The murder of Jîna Aminî by the Iranian police in September 2022 led to wide-scale demonstrations. Women in Iranian Kurdistan have developed tactics for creating art and literature that empowers them to fi ght for their rights as women and as Kurds. “Doing art” invites them to cross the border between fictional and real, private and public, and to create negotiations with the patriarchal society and legal system that oppresses them.

Le commerce des fourrures en Nouvelle-France est à l’origine d’une abondante historiographie. Cependant, malgré de nombreux travaux ethnohistoriques, ses dimensions environnementales demeurent peu étudiées. Cet article propose une réflexion renouvelée sur la conservation du castor dans une perspective impériale et transatlantique. En s’appuyant sur une relecture des sources coloniales, il révèle non seulement la diversité des rapports autochtones au castor, mais aussi les causes expliquant la difficile conservation de l’animal par les autorités. Dans un monde encore marqué par le caractère inépuisable du vivant, des inquiétudes apparaissent quant à la raréfaction du castor, mais aucune politique coloniale uniforme n’est mise en place. Plusieurs paramètres conditionnent la question de la conservation du castor : les relations entre les contraintes environnementales et l’économie, l’apparition de formes de marchandisation de la nature, la prééminence de la raison d’État, les différents degrés d’insertion des territoires à l’économie pelletière, la variété des configurations écologiques ainsi que les tensions impériales et intra-coloniale, qui témoignent de réponses variées de la part des acteurs autochtones et européens.

This article explores the socio-political landscape of Donbas through a lens of post-colonial studies, revealing the Russian colonial past and neo-colonial ambition. By uncovering the interplay of cultural, political, and economic challenges the author identifies the key elements of the region’s identity and draws on historical analysis and personal reflections on the Russo-Ukrainian war. The article explores how Russia managed to dominate the discourse in Donbas, as well as the reasons why a significant part of the Donbas people accepted Russian dominance over the region and the creation of self-proclaimed states without great resistance. The study underscores the necessity to work on the decolonization of Donbas’ identity as the pivotal point for fostering reconciliation processes in the long-term occupied territories of Ukraine.

The maternal restraint stress animal model is based on a long-term stress paradigm administered to pregnant maternal animals, and these offspring have been shown to exhibit a variety of biochemical defects including obesity. This study aimed to investigate whether maternal restraint stress affects obesity-associated changes in offspring intestinal microbiota and the adipogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs).

Pregnant mice were subjected to restraint stress three times daily from gestational Day12 to delivery. Changes in the composition of the intestinal microbiota of mothers (during pregnancy and lactation) and their lactating offspring exposed to maternal restraint stress were analyzed using next-generation sequencing. Maternal stress altered the maternal microbiota, with reduced Bacteroidetes and increased Firmicutes. While similar trends were observed in offspring, these changes were not statistically significant. However, maternal stress notably reduced microbial diversity in the offspring’s intestinal microbiota. Bone marrow-derived MSCs from offspring at weaning were analyzed for adipogenic transcription factors and hormone receptor expression using quantitative PCR. Maternal stress enhanced the adipogenic phenotype of offspring MSCs, as evidenced by increased expression of adipogenic markers (PPARγ, leptin receptor) and a reduced osteogenic phenotype. In vitro induction further confirmed the higher adipocyte differentiation potential in stressed offspring MSCs compared to controls.

Our results revealed that maternal restraint stress altered the maternal intestinal microbiota, leading to reduced microbial diversity in offspring, predisposing their MSCs toward an adipocyte phenotype. These finding suggest that modulating the intestinal microbiota of stressed pregnant women may improve the susceptibility to obesity in their children.

In the early nineteenth century, concert reviews often judged pianists and pianos on their combined value. This critical tendency is exemplified in the professional career of virtuoso pianist Anna Caroline de Belleville. This article examines the reciprocal relationship between Belleville and her pianos — particularly Érard’s and Streicher’s — within the contexts of the technological development of piano-making and piano performance culture. I argue that the distinct advantages of Belleville’s pianos helped her develop a well-rounded pianism that combined both brilliancy and lyricism, winning her a place among the most distinguished pianists of the day. Furthermore, Belleville’s active engagement with and promotion of her pianos enhanced the instruments’ own reputation and commerciality. This understudied yet illuminating story about the interdependency of the virtuoso and her instruments (and attendant instrument makers) enriches our understanding of nineteenth-century performance culture by highlighting the inextricable relationship between technology, virtuosity, commerciality, and entrepreneurship.

This article tells the story of one small department in the Israeli Ministry of Justice: “The Inspector for Complaints Against General Security Service (GSS) Interrogators” (in Hebrew: Mavtan). Tasked with examining complaints of torture in GSS interrogations, and determining whether they merit launching a criminal investigation, Mavtan has reviewed more than 1,450 complaints to date. None of these, however, had ever led to criminal charges. By analysing this failure, we tell a segment of the story of torture in Israel and, more broadly, of the legal bureaucracy that makes state and colonial violence possible. Despite the failure to produce concrete outcomes, Mavtan is a very industrious unit. We argue that this extensive bureaucratic labor creates a semblance of the rule of law by performing an adherence to hallmarks of good governance, such as transparency and accountability. Paraphrasing Mitchell (1999), we call this semblance the “legitimacy effect,” as it works to produce state legitimacy on two levels: internationally, to cordon off external interventions, and domestically, to defuse the internal tension between torture and democracy. It hence allows torture to emerge as a problem that may be addressed procedurally, without ever contending with the violence and the violations of international law it necessarily entails.