Restoring the identities of Mexico’s unknown dead

Goethe University Frankfurt signs cooperation agreement with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for forensic "Identifications in Mexico" project

Business Announcement

GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

Goethe University Frankfurt has entered into a cooperation agreement with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Mexico to assist the Mexican government in identifying the country’s more than 110,000 officially disappeared. At 55,000, the official figure of unidentified decedents is also staggering. The Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Mexico’s national human rights commission, has called the current situation as a forensic crisis and an enormous burden on civil society.

Although the Mexican government is increasingly relying on international cooperation and assistance in recent years to help identify unidentified decedents, and significant progress has been made (including the construction of regional identification centers), identification remains a significant challenge. One partner is UNFPA, whose Mexican branch is a member of the “Identifications in Mexico” project (partially funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office), which supports the Comisión Nacional de Búsqueda (CNB) search commission’s national identification policy. One of the project’s workplans comprises Goethe University Frankfurt’s collaboration with Mexican institutions and universities.

The signing ceremony was attended by Cecilia Villanueva Bracho, Mexican Consul General to the city of Frankfurt; Goethe University President Prof. Enrico Schleiff; the Deputy Head of UNFPA Mexico, Iván Castellanos; the Director of Goethe University’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, Prof. Dr. Marcel Verhoff: and UNFPA Project Head Maximilian Murck. The goal of the cooperation agreement between UNFPA and the Institute of Forensic Medicine is to offer families certainty about the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Specifically, the cooperation aims to develop pragmatic approaches to identify more deceased persons within a shorter period of time, including by means of:

• DNA analysis of relatives and unidentified decedents
• Analysis of tattoos for identification purposes
• Academic exchanges and research with Mexican forensic scientists and medical examiners

Goethe University President Prof. Dr. Enrico Schleiff emphasized the humanitarian obligation to support the Mexican government in restoring the identity of unidentified decedents, adding that the relatives of the disappeared deserve to have certainty of their loved ones’ fate. Schleiff welcomed the cooperation agreement, which allows the work done to date by Frankfurt’s forensic experts in identifying Mexico’s disappeared to be continued. He explicitly thanked UNFPA for its support of the "Identifications in Mexico" project, as well as all scientists and doctors involved.

Iván Castellanos, deputy head of UNFPA Mexico, emphasized that every person has the right to their identity, pointing to the important measures the Mexican government has initiated in recent years to strengthen its institutions in the search for the disappeared, as well as to the reforms passed to improve the identification of unidentified decedents. The government for the first time invited the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) in 2021, he said, also expressing its compromise with the disappeared.

For his part, Prof. Dr. Marcel Verhoff, director of Goethe University’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, pointed out that the Frankfurt-based institute had already worked with the University of Guadalajara in the introduction of a master degree in forensic science, and in the analysis of genetic samples, autopsies and excavations in Mexico. The new agreement will further strengthen academic collaboration, he said, allowing both institutions to benefit from one another, adding that the knowledge exchange will be realized both in scientific projects as well as practical identification work.

Maximilian Murck, who heads the UNFPA project, said that while identifying the dead is not an easy task, it is not an impossible one either, adding that it is important to work out common solutions and to make visible the successes of cooperation in this difficult context. One example is the introduction of fingerprint matching technology in several Mexican states – an initiative coordinated by the CNB. Murck expressed his gratitude to Goethe University as well as the Mexican institutions for their support and trust.

Regarding the cooperation agreement signed between Goethe University and UNFPA, Cecilia Villanueva Bracho, Mexico’s consul general in Frankfurt, stressed: "The Mexican government supports this project that contributes to the cooperation between Mexico and Germany in the field of forensic medicine. It also serves to strengthen institutions by enabling us to better address contemporary priorities in the fields of security, crime control and prevention. The collaboration comprises the exchange of knowledge and best practices to promote governmental and academic institutions and develop technical capacities."

We are wasting up to 20 percent of our time on computer problems

Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction between 11 and 20 per cent of the time, a new study from the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF SCIENCE

Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction between 11 and 20 per cent of the time, a new study from the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. The researchers behind the study therefore find that there are major gains to be achieved for society by rethinking the systems and involving users more in their development. 

An endlessly rotating beach ball, a program that crashes without saving data or systems that require illogical procedures or simply do not work. Unfortunately, struggling with computers is still a familiar situation for most of us. Tearing your hair out over computers that do not work remains very common among users, according to new Danish research.

In fact, so much that, on average, we waste between 11 and 20 per cent of our time in front of our computers on systems that do not work or that are so difficult to understand that we cannot perform the task we want to. And this is far from being good enough, says Professor Kasper Hornbæk, one of the researchers behind the study.

“It’s incredible that the figure is so high. However, most people experience frustration when using computers and can tell a horror story about an important PowerPoint presentation that was not saved or a system that crashed at a critical moment. Everyone knows that it is difficult to create IT systems that match people’s needs, but the figure should be much lower, and one thing that it shows is that ordinary people aren’t involved enough when the systems are developed,” he says.

Professor Morten Hertzum, the other researcher behind the study, emphasises that most frustrations are experienced in connection with the performance of completely ordinary tasks.

“The frustrations are not due to people using their computers for something highly advanced, but because they experience problems in their performance of everyday tasks. This makes it easier to involve users in identifying problems. But it also means that problems that are not identified and solved will probably frustrate a large number of users,” says Morten Hertzum.

The problems are only too recognisable

To examine this issue, the researchers have been assisted by 234 participants who spend between six and eight hours in front of a computer in their day-to-day work.

In one hour, the researchers told them to report the situations in which the computer would not work properly, or where the participants were frustrated about not being able to perform the task they wanted.

The problems most often experienced by the participants included that: “the system was slow”, “the system froze temporarily”, “the system crashed”, “it is difficult to find things”. The participants had backgrounds such as student, accountant, consultant, but several of them actually worked in the IT industry.

“A number of the participants in the survey were IT professionals, while most of the other participants were highly competent IT and computer users. Nevertheless, they encountered these problems, and it turns out that this involves some fundamental functions,” says Kasper Hornbæk.

The participants in the survey also responded that 84 per cent of the episodes had occurred before and that 87 per cent of the episodes could happen again. And, according to Kasper Hornbæk, we are having the same fundamental problems today that we had 15-20 years ago.

“The two biggest categories of problems are still about insufficient performance and lack of user-friendliness,” he says.

Morten Hertzum adds: “Our technology can do more today, and it has also become better, but, at the same time, we expect more from it. Even though downloads are faster now, they are often still experienced as frustratingly slow. "

88 per cent use a computer at work

According to Statistics Denmark, 88 per cent of Danes used computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices at work in 2018. In this context, the new study indicates that a half to a whole day of a normal working week may be wasted on computer problems.  

“There is a lot of productivity lost in workplaces throughout Denmark because people are unable to perform their ordinary work because the computer is not running as it should. It also causes a lot of frustrations for the individual user,” says Kasper Hornbæk.  

This means that there are major benefits to be gained for society if we experienced fewer problems in front of our computers. According to Kasper Hornbæk, the gains can, for example, be achieved if more resources are invested in rethinking how faults are presented to us on the computer.

“Part of the solution may be to shield us from knowing that the computer is working to solve a problem. In reality, there is no reason why we need to look at an incomprehensible box with commands or a frozen computer. The computer could easily solve the problems without displaying this, while it provided a back-up version of the system for us, so that we could continue to work with our tasks undisturbed,” says Kasper Hornbæk.

At the same time, IT developers should involve the users even more when designing the systems to make them as easy to use – and understand – as possible. For, according to the researcher, there are no poor IT users, only poor systems.

“When we’re all surrounded by IT systems that we’re cursing, it’s very healthy to ascertain that it’s probably not the users that are the problem, but those who make the systems. The study clearly shows that there is still much room for improvement, and we therefore hope that it can create more focus on making more user-friendly systems in the future,” concludes Kasper Hornbæk.  

Facts:

• 234 participants, aged 10-69, participated in the survey.
• The majority of the participants spent between 6-8 hours a day in front of a computer.
• The participants reported an average of one computer problem or frustration per hour.
• The participants in the survey also responded that 84 per cent of the episodes had occurred before and that 87 per cent of the episodes could happen again.
• A large part of the problems concerned slow systems, systems that did not respond or crashed.
• The researchers have created a new version of a previous study conducted 15 years ago, which showed that the participants wasted as much as 40-50 per cent of their time on frustrations about the computer.
• The study has been conducted by Morten Hertzum from Roskilde University and Kasper Hornbæk from the University of Copenhagen.
• The study has been published in the scientific journal ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction https://doi.org/10.1145/3582432

JOURNAL

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

DOI

10.1145/3582432 

ARTICLE TITLE

Frustration: Still a Common User Experience

Birds and honey badgers could be cooperating to steal from bees in parts of Africa

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

 

IMAGE: A GREATER HONEYGUIDE FEEDING ON BEESWAX IN NIASSA SPECIAL RESERVE, MOZAMBIQUE view more 

CREDIT: DOMINIC CRAM

The honeyguide bird loves beeswax, but needs help breaking open bees’ nests to get it. So it shows a honey badger the way to the nest, who rips it open and together they share the rewards. Or so the story goes.

This Disneyesque tale of two species cooperating for mutual benefit has captivated naturalists for centuries – but is it true?

“While researching honeyguides, we have been guided to bees’ nests by honeyguide birds thousands of times, but none of us have ever seen a bird and a badger interact to find honey,” said Dr Jessica van der Wal at the University of Cape Town, lead author of the study.

She added: “It’s well-established that honeyguides lead humans to bees’ nests, but evidence for bird and badger cooperation in the literature is patchy – it tends to be old, second-hand accounts of someone saying what their friend saw. So we decided to ask the experts directly.”

In the first large-scale search for evidence of the interaction, a team of young researchers from nine African countries, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town, conducted nearly 400 interviews with honey-hunters across Africa.

People in the 11 communities surveyed have searched for wild honey for generations - including with the help of honeyguide birds.

Most communities surveyed were doubtful that honeyguide birds and honey badgers help each other access honey, and the majority (80%) had never seen the two species interact.

But the responses of three communities in Tanzania stood out, where many people said they’d seen honeyguide birds and honey badgers cooperating to get honey and beeswax from bees’ nests. Sightings were most common amongst the Hadzabe honey-hunters, of which 61% said they had seen the interaction.

“Hadzabe hunter-gatherers quietly move through the landscape while hunting animals with bows and arrows, so are poised to observe badgers and honeyguides interacting without disturbing them. Over half of the hunters reported witnessing these interactions, on a few rare occasions,” said Dr Brian Wood from the University of California, Los Angeles, who co-authored the study.

The report is published today in the Journal of Zoology.

Examining the evidence

The researchers reconstructed step-by-step, what must happen for honeyguide birds and honey badgers to cooperate in this way. Some steps, such as the bird seeing and approaching the badger, are highly plausible. Others, such as the honeyguide chattering to the badger, and the badger following it to a bees’ nest, remain unclear.

Badgers have poor hearing and bad eyesight, which isn’t ideal for following a chattering honeyguide bird.

The researchers say perhaps only some Tanzanian populations of honey badgers have developed the skills and knowledge needed to cooperate with honeyguide birds, and they pass these skills down from one generation to the next.

It’s also possible, they say, that badgers and birds do cooperate in more places in Africa but simply haven’t been seen.

“The interaction is difficult to observe because of the confounding effect of human presence: observers can’t know for sure who the honeyguide bird is talking to – them or the badger,” said Dr Dominic Cram in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, a senior author of the study.

He added: “But we have to take these interviews at face value. Three communities report to have seen honeyguide birds and honey badgers interacting, and it’s probably no coincidence that they’re all in Tanzania.”

The authors highlight the need for more scientists to engage with relevant communities and learn from their views and observations, and integrate scientific and cultural knowledge to enrich and accelerate research.

Partner switch?

The greater honeyguide bird, Indicator indicator, is well-known to communities across many African countries, where it has been used for generations to find bees’ nests. Wild honey is a high-energy food that can provide up to 20% of calorie intake – and the wax that hunters share or discard is a valuable food for the honeyguide.

Humans have learned how to read the calls and behaviour of the honeyguides to find wild bees’ nests.

“The honeyguides call to the humans, and the humans call back – it’s a kind of conversation as they move through the landscape towards the bees’ nests,” said Dr Claire Spottiswoode from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, joint senior author of the study.

With our control of fire and tools, humans are useful partners to honeyguides. We can cut down trees, and smoke the bees to subdue them before opening their nests. Honey badgers, Mellivora capensis, are more likely to make the bees angry – and aggressive bees sometimes sting the birds to death.

But honeyguide birds have been around far longer than modern humans, with our mastery of fire and tools.

“Some have speculated that the guiding behaviour of honeyguides might have evolved through interactions with honey badgers, but then the birds switched to working with humans when we came on the scene because of our superior skills in subduing bees and accessing bees’ nests. It’s an intriguing idea, but hard to test,” said Spottiswoode.

The research was primarily funded by the European Research Council.

A honey badger feeding on honeycomb in Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique

A honey hunter harvests a bees' nest in the Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique

Trail camera footage of honey [VIDEO] | 

CREDIT

Dominic Cram

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JOURNAL

Journal of Zoology

DOI

10.1111/jzo.13093 

ARTICLE TITLE

Do honey badgers and greater honeyguide birds cooperate to access bees’ nests? Ecological evidence and honey-hunter accounts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

29-Jun-2023

Researchers on UN Maritime Organization: "At the moment, it’s working against its own green transition"

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR TEIS HANSEN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN view more 

CREDIT: TEIS HANSEN

The UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) is actively contributing to the shipping industry being far off course from ever reaching its climate goals. In large part, this is because the organization lacks funding and expertise. Without strengthening the IMO, any transition of the enormous industry is hazily imaginable. This, according to the Copenhagen and Lund university researchers behind a new study of the organization.

Three percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to the shipping industry. And things remain headed in the wrong direction – with CO2 emissions from ships continuing to rise year after year. This has increased pressure on the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO), the international body responsible for regulating the global shipping sector. Criticism that the IMO is too slow to regulate greenhouse gases from ships comes from corners of the industry itself, as well as from governments, NGOs and other actors.

From July 3-7, the IMO will review its strategy and most likely set more ambitious climate targets than its current ones, which are not yet aligned with the Paris Agreement. However, researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Lund University point out that new goals alone are insufficient.

"More ambitious climate targets are fine. But the problem is that the IMO doesn’t even have the political instruments needed to achieve its former objectives. So, we need to understand why the IMO is so short on success in this area. Because if nothing happens, this enormous industry will account for a larger and larger share of global CO2 emissions," says Professor Teis Hansen of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food and Resource Economics.

Consequently, he and fellow researcher Hanna Bach from Lund University scrutinized why the organization is slow in getting the transition started. In their study, they mapped how IMO rules were developed and interviewed IMO employees and various stakeholders.

At odds with their own political goals

The study points to an organization with too little engine power. This has resulted in an international regulatory body without the ability to be forward thinking and unable to manage new types of marine fuels and other technologies, such as batteries and wind assisted propulsion technologies.

"Our research shows that throughout the IMO’s history, the focus has only been on preexistent technologies. In other words, they simply regulate the fuels already being used by the industry. In this way, you regulate retroactively. At the same time, the IMO has no regulation that directly promotes the use of more sustainable fuels, which is what we need," says Hanna Bach.

On the contrary, the organization's goal of reducing air pollution from ships, which mainly consists of sulfur and nitrogen oxides emissions, has pushed development in the wrong direction:

"Until now, the IMO focused on air pollution instead of greenhouse gases. This created an imbalanced legal framework, which in practice, has meant tethering the industry to fossil fuels," says Teis Hansen, who elaborates:

 "With current regulation, the IMO promotes liquefied natural gas as marine fuel because it can reduce sulfur and nitrogen emissions. However, LNG use has contributed to a 150 percent jump in methane emissions – a figure that will increase because more and more liquefied natural gas-powered ships are being ordered. As such, the IMO is working against its own political goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

Send more money, please

Roughly 300 people are currently employed at the International Maritime Organization's London headquarters. This corresponds to approximately 5% of the employees in a medium sized Danish municipality.. To begin with, turning things around requires increased organizational capacity. The researchers point out:

"The secretariat needs more resources. Both with regards to an expanded workforce and for administering other types of political instruments than the ones they have today. This could include a global carbon tax, a global fund to support the transition to green fuels and other types of financial support to promote the use of green technologies," says Hanna Bach. 

According to the researchers, the IMO secretariat is generally short on staff, but also lacks people with the right expertise.

"We interviewed one IMO official who stated, 'We don't have the capacity to follow all of the different technologies, and we don't have the capacity to make good financing decisions in terms of what to support and what not to support.' That's remarkable," notes Teis Hansen. 

The IMO’s murky mandate

In two research articles published in the journals Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions and Marine Policy, the researchers identify even more reasons why the IMO is so reluctant to steer its way onto a greener course. This includes a lack of political consensus among the 175 member states, as well as an unclear mandate:

"There are member states that ask whether the implementation of instruments such as a global carbon tax is actually within the IMO mandate or whether it conflicts with national law. However, the IMO secretariat hasn’t been able to provide a clear answer to this. So, it is constantly up for debate, which consumes a lot of time and stalls negotiations when it comes to implementing new policy instruments," says Hanna Bach.

In general, the IMO needs to be organized better if we are to hope for a global transformation of shipping,” says Teis Hansen, who concludes:

"History shows that we cannot simply rely on the IMO itself to regulate this area in a way that follows their own strategy. To ensure this, we need to look at whether we can strengthen the IMO by organizing the institution better."

 

 

THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY’S “BLACK TRAIL”

• Shipping currently accounts for three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The IMO's own projections demonstrate that the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions could increase fifty percent by 2050 if emissions growth is not curbed.
   
• The IMO adopted the first greenhouse gas reduction strategy for shipping in 2018. Among other things, the strategy aims to, at a minimum, halve the shipping industry's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Thus, the goal is not aligned with the Paris Agreement's requirement to be climate neutral by 2050.
   
• The European Commission has decided to include the maritime sector in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) from 2024, which means that the EU shipping industry will have to report all emissions.

 

ABOUT THE IMO

• The IMO (International Maritime Organization) was established in 1958 as a specialized agency under the United Nations for the regulation of international maritime relations. The IMO negotiates and adopts international rules to promote maritime safety and environmental protection, among other things.
   
• Strategically, the IMO's work is directed by the IMO Council and Assembly. The Council is the governing body of the IMO, which continuously prioritises and coordinates work. The Council consists of 40 member states. The IMO's highest decision-making body is the Assembly, which consists of all member states. The Assembly adopts resolutions and approves the IMO's overall strategic direction and budget. Moreover, this is where the Council is elected. (Source: Danish Maritime Authority.)

 

 

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JOURNAL

Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions

DOI

10.1016/j.eist.2023.100720 

ARTICLE TITLE

Flickering guiding light from the International Maritime Organisation's policy mix

 

Researchers create edible, transparent composite packaging with biocellulose

Scientists at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have developed an edible, transparent and biodegradable material with considerable potential for application in food packaging

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SOCIETY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR TO NGAI view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT YAHOO! NEWS

Plastic food packaging accounts for a significant proportion of plastic waste in landfills. In the face of escalating environmental concerns, researchers are looking to bio-derived alternatives.

Now, scientists at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have developed an edible, transparent and biodegradable material with considerable potential for application in food packaging.

The heavy reliance on petrochemicals and inherent non-biodegradability of plastic packaging mean it has long been a significant contributor to environmental contamination. A team at CUHK have turned their attention to bacterial cellulose (BC) – an organic compound derived from certain types of bacteria which has garnered attention as a sustainable, easily available, and non-toxic solution to the pervasive use of plastics.

Professor To Ngai from the Department of Chemistry, CUHK and corresponding author of the study explained that the impressive tensile strength and high versatility of BC are the key to its potential.

Speaking to SCI, he said, ‘Extensive research has been conducted on BC, including its use in intelligent packaging, smart films, and functionalised materials created through blending, coating, and other techniques. These studies demonstrate the potential of BC as a replacement for single-use plastic packaging materials, making it a logical starting point for our research.’

Unlike the cellulose found in the cell walls of plants, BC can be produced through microbial fermentation, which eliminates the need for harvesting trees or crops. Ngai noted that as a result, ‘this production method does not contribute to deforestation or habitat loss, making BC a more sustainable and environmentally friendly material alternative to plant cellulose.’

Up until now, the widespread adoption of BC has been limited by its unfavourable sensitivity to moisture in the air (hygroscopicity), which detrimentally impacts its physical properties. 

In the recent paper, published in the SCI Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, the researchers at CUHK lay out a novel approach to address the limitations of BC-based materials. By incorporating certain soy proteins into the structure and coating it with an oil-resistant composite, the scientists successfully created an edible, transparent, and robust BC-based composite packaging.

Ngai noted that this approach has a high feasibility for scale-up. ‘It does not require specific reaction conditions like chemical reactions, but rather a simple and practical method with mixing and coating’ he said.

‘This approach offers a promising solution to the challenge of developing sustainable and environmentally friendly packaging materials that can replace single-use plastics on a large scale.’

The study demonstrated that the plastic alternative could be completely degraded within 1-2 months. Unlike other bio-derived plastics such as polylactic acid, the BC-based composite does not require specific industrial composting conditions to degrade.

Ngai explained, ‘The material developed in this research is completely edible, making it safe for turtles and other sea animals to consume without causing aquatic toxicity in the ocean.’

The researchers at CUHK are now exploring the directions for future research. They hope to enhance the versatility of modified BC films, making them suitable for a wider range of applications. Specifically, they are focused on developing a thermosetting glue that can create strong bonds between bacterial cellulose, allowing it to be easily moulded into various shapes when heated.

‘One of the main challenges with bacterial cellulose films is that they are not thermoplastic, which limits their potential for use in certain applications. By addressing this issue, we hope to make bacterial cellulose films more competitive with traditional plastics while maintaining their eco-friendliness,’ explained Ngai.

Ngai hopes that the current study will help to combat the excessive use of single-use plastics, which can persist for hundreds of years after only a few days of being displayed on supermarket shelves.

‘This research serves as a reminder that natural raw materials may already possess the necessary characteristics to perform beyond the functions of plastic packaging.’

Professor To Ngai

CREDIT

Yahoo! News

Bacterial cellulose (BC) – an organic compound derived from certain types of bacteria which has garnered attention as a sustainable, easily available, and non-toxic solution to the pervasive use of plastics.

By incorporating soy protein into the structure and coating it with an oil-resistant composite, the CUHK team successfully created an edible, transparent, and robust BC-based composite packaging.

CREDIT

To Ngai

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JOURNAL

Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture

DOI

10.1002/jsfa.12758 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Edible, strong, and low-hygroscopic bacterial cellulose derived from biosynthesis and physical modification for food packaging

 

Which state is the best in the world?

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG

The state is not only the federal government, the states and the municipalities. "We can see the state in everything that surrounds us, for example in the streets, the courts, the police or the schools," says Theresa Paola Stawski. But how well do the states of this world function? This is what the political scientist with a doctorate has been investigating over the past few months. In her ranking, which is available on the internet, Germany is in tenth place out of 173 countries in 2022. Singapore takes first place. Stawski is a research assistant at the Department of Comparative Politics and Systems at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU).

The fact that a patient who needs an X-ray examination receives a doctor's appointment promptly, that there are schools all over the country and that electricity flows day and night, all this constitutes a well-functioning state. Quite a few people in this world can only dream of this. Citizens in South Sudan, Yemen and Libya are doing particularly badly. "These are collapsed states," explains Theresa Paola Stawski. In fact, there is no productive state work there any more. Yemen has at least improved minimally. This can be read in the 2022 report on the "Stateness Index" (StIx) on the website www.stateness-index.org.

A functioning state does not have to be democratic

According to the Stateness Index, a Cypriot currently lives in a "defective" state, just like a Moroccan or an Indian. Citizens from Luxembourg, Norway or Belgium, on the other hand, are lucky enough to live in a highly functional state, just like Germans. "Whether a state functions well or not does not always have something to do with democracy," says Theresa Paola Stawski. Singapore, for example, is not a democracy. Nevertheless, the political scientist's analysis showed that this country is at the top in terms of statehood. The United Arab Emirates is also in the field of highly functional states.

In a country where, for example, there is no freedom of speech, people can still be well provided with all the essentials of life. State research, Theresa Paola Stawski emphasizes, is not identical of democracy studies: "State research is even more fundamental." Nevertheless, it still forms a niche topic within political science. Theresa Paola Stawski has specialised in state research. The DFG research project "The Statehood Index StIx" under the direction of Professor Hans-Joachim Lauth, holder of the Chair of Comparative Politics and German Government, in which she was intensively involved, builds on her dissertation. In it, she dealt with the question of how states develop when democracies become autocracies. And vice versa.

Study over more than 70 years

The new Stateness Index covers a long period of time: the development of the various states since 1950 can be traced via the homepage. The homepage itself is in English, the german side follows later this year. Nevertheless, interested citizens can use it relatively easily. For example, the menu item "Online Analyses" leads to a page with "Settings". If you click on it, you can easily select all years between 1950 and 2022.

Classically, the analysis of states focuses on the state's monopoly on law, violence and administration, but that is by no means everything that constitutes a state. "We did not only measure the formal state, but we also looked at the informal side," explains Theresa Paola Stawski, who cooperated closely with Lukas Lemm from the Institute of Political Science in her research. This informal side concerns, for example, the topic of "corruption". The measuring system and the overall very innovative approach to measuring stateness distinguishes the project, which started in October 2021.

Changes of government have little effect

In some countries, you have to reckon with the fact that the law enforcement agencies are bribed. There may be enough police officers. But when police officers act in a biased way, it is bad for citizens. Well-done reforms can improve governance, according to Theresa Paola Stawski. Mere changes of government, on the other hand, often have little effect. This becomes clear when you go to "Online Analyses" and click on "Country": a graph appears showing Germany's stateness since 1950. There was a jump upwards after reunification. Since 1990, however, the curves have been relatively stable. Regardless of who was in power at the time.

Currently, there is a lot of loud complaining about the German state, but according to Theresa Paola Stawski, this should not mislead citizens. According to her analyses, Germany remains one of the world's best states. "Elsewhere there are famines, epidemics and serious diseases, and almost no medical care," she says. A lot of things that the German population takes for granted are not available at all or no longer available in many countries of the world. Which does not mean, according to the scientist, that citizens in this country should sit back and relax. Further improvements are possible through democratic participation.

Germany ahead of the USA

Incidentally, according to the index, Joe Biden, the President of the USA, is at the head of a state that functions very well, but nowhere near as well as Germany. The United States is only 23rd in the ranking. Ahead of the USA are, for example, Malta, Spain, France and Japan. Directly behind the United States are the Czech Republic, Austria, Canada and Barbados. Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands perform even better than Germany. But Germany could also learn from the Baltic state of Estonia.

Alarming antibiotic resistance discovered in war-torn Ukraine

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LUND UNIVERSITY

Researchers led by Lund University in Sweden have assisted microbiologists in Ukraine in investigating bacterial resistance among the war-wounded patients treated in hospitals. The results, which were recently published in TheLancet Infectious Diseases, reveal that many of the patients were affected by bacteria that exhibited an extremely high level of antibiotic resistance.

“I am quite thick-skinned and have witnessed numerous situations involving patients and bacteria. However, I must admit that I have never encountered bacteria as resistant as this before”, says Kristian Riesbeck, professor of Clinical Bacteriology at Lund University.

There was never any doubt about helping out when Dr. Oleksandr Nazarchuk, a microbiologist at a university in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, got in touch, says Kristian Riesbeck. Help was needed in Ukraine to assess the extent of antibiotic resistance in bacteria among severely injured patients in hospital.

In addition to all the human suffering caused by the war in Ukraine, another battle is being fought – an invisible war against resistant bacteria. This became evident when Kristian Riesbeck and his research colleagues analysed patient samples from seriously wounded patients, many of whom had burn injuries, in Ukraine. The patients had acquired infections while in hospital, primarily due to the overwhelmed wards and destroyed infrastructure. 

Samples were collected from a total of 141 war victims, 133 adults who sustained injures during the war and eight infants diagnosed with pneumonia. These patients were admitted to three different hospitals in Ukraine, where they received emergency surgeries and intensive care to address their conditions.

“We observed that several the Gram-negative bacteria exhibited resistance to broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents, including newly developed enzyme-inhibiting antibiotics that are not yet available in the market. Moreover, nearly ten per cent of the samples contained bacteria that demonstrated resistance even to “our last-resort” antibiotic, colistin. While we have encountered similar cases in India and China before, nothing compares to the extent of resistance observed in this study. As much as six per cent of all the samples contained bacteria resistant to every antibiotic we tested,” says Kristian Riesbeck.

He emphasizes that this clearly highlights the challenges posed by resistant bacteria in times of war. In particular, Kristian Riesbeck expresses concern regarding the resistance displayed by Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria, as they have the potential to cause illness in individuals with a healthy and well-functioning immune system.       

“This makes me very worried. It’s rare to encounter Klebsiella with such high levels of resistance, and it was not what we anticipated. While isolated cases have been documented in China, the magnitude of this situation surpasses anything we have seen before. While many countries are providing military aid and resources to Ukraine, it is equally crucial to assist them in addressing this ongoing situation. There is an evient risk of further spread of resistant bacteria, and this threatens the entire European region,” remarks Kristian Riesbeck. 

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JOURNAL

The Lancet Infectious Diseases

DOI

10.1016/S1473-3099(23)00291-8 

ARTICLE TITLE

Highly multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections in war victims in Ukraine, 2022