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This thought-provoking text presents a fresh synthesis of the principles of social evolution that underlie the major transitions, explaining how the basic theory underpinning social evolution - inclusive fitness theory - is central to understanding each event.

In his Politica: Politics Methodically set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples published in 1603 Johannes Althusius' sets out his grand scheme of republican federalism. Soon, however, the final establishment of the territorial state and the paradigm of statism relegated grand federalism to the distant margins of constitutional theory. Statism as concisely enunciated in this article, recognises only two entities namely the state as a centralised power apparatus and the abstract individual on whom a statist identity in the image of the state is enforced. Statism dispenses with communities. Statism has been playing out on a continuum, with the statist-individualism on the one and statist-collectivism on the opposite extreme. Statist-individualism seeks to fend off the risks of supreme political power with strategies for the protection of individual rights. In contrast, statist-collectivism dispenses with the subtleties of statist-individualism and is distinctively more blatant in forging a homogeneous statist nation. In the face of the rise of claims of communities, the emergence of communitarian thinking and increased evidence of the receding territorial state, new - post statist - constitutional thinking is gathering strength. This has unleashed considerable interest in alternative thinking such as that of Althusius. Althusius' grand federalism should be viewed, however, within the context of his broader constitutional thinking, which on close analysis, is constituted by four interlinked aspects namely: piety, justice and community; covenant (or contract); supremacy of the commonwealth and of the law; and political authority and public office. These tenets are the main focus of the present discussion. There is no room for a blanket transplantation of Althusian thinking into modern constitutional theory. However, it does provide a valuable source of communitarian theory for contemporary constitutional law. It brings to light that (individual) identity, morality, and a happy life and individual ...

This article discusses the primary structures Johannes Althusius' constitutionalism, as explained in his Politica: Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples published in 1603. The first of these structures and the theme that Althusius is most famous for, is his scheme of grand republican federalism. The second is the public office of the ephors. The discussion is not primarily historical, however. The main aim, instead, is to assess the potential relevance of Althusius' thinking for present-day constitutionalism. After centuries of at best scant relevance owing to the dominance of the statist paradigm in constitutional doctrine and practice, the decline of this paradigm is now creating considerable new interest in Althusius' thinking. The discussion starts off with a concise account of the statist paradigm, which was at its advent in Althusius' days. Thereafter follows an exposition of his federalism which consists of a set of associations, beginning with the closest-knit association, namely the family, spiralling out into the most encompassing association, which is the commonwealth or realm, with collegia, cities and provinces in between. The office of the supreme magistrate is dealt with under this heading. This discussion also focusses pertinently on the question of sovereignty, which in Althusian conceptualisation was a diffuse popular sovereignty in contrast to that of his statist opponents, more specifically Jean Bodin, and in posterity, Thomas Hobbes. Then follows an assessment of the public office of the (council of the) ephors, which assists the supreme magistrate in executing his responsibilities in accordance with the law and the covenant between the commonwealth and the magistrate and serves a as counterbalance of authority and power against the sovereign. Against this backdrop Althusius' constitutional thinking is evaluated. First, his constitutionalism is placed in historical context in contrast to (1) classical polis-based thought; (2) medieval imperial ...

The Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative is a joint development program between the governments of Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa, which includes malaria control as a core component of the initiative. Vector control through indoor residual spraying (IRS) was incrementally introduced in southern Mozambique between November 2000 and February 2004. Surveillance to monitor its impact was conducted by annual cross-sectional surveys to assess the prevalence of Plasmodium falciparum infection, entomologic monitoring, and malaria case notification in neighboring South Africa and Swaziland. In southern Mozambique, there was a significant reduction in P. falciparum prevalence after the implementation of IRS, with an overall relative risk of 0.74 for each intervention year (P < 0.001), ranging from 0.66 after the first year to 0.93 after the fifth intervention year. Substantial reductions in notified malaria cases were reported in South Africa and Swaziland over the same period. The success of the program in reducing malaria transmission throughout the target area provides a strong argument for investment in regional malaria control.

Methods: In an effort to study sex-specific genetic factors associated with PD, we explored 2 large genetic datasets from the International Parkinson?s Disease Genomics Consortium and the UK Biobank consisting of 13,020male PD cases, 7,936 paternal proxy cases, 89,660 male controls, 7,947 female PD cases, 5,473 maternal proxy cases, and 90,662 female controls. We performed GWASmeta-analyses to identify distinct patterns of genetic risk contributing to disease inmale versus female PD cases. Results: In total, 19 genomewide significant regions were identified and no sex-specific effects were observed. A high genetic correlation between the male and female PD GWAS were identified (rg = 0.877) and heritability estimates were identical between male and female PD cases (~ 20%). Interpretation: We did not detect any significant genetic differences between male or female PD cases. Our study does not support the notion that common genetic variation on the autosomes could explain the difference in prevalence of PD between males and females cases at least when considering the current sample size under study. Further studies are warranted to investigate the genetic architecture of PD explained by X and Y chromosomes and further evaluate environmental effects that could potentially contribute to PD etiology in male versus female patients. ; FUNDING: This work was supported in part by the Intramural Research Programs of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences both part of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services; Project numbers 1ZIA-NS003154, Z01-AG000949-02, and Z01-ES101986. In addition, this work was supported by the Department of Defense (award W81XWH-09-2-0128), and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants R01NS037167, R01CA141668, and P50NS071674, American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA); Barnes Jewish Hospital Foundation; Greater St Louis Chapter of the APDA. The KORA (Cooperative Research in the Region of Augsburg) research platform was started and financed by the Forschungszentrum für Umwelt und Gesundheit, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Technology and by the State of Bavaria. This study was also funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the funding code 031A430A, the EU Joint Programme - Neurodegenerative Diseases Research (JPND) project under the aegis of JPND -www.jpnd.eu – through Germany, BMBF, funding code 01ED1406 and iMed – the Helmholtz Initiative on Personalized Medicine. This study utilized the high-performance computational capabilities of the Biowulf Linux cluster at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA (http://biowulf.nih.gov), and DNA panels, samples, and clinical data from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Human Genetics Resource Center DNA and Cell Line Repository. People who contributed samples are acknowledged in descriptions of every panel on the repository website. We thank P. Tienari (Molecular Neurology Programme, Biomedicum, University of Helsinki), T. Peuralinna (Department of Neurology, Helsinki University Central Hospital), L. Myllykangas (Folkhalsan Institute of Genetics and Department of Pathology, University of Helsinki), and R. Sulkava (Department of Public Health and General Practice Division of Geriatrics, University of Eastern Finland) for the Finnish controls (Vantaa85+ GWAS data). This study was also funded by the Sigrid Juselius Foundation (KM). We used genomewide association data generated by the Wellcome Trust Case–Control Consortium 2 (WTCCC2) from UK patients with Parkinson's disease and UK control individuals from the 1958 Birth Cohort and National Blood Service. UK population control data was made available through WTCCC1. As with previous IPDGC efforts, this study makes use of data generated by the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium. A full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available from www.wtccc.org.uk. Funding for the project was provided by the Wellcome Trust under awards 076113, 085475, and 090355. This study was also supported by Parkinson's UK (grants 8047 and J-0804) and the Medical Research Council (G0700943 and G1100643). Sequencing and genotyping done in McGill University was supported by grants from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF), awarded to McGill University for the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives (HBHL) program and Parkinson's Society Canada. The access to part of the participants at McGill has been made possible thanks to the Quebec Parkinson's Network (http://rpq-qpn.ca/en). We thank the Quebec Parkinson's Network (http://rpq-qpn.org) and its members. Harvard NeuroDiscovery Biomarker Study (HBS) is a collaboration of HBS investigators and funded through philanthropy and NIH and Non-NIH funding sources. The HBS Investigators have not participated in reviewing the data analysis or content of the manuscript. PPMI – a public-private partnership – is funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and funding partners, the full names of all of the PPMI funding partners can be found at www.ppmi-info.org/ fundingpartners. The PPMI Investigators have not participated in reviewing the data analysis or content of the manuscript. For up-to-date information on the study, visit www.ppmi-info.org. Parkinson's Disease Biomarker Program (PDBP) consortium is supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health. A full list of PDBP investigators can be found at https://pdbp.ninds.nih.gov/ policy. The PDBP Investigators have not participated in reviewing the data analysis or content of the manuscript