covid-19 and the Role of the State: Evidence from Keren, Eritrea

The covid-19 pandemic has caused the worst socio-economic disruption since World War ii. From the integral state perspective, this article explores the Eritrean government’s pandemic response and the ramifications for its people. The study seeks to understand the measures taken by the government to contain the virus and their immediate impact on the residents of the city of Keren, using individual stories, in-depth interviews, participant observations, media sources, and archival resources gathered from local and national resource centres in Eritrea between March and July 2020. According to the findings, the state’s main measures were restricting large gathering, maintaining complete or partial lockdowns, quarantining persons who might be infected, closing non-essential shops and stores, setting up hotline services, and running massive media campaigns. However, these measures hurt the livelihoods of the majority of residents, leaving many households without any way to earn a living.

Analysis and Evaluation of Comprehensive Competitiveness of China’s Main Coastal Ports

As the center of national resource strategy and global resource allocation, the port is of great significance in economic development and foreign trade. The implementation of “The Belt and Road” initiative makes China’s ports play a more prominent role in foreign trade than before. As the dominant node of the maritime route of the Silk Road, China’s ports are facing great opportunities and challenges. With the increasing economic pressure in the world, the competition of ports is increasingly fierce, and the ports are facing a severe challenge. This paper analyzes the basic problems and explores how to develop further in China’s coastal major ports along “The Belt and Road”. The evaluation factors of port comprehensive competitiveness are selected to establish the evaluation index system. The factors of 13 ports are defined by SPSS software to obtain the ranking of comprehensive competitiveness of the ports through the ladder comparison with cluster analysis. Based on the result, the appropriate policy is suggested.

NRMNet: Building a National Resource for Mentorship, Networking and Professional Development to Enhance Diversity

Background: To address the need for diver­sifying the biomedical research workforce, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) established the Diversity Program Consor­tium (DPC) with the goal of developing, implementing, assessing, and disseminating interventions and programs to enhance the participation and persistence of individu­als from underrepresented backgrounds in biomedical research careers.Intervention: As part of the DPC initia­tive, the NIH funded the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), which aimed to increase diversity of the biomedical research workforce through culturally responsive mentorship, networking, and professional development. In 2015, the NRMNet portal was developed to provide a broad-based network of mentors who are accessible to diverse mentees across the country. The portal also provides network­ing and professional development resources that support mentee transitions from one career stage to the next.Results: NRMNet is the gateway for career stage-specific mentorship, networking, resources, and professional development programs for trainees across the biomedi­cal, behavioral, clinical, and social sciences. In the first five years, the NRMN strategic recruitment efforts resulted in an expanded network of nearly 13,000 diverse mentors and mentees with NRMN representation in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Consistently, over the first five years, racial and ethnic diversity was reflected in composition of mentee and mentor groups: 66% of 6,526 mentees and 33% of 3,866 mentors were from underrepresented groups.Conclusions: The NRMNet portal is a promising effort for enhancing participation and continued engagement of undrerepre­sented individuals in biomedical research careers by providing culturally responsive mentorship, networking, and professional development for individuals at all career stages.Ethn Dis. 2021;31(3):469-480; doi:10.18865/ed.31.3.469

THE ROLE OF RESERVE COMPONENT IN SUPPORTING TOTAL PEOPLE’S DEFENSE AND SECURITY SYSTEM (SISHANKAMRATA) TO CONFRONT THE THREAT OF THE SIXTH GENERATION WARFARE

<div><p class="Els-history-head">The exponential growth of information and communication technology in this globalization era brings enormous changes to the new world order. This also shifts the warfare paradigm to a new generation. The traditional conventional threats (physically) have developed into multidimensional (physical and non-physical) ones. The Total People’s Defense and Security System (SISHANKAMRATA) adopted by the Indonesian is considered to be one of the most appropriate defense systems in confronting the threat of every war generation. The components of SISHANKAMRATA consist of the Indonesian National Military (TNI) as the main component and the National resources coming as the reserve and support component. Government Regulation Number 3 of 2021 concerning National Resource Management as a juridical basis regulating the components in the SISHANKAMRATA has just been passed. This study aims to explore the role of the reserve component as a national resource contributing to confronting the threat of the new generation of war; the sixth generation warfare. The method used in this study was a narrative analysis by developing literature studies, and previous researches. The results of this study confirm that the role of the reserve components is very important in SISHANKAMRATA facing the threat of modern warfare, including the sixth generation warfare.</p></div>

Better Understanding the Catastrophe Risk in Interconnection and Comprehensive Disaster Risk Defense Capability, with Special Reference to China

Catastrophe risk governance has become one of the key issues affecting global sustainable development. As great changes have taken place in the global social ecosystem, the degree of interconnection between different regions in today’s society is much greater than ever before. Various types of contact networks, e.g., the production chain and supply chain, have been created, which provide diversified channels for the spread of catastrophe risk across time and space. In the context of interconnection, this paper first analyzes the drastic changes of the current disaster risk system. Severe catastrophe risk has posed a great threat to the highly growing international trade, and has also tested the capabilities of national comprehensive disaster defense. Thus, this paper analyzes the main characteristics of China’s comprehensive disaster defense capability, including physical, social, and humanistic defense capability. Finally, this paper puts forward the key points to resolve catastrophe risk from the perspective of decision-makers, including improving the decision-makers’ ability to study and judge the catastrophe chain and the impact of catastrophe, and the national resource reserve capacity to cope with the catastrophe.

The National Institutes of Health COVID-19 NeuroDatabank and NeuroBiobank: A National Resource for Learning, Discovery, and Progress

Patients suffering from COVID-19 experience a wide range of symptoms and sequelae, including increasingly recognized neurological problems. A concerted effort is necessary to identify and characterize these issues, whether newly appearing as a result of COVID-19 disease or exacerbations of underlying conditions. A national resource to collect information and/or biospecimens regarding neurological complications of COVID-19 offers an opportunity for broad representation, harmonization, and rapid learning, all while ensuring robust protection of confidential information through the use of global unique identifiers to protect patient privacy.