Lesions as Therapy: Surgical Intervention in Parkinson's Disease Prior to L-Dopa

The study of Parkinson's disease has undergone vast changes across its almost 200 year history. Over this period, research scientists have added dramatic detail to their understanding both of the motor system in general and the etiology of Parkinson's disease specifically This expanded understanding has been facilitated, particularly, by the work of clinicians with the goal of improving treatments designed to ameliorate its symptoms. This article examines the evolution of one particular clinical approach, the production of lesions to segments of the basal ganglia, from its inception, through its “golden era,” disuse, and rebirth.     

From DOPA to Parkinson's disease: the early history of dopamine research

Dopamine is among the most well-researched neurotransmitters at the present time. For the first half-century of neurotransmitter research, however, interest in dopamine was minimal, and only a few scattered groups of researchers studied it. It was their research that stimulated current interest, and provided the background for our present understanding of this important substance. By the late 1950s, it was clear to these individuals that dopamine served an important physiological role in mammalian brains, and that its role was most likely that of a central nervous system agonist. Soon after this, dopamine, or more specifically the depletion of dopamine, was clearly implicated in Parkinson's disease. This paper looks at the early history of the physiological roles of this intriguing compound.     

Lesions as Therapy: Rigidity and Parkinsons Disease

Since James Parkinson (1817) first characterized the shaking palsy as a unique condition, significant confusion has remained concerning the causes and treatments of Parkinson‘s disease (PD). Through the 19th century, a wide variety of approaches were attempted in an effort to reduce its cardinal signs – rigidity, tremor, and bradykinesia – but to little effect. Today, approaching 200 years after Parkinson‘s seminal work, this disorder is commonly treated by surgical means, inducing a lesion in one specific portion of a small nucleus in the central nervous system (Desaloms et al., 1998, Lang et al., 1999). The notion of providing a lesion to the nervous system as a therapy for PD, however, began in earnest at the beginning of the 20th century. The first attempt to alleviate the symptoms of PD through surgical means involved a section of the dorsal roots of the spinal cord supplying the affected limb (also known as dorsal rhizotomy).Today, selective dorsal rhizotomy is commonly performed to treat chronic pain (Scrivani et al., 1999) and spasticity in children with cerebral palsy (Vaughan et al., 1998). Thus, for certain types of paralysis, this procedure relieves some measure of rigidity without producing further complications.     

One island too many: reappraising the extent of deforestation in the Philippines prior to 1946

The extent to which parts of the Philippine archipelago were deforested prior to 1946 has received less scholarly attention than it deserves. Unfortunately most of the forestry records of both the Spanish and American colonial regimes were lost as a result of mishap and warfare. However, by sifting through hitherto largely untapped archival sources in Manila and Washington as well as a considerable body of contemporary commentaries, it is possible to reconstruct a much more accurate picture of the scale of forest loss and chart the growth of a commercial timber market during the second half of the nineteenth century. Attention is also drawn to a fundamental misconception about the effective size of the colonial state and therefore the unit of analysis used to calculate previous attempts at forest cover and depletion. The exclusion or inclusion of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, has implications for both the true extent of deforestation under Spanish rule and the subsequent rate of forest felling during the ensuing American period. Finally, the contention is made that the quality of forest cover data collected by manual means in the past is perhaps more accurate than previously acknowledged and requires more serious consideration in conjunction with material obtained by modern instrumentation.     

Congenital Syphilis in the Archaeological Record: Diagnostic Insensitivity of Osseous Lesions

The paucity of convincing evidence for congenital bone lesions of syphilis in the archaeological record led to study of the human remains from the Buffalo site in West Virginia, dated at 550—650 years BP. The diagnosis of syphilis (venereal) in adults was based on previously validated population criteria for the recognition of syphilis and its distinction from among the other treponemal diseases. Among the 151 juveniles (23.3 per cent of the total series), only one had macroscopic evidence of periosteal disease. The low frequency of recognizable osseous stigmata characteristic of congenital syphilis, combined with the conspicuous absence of pathognomonic dental lesions, make such periosteal lesions insufficiently sensitive criteria for the identification of syphilis in the archaeological record. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From humanitarian relief to humanitarian intervention: victims, interveners and pillars

Current humanitarian crises are bedeviling the United Nations, relief agencies and governments. Efforts to provide food and other basic supplies to traumatized populations are frequently stymied by uncooperative regimes, violent militias, remote locations, high costs and complicated operations. As a result, humanitarian relief operations that have focused primarily on food distribution must be radically revised to encompass the much broader agenda of humanitarian intervention, which entails an aggressive, multilateral role within states. Five ‘pillars’ are proposed—basic needs, public security, political dialogue, human rights/justice and sustained economic development—on which to base future humanitarian interventions.     

Opportunities and constraints for intensive agriculture in the Hawaiian archipelago prior to European contact

Intensive agricultural systems interact strongly and reciprocally with features of the lands they occupy, and with features of the societies that they support. We modeled the distribution of two forms of pre-European contact intensive agriculture – irrigated pondfields and rain-fed dryland systems – across the Hawaiian archipelago using a GIS approach based on climate, hydrology, topography, substrate age, and soil fertility. Model results closely match the archaeological evidence in defined locations. On a broader scale, we calculate that the youngest island, Hawai'i, could have supported 572 km² of intensive agriculture, 97% as rain-fed dryland field systems, while Kaua'i, the oldest island, could have supported 58 km², all as irrigated wetland systems. Irrigated systems have higher, more reliable yields and lower labor requirements than rain-fed dryland systems, so the total potential yield from Kaua'i (49k metric tons) was almost half that of Hawai'i (97k metric tons), although Kaua'i systems required only 0.05 of the agricultural labor (8400 workers, versus 165,000 on Hawai'i) to produce the crops. We conclude that environmental constraints to intensive agriculture across the archipelago created asymmetric production efficiencies, and therefore varying potentials for agricultural surplus. The implications both for the emergence of complex sociopolitical formations and for anthropogenic transformation of Hawaiian ecosystems are substantial.     

Russia,humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: the case of Syria

Western analysis perceives Russian approaches to issues of humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as running counter to western‐inspired international norms. This debate has surfaced with some vigour over Russia's policy in the Syria conflict where, in order to protect its strategic interests in Syria, an obstructionist Moscow has been accused of ignoring humanitarian considerations and allowing time for the Assad regime to crush the opposition by vetoing a resolution threatening to impose sanctions. While Russian approaches are undoubtedly explained by a desire to maximize its growing political influence and trade advantages to serve its legitimate foreign policy interests, and while Moscow's attitudes to intervention and R2P exhibit important differences from those of the major western liberal democracies, its arguments are in fact framed within a largely rational argument rooted in ‘traditional’ state‐centred international law. This article first highlights key arguments in the scholarly literature on intervention and R2P before going on to examine the evolution of Russian views on these issues. The analysis then focuses on the extent to which Moscow's arguments impact on international legal debates on the Libya and Syria conflicts. The article then seeks to explore how Russian approaches to intervention/R2P reflect fundamental trends in its foreign policy thinking and its quest for legitimacy in a negotiated international order. Finally, it attempts to raise some important questions regarding Russia's role in the future direction of the intervention/R2P debates.     

Adding insult to injury: opportunistic treponemal disease in a scalping survivor

Although the taking of scalps is arguably a perimortem trophy‐taking behaviour, cases of scalping survival are occasionally reported in the historical documents of the American Colonial Period and the 19^th century westward expansion. Survival cases are also detected in pre‐Columbian bioarchaeological contexts. Although scalp avulsion injuries can heal without complication, often the process is compromised by secondary osteomyelitis, usually attributable to environmentally ever‐present Staphylococcal or Streptococcal bacteria. A scalping survivor case from the late prehistoric (AD 1200–1600) Hampton site (40RH41) of East Tennessee unusually displays infectious sequelae in the area denuded by scalp avulsion which are pathognomonic for treponemal disease (caries sicca, stellate scarring). This infection is probably a reflection of the easy opportunity afforded by the large size of the wound bed, poor post‐trauma hygiene, and direct inoculation of the diploë by a ubiquitous Treponema. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

India's response to the 1971 East Pakistan crisis: hidden and open reasons for intervention

Based on recently declassified materials from the Indian government archives and on the private papers of the principal secretary to the Indian prime minister, this article investigates how India formulated its response to the 1971 East Pakistan genocidal crisis that culminated with the third Indo-Pakistani war. India's victory changed the balance of power in South Asia: Bangladesh emerged as a new independent state, while Pakistan was significantly reduced. The 1971 war is cited in the international literature as one of the first cases of humanitarian intervention in world history. The Indian official position, recently reinforced by a new major publication, highlights the ‘humanitarian’ character of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, depicting a reluctant India compelled to intervene by international inactivity towards the atrocity. This article contests this interpretation and argues that humanitarian considerations were only one side of the picture. Clear political interests drove the actions of New Delhi, which autonomously formulated a specific strategy aimed at making capital out of the dramatic humanitarian crisis. In advancing this argument, this article contributes to the complex debate about humanitarian intervention by observing that the inability of the UN system to intervene is bound to open the way to two possible outcomes: one is the continuation of the genocidal massacres; the other is the unauthorized humanitarian armed intervention by a regional power, which is likely to act according to its own interests. The specific case under review demonstrates that unauthorized armed intervention cannot per se always be branded as deplorable, since in certain cases such a scenario is better than no intervention at all.     

Not quite as British as Finchley: the failed attempt to bring British Conservatism to Northern Ireland

In a previous issue of Irish Studies Review I examined the unanticipated emergence in the late 1980s of a series of Conservative associations in Northern Ireland. In this follow-up article, I will seek to account for the subsequent swift and ignominious decline in the early 1990s of the Northern Irish Conservatives. While the fortunes of the Ulster Tories were undermined by a number of contingencies – the vagaries of parliamentary arithmetic and their own lack of political judgement foremost among them – their fate was sealed primarily by certain rather more structural concerns. In particular, the rapid decline of the Conservative associations in Northern Ireland owes its origins to the historically “loveless marriage” between Ulster unionists and the British state. The unionist community simply refused to vote in meaningful numbers for a political party at the centre of a Westminster establishment deemed hostile to the cause of the Union. In addition, the Conservative hierarchy would inevitably prove unwilling to nurture their own party associations in Northern Ireland as this “integrationist” project ran precisely counter to their own longstanding political ambitions for the region. This conflict of interests and intentions would in short order ensure the demise in all but name of the Northern Irish Conservatives. There can be few more dramatic illustrations of the mutual distrust that conjoins Ulster unionists and the British state than the string of lost deposits incurred by Conservative candidates running for office in Northern Ireland.     

曲阜三孔 传统中国的文化缩影

<正>对于很多外国人来说,也许不知道曲阜或者山东,但一定知道孔子。曲阜的孔府、孔庙、孔林,统称"三孔",是中国历代纪念孔子,推崇儒学的表征。这组庞大的古代建筑群,历经沧桑,成为中国传统文化的一个缩影。值得一提的是,孔庙不但是封建社会全国性祭孔最重要的活动场所,而且是现在孔氏后人每年祭奠先人的地方。     

Feminism from Amsterdam to Brussels in 1891: Political Transfer as Transformation

Although the fact has been completely forgotten on both sides of the Dutch–Belgian border, careful historical reconstruction enables us to perceive the origins of organized feminism in Belgium as a case of political transfer from Amsterdam to Brussels. For it was the spectacular appearance that Dutch feminist Wilhelmina Drucker put in at the Brussels Congress of the Second Socialist International in 1891 that sparked off a first wave of feminist organizing in Belgium. However, this specific case of political transfer, with its many dissimilarities between political actors and political frames, forces us to review critically some assumptions basic to the field. Political transfer may not be so much about attribution of similarity leading to imitation, as about the certification of actors in highly volatile political situations. In that case political transfer should be conceived not as wholesale importation of ‘foreign’ political practices, but as a reinvention of all elements of a political configuration interdependently and relationally, so as to let actors, frames, political styles and the articulation of political claims emerge transformed through contention.

Résumé:?Bien que la chose soit occultée des deux cotés de la frontière Belgo–hollandaise, une analyse des origines nous permet de présenter les origines du féminisme Belge comme un cas de transfert politique d'Amsterdam à Bruxelles. La présence spectaculaire de la féministe hollandaise Wilhelmina Drucker au congrès de Bruxelles de la Seconde Internationale Socialiste de 1891 fut le point de départ d'une première vague de féminisme organisée en Belgique. Cependant ce cas de transfert politique avec ses divergences entre acteurs et cadres politiques nous oblige à remettre en question les termes du concept de transfert politique. Le pivot du transfer politique est peut-être moins la similarité ou l'imitation des acteurs que leur lutte pour reconnaissance dans des circonstances changeantes. Dans ce cas, le transfert politique est moins une importation de pratiques étrangères mais plutôt une réinvention des termes interdépendants d'une situation politique de sorte que tous les éléments, les acteurs, les cadres, les styles politiques et les revendications en sortent transformés.     

Indigenous free prior informed consent: a case for self determination in World Heritage nomination processes

Free prior informed consent is a critical concept in enacting the rights of Indigenous People according to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This paper outlines a case for the inclusion of free prior informed consent in World Heritage nomination processes and examines issues that are problematic when enacting free prior informed consent. Case research was used to analyse current issues in the potential nomination of certain areas of Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The authors’ reflexive engagement within this case offers insights into the praxis of developing a World Heritage nomination consent process. The outcomes of this research were: preconditions need to be addressed to avoid self-exclusion by indigenous representative organisations; the nature of consent needs to account for issues of representation and Indigenous ways of decision making; the power of veto needs to have formal recognition in the nomination process; and prioritising self-determination within free prior informed consent ensures the intent of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The paper contributes to the human rights agenda of Indigenous People and conservation management processes by helping address the issues that will be raised during a World Heritage nomination process.     

Multiple Calvarial Lytic Lesions: A Differential Diagnosis from Early Medieval France (5th to 7th c. AD)

A skull from the early French Medieval period presenting multiple destructive lesions is investigated. The study of this presumably young female skull suggests a series of possible diagnoses using macroscopic features, standard radiography, CT, and 3D analysis. After a review of the paleopathological and medical literature, the debate focuses on several malignant disorders (cancerous metastases, multiple myeloma), Langerhans cell histiocytosis, and other benign conditions such as infection (especially tuberculosis) or sarcoidosis. Although the definite diagnosis of such paleopathological lesions is not straightforward, Langerhans cell histiocytosis is the most probable diagnosis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.