For human dental cementum research, sample preparation protocol is now widely tested, validated, and standardized, thanks to the low variability in teeth morphology. For non-human mammals, posterior teeth are typically preferred. However, the taxa diversity implies a significant variation in morphology or specific characteristics for certain species (equids, suids), leading to multiple unstandardized protocols. This work aims to improve protocols for producing a thin section by optimizing the parameters, minimizing the risk of errors, and offering an easily reproducible quality of thin-sections. The result of 26 experiments and 124 analyses during stages of consolidation (embedding), cutting, gluing, and finishing (grinding) allowed the co-authors' combined experience from multiple laboratories to propose standardized humans and ungulates (large teeth) protocols for the systematic analysis of dental research collections.

In modern humans, counts of tooth cementum annulations (TCA) have been widely used to determine adult age at death using classical histology. This destructive technique requires physically thin sectioning the teeth which may not be an option for valuable fossil and subfossil specimens. For over a decade, propagation phase contrast synchrotron X-ray microtomography (SRμCT) at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility has paved the way to non-destructively visualize dental microstructures that remain otherwise invisible to conventional X-ray absorption-based μCT. Here we extend the use of SRμCT to the non-destructive visualization of TCAs in known age archeological modern human teeth, for adult age at death estimation. Our results show that virtual sections are able to elucidate true cementum annulations even if their visibility is often close to the resolution limit of our setup. This is a promising first step in non-destructive adult age at death estimation which future technical fine-tuning will undoubtedly improve further

Uterus transplantation involves a vascularised composite allograft for women with absolute uterine factor infertility, and is considered research. It requires a large medical and surgical multidisciplinary team, requires adequate psychological support and risks premature birth in the offspring. We compare it with the alternative of surrogacy, with the pros and cons regarding the prospective parents and offspring, the parental project collaborators, whether dead or live uterine donor or the gestating surrogate, and society at large. The possible aspects of cross-border reproductive care are also considered before concluding that it is still ‘a step too far’.

Chapter 1 examines war’s place in a universal paradigm of order and chaos, balance and imbalance; explores war’s origins and relationship to human nature; and concludes by formally defining war. After relating Aristotle’s “four causes” model (material, formal, efficient, and final) to war as an organizing concept, the chapter articulates war’s alignment within a universal theme of balance and characterizes war as an amalgam of twenty “dialectics,” including order-chaos and creation-destruction. It highlights how political imbalances can spark war and how dialectical disparities undermine war theory and strategy. Next, the chapter marshals multidisciplinary evidence to argue that evolutionary processes have imbued humanity with warlike and peaceful attributes and that war ultimately reflects human choices arising from various motives including Thucydides’s fear, honor, and interest. Finally, the chapter concludes by defining war as the nexus of a new trinity – humanity, politics, and combat – evaluating the boundaries between war and peace, and taking a first look at the question of war’s inevitability as a human activity.

This chapter examines the reception of two Platonic texts, the Protagoras and the Statesman, in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers and Plutarch’s Gryllus. It argues that part of the reason for the success of this reception lies in the way that Plato’s texts are embedded in insolvable problems such as what constitutes nudity and how one distinguishes between animal and human. Embedding a text in a wicked problem is an effective way to ensure it afterlife. In the case of Plato, the difficulty of this problem is exacerbated by his decision to ground his distinction between animal and human in the presence or absence of body-hair. Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, in different ways, draw attention to the simultaneous complexity, instability, and capaciousness of body-hair as a signifier. They are attracted to explore its potential, but are ultimately forced to reject it and the systems of thought that it supports as unsatisfactory.

Here, I examine the link between intelligence and life. Unlike a skeleton, which is a requisite for any large organism, intelligence is less crucial for survival. It is much more thinly spread in the animal kingdom than are skeletons, and is absent entirely from the plant kingdom. After considering how intelligence might be defined, I consider the question of where it is found in the animal tree of life. I then focus on four examples – tool use by octopuses and crows, mirror self-recognition in certain mammals, and space travel by apes (both humans and chimps). I finish by considering the link between intelligence and Darwinian fitness. Over the course of animal evolution, some groups have prospered without having brains, others have evolved small brains, and others still – notably humans – large ones. Strangest of all, perhaps, is the case of the starfish group (echinoderms), where all current species are brainless, in contrast to their ancestors, which possessed brains, albeit small ones. This combination of evolutionary trajectories in brain size shows that the link between intelligence and fitness is complex.

The number of transnational corporations (TNCs) – including parent companies and subsidiaries – has exploded over the last forty years. In 1970, there were approximately 7,000 TNCs in the world; today, there are more than 100,000 with over 900,000 foreign affiliates.1 TNCs are now so complex and amorphous in their structure – even compared to ten years ago – that it is difficult for even the most sophisticated legal systems to adequately hold TNCs accountable for the harms they create in countries where they operate, even as the TNCs make enormous profits at the expense of often vulnerable communities. The truth is, certain legal doctrines, often devised nearly a century ago or longer, are too outdated to sufficiently assure that TNCs are held accountable for harms they create in today’s world, where TNCs operate globally, and often have structures that transcend a single country or jurisdiction.

While TNCs stand to benefit greatly from their work in less developed or developing countries, it is frequently the local, most vulnerable populations and communities – often nonconsenting to the development – who absorb most of the costs associated with this economic activity in the form of lower labor and regulatory costs, environmental damages, and civil and human rights violations.1 Although many TNCs are responding to human rights violations by acting responsibly, engaging in due diligence,2 and otherwise establishing mechanisms to assist in the prevention of human rights violations, when violations do occur, victims often do not have any remedy available to them.

This chapter explores the pervasive ways in which Gothic forces and affiliations appear in Dickens’s writings. The word ‘Gothic’ is rare in his work but an awareness of Gothic tropes, plottings and conventions is vital to understanding it. Gothic is used in highly innovative ways: to explore asymmetrical power relations of many sorts; to limit-test the idea of the ‘human’; and as radical social critique. The diabolical and uncanny are particularly powerful modes, and Dickens is pioneering both in his use of ‘virtual’ Gothic in A Christmas Carol and in the creation of ‘paranoid Gothic’ in the violent same-sex eroticism of Our Mutual Friend and theMystery of Edwin Drood. Gothic is also an essential component of such scenes as Miss Havisham’s resemblance to ‘waxwork and skeleton’ in Great Expectations and Fagin’s and Monks’s appearance at the sleeping Oliver Twist’s window. The chapter discusses a wide range of Gothic presences in these and other works, concluding with a discussion of Dicken’s remarkable late essay ‘Nurse’s Stories’ (1863), a complex ‘meta-Gothic’ reflection on uncanny repetition and its simultaneously comic and diabolical power in subjective experience and narration.

In the aftermath of World War I, some politicians, scholars, and lawyers argued that individuals ought to be subjects of international law and bear rights within the international order. With the collapse of the Russian Empire and the onset of revolution, hundreds of thousands of Russians found themselves effectively stateless. Without a state to protect them, these Russians had no identity documents and no effective nationality. The League of Nations and the International Labor Organization worked with various states to create the first refugee passport system. However, unlike today’s system that is based upon someone’s “well-founded fear” of persecution, eligibility for refugee status in the interwar period was based, in part, on one’s former nationality. Even refugees couldn’t escape the tyranny of nationality as the fundamental classification of the individual in the international realm.