The surge in "unconventional" oil projects such as Alberta's Tar Sands in the last decade signals a shift in global production from relatively accessible conventional reserves to "frontier" oil. This paper examines one aspect of the oil/environment tension – the environmental regulatory system surrounding the tar sands – by adopting...
To analyze institutional dynamics, it is first necessary to determine when change has occurred, when not, and the nature and magnitude of change. If social institutions are defined in terms of rules, then a change of rules forms the core of institutional change. A number of complications arise from the...
Are the lending programs of the International Monetary Fund bad for democracy? The conventional wisdom is that the implementation of IMF conditional lending programs triggers cycles of austerity, social protest, and government repression that result in democratic backsliding. We present evidence which suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong. We...
This essay discusses the role of the ulama (Islamic scholars) in the 2007 Nigerian elections. Based on interviews and the political activities and statements of the twelve members of the ulama, most of whom are from Kano, the author observes four areas of consensus among these scholars: 1) The compatiblity...
Most scholars think of courts as a single category of adjudicative bodies or triadic dispute adjudication. But courts play a variety of roles in the domestic political system. Increasingly, the roles and tasks delegated to International Courts (ICs) mimic in form and content the roles and tasks delegated to courts...
On February 22, 2022, I gave a talk hosted by the African Studies Program of Georgetown University. Two days later, Russian battalions were sent across Ukraine’s borders by President Vladimir Putin. In real time, viewers around the world have seen immense distress unleashed on innocent citizens. In Africa, distress has...
The aviation industry is set to see another significant leap in new technology, namely electric aircraft. As of the time of this research, both 9-seat and 19-seat aircraft would be ready to be launched by air service providers under the Essential Air Service (EAS) program. While electric aircraft manufacturers are...
Cite this article: Shen, J., McFarland, A.G., Blaustein, R.A. et al. An improved workflow for accurate and robust healthcare environmental surveillance using metagenomics. Microbiome 10, 206 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-022-01412-x and Background: Effective surveillance of microbial communities in the healthcare environment is increasingly important in infection prevention. Metagenomics-based techniques are promising due to their untargeted nature but are currently challenged by several limitations: (1) they are not powerful enough to extract valid signals out of the background noise for low-biomass samples,...