elsevier without any justification. While it was fully within the legal rights of the publisher to make that decision, they failed to consult with the NNBM editorial board. Elsevier also rejected a collective letter signed by 74 board members and editors requesting the reversal of the decision and served up the usual excuses. This was not the first instance of a publisher acting without the input of an editorial board or completely disregarding sicentists' opinion [1] [2], [3], and the reaction was also similar. In 2015, almost all associate editors and more than 60 editorial board members of the journal Lingua resigned in protest [3]. Similar to the mutiny by Lingua's editors, we also set out to launch our own open-access journal[2] to promote all progressive and rational aspects of nanomedicine including theory and practice while exercising good publishing practices (for a deeper analysis of the present state of scholarly publishing see the opinion paper in this issue).

This article explores how austerity combined with the UK Government’s expressed aim of creating a hostile environment, reshaped policy and practice towards new migrants in a downscaled urban area. There is an assumption that volunteers come to govern in zones the state has ceded or abandoned. However, how volunteers come to undertake these roles, their discretionary power and the consequences for state theory have not been fully explored. Drawing on 73 interviews with local state actors and volunteers and in-depth participant observation over 14 months with more than 200 new migrants, this article argues volunteers become the ‘face of the state’ for new migrants with direct effects. Volunteers have wide discretionary power and negotiate uncertainty by falling back on religious values and local narratives of migration forging new practices of governance. This article makes two contributions to theorising the state. First, the economic position of a city and narratives of place shapes who gains legal status and state membership, adding to literature on the relationship between civil society and the state in neoliberal contexts. Second, seemingly mundane actions and intimate relations have immediate implications for political membership. This represents a system of governance that relies on assessments of behaviours in new migrants’ everyday lives rather than rights or entitlements. This article unpacks these assessments and explores the consequences for volunteers and new migrants alike.

The article analyzes corruption as an extra-legal phenomenon that destroys the morality and values of society, threatens democracy and human rights, deforms the functions of state power, discrediting it both within the country and in the international arena. It is noted that the formation of dysfunctions in the sphere of public administration is not the main socio-political danger of corruption.The threat of "corrosion" and gradual destruction of social ties in the system of state regulation, public control and the functioning of social institutions is creating. The sociological and legal interpretation of corruption made it possible to study it as a trigger that weakens statehood, to reveal the social mechanism of the influence of corruption ties on state institutions, to assess the political, economic, legal, socio-structural and psychological factors of its spread. The authors characterize foreign and domestic “models” of corruption and ways of counteracting it from the standpoint of the ontological approach; she also has identified social markers that reflect its specificity in Ukraine; a real assessment of the degree of effectiveness of anti-corruption actions in Ukraine are presented; the expediency of analyzing corruption in the international aspect, especially the mechanisms, forms and methods of Ukrainian corruption spreading in the world corruption services and the penetration of transnational corruption into the Ukrainian political and economic space; it is also revealed the effect of the social mechanism of corruption in the structure of the state, as a result of which the process of state regulation loses its morality and social value. It is shown that the stable, actively "mutating", adaptive to the majority of social changes, the nature of corruption in Ukraine does not only forms and reproduces the tolerant attitude of government and a significant part of the public, but it also actively inhibits democratic transformations and deforms the public consciousness of Ukrainians. It is emphasized that "salus populi" is the most pragmatic option among the systemic models of fighting corruption (totalitarian, authoritarian, liberal).

By exploring forms of maritime resistance spanning the age of sail and steam, this article interrogates certain preponderant assumptions within the historiography of subaltern agency. Within this historiography, “modernity” has generally come to be signalled by trade union organisation and a concomitant regard for legality, while violent resistance is implicitly or explicitly taken to signify the Other of modernity: traditional, primitive, incomplete. Arguing that this tradition/modernity divide has mapped onto the sail–steam divide in the historiography of maritime resistance, this article complicates the association of violent mutiny with the age of sail and litigiousness with the age of steam. It does this by bringing both epochs into single focus, thereby finding important continuities in forms of everyday resistance on board ship across the sail-steam divide. Using existing scholarship to look at resistance in the age of sail and archival material like ships’ logbooks, newspapers and “Lascari”–English dictionaries for the age of the steam, it argues that rather than trade unions fundamentally reshaping the forms of everyday resistance into legal channels, it was in fact these longer traditions of quotidian contestation that fed into the formation of unions at the end of World War I, and continued through the 1920s and 1930s.

Aim: Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is an essential tool for the detection of many pathogens, relying on the use of primers. However, there is limited literature on the shelf life of these nucleotides, which is crucial for meeting the stability requirements of European regulations for in vitro diagnostic medical devices (IVDR) (Regulation (EU) 2017/746). This study aims to determine the shelf life of primers used in conventional PCR. Materials and Methods: Over the past 15 years, we have conducted numerous PCR experiments for various pathogens to estimate the shelf life of dissolved oligonucleotides stored at -20°C. This study focuses on the shelf life of primers used in conventional PCR for two pathogens: Chlamydia trachomatis and Streptococcus mutans. Results: The findings suggest that primers stored at -20°C typically have a shelf life of five years, even after enduring at least 20 freeze-thaw cycles. Conclusion: This study contributes valuable insights to the limited literature on primer stability, demonstrating that primers stored at -20°C remain viable for five years. These findings can help laboratories and research institutions reduce costs by minimizing the need for frequent primer replacement and ensure compliance with legal stability requirements.

Zamfarawa wani sashe ne a cikin al’ummar Hausawa waɗanda suka kasance da hasaloli kyawawa cike da halayen kirki tare da aiwatar gaskiya da son ‘yan’uwa da kuma abokai. Mutane ne masu kunya, masu kawar da kai, sannan kuma masu neman shawarwari a tsarin hasalolin rayuwa. Zamfarawa mutane ne, masu kulawa, waɗanda suke iya zama da kowaɗanne nau’o’in mutane da suka sami kansu a cikinsu ne. Suna tafiyar da kyawawan mu’amaloli ne da mutane daban-daban, musamman idan aka yi la’akari da yanayin harkokinsu da mutanen Legas da na Ibadan da na Ogbomosho da na Ghana da na Paris da na Ingila da na Amurka da na Libya da na Agadaz da na Anambara da na Adamawa da na Zuru da na Yawuri da na Argungu da na Kano da na Katsina da na Zariya da dai sauransu. An ayyana, ayyuka ne da hidimomin rayuwa suka kawo Zamfarawa jihar Kano. An fahimci Zamfarawa mazauna Kano sun haɗu ne a sigar mutuntawa tare da girmama duk wani jinsi na ɗan’adam da suke zaune da shi. Hakan ne kuma ya haddasa musu aiwatar da wani yunƙuri tare da azama na kafawa da samar da Ƙungiyar Zamfarawa Mazauna Jihar Kano kwata. Daga cikin manufofin da suka haddasa kafa wannan ƙungiya bai wuce a ƙara samar da danƙon zumunci ba, tare da lura da ɗorewar kulawa da juna. Haka kuma yana daga cikin manufofinta, a ƙara saka ƙaimi wajen taimakawa da ƙarfafawa juna da kuma abokan hulɗa, tare da lazimtar aikata halaye na gari da ƙarfafa ayyukan addinin Musulunci da bunƙasa tattalin arziki da ƙarfafa dukkan nau’o’i da rassa na ilimi da kuma kulawa da sa-hannun ƙungiya wajen samar da ayyukan-yi ga matasa. Ta haka ake ba da shawara da a bunƙasa wasu muhimman gurabu domin a aiwatar da hidimomin ƙungiyar. Sannan, gurabun kar su yawaita; a zaɓi mutanen da suka dace a ɗora su a matsayin Shugaban Ƙungiya da Sakataren Dauwana Ayyukan Ƙungiya da Sakataren Tantance Shiga-da-Ficen Kuɗin Ƙungiya da Ma’aji da Sakataren Sadar da Ayyukan Ƙungiya. Sannan a samar da Kundin Tsarin Mulki (Constitution) da Kwamitin Amintattun Wakilai na Ƙungiya da Kwamitin Iyayen Ƙungiya da kuma Kwamitin Lauyoyin Ƙungiya.

ABSTRACT The invasion of red blood cells (RBCs) by Plasmodium falciparum is dependent on multiple molecular interactions between erythrocyte receptors and parasite ligands. Invasion studies using culture-adapted parasite strains have indicated significant receptor heterogeneity. It is not known whether this heterogeneity reflects the parasite invasion arsenal in the field. We have studied the invasion phenotypes of 14 distinct field isolates from the Legal Amazon areas of Brazil by using erythrocyte invasion assays to investigate invasion into normal, enzyme-treated, and clinical-mutant RBCs. Analysis of these isolates revealed four distinct invasion profiles. Using En(a−) cells to get an unequivocal estimate of the use of glycophorin A (GPA) as a receptor, we found that the 175-kDa erythrocyte-binding antigen (EBA-175)/GPA pathway was used by a minority of the parasite isolates studied. Although polymorphism of region II domains at specific amino acid positions in both EBA-140 and EBA-181 was found in these field isolates, this did not correlate with invasion profiles and thus receptor selectivity. These studies have further confirmed the existence of a significant diversity of invasion pathways in nature and suggest that additional parasite ligands will have to be targeted to devise global vaccines that will work in the field.

AbstractContemporary criminal justice is premised on a rights-bearing defendant safe-guarded by due process from arbitrary state punishment. The paucity of academic commentary on the role of the criminal defendant suggests that there is a common assumption that the role is static. However, the rights-bearing defendant is a relatively new concept. Through a legal history analysis, this paper demonstrates that the defendant's role can mutate in response to pressures placed on the criminal trial. Broadly, there have been three conceptualisations of the defendant: the penitent Anglo-Norman defendant; the advocate defendant of the jury trial; and the rights-bearing adversarial defendant. Importantly, the shift from one conceptualisation to another has occurred gradually, often without commentary or conscious effort to instigate change. There are many contemporary pressures that could be impacting on the rights-bearing defendant. The concept of a mutable defendant provides a new theory through which to analyse these pressures. This paper considers the introduction of adverse inferences regarding the right to silence and disclosure, and the rise of ‘digilantism’. These new pressures, it is suggested, help to facilitate a rhetoric of deservingness that goes against the rights-bearing defendant and raises the risk its role could once again be mutating.

Chlamydial infection of the upper genital tract after abortion is well recognized, but routine screening for infection before termination is rare, and few centres are aware of the prevalence of post-abortion complications in their patient population. Knowledge of the patient population is the best guide for developing screening strategies. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of chlamydial infection in patients presenting for legal termination of pregnancy, and to assess the presence of Chlamydia trachomatis by PCR on specimens collected in either PreservCyt (ThinPrep) or 2-sucrose phosphate (2-SP) transport medium. Two hundred and eleven single, sexually active women, aged 15–26 years, attending the Gynaecology and Obstetric Hospital, Amiens, France, for surgical termination of pregnancy were enrolled in this study from June 2002 to June 2003. C. trachomatis detection using a Cobas Amplicor PCR test (Roche Diagnostics) targeting a 207 bp segment of the common cryptic plasmid and a quantitative LightCycler real-time PCR (LC-PCR) (Roche Diagnostics) targeting a 123 bp fragment within the highly conserved constant domain 3 of the single-chromosome-copy ompA gene were performed on endocervical swabs in 2-SP, and on specimens collected using a cytobrush and placed in PreservCyt medium. The in-house LC-PCR was used as a chromosomal diagnosis method and to determine the load of C. trachomatis. This method was able to detect the mutant Swedish variant with a deletion of 377 bp in the target area in the cryptic plasmid, which is the region targeted by the Cobas Amplicor PCR test. C. trachomatis was detected in 19/211 patients (9 %) by both PCR methods. Among the 19 infected women, C. trachomatis was detected by the Cobas Amplicor PCR in 16 specimens in PreservCyt (7.6 %) and in 12 endocervical swabs in 2-SP (5.7 %). Specimens from only nine women were PCR-positive in both PreservCyt and 2-SP media by this method. Cobas Amplicor PCR revealed that 10.9 and 2.3 % of the PreservCyt and 2-SP samples, respectively, contained inhibitors. The same 19 infected women were LC-PCR positive in both PreservCyt and 2-SP samples. No additional infected women were found by this last method; thus, it was concluded that none of the samples contained the new variant of C. trachomatis. The load in each sample varied from 102 to 107 copies ml−1.

Modern financial law historically emerged as a patchwork of regulatory reactions to a series of financial crises. It continued to develop in sync with the ebb and flow of regulatory cycles that oscillated between periods of calm, conducive to a deregulatory frenzy, and periods of crises followed by re-regulatory fervour. Reform initiatives spurring in reaction to crises also comprise procedural/institutional reforms (i.e. those relating to the “who” and “how” of regulation, as opposed to the “what”). The latest financial crisis is no exception to this rule. This article focuses on the EU institutional reforms, which arguably represent a more radical departure from the status quo (in comparison to domestic or international initiatives) in that they involve an instance of “proper” institution-building with implications across different levels of governance. This reform is examined first against the backdrop of the existing EU agencies' legal framework and is found to constitute an important milestone in the crystallization of this framework. A closer look is then taken at the new European Supervisory Authorities' role in EU rulemaking, and to their relationship with the European Commission. Subsequently, the paper takes a further step back and offers some thoughts about the continuously mutating relationship between law and new governance practices, as illustrated in the context of EU financial regulation.

Purpose This paper aims to offer detailed preliminary data and analysis that focuses specifically on the structures and financial aspects of the UK cocaine market. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on in-depth interviews with – among others – four active criminal entrepreneurs involved in powder cocaine supply in the UK. Furthermore, along with a review of relevant literature and open sources, in-depth interviews were undertaken with a range of experts with knowledge of the cocaine market. These experts include law enforcement agents and independent academics/researchers who have researched the cocaine market in the UK and internationally. Findings The cocaine market is a fragmented business dependent on networks of individual entrepreneurs and groups. At the core of collaborations often lie family, ethnic or kinship relationships and relationships forged within legal businesses and in prison. Capital investment practices in this market are flexible, “messy” and mutating, and money comes from a range of different sources. Credit is an integral feature of the cocaine business in the UK. The financial management of the cocaine trade is a result of (and reflects) a number of factors, such as the fragmented and decentralised nature of the trade. Originality/value Empirical research into financial aspects of organised crime manifestations is important for the assumptions that are part of public debate to be tested. In addition, understanding the broader range of financial aspects of organised crime is an important component of the process of crimes for gain and can contribute to both better investigation and better prevention.

Abstract BACKGROUND Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) is now legal in 10 US states and Washington, DC, allowing terminally ill patients to self-administer medications to peacefully end their life. There is little published on pediatric hospitals’ approach to young adult patients requesting MAiD. METHODS We review the two patients who have participated in MAiD at the Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHCO). We also explore publicly available Colorado MAiD statistics. RESULTS Between 2017 and 2022, there have been 1,090 prescriptions written for MAiD medication in Colorado, 5 of which were for patients aged 18-34 (0.5%). Two of these patients were treated at CHCO. Patient A was a 26 year old male with a CNS non-germinomatous germ cell tumor whose treatment was complicated by mucormycosis and severe engraftment syndrome. He relapsed 23 months after completing therapy. He had neurologic decline including ataxia and blindness, at which time he requested MAiD. Patient B was a 24 year old male with multiply recurrent IDH-mutant medullary high grade glioma. With metastatic progression, he had many tumor-related symptoms including dysphagia, dysarthria, and weakness impacting his activities of daily living, so he requested MAiD. Both patients had multidisciplinary care conferences with neuro-oncology, social work, ethics, psychology, and palliative care. After completing psychological evaluation and all steps required by law, they were prescribed DDAMP2 (digoxin 50 mg, diazepam 1 gram, morphine 15 grams, and propranolol 2 grams). Both patients took the medications and died peacefully. Barriers encountered included infrequency of MAiD requests leading to unclear policies and processes. CONCLUSIONS Young adults represent a small but important subset of those seeking MAiD prescriptions. Despite challenges, patients were able to receive MAiD without delay in a compassionate manner. Our experience may be applicable to other pediatric hospitals facing these requests.

Abstract Chromosome instability (CIN) and Genetic instability is a common feature of malignant tumor cells, which may contribute to tumor progression and lead to drug resistance and tumor metastasis. KIF18A, a member of the kinesin-8 family, is an ATP dependent plus end microtubule motor protein. Studies have found that genetic depletion of KIF18A greatly impacts the chromosome alignment, elongation of mitotic spindles, activation spindle assembly checkpoint of CIN+ tumor cell and leads to cell death, while have little impact towards the survival of normal cells, making KIF18A an attractive therapeutic target for targeting the vulnerability of CIN related tumors. Here we report the pharmacology characterization of a “best in class” potential KIF18A inhibitor for CIN+ tumors. In vitro, GSC000190 inhibited KIF18A ATPase activity with a single nM potency and has great potency inhibiting growth of a wide range of TP53 mutant/CIN+ tumor cells. In vivo, GSC000190, at approximately one tenth of systematic exposure comparing to that of AMG650, the leading clinical KIF18A inhibitor, causes tumor shrinkage in multiple CDX models including ovarian, colon and lung cancers. In an HGSOC PDX model which is resistant to platinum and olaparib, GSC000190 induced strong tumor regression both as single agent and through combination without significant body weight reduction. PD study confirms a more elevated mitotic phosphorylated histone 3 (PH3) staining in GSC000190 treated tumor tissues, correlating with a better in vivo efficacy than that of AMG650. GSC000190 has a favorable ADME profile in rodents, dogs and NHPs, as well as a much better safety profile. GSC000190 is now under IND-enabling study and P1 study is planned in the second quarter of 2024. Legal entity responsible for the study: The authors. Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest. Citation Format: Peng Tu, Chen Zhang, Biao Lu, Yuanfeng Xia, Fanglong Yang. GSC000190, a highly potent inhibitor of KIF18A, for tumors with chromosome instability [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 664.

The films of science fiction genre from the second half of the 20th and early 21st century contained many visions of the future, which were at the same time a reflection on the achievements and deficiencies of modern times. In 1960s, cinematographic works were dominated by optimism and faith in the possibility of never-ending progress. The disappearance of political divisions between the blocs of states and the joint exploration of the cosmos was foreseen. The designers undertook cooperation with scientists, which manifested itself in showing cosmic constructions far exceeding the real technical capabilities. Starting from the 1970s, pessimism and the belief that the future will bring, above all, the intensification of negative phenomena of the present began to grow in films. Fears of the future were connected with indicating various possible defects and insoluble contradictions between them. When, therefore, some dystopian visions illustrated the threat of increase in crime, others depicted the future as saturated with state control mechanisms and the prevalence of surveillance. The fears shown on the screens were also aroused by the growth of large corporations, especially by their gaining political influence or staying outside the system of democracy. The authors of the films also presented their suspicions related to the creation of new types of weapons by corporations, the use of which might breach the current legal norms. Particular objections concerned research on biological weapons and the possible spread of lethal viruses. The development of robotics and research into artificial intelligence, which must have resulted in the appearance of androids and inevitable tensions in their relations with humans, also triggered fear. Another problem for film-makers has become hybrids that are a combination of people and electronic parts. Scriptwriters and directors likewise considered the development of genetic engineering, which led to the creation of mutant human beings. A number of film dystopias contemplated the possibility of the collapse of democratic systems and the development of authoritarian regimes in their place, often based on broad public support. This kind of dystopia also includes films presenting the consequences of contemporary hedonism and consumerism. The problem is, however, that works critical of these phenomena were themselves advertisements for attractive products.

The COVID-19 outbreak was declared a worldwide epidemic (global pandemic) by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. With this announcement, WHO warned countries that the epidemic represents an unprecedented global economy and health crisis. Although countries try to prevent this pandemic with restrictions and measures such as curfews at various levels, working from home, closing the borders or applying quarantine to foreigners, it cannot be supported that these measures have worked very well due to the measures taken by the countries do not end the epidemic but only slow down the process. If the epidemic continues for a while, the result will affect not only human health, primarily physically and psychologically, but it will also cause damages in various areas such as economy, industry, education and tourism. In order to prevent the COVID-19 epidemic, which has been affecting the world for a short time at the beginning of 2020 but has been continuing for a long time, the most effective remedy we have at the moment is the COVID-19 vaccines. As of the end of December 2020, some countries which can reach shots has begun to vaccinate vulnerable groups. As of July 18, 2021, it is seen that 3.66 billion vaccine doses have been made worldwide. On the one hand, while some countries are trying to reach two vaccine doses, some other countries have switched to third dose vaccination in some regions, as in our country. On the other hand, even a single dose of vaccine has not been administered in some underdeveloped countries such as Haiti. Considering the rapidly mutating nature of the coronavirus, it is obvious that the pandemic will not end without simultaneous vaccination worldwide. Its negative impact on the sectors will continue for years. For this reason, with the statements of the World Trade Organization and some world leaders, discussions have arisen about whether it will be possible for pharmaceutical companies to waive their patent obligations for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. Because, in this extraordinary period we are in, a balance needs to be struck between the legal protection provided by the patent right to pharmaceutical companies within the scope of the TRIPS Agreement and the right of access to drugs, which is one of the fundamental rights of people. Therefore, this study will discuss whether a waiver of the pharmaceutical patent obligations for COVID-19 vaccines is possible or not by considering similar examples seen in the world.

In children, tooth extraction is performed not only in the presence of odontogenic inflammatory processes, but also for orthodontic indications. One of the main conditions for the qualitative course of the process of epithelialization of the socket after tooth extraction is a sufficiently high level of hygiene, a certain species composition of the resident microflora and the state of the protective mechanisms of the oral cavity. The aim of the study was to identify changes in the microbiocenosis and protective reactions of the oral cavity of children after tooth extraction for orthodontic indications. Material and methods. To establish the effectiveness of prevention and treatment of complications, two observation groups were under observation: the main group (n=30), whose children were treated with the developed drug complex, and the comparison group (n=29), where the tooth extraction operation was performed without any additional actions. It should be noted that the patients involved in the study did not have concomitant somatic pathology. To prevent post-extraction complications, we proposed a method of pharmacological influence on the condition of the tissues of the maxillofacial area of orthodontic patients before the start of the surgical stage of treatment. The complex we developed is aimed at increasing the protective capabilities and normalizing the microbiocenosis of the oral cavity of children and involves the systemic use of a vitamin-mineral preparation, an immunomodulator and a probiotic at the local level. Statistical processing of the data was carried out using the methods of variation statistics using the Statistica statistical software package. The law of distribution of the studied traits was checked for normality using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The hypothesis that the law of distribution of the sample population is normal was accepted at the significance level of α=0.05. Two samples were compared using the Student-Fisher test if the hypothesis of the normal distribution of both samples was accepted. The study was conducted in accordance with the main provisions of the Convention of the Council of Europe on Human Rights and Biomedicine (4 April 1997), the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association for the Ethical Principles of Scientific Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (1964-2013), ICH GCP (1996), Orders of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine No.690 dated 23.09.2009, No.944 dated 14.12.2009, No.616 dated 03.08.2012. The Biomedical Ethics Commission of the Bukovinian State Medical University (Protocol No. 3 of 17 September 2021) did not find any violations of moral and legal norms during the research work. The study was performed within the framework of the research work of the Department of Paediatric Dentistry of Bukovinian State Medical University on the topic ‘Development of methods for the prevention and treatment of major dental diseases in children, taking into account the risk factors for their development’ (SR No. 0121U110122). Results. The study of oral fluid of children who underwent tooth extraction for orthodontic indications against the background of pharmacological correction showed the restoration of its protective functions (an increase in lysozyme activity by 20.52 % (p<0.05), sIgA level by 6.26 % against the background of a decrease in total protein content by 21.34 % (p<0.05) and IL-4 concentration by 21.22 % (p<0.05)) and antioxidant protection (an increase in catalase activity by 46.4 2% (p<0.05), superoxide dismutase by 15.53 %, the level of HS groups by 24.58 % (p<0.05), G-SH by 60.87 % (p<0.05), inactivation of glutathione peroxidase by 14.08 % and restoration of glutathione reductase function by 15.21 %), which ensured the course of postoperative period without complications. Conclusions. The oral microbiocenosis of children who used the agents proposed by us during the surgical stage of orthodontic treatment demonstrated quantitative and qualitative changes (the total microbial count decreased by 20.75 % (p<0.05)), the number of pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria decreased by 2.09 times, Str. mutans – by 3.0 times against the background of an increase in the number of lactobacilli by 2.34 times and the complete absence of Candida species, which was a prerequisite for the normal course of the wound process.

Famous people, such as celebrities and influencers, are harassed online on a daily basis. Online harassment mentally disturbs them and negatively affects society. However, limited studies have been conducted on the online harassment victimization of famous people, and its effects remain unclear. We surveyed Japanese famous people (N = 213), who were influential people who appeared on television and other traditional media and on social media, regarding online harassment victimization, emotional injury, and action against offenders and revealed that various forms of online harassment are prevalent. Some victims used the anti-harassment functions provided by weblogs and social media systems (e.g., blocking/muting/reporting offender accounts and closing comment forms), talked about their victimization to close people, and contacted relevant authorities to take legal action (talent agencies, legal consultants, and police). By contrast, some victims felt compelled to accept harassment and did not initiate action for offenses. We propose several approaches to support victims, inhibit online harassment, and educate people. Our findings help that platforms establish support systems against online harassment.

This paper discusses comparative law and literature as an approach to studying law culturally, addressing how the study of literature from the standpoint of comparative law identifies one way of coding legal cultural knowledge in literature. The interaction between the worlds of law and culture is addressed through imaginary legal transplants. By transplanting legal ideas from the real world to literature, authors imagine worlds as they construct legal meanings in their storytelling. Whereas a legal transplant is a notion filled with problems and paradoxes, in literature it is far less problematic. Imaginary legal transplants are different from real-world transplants because in the real world legal diffusion takes place in mutant form, transforming transplants into irritants. The legislator never controls the world completely, whereas in fictional literature the creator of a written work controls the created world. In this sense, it is argued, imaginary legal transplants are perfect transplants.

AbstractThis article analyses the limits of legal norms and institutions in holding to account the emerging power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. It demonstrates how a symbiosis of capitalism and new forms of digital power is mutating to produce novel and dangerous styles of organised irresponsibility that go beyond the reach of conventional legal mechanisms. It draws on the work of Pashukanis, Baudrillard, and Alain Supiot to show how this transformation is taking place. Referring to the role of AI in the spread of Financial Technologies, it introduces a new term – ‘venture legalism’ – to describe how unprecedented risks are currently being created. It concludes by observing how ethical and democratic registers are equally implausible modes of accountability.

Abstract What is the legal source of legitimacy in political authority? This pressing question made a striking appearance on the South Korean scene when, since its inception in 1948, a popular backlash against a liberal democracy perceived as foreign and unjuridical erupted in the forms of terror, insurgency, mutiny, and putsch. Park Chung Hee's successful assumption of power through his 1961 coup d’état provided an implicit response, recasting the Korean concepts of legality and legitimacy. Han T'ae Yŏn was a key figure in this national dispute. Armed with Carl Schmitt's canon, Han gave a decisive verdict on how Korean liberal democracy had been eclipsed under the two spuriously liberal governments of Syngman Rhee and Chang Myŏn. His legal apology for Park's authoritarian constitutional regime echoed Schmitt's defense of the Führer by invoking the president as an incarnation of the will of the people as a whole. This article intends to revisit Schmitt's accusation of judicial positivism for its failure to deliver a genuine voice of the people in the case of a non-Western society.

Abstract This paper offers an account of Physiocracy’s ideal of legal despotism. It does so by pursuing three argumentative lines. First, it offers a definition of liberalism to then distinguish two traditions in modern liberalism. Subsequently, it argues that Physiocracy is an heir to modern natural law and constitutes a crucial step in mutating the juridical conception of natural law into an economic understanding. Next, it examines the concept of legal despotism. For this purpose, it elucidates the meaning of absolutism in early modern political thought and the significance of the concept of despotism by comparing it with the Aristotelean formulation. To conclude, it examines the new way the law of nature limits political authority and how Physiocratic despotism is structurally compatible with the liberal understanding of political authority.

AbstractGlobal energy companies have regularly depended on state and private security for sustaining their operations, often with deadly consequences for union leaders, environmental defenders, and local communities. This article examines how these security arrangements are mutating amid the rapid expansion of renewable energy in Latin America. It uncovers how wind energy companies in Colombia rely on Indigenous knowledge, social networks, and legal norms to safeguard themselves in La Guajira, a border region reputed by outsiders as haunted by criminality and (il)legal practices. Through long‐term ethnographic research of corporate spaces, I argue that Wayúu lifeways are mobilized by green energy capital to craft a hybrid security apparatus that, though failure‐prone, is crucial for Colombia's low‐carbon future. This case reveals how corporate and Indigenous configurations of protection and risk prevention work in tandem across sites that are being demarcated for the energy transition and climate change mitigation in Latin America.

This Article examines the ways in which market vendors in Kampala, Uganda, responded to plans to redevelop their markets through the concession of long-term leases to private investors. These plans met with massive resistance from the marketers, with significant outcomes. The Article uncovers how the marketers actively negotiated a “gray space” between legality and illegality and creatively used the law, with a view to asserting themselves as the legitimate rulers of their markets. It shows how the marketers engaged in highly diverse modalities of struggle, stretching across the legal/illegal boundary. They organized in multiple configurations which were flexible, hybrid and mutant in character, rather than being fixed in particular organizational categories. In their struggles, the marketers engaged in shifting alliances and with a disparate range of political allies. Their politics were fluid, untamed and pragmatic, but also contradictory and fractured. This flexibility and pragmatism enabled them to navigate a complex political landscape and to make instrumental use of a generally unfavorable legal environment

The Y chromosome contains short tandem repeats (STRs) that have numerous applications, including forensic investigations, male identification for legal purposes, and population genetics. However, commercially available Y-STR tests have limitations in their ability to differentiate closely linked male individuals in forensic genetics. Recent studies have shown that rapidly mutating (RM) Y-STRs offer significantly greater haplotype diversity across worldwide populations than conventional Y-STRs, although some RM Y-STR loci are not included in current commercial kits. This research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of RM Y-STR haplotype frequencies in distinguishing individuals with genetic variations in the Gilgit population and other Pakistani populations. The study involved analyzing several RM Y-STRs in 56 unrelated Gilgit men and 21 other Pakistani populations. Statistical analysis showed that most of the loci maintained haplotype values, while some varied in certain cases. The results indicated that RM Y-STRs were highly effective in distinguishing genetic differences among the Gilgit population and other Pakistani populations, as evidenced by the gene diversity (GD), average GD and discrimination capacity (DC), match probability (MP), and power discrimination (PD) values calculated for the set of various RM Y-STRs in Table 1 for the Gilgit population and in Table 2 for other Pakistani populations. These findings highlight the potential of RM Y-STRs in forensic genetics and population genetics research and underscore the importance of including a diverse set of loci to maximize the discriminatory power of genetic markers. Further research could explore the utility of RM Y-STRs in other populations and their potential for use in other applications beyond forensic investigations and male identification.

The objective of this research was to identify bacteria present in the microbiota of dentinal carious lesions in primary molars of some Costa Rican pediatric patients. Data were collected from 15 children aged between 4 and 8 years old who attended the Pediatric Dentistry Clinic at the Faculty of Dentistry from the University of Costa Rica (UCR). The inclusion criteria were: infants between 4 and 8 years old who presented cavitated carious lesions in primary teeth, who were actively attended by students at the Faculty of Dentistry from the UCR, and whose parents or legal guardians signed the informed consent to participate in this research. Samples were taken using a sterile spoon, placed in storage vials, and subjected to various conventional and molecular microbial identification techniques, such as Gram stain identification, catalase tests, oxidase, TSI, API 20E, API STAPH, and VITEK 2. Of the 60 bacterial strains subjected to Gram staining, the following was obtained: 28 Gram-positive bacteria and 32 Gram-negative bacteria. The main isolated organisms were species of Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pasteurella pneumotropica/Mannheimia haemolytica, Pantoea spp, and Streptococcus mutans.

The history of Indonesian labour activism as seen from an Australian perspective is best known in the context of World War Two when the presence of Asian seamen in Australia sparked a flourish of internationalism and anticolonial protest under the umbrella organization of the Seamen's Union of Australia. But the story of Malay maritime worker protest has a deeper history, reaching back to the early years of the pearl-shelling and trepang industries when Malay workers from the Dutch East Indies were brought to work off the northern Australian coast. Before the advent of a seamen's union, these workers faced harsh working conditions and had little recourse to legal forms of protest. Their refusal to accept poor conditions was met with reprisals which included physical punishment, gaol sentences and detention on board ships without shore leave. There is evidence that in the late nineteenth century the most common form of protest was mutiny, with Malay crews seizing vessels and sailing to the Dutch East Indies. By the twentieth century there was more scope for negotiation, with increasing support from Australian unions and improved government regulation. The milder forms of more recent protests and the willingness of Indonesians to take their cue from Australian unionists has somewhat obscured the nature of early Malay protest. This paper takes a longer view of worker activism in order to highlight the deep roots of maritime protest in the Indian Ocean region.

This paper considers the proposal to pay people to get vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The first section introduces arguments against the proposal, including less intrusive alternatives, unequal effects on populations and economic conditions that render payment more difficult to refuse. The second section considers arguments favouring payment, including arguments appealing to health equity, consistency, being worth the cost, respect for autonomy, good citizenship, the ends justifying the means and the threat of mutant strains. The third section spotlights long-term and short-term best practices that can build trust and reduce ‘vaccine hesitancy’ better than payment. The paper concludes that people who, for a variety of reasons, are reluctant to vaccinate should be treated like adults, not children. Despite the urgency of getting shots into arms, we should set our sights on the long-term goals of strong relationships and healthy communities.

There is an expression, in recent Marvel superhero films, of a social anxiety about genetic science that, in part, replaces the social anxieties about nuclear weapons that can be detected in the comic books on which these films are based (Rutherford). Much of the analysis of superhero comics – and the films on which they are based – has focussed its attention on the anxieties contained within them about gender, sexuality, race, politics, and the nation. Surprisingly little direct critique is applied to the most obvious point of difference within those texts, namely the acquisition, display, and use of extra-ordinary abilities. These superhero films represent some of the ways that audiences come to understand genetics. I am interested in this essay in considering how the representation of genetic mutation, as an error in a bio-chemical code, is a key narrative device. Moreover, mutation is central to the way the films explore the social exclusion of characters who acquire super-abilities. My contention is that, in these Marvel comic films, extra-ordinary ability, and the anxieties expressed about those abilities, parallels some of the social and cultural beliefs about the disabled body. The impaired body thus becomes a larger trope for any deviation from the “normal” body and gives rise to the anxieties about deviation and deviance explored in these films. Impairment and illness have historically been represented as either a blessing or a curse – the source of revelation and discovery, or the site of ignominy. As Western culture developed, the confluence of Greek and Judeo-Christian stories about original sin and inherited punishment for parental digression resulted in the entrenchment of beliefs about bent and broken bodies as the locus of moral questions (and answers) about the abilities and use of the human body (Sontag 47). I want to explore, firstly, in the film adaptations of the Marvel comics X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and The Hulk, the representation of changes to the body as the effect of invisible bio-chemical states and processes. It has been impossible to see DNA, whether with the human eye or with technical aid; the science of genetics is largely based on inference from other observations. In these superhero films, the graphic display of DNA and genetic restructuring is strikingly large. This overemphasis suggests both that the genetic is a key narrative impetus of the films and that there is something uncertain or disturbing about genetic science. One such concern about genetic science is identifying the sources of oppression that might underlie the, at times understandable, desire to eliminate disease and congenital defect through changes to the genetic code or elimination of genetic error. As Adrienne Asch states, this urge to eliminate disease and impairment is problematic: Why should it be acceptable to avoid some characteristics and not others? How can the society make lists of acceptable and unacceptable tests and still maintain that only disabling traits, and not people who live with those traits, are to be avoided? (339) Asch’s questioning ends with the return to the moral concerns that have always circulated around the body, and in particular a body that deviates from a norm. The maxim “hate the sin, not the sinner” is replaced by “eradicate the impairment, not the impaired”: it is some kind of lack of effort or resourcefulness on the part of the impaired that is detectable in the presence of the impairment. This replacement of sin by science is yet another example of the trace of the body as the site of moral arguments. As Bryan Turner argues, categories of disease, and by association impairment, are intrinsic to the political discourse of Western societies about otherness and exclusion (Turner 216). It is not surprising then, that characters that experience physical changes caused by genetic mutation may take on for themselves the social shame that is part of the exclusion process. As genetic science has increasingly infiltrated the popular imagination and thus finds expression in cinema, so too has this concern of shame and guilt become key to the narrative tension of films that link changes in the genetic code to the acquisition of super-ability. In the X-Men franchise, the young female character Rogue (Anna Paquin), acquires the ability to absorb another’s life force (and abilities), and she seeks to have her genetic code resequenced in order to be able to touch others, and thus by implication have a “normal” life. In X2 (Bryan Singer, 2003), Rogue’s boyfriend, Iceman (Shawn Ashmore), who has been largely excluded from her touch, returns home with other mutants. After having hidden his mutant abilities from his family, he finally confesses to them the truth about himself. His shocked mother turns to him and asks: “Have you tried not being a mutant?” Whilst this moment has been read as an expression of anxiety about homosexuality (“Pop Culture: Out Is In”; Vary), it also marks a wider social concern about otherness, including disability, and its attendant social exclusion. Moreover, this moment reasserts the paradigm of effort that underlies anxieties about deviations from the norm: Iceman could have been normal if only he had tried harder, had a different girlfriend, remained at home, sought more knowledge, or had better counsel. Science, and more specifically genetic science, is suggested in many of these films as the site of bad counsel. The narratives of these superhero stories, almost without exception, begin or hinge on some kind of mistake by scientists – the escaped spider, the accident in the laboratory, the experiment that gets out of control. The classic image of the mad scientist or Doctor Frankenstein type, locked away in his laboratory is reflected in the various scenes in all these films, in which the scientists are separated from wider society. In Fantastic 4 (Tim Story, 2005), the villain, Dr Von Doom (Julian McMahon), is located at the top of a large multi-story building, as too are the heroes. Their separation from the rest of society is made even more dramatic by placing the site of their exposure to cosmic radiation, the source of the genetic mutation, in a space station that is empty of anyone else except the five main characters whose bodies will be altered. In Spiderman (Sam Raimi, 2002), the villain is a scientist whose experiments are kept secret by the military, emphasising the danger inherent in his work. The mad-scientist imagery dominates the representation of Bruce Bannor’s father in Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003), whose experiments have altered his genetic code, and that alteration in genetic structure has subsequently been passed onto his son. The Fantastic 4 storyline returns several times to the link between genetic mutation and the exposure to cosmic radiation. Indeed, it is made explicit that human existence – and by implication the human body and abilities – is predicated on this cosmic radiation as the source of transformations that formed the human genetic code. The science of early biology thus posits this cosmic radiation as the source of what is “normal,” and it is this appeal to the cosmos – derived from the Greek kosmos meaning “order” – that provides, in part, the basis on which to value the current human genetic code. This link to the cosmic is also made in the opening sequence of X-Men in which the following voice-over is heard as we see a ball of light form. This light show is both a reminder of the Big Bang (the supposed beginning of the universe which unleased vast amounts of radiation) and the intertwining of chromosomes seen inside biological nuclei: Mutation, it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single celled organism to the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia evolution leaps forward. Whilst mutation may be key to human evolution and the basis for the dramatic narratives of these superhero films, it is also the source of social anxiety. Mutation, whilst derived from the Latin for “change,” has come to take on the connotation of an error or mistake. Richard Dawkins, in his celebrated book The Selfish Gene, compares mutation to “an error corresponding to a single misprinted letter in a book” (31). The language of science is intended to be without the moral overtones that such words as “error” and “misprint” attract. Nevertheless, in the films under consideration, the negative connotations of mutation as error or mistake, are, therefore, the source of the many narrative crises as characters seek to rid themselves of their abilities. Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), the villain of Spiderman, is spurred on by his belief that human beings have not achieved their potential, and the implication here is that the presence of physical weakness, illness, and impairment is the supporting evidence. The desire to return the bodies of these superheroes to a “normal” state is best expressed in_ Hulk_, when Banner’s father says: “So you wanna know what’s wrong with him. So you can fix him, cure him, change him.” The link between a mistake in the genetic code and the disablement of the these characters is made explicit when Banner demands from his father an explanation for his transformation into the Hulk – the genetic change is explicitly named a deformity. These films all gesture towards the key question of just what is the normal human genetic code, particularly given the way mutation, as error, is a fundamental tenet in the formation of that code. The films’ focus on extra-ordinary ability can be taken as a sign of the extent of the anxiety about what we might consider normal. Normal is represented, in part, by the supporting characters, named and unnamed, and the narrative turns towards rehabilitating the altered bodies of the main characters. The narratives of social exclusion caused by such radical deviations from the normal human body suggest the lack of a script or language for being able to talk about deviation, except in terms of disability. In Spiderman, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) is doubly excluded in the narrative. Beginning as a classic weedy, glasses-wearing, nerdy individual, unable to “get the girl,” he is exposed to numerous acts of humiliation at the commencement of the film. On being bitten by a genetically altered spider, he acquires its speed and agility, and in a moment of “revenge” he confronts one of his tormentors. His super-ability marks him as a social outcast; his tormentors mock him saying “You are a freak” – the emphasis in speech implying that Parker has never left a freakish mode. The film emphasises the physical transformation that occurs after Parker is bitten, by showing his emaciated (and ill) body then cutting to a graphic depiction of genes being spliced into Parker’s DNA. Finally revealing his newly formed, muscular body, the framing provides the visual cues as to the verbal alignment of these bodies – the extraordinary and the impaired bodies are both sources of social disablement. The extreme transformation that occurs to Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis), in Fantastic 4, can be read as a disability, buying into the long history of the disabled body as freak, and is reinforced by his being named “The Thing.” Socially, facial disfigurement may be regarded as one of the most isolating impairments; for example, films such as The Man without a Face (Mel Gibson, 1993) explicitly explore this theme. As the only character with a pre-existing relationship, Grimm’s social exclusion is reinforced by the rejection of his girlfriend when she sees his face. The isolation in naming Ben Grimm as “The Thing” is also expressed in the naming of Bruce Banner’s (Eric Bana) alter ego “Hulk.” They are grossly enlarged bodies that are seen as grotesque mutations of the “normal” human body – not human, but “thing-like.” The theme of social exclusion is played alongside the idea that those with extra-ordinary ability are also emblematic of the evolutionary dominance of a superior species of which science is an example of human dominance. The Human Genome Project, begun in 1990, and completed in 2003, was in many ways the culmination of a century and a half of work in biochemistry, announcing that science had now completely mapped the human genome: that is, provided the complete sequence of genes on each of the 46 chromosomes in human cells. The announcement of the completed sequencing of the human genome led to, what may be more broadly called, “genomania” in the international press (Lombardo 193). But arguably also, the continued announcements throughout the life of the Project maintained interest in, and raised significant social, legal, and ethical questions about genetics and its use and abuse. I suggest that in these superhero films, whose narratives centre on genetic mutation, that the social exclusion of the characters is based in part on fears about genetics as the source of disability. In these films deviation becomes deviance. It is not my intention to reduce the important political aims of the disability movement by equating the acquisition of super-ability and physical impairment. Rather, I suggest that in the expression of the extraordinary in terms of the genetic within the films, we can detect wider social anxieties about genetic science, particularly as the representations of that science focus the audience’s attention on mutation of the genome. An earlier film, not concerned with superheroes but with the perfectibility of the human body, might prove useful here. Gattaca (Andrew Nicol, 1997), which explores the slippery moral slope of basing the value of the human body in genetic terms (the letters of the title recall the chemicals that structure DNA, abbreviated to G, A, T, C), is a powerful tale of the social consequences of the primacy of genetic perfectibility and reflects the social and ethical issues raised by the Human Genome Project. In a coda to the film, that was not included in the theatrical release, we read: We have now evolved to the point where we can direct our own evolution. Had we acquired this knowledge sooner, the following people may never have been born. The screen then reveals a list of significant people who were either born with or acquired physical or psychological impairments: for example, Abraham Lincoln/Marfan Syndrome, Jackie Joyner-Kersee/Asthma, Emily Dickinson/Manic Depression. The audience is then given the stark reminder of the message of the film: “Of course the other birth that may never have taken place is your own.” The social order of Gattaca is based on “genoism” – discrimination based on one’s genetic profile – which forces characters to either alter or hide their genetic code in order to gain social and economic benefit. The film is an example of what the editors of the special issue of the Florida State University Law Journal on genetics and disability note: how we look at genetic conditions and their relationship to health and disability, or to notions of “normalcy” and “deviance,” is not strictly or even primarily a legal matter. Instead, the issues raised in this context involve ethical considerations and require an understanding of the social contexts in which those issues appear. (Crossley and Shepherd xi) Implicit in these commentators’ concern is the way an ideal body is assumed as the basis from which a deviation in form or ability is measured. These superhero films demonstrate that, in order to talk about super-ability as a deviation from a normal body, they rely on disability scripts as the language of deviation. Scholars in disability studies have identified a variety of ways of talking about disability. The medical model associates impairment or illness with a medical tragedy, something that must be cured. In medical terms an error is any deviation from the norm that needs to be rectified by medical intervention. By contrast, in the social constructivist model, the source of disablement is environmental, political, cultural, or economic factors. Proponents of the social model do not regard impairment as equal to inability (Karpf 80) and argue that the discourses of disability are “inevitably informed by normative beliefs about what it is proper for people’s bodies and minds to be like” (Cumberbatch and Negrine 5). Deviations from the normal body are classification errors, mistakes in social categorisation. In these films aspects of both the medical tragedy and social construction of disability can be detected. These films come at a time when disability remains a site of social and political debate. The return to these superheroes, and their experiences of exclusion, in recent films is an indicator of social anxiety about the functionality of the human body. And as the science of genetics gains increasing public representation, the idea of ability – and disability – that is, what is regarded as “proper” for bodies and minds, is increasingly related to how we regard the genetic code. As the twenty first century began, new insights into the genetic origins of disease and congenital impairments offered the possibility that the previous uncertainty about the provenance of these illnesses and impairments may be eliminated. But new uncertainties have arisen around the value of human bodies in terms of ability and function. This essay has explored the way representations of extra-ordinary ability, as a mutation of the genetic code, trace some of the experiences of disablement. A study of these superhero films suggests that the popular dissemination of genetics has not resulted in an understanding of ability and form as purely bio-chemical, but that thinking about the body as a bio-chemical code occurs within already present moral discourses of the body’s value. References Asch, Adrienne. “Disability Equality and Prenatal Testing: Contradictory or Compatible?” Florida State University Law Review 30.2 (2003): 315-42. Crossley, Mary, and Lois Shepherd. “Genes and Disability: Questions at the Crossroads.” Florida State University Law Review 30.2 (2003): xi-xxiii. Cumberbatch, Guy, and Ralph Negrine. Images of Disability on Television. London: Routledge, 1992. Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 30th Anniversary ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Karpf, A. “Crippling Images.” Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media. Eds. A. Pointon and C. Davies. London: British Film Institute, 1997. 79-83. Lombardo, Paul A. “Taking Eugenics Seriously: Three Generations Of ??? Are Enough.” Florida State University Law Review 30.2 (2003): 191-218. “Pop Culture: Out Is In.” Contemporary Sexuality 37.7 (2003): 9. Rutherford, Adam. “Return of the Mutants.” Nature 423.6936 (2003): 119. Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. London: Penguin, 1988. Turner, Bryan S. Regulating Bodies. London: Routledge, 1992. Vary, Adam B. “Mutant Is the New Gay.” Advocate 23 May 2006: 44-45. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Mantle, Martin. "“Have You Tried Not Being a Mutant?”: Genetic Mutation and the Acquisition of Extra-ordinary Ability." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/10-mantle.php>. APA Style Mantle, M. (Oct. 2007) "“Have You Tried Not Being a Mutant?”: Genetic Mutation and the Acquisition of Extra-ordinary Ability," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/10-mantle.php>.