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How can a human being ‘disappear’?

On the 30th of August the United Nations observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Emmanuel Decaux (President of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances) and Olivier de Frouville (Chair and Rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances(WGEID)) have taken the time to consider a few questions with us in recognition of this important observance day, which was established by the UNGA (resolution 65/209, para. 4).

Unconventional monetary policy

By Christopher Bowdler and Amar Radia
Central banks in advanced economies typically conduct monetary policy by varying short-term interest rates in order to influence the level of spending and inflation in the economy. One limitation of this conventional approach to monetary policy is the so called lower bound problem. If the central bank were to try to set short-term interest rates much below zero, then households and companies would choose to hold money in the form of currency instead of depositing it in banks.

Crawling leaves: photosynthesis in sacoglossan sea slugs

By Sónia Cruz
“Crawling leaves” or “solar-powered sea slugs” are common terms used to name some species of sacoglossan sea slugs capable of performing photosynthesis, a process usually associated with plants. These sea slugs ingest macroalgal tissue and retain undigested functional chloroplasts in special cells of their gut (kleptoplasty). The “stolen” chloroplasts (kleptoplasts) continue to photosynthesize, in some cases up to one year.

Shakespeare’s hand in the additional passages to Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy

By Douglas Bruster
Why should we think that Shakespeare wrote lines first published in the 1602 quarto of The Spanish Tragedy, a then-classic play by his deceased contemporary Thomas Kyd? Our answer starts 180 years ago, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge—author of ‘Kubla Khan’ and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—said he heard Shakespeare in this material.

Religious displays and the gray area between church and state

By Rebecca Sager and Keith Gunnar Bentele
This August marks the 10-year anniversary of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s suspension for refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building. Judge Moore, rather famously, erected the statue in the middle of the night and created a controversy that stirred up emotions about what role religion should play in our public spaces.

Ideal pregnancy length: an unsolved mystery

By Anne Marie Jukic, Donna Baird, Clarice Weinberg, and Allen Wilcox
Pregnancy begins with conception – an event that is practically invisible. Since we can’t measure the beginning of pregnancy, it’s hard to know how far along a woman is in her pregnancy. We guess the beginning of pregnancy either from the woman’s report of her last menstrual period or from fetal size on ultrasound, both of which have errors.

Crossbow competitions and civic communities

By Laura Crombie
In the popular imagination, tournaments feature prominently as the greatest spectacles of the Middle Ages. If archery competitions are thought of, it is probably in the context of Robin Hood films or the great English longbow (and the successes it brought, particularly Agincourt).

Between self-murder and suicide: the etymology of a modern stigma

By Andreas Bähr
Translated from German by Dominic Bonfiglio
Some words can kill. Even those one wouldn’t have thought so to look at. Consider “self-murder.” Perpetrators of this supposed crime die a second, linguistic death in retribution for their deed — eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

Money, prices, and growth in pre-industrial England

By Nick Mayhew
At a time when governments across the world are pursuing the elusive goal of economic growth, it may be instructive to consider the historical evidence for growth in Britain.

Are HD broadcasts “cannibalizing” the Metropolitan Opera’s live audiences?

By James Steichen
When the Metropolitan Opera launched its high-definition broadcast initiative in 2006, hopes were very high. The basic concept was simple: the Met would offer live cinema broadcasts of its Saturday matinee performances to a network of movie theaters around the country.

Honouring treaty and gender equality

By Rosemary Nagy
In Canada, there are almost 600 documented cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women over the last twenty years. The Canadian government has continuously refused to hold a national public inquiry into the missing and murdered women, despite mounting international and domestic pressure to do so.

UNDRIP, CANZUS, and indigenous rights

By Katherine Smits and Stephen Winter
In recent weeks, the Global Indigenous Preparatory Conference for the United Nations High Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly convened in Alta, Norway and released its comprehensive ‘Outcome Document’. The document has met with resounding indifference. That result might have been expected.

Assembling a coherent picture in the Daniel Pelka case

By P.A.J. Waddington
The appalling murder of Daniel Pelka by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and her partner, Mariusz Krezolek, has yet again been followed by soul-searching and a storm of criticism directed at ‘the authorities’ for their failure to protect Daniel from the child abuse that eventually led to his death.

Human rights education and human rights law: two worlds?

By Paul Gready and Brian Phillips
Education and training programmes have become one of the most familiar features of the contemporary global human rights landscape. Their current volume and scope would have been unimaginable even two decades ago. Programmes dedicated to human rights education and training are now delivered by a myriad of actors and are aimed at various audiences.

The origins of the Fulbright program

By Sam Lebovic
Since its creation in the summer of 1946, the Fulbright program has become the “flagship international educational exchange program” of the US government. Over the past 67 years, almost 320,000 students, scholars and teachers have traveled internationally as part of the program’s vast effort to improve mutual understanding between nations.

Where’s Mrs Y? The effects of unnecessary ward moves

By Miles Witham and Marion McMurdo
It’s a Thursday morning in February, and I have just arrived on the ward to start my ward round. Mrs Y, a lady in her 90’s with dementia, was admitted with pneumonia a few days ago. She is on the mend, rehabilitating well, and we planned to get her home tomorrow with some extra home care.