2016

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The Shaping of Tuscany

I grew up in the outskirts of Florence in the 1970s and 1980s, in a town that was neither city nor country and that is now firmly embedded in Florence’s metropolitan area.…

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The remarkable Dr Robertson

The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “The remarkable Dr Robertson” by Tansy C. Hammarton. It’s strange to think that little over a year ago, my knowledge of Muriel Robertson was limited to the two paragraphs I’d read about her in ‘The Scottish Encounter with Tropical Disease’ , namely that she had studied in Glasgow in the early 1900s and later travelled to Africa where she made key discoveries about the life cycle of the African trypanosome parasite.…

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Two glaciers collapse in western Tibet

A glacier near Lake Aru in western Tibet collapsed on 17 July 2016. Now the Journal of Glaciology publishes the first scientific account of this cryospheric disaster in which nine local yak herders were killed. Eyewitnesses reported that the episode lasted only four to five minutes. More than 70 million cubic metres of ice tumbled down a mountain valley, spreading over a distance of 6 kilometres onto the lowland below.

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The World of Mr Casaubon

The world waits on tenterhooks to discover what kind of leader President-elect Trump will be. Will Trump’s statecraft involve a straightforward implementation of his somewhat preposterous campaign promises?…

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Global Institutional Justice – A Chimera?

A United Nations tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention (UNC) on the Law of the Sea at Hague submitted its verdict recently on a unilateral arbitration instituted by Philippines on June 21st, 2013 questioning the validity of China’s “nine-dash line” claims in the South China Sea (SCS).

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Always something new from Anatolian Studies!

As a subscriber to Anatolian Studies for forty years, I am a loyal reader and very familiar with the academic literature and specialist studies about the antiquities of Turkey, but by any standards the 2016 volume of the journal must count as one of the best ever.

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Police-Public Interactions in U.S. Cities

Concern over the nature of police interactions with civilians has long been lurking beneath the surface of public discourse, recently capturing national attention with the advent of smartphone technology and real-time footage of numerous violent incidents.…

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Meal timing, what do we know?

The Nutrition Society Paper of the Month for November is from Nutrition Research Reviews and is entitled ‘When to eat? The influence of circadian rhythms on metabolic health: are animal studies providing the evidence?‘.…

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Margaret Thatcher would have Supported Hillary

With just a few hours to go before the announcement of the new US president, one of the many remarkable aspects of the campaign is how the Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton, is the candidate standing up for conservative principles rather than her Republican opponent, Donald Trump.…

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Striking a balance between development and sustainability

A post from the new Cambridge Open Access title Global Sustainability Since the notion of Sustainable Development has become widespread with the publication of the UN Commission on Environment and Development in 1986, there has been the tension between the aspiration to develop on the one hand and to stay within ‘planetary boundaries’ on the other.…

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Recent trends and future prospects in human capital development

Blog post based on an article published in Journal of Demographic Economics. The dataset (Goujon et al. 2016) that we present in the article aims to fill one major gap: provide long time series of harmonized data on education stocks – the educational attainment of adult population — from 1970 to 2060, across 171 countries.…

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Talk ‘like a man’: The linguistic style of Hillary Clinton

By tracking Hillary Clinton's subtle linguistic behavior over time, Jennifer Jones' research shows how these forces manifest in Clinton's self-presentation. Jones' findings suggest that as the Democratic nominee transitioned from First Lady to U.S. Senator to Secretary of State, she spoke in an increasingly "masculine" way.

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Glaciology today: Q&A with Perry Bartelt

In this blog Perry Bartelt– one of four new Associate Chief Editors for the journals of the International Glaciological Society, Journal of Glaciology and Annals of Glaciology – answers questions on the current state of glaciological research.…

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Natural disasters, mitigation investment and financial aid

Blog post based on an article published in Environment and Development Economics Natural disasters like the recent floods in Philippines and the tropical cyclone in Japan are just a few examples of catastrophic hazards which can cause loss of life, damage to personal property, business and infrastructure.…

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Painting a poetic portrait

Michael Squire, Reader in Classical Art at King’s College London, introduces the picture-poems of Optatian, composed in the early fourth century AD, which are the subject of his forthcoming article ‘How to read a Roman portrait? Optation Porfyry, Constantine and the uultus Augusti’, to be published in Papers of the British School at Rome later this year

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New meta-analysis supports almonds’ role in heart health

A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Nutritional Science found that eating almonds results in significant reductions in total cholesterol, adding to the weight of evidence that supports the consumption of almonds as part of a healthy diet to help maintain healthy blood lipid levels and reduce the risk of heart disease.

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Glaciology Q&A with Sérgio H. Fario

In this blog Sérgio H. Fario – one of four new Associate Chief Editors for the journals of the International Glaciological Society, Journal of Glaciology and Annals of Glaciology – answers questions on where glaciology is at now, where it is going and how it is being affected by climate change.…

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The creation of medieval papal history

Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge, discusses her forthcoming article ‘The papacy and Byzantium in the seventh- and early eighth-century sections of the Liber pontificalis’, which will be published in Papers of the British School at Rome later this year.

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How to write about China and India

How to write about China and India – Jahnavi Phalkey As  BJHS Themes, the new, fully open access, peer-reviewed journal from the British Society for the History of Science, publishes its first issue, one of the volume’s editors, Jahnavi Phalkey, gives her observations on the opportunities and challenges on writing about China and India.…

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Risk factors for dementia diagnosis

The July International Psychogeriatrics Article of the Month is entitled “Risk factors for dementia diagnosis in German primary care practices” by Anke Booker, Louis EC Jacob, Michael Rapp, Jens Bohlken and Karel Kostev.…

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Researchers find lifestyle link in depression

Researchers following the progress of 1200 people for five years have found strong links between unhealthy lifestyles and depression. Researchers at the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research studied the impact of lifestyle on depression and the impact of depression on lifestyle.…

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