April 2019

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Australia as a jurisdiction for transnational human rights litigation: Kamasaee v Commonwealth

Renewed focus on access to remedy for business related human rights abuses has drawn attention back to jurisdictions that have developed a body of jurisprudence which, to varying degrees, will allow domestic courts to accept jurisdiction over claims where extraterritorial human rights violations are framed as civil suits and brought against a corporate actor in its home jurisdiction.…

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Deep learning for automating pig tail scoring

The animal article of the month for May is ‘Tailception’: using neural networks for assessing tail lesions on pictures of pig carcasses’ Injuries caused by one pig biting the tail of another pig are a big welfare problem in pigs reared for slaughter.…

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What makes a decision ‘shared’?

RCPsych Article of the Month for April is from The British Journal of Psychiatry (BJPsych) and is entitled ‘Involving patients with dementia in decisions to initiate treatment: effect on patient acceptance, satisfaction and medication prescription’ by Authors Jemima Dooley, Nick Bass, Gill Livingston and Rose McCabe.

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Brexit: An editor’s dream

I have spent the last three years focussed on Brexit. Mostly, I confess, it has been rather depressing – not particularly because I do not like the probable destination of the process, which I don’t – but because it has been so hard to establish that fact and analysis could play a fundamental role in resolving not only the technical issues but also the political ones.…

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Giving the Treaty a Purpose

The U.S. is an international anomaly in that it has several instruments at its disposal to conclude agreements with other countries. The choice of the instrument determines what steps need to be taken in order to turn an informal promise into a formal and binding agreement under U.S. law. Whereas treaty ratification needs the support of two-thirds of the Senate, the congressional-executive agreement (“CEA”) requires a simple majority in both the Senate and the House.

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Mobile armed mobs in deadly riots

Experts on ethnic riots agree that the ethnic composition of localities affects their susceptibility to violence. They are however divided on which are more prone to turmoil between ethnically segregated and diverse settings.…

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The Long Lives of Old Books

In 1584 Edmund Roberts had just a few months to live. A devout Christian, the book of hours that he used every day to guide his prayers was old and worn, with extra texts crammed into spaces that had originally been left blank.…

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What is the cost of police, really?

A recent study by RAND Corporation researchers examined the average amount of police spending on crimes for each state. Averaging the results across all states and considering where people live, the cost to respond to various crimes

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Brexit and European Legal Studies

Brexit may have a surprising potential to animate European Legal Studies as a field of legal enquiry. Never has the demand for European legal expertise been higher than it is now as we come to terms with the complexities of the process from withdrawing from the EU.…

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MINDY, a grazing ruminant in silico

The article Diurnal patterns of urination and drinking by grazing ruminants: a development in a mechanistic model of a grazing ruminant, MINDY is available Open Access in the Journal of Agricultural Science Estimates of herbage and water intake with parallel measurements of ingestive, digestive and metabolic behaviours of grazing ruminants pose considerable experimental and technical difficulties.…

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Celebrating the Special Issue on Cultural Adaptations of CBT

One again I would like to thank Richard Thwaites (Editor-in-Chief of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist) and Cambridge University Press for providing me with this opportunity to share some thoughts about the recent  launch of the Special Issue of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (tCBT) on Cultural Adaptations.…

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Watch: How does stone skipping work?

By bouncing elastic spheres across the surface of Bear Lake in Utah, researchers have discovered the physics behind stone skipping. The mechanism of ‘water walking’ occurs when a deformed sphere rotates continuously across the surface of the water giving the appearance that the sphere is literally walking on water.…

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JPP board member elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

“I feel deeply honoured and I am looking forward to contributing to the important task of the Academy – to promote science and strengthen its role and influence in our society. It will also be interesting to exchange experiences and ideas with the other members,” Professor Tünde Fülöp, of the Division of Subatomic and Plasma Physics at Chalmers University of Technology, and editorial board member of the Journal of Plasma Physics

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Crop wild relatives – a vital resource for the future of food security

Crop wild relatives are wild plant species that are relatively closely related to cultivated crops and include the ancestors of cultivated crops. Crop wild relatives are a critical source of adaptive traits / genes, including resistance to diseases, pests and stresses such as drought and extreme temperatures that can be used in plant breeding, with the potential to enhance sustainable food security in the face of challenges such as climate change and population growth.

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New editor Q&A: Rhonda Righter of UC Berkeley

Rhonda Righter is joining the editorial board of the journal Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences. She brings with her a wealth of knowledge in the area of stochastic modelling and optimization; read her full biography here.…

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Do global guidelines for calcium supplementation to prevent preeclampsia put women at risk of excessive intake: evidence from Ethiopia suggests this could be the case

Public Health Nutrition Editorial Highlight ‘Applying international guidelines for calcium supplementation to prevent pre-eclampsia: simulation of recommended dosages suggests risk of excess intake in Ethiopia’ Authors: Biniyam Tesfaye, Kate Sinclair, Sara E Wuehler, Tibebu Moges, Luz Maria De-Regil and Katherine L Dickin discuss their research below.

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The Accidental Austen Professor

In 1997, I was asked by my department chair at Marquette University to teach a course on Jane Austen. I had read all of her novels, some of them as a child, but had taught only one of them, Sense and Sensibility, as part of an undergraduate survey on British literature from 1800 to the present.…

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