Evidence suggests that plant-based dietary patterns —favoring plant-based foods without being strictly vegetarian or vegan — may prevent obesity and offer health benefits. Since not all plant-based foods are equally healthy, it is essential to distinguish between healthful and unhealthful plant-based options. Objective: This study aimed to analyze the associations between different plant-based dietary patterns and the incidence of obesity-related cancers. We followed-up 16,256 participants from the “Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra” (SUN) prospective cohort. Based on a validated food frequency questionnaire, we calculated adapted overall, healthful and unhealthful plant-based diet index scores. Scores for were assessed at baseline and repeatedly after 10 years of follow-up. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using multivariable-adjusted time-dependent Cox models. After a median follow-up of 13 years, 221 incident obesity-related cancer cases were confirmed. Overall plant-based and unhealthful plant-based dietary patterns showed no association. Contrarily, participants in the highest tertile of the healthful plant-based diet score had a lower obesity-related cancer risk (HRT3vsT1 0.67; 95% CI, 0.47 -0.97; Ptrend=0.031). This association persisted after updating dietary information at 10-year follow-up (HRT3vsT1 0.68; 95% CI, 0.47 -0.99; Ptrend=0.037) and was stronger for women (HRT3vsT1 0.52; 95% CI, 0.32 -0.86; pinteraction = 0.04). In this large prospective cohort, greater alignment with a healthful plant-based dietary pattern was associated with a decreased risk of obesity-related cancer, whereas alignment with overall and unhealthful plant-based dietary patterns showed no association.

This article traces Canada’s transatlantic musical exchanges with Europe during the 1970s, as facilitated by the Canadian Government’s Department of External Affairs’ (DEA) Cultural Affairs Division. Through an archival analysis of documentation pertaining to the planning activities of the Cultural Affairs Division, this article focuses on two all-Canadian musical events funded by the division: the 1972 performance of Canadian contemporary music in Rome, and the 1977 two-week long festival of Canadian contemporary music, Musicanada, hosted in London and Paris. This article argues that these two events act as useful case studies to demonstrate how the works of Canadian contemporary composers were used for strategic soft-power purposes by the DEA’s Cultural Affairs Division in fulfilling its transatlantic diplomatic aims of projecting an image of Canadian culture which was both distinct from the United States and would appeal to European cultural elites.

The article details the complex geopolitical and national conditions that shaped the securitization of Kists — a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority who primarily reside in the Pankisi Gorge of Georgia. Securitization of Kists emerged at the intersection of colonial encounters: Russian colonial relations with the Caucasus, primarily with Georgia and Chechnya, and Western neocolonial relations with Muslims in a form of global counterterrorist policies that painted Islam as a looming threat to the Western world after 9/11. Moreover, notions about minorities within Georgia contributed to the emergence of the securitization paradigm towards Kists. These circumstances molded Georgian national politics concerning Kists — namely, securitization policies and practices that legitimized violent special operations in the valley, close surveillance, scrutiny, and intimidation of the community. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, qualitative interviews, and critical discourse analysis, this article examines these policies, practices, and the profound effects of the state’s politics on the social landscape of Pankisi. Moreover, this research also observes various everyday strategies and tactics employed by Kists to navigate the social terrains of marginality.

This article theorizes on the mobilization of R-TANS (right-wing transnational advocacy networks [Payne 2023]) globally, with a focus on those that target gender, reproductive, and sexuality-based (GRAS) rights. An international anti-GRAS network has emerged, increasing their power through transnational allyship. This article describes and analyses an original database of anti-GRAS actors that form this network, asking: who are the groups; where do they originate and mobilize; how do they mobilize; and why? I develop an original analytical framework drawing on transnational social movements and anti-gender mobilization literature. Applying this framework to database analysis, I hypothesize on these questions while drawing on social network theory to examine the strength of ties between groups and the extent of the transnational network. It is unique in its contribution, considering the overlap of groups that oppose both LGBTQIA+ and reproductive rights and the alliances they develop to further the goals of the entire network.

This cross-sectional study examined the independent and combined associations of breakfast frequency, forced vital capacity (FVC) and psychological symptoms among Chinese adolescents. A total of 2776 adolescents aged 12-17 years were recruited from three regions of Anhui Province using stratified cluster random sampling. Breakfast frequency was self-reported as days per week over the past month and categorised as low, medium or high. FVC was measured with a standardised electronic spirometer (CSTF-FH) following CNSSCH protocols. Psychological symptoms were assessed using the Multidimensional Subhealth Assessment Questionnaire for Adolescents (MSQA) and dichotomised according to established cut-offs. Covariates included age, height, weight, grip strength, standing long jump, sleep duration and parental education. Binary logistic regression was used, building three models. The overall prevalence of psychological symptoms was 14%. Breakfast frequency was inversely correlated with psychological symptoms (P < 0.001). Low breakfast frequency (1-2 d/week) was associated with a higher symptom rate (31%) than high frequency (5-7 d/week, 12%) and increased odds of symptoms (OR = 3.34, 95% CI 2.04–5.60). No independent association was found between FVC and psychological symptoms. However, adolescents with both low breakfast frequency and low FVC had 4.10 times higher odds of psychological symptoms (95% CI 1.83–9.21, P < 0.001) than those with high breakfast frequency and high FVC. These findings suggest that low breakfast frequency is a robust correlate of psychological symptoms in adolescents, and that the combination of low breakfast frequency with low FVC identifies a particularly high-risk group.

Healthcare spaces are “contact zones,” where care may be practised using a lingua franca, or in various configurations of language codes. This paper examines two foundational constructs, communicative competence and health literacy, that are implicated in the contact zones of health care. I propose a heuristic framework of spheres of activity for locating, articulating, and understanding the facets and workings of measured constructs as a basis for a multiperspectival, interdisciplinary research agenda. The framework is applied to a health literacy test to explore the multilayered texture of construct activity. Moving to the applicable world of the hospital ward, I consider what “health literacy” may look like in authentic doctor–patient interaction. Finally, I discuss the relationship between the different activities: what is operationalized in tests, what is wished for in policy, and what is evident in practice. Even though the capacity to communicate is considered a key ingredient in mobilizing health literacy for shared decision-making, communication is barely represented in operationalized constructs. An orientation to the interactional repertoires of health care and the dynamic nature of knowledge co-construction in health decision-making could generate useful development in theory, measurement, and practice.

The accountability gap in Africa’s extractive sector is not a result of the absence of binding legal frameworks or investment regulations. The African human rights system has advanced global jurisprudence by introducing and applying innovative human rights and investment norms. Despite the robust human rights regime, including legally binding regional norms for redressing human rights abuses, local communities continue to suffer the consequences of extractive MNCs’ egregious human rights abuses without access to remedies. Corporate impunity is often fueled by governments’ reluctance or inability to hold these corporations accountable and by local communities’ limited access to effective remedies. While extractive MNCs in Africa are legally obligated to respect human rights, the continent needs a robust enforcement mechanism and the political will to hold defaulting enterprises accountable. Hence, I propose strategies to implement the region’s rich human rights and investment initiatives and to narrow the accountability gap in the extractive sector.

Climate change is deeply unsettling—both ecologically, as reflected in the rise of climate disasters and biodiversity loss, and materially, as seen in the widespread disruptions and displacements it causes. The impacts of climate change are increasingly experienced as constant and material impact on bodies, and the disruption and displacement of connections to place and entangled environments. This continuous turbulence is creating an experience of being unmoored, disconnected from attachments, both human and environmental. This essay will address both the reality of climate turbulence and the growing intersection of such turbulence and conceptions of environmental, ecological, and climate justice. How and why can the changed, disrupted, turbulent life of climate change, specifically, be understood as a unique form of climate injustice? A variety of conceptions of climate justice are addressed, with a particular focus on the way that climate turbulence unsettles individual and community capabilities and functioning in multiple ways. The essay addresses how a more just response to climate turbulence means more inclusive and capabilities-based approaches to climate justice.