Seize the opportunity Will the government's white paper The Health of the Nation (p 135)'2 turn out to be the most important measure for improving the health of the English people since the birth of the NHS or just so much hot air? Following strong leads from the World Health Organisation,'4 it sets out an ambitious programme for shifting the focus of the health service from sickness to health....

ISBN 978-1-906837-78-5 Cover design: lukejefford.com E ach day seems to bring fresh warnings of the pressuresbearing down on the NHS. As resources fail to keep trackof demand, the principle of universal healthcare is under threat as never before. Excessive waiting times, the rationing of new drugs, ambulances queuing up outside A&E, staff shortages, the list goes on. What has brought the NHS to...

Nationalism creates and recreates a sense of distinctive identity and autonomy based on the Enlightenment idea of human freedom that enables people to survive in a modern world in which unpredictable change has become the norm. While, in the medieval world, the feudal states invoked religion and cultural resources to make people servile, the modern state invokes identity in a language of servin...

This paper explores how the increase in army size observed in early modern times changed the way states conducted wars. Starting in the late 18th century, states switched from mercenaries to a mass army by conscription. We model the incentives of soldiers to exert effort in war and show that as army size increases paying mercenaries is no longer optimal. In order for the population to accept fi...

For much of its existence, Nigeria was governed by the military. From 1960 to 2007, a total of forty-seven years, the military ruled for twenty-nine years. The remaining eighteen years was taken up by civilian rule. The search for a functional and cohesive Nigeria was a constant leitmotiv that ran throughout the period. This search is what has been termed nation-building. The federal government...

Whereas members of the Navajo Nation are at high risk for diabetes mellitus, there are no recent published estimates of the burden of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), an important sequela of diabetes, on the Navajo Nation, a 16 million acre area in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah with more than 200 000 tribal members. We used data from the US Renal Data System to estimate the prevalence and incide...

A new analog for the giant polygons in the Chryse-Acidalia area suggests that those features may have formed in a major body of water – likely a Late Hesperian to Early Amazonian ocean. This analog -terrestrial polygons in subsea, passive margin basinsderives from 3D seismic data that show similar-scale, polygonal fault systems in the subsurface of more than 50 terrestrial offshore basins. The ...