The Traces of Repression in the Bones: Experiences of Exhumation, Identification and Anthropological Analysis in Mass Graves in Andalusia (Spain)

ABSTRACT The application of forensic anthropological methodology in interventions aimed at the exhumation of victims of Francoism is of paramount importance. This is not only for the identification of the remains, but also to fulfill a social task of reconciliation, clarification of the truth, justice and dignification of the victims and their families, in accordance with the provisions of international law and Spanish and regional legislation. This paper underscores the pivotal role of forensic anthropology, with a particular emphasis on Andalusia, a region disproportionately impacted by Franco's repression. It delineates the methodologies and protocols employed in the interventions undertaken, encompassing preliminary investigations and comprehensive analyses of the remains. Moreover, the case of the Pico Reja grave, situated in the San Fernando Cemetery in Seville, is presented as a practical exemplar to elucidate these procedures. This article is categorized under: Forensic Anthropology > Anthropology in Mass Disaster & War Crime Contexts Forensic Anthropology > Forensic Archaeology

When Conflict Closes the Operating Room: The Impact of War on Elective Surgeries

ABSTRACT Protracted conflict in Bukavu, South Kivu, DR Congo, has repeatedly disrupted elective surgical care, leaving patients with nonemergency conditions at high risk of morbidity, disability, and long‐term suffering. Drawing on local facility data and health system studies from eastern DRC, this perspective argues that elective surgery is not optional but essential to health equity in conflict settings. Despite 14.6% of surgical admissions in DRC being elective (even under MSF‑supported operations), elective case provisioning in Bukavu is severely constrained by systemic breakdowns, supply disruptions, workforce shortages, and poor data. Surgery postponement yields progressive morbidity: hernias become strangulated, fibroids induce chronic anemia, and delayed cholecystectomies escalate into emergency cholecystitis. Current humanitarian and national health responses focus on trauma, infectious disease, and obstetric emergencies, marginalizing elective care. To realign priorities, this paper recommends integrating elective surgical planning into crisis preparedness, strengthening local surgical workforce, operationalising mobile surgical teams, and capturing perioperative delay data to inform resource allocation. Restoring elective services in Bukavu operating rooms is both ethically imperative and clinically urgent.

The Limits of Depoliticized Water–Energy Diplomacy: Insights From the UAE–Israel–Jordan Water‐for‐Energy Deal

ABSTRACT This paper examines the rise and collapse of the 2021 United Arab Emirates (UAE)–Israel–Jordan Water‐for‐Energy Deal, a landmark initiative that sought to exchange Jordanian solar energy for Israeli desalinated water. Presented as a breakthrough in regional cooperation and environmental peacebuilding, the agreement was brokered under the Abraham Accords with strong backing from the United States and the UAE. However, despite its technical promise, the deal unraveled within 2 years amidst Israel's war on Gaza, mounting public opposition in Jordan, and shifting geopolitical dynamics. Drawing on qualitative analysis and process tracing, this paper argues that the deal's failure reflects the limits of technocratic cooperation in deeply asymmetric and politicized contexts. Rather than addressing structural inequalities, occupation, and historical grievances, the agreement attempted to depoliticize a conflict‐laden landscape—ultimately undermining its legitimacy and durability. By situating this case within broader debates on hydrohegemony, power asymmetry, and environmental peacebuilding, the paper highlights how resource‐sharing initiatives may reinforce rather than resolve conflict when they overlook the fundamental political conditions in which they operate. The study offers critical lessons for designing more equitable and sustainable transboundary cooperation in the Middle East and beyond.

“To Be Mindful of Their Sensitivities:” The Chinese American Chemical Society and the Scientific Diaspora

This paper investigates the Chinese American Chemical Society (CACS) as an organisation of the scientific diaspora at the end of the Cold War. Established in 1981 by mostly first-generation immigrants, the CACS adopted a non-political stance to boost the career of its members in the United States, China, and Taiwan. Tracing this non-political sensitivity to its founder, Jesse Hwa (1924–2008), the paper begins with Hwa’s career as an immigrant scientist and his experience with China at the beginning of its economic reforms of the 1970s. It then studies the CACS’s ambition to overcome the Cold War divide in the 1980s and reach out to Taiwan and China simultaneously. However, with limited success in technology transfer and facing issues in expanding the membership, the CACS faced a further crisis in the June Fourth Incident of 1989. As the officers tried to maintain the non-political stance amid varying responses from its members, the CACS increasingly turned attention to forging an identity for Chinese American chemists. By analysing the strategies of the CACS in building a community within the scientific diaspora, the paper enriches current scholarship on the history of twentieth-century chemistry and science diplomacy during the final days of the Cold War.

National Chemical Societies and the Formation of Early Global Networks, ca. 1890–1914

Historians suggesting an early phase of globalisation in the decades before the First World War have pointed to new specialist learned societies as among the agents in the process. This paper explores the international dimensions of national chemical societies in this era of empires. During the nineteenth century, national chemical societies were established in many countries. Four of the earliest and largest – the [British] Chemical Society (founded 1841), the Société Chimique de France (1857), the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (1867), and the American Chemical Society (1876) – recruited numerous members living abroad, so that, by the early twentieth century, such “extra-national” members – members, that is, who lived outside the state in which the society was based  – constituted a substantial share of their memberships. Our paper examines this phenomenon. It argues that an analysis of extra-national members can help us chart the spread of chemistry around the globe. It considers whether the extra-national memberships of these chemical societies can be seen as constituting early, overlapping global networks of individuals, based on their common membership of leading societies.

When Will (Game) Wars End?

We study several variants of the classical card game war . As anyone who has played this game knows, the game can take some time to terminate, but it usually does. Here, we analyze a number of asymptotic variants of the game, where the number of cards is n , and show that all have an expected termination time of ordern 2. This is the same expected termination time as the game where at each turn a fair coin toss decides which player wins a card, known as Gambler’s Ruin and was studied by Blaise Pascal, Pierre de Fermat and others in the seventeenth century.

Abraham Wald and the Origins of the Sequential Probability Ratio Test

Abraham Wald’s formalization of the sequential probability ratio test in the crucible of World War II is one of the more famous cases in the history of statistics of the interplay of statistical theory and real-world applications. Focusing entirely on the moments around its creation, however, obscures the way in which it was also a continuation of previous work he had done in the late 1930s, and in particular, Wald’s development of decision theory and his approach to using inverse probability. By situating the origins of the sequential probability ratio test in a broader history, we see not only how inverse probability initially made its way into sequential analysis but also the ongoing importance of the role of applications in motivating the development of statistical theory.

Salvador Luria: an immigrant biologist in Cold War America by Rena Selya, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2022, 248 pp., $35.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780262046466

Capital liquidity and abnormal returns in the Taiwan stock market: The impact of the US-China trade conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic

Liquidity plays a crucial role in the risks associated with capital flows. This study points out that, in addition to transaction costs that may hinder liquidity, increased external risk can also contribute to a reduction in liquidity. A slowdown in liquidity can lead to abnormal returns in the stock market, resulting in sharp increases or decreases. The research investigates the relationship between liquidity of capital flows and abnormal returns within the Taiwan stock market, with particular emphasis on the periods preceding and following the US-China trade conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic. The results reveal that both events exerted a considerable influence on the risk dynamics within Taiwan’s stock market. Specifically, during the US-China trade war, there was a notable increase in capital liquidity in Taiwan’s stock market. Conversely, the period of the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized by a decrease in liquidity. Additionally, our analysis indicates that illiquidity significantly impacts abnormal returns.

Environmental regulation, air pollution and household well-being: evidence from China’s key region policy

Over the past decades, tremendous efforts have been invested into the environmental regulation around the world. How these environmental policies affect the pollution level and household welfare, and how to understand any distributional effectsof environmental regulation are at the core of both academic and policy field. This paper evaluates the impact of ‘China’s War on Pollution’ initiated in 2014, utilizing the ‘Key Region Policy’ as a quasi-experimental research design. The findings indicate that this stringent environmental regulation significantly reduced${\rm{P rm{M}}_{2.5}}$PM2.5concentrations. As a result, there was a notable decline in chronic respiratory diseases, pollution-related chronic illnesses, and improved self-rated health among middle-aged individuals. Given the differential pollution exposure across occupational categories, the analysis reveals that manufacturing workers experienced a larger reduction in chronic respiratory disease rates due to this regulation. Back-of-the-envelope calculations estimate that the Key Region Policy generated substantial benefits, valued at approximately 18.9 billion for the year 2017.