Starvation

We investigated whether spiders fed lipid-rich rather than protein-rich prey elevate metabolism to avoid carrying excessive lipid deposits, or whether they store ingested lipids as a buffer against possible future starvation. We fed wolf spiders (Pardosa prativaga) prey of different lipid:protein compositions and measured the metabolic rate of spiders using closed respirometry during feeding and fasting. After a 16-day feeding period, spider lipid:protein composition was significantly affected by the lipid:protein composition of their prey. Feeding caused a large and fast increase in metabolism. The cost of feeding and digestion was estimated to average 21% of the ingested energy irrespective of diet. We found no
difference in basal metabolic rate between dietary treatments. During starvation ˙VO2 and ˙VCO2 decreased gradually, and the larger lipid stores in spiders fed lipid-rich prey appeared to extend survival of these spiders under starvation compared to spiders fed protein-rich prey. The results show that these spiders do not adjust metabolism in order to maintain a constant body composition when prey nutrient composition varies. Instead, lipids are stored efficiently and help to prepare the spiders for the long periods of food deprivation that may occur as a consequence of their opportunistic feeding strategy.

The career of the third Viscount Palmerston as foreign secretary and prime minister has been thoroughly studied, but few are aware that he was one of the first Irish landlords to finance the emigration of starving tenants during the great Irish famine. Although the first boatloads of emigrants were well outfitted, by the end of 1847 Palmerston stood accused of cruelly mistreating his departing tenants. One Canadian official compared conditions on the vessels he chartered to those of the slave trade. Given the tremendous detail with which historians have scrutinized Palmerston's long career, it is surprising that no thorough account of either the management of his Irish estate or of his emigration scheme has ever been written. An examination of the programme under which 2,000 residents of Palmerston's Sligo estate fled to America in 1847 adds significantly to our understanding of the career of one of Britain's most important nineteenth-century statesmen, the complicated m...

The concept of processes scheduling has had a major role since the advent of operating scheduling policies, the CPU plays a significant role in the computer system by transferring control between different processes and must work efficiently, the operating system performs a basic task, which is scheduling the processor for its efficient and optimized use. Scheduling the processor is one of the most important operational implemented through the operating system. Different algorithms for processor scheduling exist including the scheduling algorithm of priority. The priority number makes the algorithm effective. In this research, a proposed algorithm for scheduling the processor between processes was adopted using the KNAPSACK algorithm in order to eliminate the waiting state and starvation situation that occurs for low priority processes.

Merely “surreal” might describe the interview given by Aqua America’s CEO, Nick DeBenedictis, to Crissa Shoemaker DeBree did the fact that he is lying not portend such devastating consequences for so many people. The security of the nation’s water supply is an important, but often silent, priority for water companies, said the head of Aqua America. The worldview evinced in DeBenedictis’ brief interview with DeBree is not, in fact, surreal; it’s not even “merely” self-deluded. Rather, it epitomizes the “up is down,” “true is false,” “the sky is pink” (thanks Josh Fox) propaganda promoted by the hydraulic fracturing corporations and their associates in order to justify the construction of 200,000 fracked wells, their attendant compressor stations, water withdrawal depots, freshwater impoundments, and “produced water” deep injection disposal wells. For DeBenedictis, the sky is pink—and water is the green of a big fat dollar bill.

Three distinct but related concepts have been used to estimate the numbers of people affected by hunger and to analyze the global food situation: food shortage, food poverty, and food deprivation. They focus on different aspects of the phenomenon of hunger and different levels of aggregation involved in its study. Food shortage occurs when total food supplies within a designated area—the world as a whole or continents, countries, or regions within countries—are insufficient to meet the needs of its population. Food poverty refers to the situation in which households cannot obtain enough food to meet the needs of all their members. Food deprivation refers to inadequate individual consumption of food or specific nutrients, also known as undernutrition. The relationships between food shortage, food poverty, and food deprivation are complex. If a region suffers a food shortage, some households will be food poor, and at least one household member will suffer food deprivation. Conversely, food poverty also can (and does) occur within regions where there is no aggregate food shortage, and individual food deprivation can occur in households that are not food poor. The key factor in both cases is distribution.

Na memória colectiva do povo da ilha de S. Vicente, este acto de guerra ficou registado como uma ajuda alimentar à população durante a crise alimentícia provocada pelas secas de 1916-18.
O autor investigou as fontes alemãs, brasileiras, portuguesas e cabo-verdianas e chegou a conclusão diferente.

"The connection between human rights law and suffering has its roots in recent history: the development of international human rights norms after the Second World War was an immediate response to the Holocaust, which would become the symbol of extreme human suffering for post-war generations. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself was to large extent informed by the full discovery, during the Nuremberg trials, of the atrocities committed in the Nazi concentration camps.
However, human rights theory has traditionally paid little attention to the problem of suffering as such, which has been usually regarded just as the implicit psychological underpinning of human rights violations, but not as a legally relevant concept in itself. It is only in the last few decades that greater awareness has developed about the need to take pain and suffering more seriously and explicitly into account in the implementation of every human rights policy. Modern societies are just beginning to realize that the moral duty to prevent human suffering must play a crucial role in the discussions about the form and content of human rights, and that the cornerstone of human rights must be a concern for human suffering.
This chapter first argues that the whole human rights movement can be regarded as a social response to suffering; second, it claims that, although suffering is not the foundation of human rights, it is a factor that crucially contributes to their recognition; finally, it analyzes how three concrete forms of human suffering are addressed by human rights instruments: torture, starvation, and terminal illness. "

Programs intended to improve nutrition often fall short of expectations. One exception, however, occurred during the rationing years of World War II, when U.S. citizens were
encouraged to incorporate protein-rich organ meats into their protein-deficient diets. Unfortunately, most of the insights resulting from these efforts remained unpublished or in limited distribution. For the first time, the author synthesizes selected studies from this era
according to how the program restructured social norms, changed perceptions of taste, and helped assimilate variety into the U.S. diet. The author discusses the behaviorally driven
implications from these “lost lessons” in the context of the empirical contributions they made in defining what makes an unfavorable food acceptable.

This paper argues that the Rome Statute must be amended to include a prohibition of the intentional starvation of civilians in NIACs, particularly in light of the current state of international humanitarian law and customary international law which outlaws such a practice across the board, as well as in consideration of the fact that starvation as a method of war is more often used and more detrimental in contemporary NIACs. This paper will put forth several reasons why the Rome Statute should be amended, including that the use of civilian starvation as a method of warfare may be more readily used and more detrimental in the NIAC context; that the practice of charging alternate crimes, including other war crimes or crimes against humanity that go toward the same conduct, does not capture the full nature of intentional starvation and presents a host of other concerns; and, that the correct labeling of a crime is imperative for fairness toward both the accused as well as the victims of the crime.

This paper was presented at Leeds IMC 2016.

In 1400, the deposed Richard II died at Pontefract Castle.  Rumours swirled that he had died fighting his assassins or that he was secretly alive and hiding in Scotland.  However, the official Lancastrian line, conveyed by Thomas Walsingham in his chronicles, was that Richard had starved to death unintentionally, faulting no one for this sad event.  Later chroniclers would not follow this line; someone -- be it Richard II or Henry IV -- had to be responsible.  This paper explores the literary evolution of Richard II's death narrative and examines the religious and social context of these events.  Ironically, one of Thomas Walsingham's major criticisms of Henry IV's funeral for Richard was the lack of a meal for guests, a prescribed part of royal funerals. A king suffered a pauper’s death, though not quite a pauper’s funeral.

La società futura non estenderà gli attuali metodi bestiali, pardon, civili, a tutta la terra. Sfrutterà la scienza dell'alimentazione portandola a mete ben diverse che non la pura e semplice produttività. Perché questa, ed è persino un luogo tristemente comune ripeterlo, è vertiginosa per azienda, ma è fallimentare per la massa degli uomini: 100 milioni di uomini muoiono ogni anno per malnutrizione; 340 milioni sono cronicamente ammalati per lo stesso motivo; 730 milioni non hanno sufficiente denaro per nutrirsi con le calorie indispensabili a sopportare un lavoro qualsiasi.

In 2018, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2417, that condemned the deliberate use of starvation as a method of warfare and urged states to investigate and seek accountability for starvation crimes. Despite the state consensus, to date, there are no international criminal prosecutions for starvation of civilians in armed conflict. Concerned with the widespread use of starvation-tactics in the modern-day armed conflicts, this study inquires whether foreseeable ‘incidental starvation’ can trigger individual criminal responsibility under the war crime of starvation Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. The term ‘incidental starvation’, is intended to encompass all instances of foreseeable civilian starvation that occurred as a result of military actions, without it being the primary or the main goal of the conduct in question. The study clarifies the scope of the war crime in international criminal law, with particular focus on the necessary mental standard (mens rea). In doing so, it examines the corresponding prohibition on the use of starvation as a method of warfare in International Humanitarian Law. This study concludes that ‘incidental starvation’ can meet the necessary mental element of the war crime of starvation, however, it is likely to be a challenging task. Therefore, when necessary, the IHL principles of proportionality, precaution and distinction can assist in discerning the overall purpose of the attacks, helping the prosecutor to determine the intent of the perpetrator. The relevance of these findings is exemplified with a brief analysis of the Saudi Arabi-led coalition de facto blockade during the ongoing war in Yemen.

Food and nutrition became a crucial problem in wartime Russia. This problem may be considered as three closely related questions. The first of these concerns food production and consumption, the second is associated with the state's efforts to defuse a crisis of supply, and the third is related to ways of surviving attempted by different social groups. The crisis of supply strengthened gradually throughout the war and became a cause of the February Revolution in 1917. The various approaches to solving the problem demonstrated the weakness of official power and the social disturbances which prevented the old regime from passing unchanged through the war.

Se, come è vero e come Marx dimostra, una certa rendita, molto bassa, sta anche sulle terre dei "latifondi", lo Stato riformatore acchiapperebbe sempre un qualcosa (come dimostrammo altra volta, con le cifre dell'agricoltura nazionale, una miseria) ma alla condizione di mettersi a fare il rentier mantenendo i già esistenti capitalisti agrari, ossia i nostrali affittaiuoli e fermiers, i fittatori di Campania, i gabellotti di Sicilia, gli industrianti di campagna (termine teoricamente impeccabile) di Calabria, che potrebbero pagare il canone redditiero traendolo dal sopralavoro dei contadini braccianti. Ricardo, stoico ma non cinico (come i filibustieri in circolazione), avrebbe fatto così.

Tirando fuori invece la formula sciagurata della parcellazione ai contadini, la coglioneria iperbolica di un'agricoltura feudale e non passata, tra le prime del mondo, al pieno modo borghese di gestione, non si è fatto che distruggere la magra rendita assoluta che non ripartisce tra i contadini proprietari altro che la condanna ad erogare doppie ore di lavoro per grano da campare e rate da pagare, dato e fin quando non fuggano dal lotto. Quanto alle pingui rendite differenziali, esse restano sacrosante, a disposizione del capitale della Speculazione italiana, che se per principio detesta l'investimento agrario, tanto meno lo avrebbe fatto mai nella "terra peggiore", ove invece bisognava portarlo, la corda al collo, a calci nel sedere.

I exposed this paper at the Conference 'Current Issues of Social Sciences and Humanities', which took place at the Department of Ethics and Aesthetics of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the National University of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, on Friday, 29 April 2022. The paper has been published in the Proceedings of the Conference, pp. 8-20. My principal aim in this analysis is to describe Sen’s meditation as a teaching against fatalism, indifference, resignation and inaction: Sen’s criticism of these attitudes aims to uncover the deep roots of these attitudes themselves, since these attitudes conceal precise responsibilities. Sen fights both in economics and in ethics against every form of concealing, under the idea of the unavoidability of nature, failures due to human mistakes. Unavoidable destiny proves to be, actually, as not so unavoidable as someone would like to present it. For instance, Sen’s opinion that famines are not a natural, but a social phenomenon aims to uncover all the attempts to present famines as something unavoidable, in relation to which the only solution is resignation. Sen’s intention is clearly to say that famines have precise responsibilities, and that those who present famines as natural phenomenon want to conceal their own responsibilities for the insurgence of famines. Governments try to blame on nature the cause of catastrophes, whereas the causes of social catastrophes are to be connected to the inefficiency of governments. In particular, I would like to concentrate my exposition on the following themes:
• Sen’s criticism of the thesis of food shortages as the (only) cause of famines.
• Famines happening when there is no political will that want to fight against the factors bringing to the famines. Persons, and not nature, are responsible for the occurring of famines.
• Sen’s defense of democracy as a system which is compatible with economic growth against all those who considers democracy as an obstacle to economic growth.
Keywords Sen, famine, starvation, Ricardo, fatalism, entitlement, freedom, democracy, development