Mature T- and natural killer (NK)-cell neoplasms comprise multiple distinct disease entities. Diagnosis and classification of these entities require the integration of morphology, immunophenotype and cyto- and molecular genetics and correlation with clinical presentation. Multiparameter flow cytometry (MFC) is an important tool to immunophenotype T and NK cells. Our knowledge of the constellation of immunophenotypic aberrancies associated with certain disease entities has increased by the simultaneous analysis of more markers and molecular genetic studies. Genotype-phenotype associations have been identified contributing to a better understanding of the disease biology and clinical behaviour. T- and NK-cell disease entities in which MFC plays a central role in the diagnosis and classification are reviewed in this chapter. T-cell clonality analysis by MFC has become an assay used in many diagnostic laboratories. The availability of the JOVI-1 antibody against the T-cell receptor β constant region 1 protein (TRBC1) has greatly facilitated the detection of clonal TCRαβ T cells with high specificity and sensitivity. Despite the major advances in the diagnostic flow cytometry assays for the detection of T- and NK-cell neoplasms, standardized protocols are needed to increase the accuracy of diagnosis and classification and facilitate the implementation of automated MFC data analysis.

Mayilamma – the Dalit woman leader of the anti-Cola water movement in Plachimada – explicitly told this author: ‘I do not know whether it was due to globalization or not, what I know is that our wells are getting dried up; whatever little water left was polluted.’ This political statement came at a time when water has rapidly become a contested commodity worldwide, with local communities in many parts of the world suffering the threat of multinationals working in collusion with the state apparatus to usurp their precious natural resources, including in Plachimada.

There has been a recent proliferation of scholarship on water conflict and governance, both within and outside political landscapes, attempting to address the various nuances of global and local governance strategies. Increasing concern has been expressed regarding the widespread social and political-ecological implications of current and potential ‘water wars’ and water conflicts. Water supply, once considered a public utility or a service, is now fast becoming a marketable commodity, one that is to be sold on a full cost-recovery basis, an approach that is vehemently opposed by social agencies, which fight back, often as part of a wider struggle, but also within specific locales. Such movements throw into stark relief the ironies inherent in the discourse–counter-discourse (Grillo and Stirrat 1997; Terdiman 1985; Ashcroft 2001; Daudi 1983; Escobar 1985; Byrant and Baily 1997) generated as part of the process of conflict resolution. And now ‘governance’ as a conflict-resolution strategy wrought through the multiple agencies of a legislative, institutional, and regulatory framework promoting equitable access to and ecologically sustainable management of water resources appears to be the new polemics. This chapter critically engages with the multiple knowledge conflicts and the multiple agencies involved in the vexed question of water access, power, and community rights in Plachimada, a small hamlet in the Palakkad district of the south Indian state of Kerala.

Social movements by themselves are not merely sensitizers of the public, but have an important role to play in exposing the ever-increasing threats to marginalized communities in terms of their livelihood, culture, and ecology. The social agencies involved in these movements are also credited with exposing the untruth in claims made by scientific and expert knowledge in their reproduction of hegemonic power relations that gnaw away at the roots of community existence and the right to live.

The Shephelah (Judean lowlands) was only sparsely inhabited in the Iron I, with just a string of small Canaanite villages surviving the upheavals of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries BCE, forming a tiny enclave between the Philistines in the coastal plain and the Israelites of the highlands. And yet, in the Iron IIA this same area became packed with towns. The chapter investigates this drastic change, taking place in the tenth century BCE, in tandem with many other changes addressed in other chapters. It shows that the resettlement of the Shephelah was a long process, and that about a generation after the failed attempt to settle Khirbet Qeiyafa, the settlers of Canaanite villages suddenly got off the fence and joined forces with the emerging Israelite polity. This phase is evident by the growth in size experienced by the small Canaanite villages in the first half of the tenth century, when some of them were even fortified, and the finds in them show clear connections with the nascent highland kingdom. Shortly afterward, as part of the colonization of the Shephelah by the United Monarchy, new sites were settled and fortified, exhibiting the growing power of the highland polity.

This chapter identifies factors that are extrinsic to norms and affect the stability of the alternate endings. Three classical elements of rhetoric guide the analysis: speakers, audiences, and arguments. The chapter first discusses my focus on critical states with decision-making authority. Speakers need the support of important audiences to avoid or reduce social and material costs of proposing "inappropriate" norm interpretations. Some audiences are more important than others: Speakers are likely to prioritize gaining approval for their norm interpretations from their in-groups and domestic audiences. The chapter gives guidance on identifying in-groups. Speakers try to gain support for their norm interpretations through their argumentation: We would expect the use of legal language and output legitimation when norm interpretations are openly proposed, and identity-based legitimation when actors try to hide exceptionalist norm interpretations. Lastly, I draw attention to a particular kind of speaker – agents to whom norm interpretation was delegated. When agents are involved, perceptions of agent competence also affect what interpretations can be upheld. The chapter concludes that audience reactions, argumentation, and delegation to agents affect the extent of collective expectations surrounding norm application, and thus norm strength.

The chapter discusses empires from a broader historical and anthropological perspective, defining the topic and revealing several false assumptions that led the entire discussion of the United Monarchy astray. The chapter shows that while scholars were often using the Roman or even the British empire as a model when assessing the United Monarchy, most empires had a different form, rising very quickly – often evolving not from “states” but from simpler forms of sociopolitical organization, in what is sometimes referred to a stateless empires – and then dissolving just as quickly, often a generation or two after their foundation. Both the very rapid growth of such empires and their rapid disintegration means that although such empires were common, they did not exist long enough to have material manifestations resembling Assyria or Rome. As examples, the chapter looks at the empires founded by Shaka and Genghis Khan as models of empires that seem to serve as better antecedents to the United Monarchy. The chapter concludes that the reconstruction of the United Monarchy presented in the book is very much in line with what is known historically and anthropologically about empires.

The Sharon Plain suffers from drainage problems and poor soil. For much of history, the region was only sparsely inhabited, suffering severe demographic fluctuations. The Iron Age IIA stands out as a period during which settlement in the Sharon, and especially in the Yarkon basin (the Sharon’s southernmost part), reached a peak before plummeting in the Iron Age IIB. What caused this unusual fluctuation? The only reason to build new settlements in the swampy Sharon was for serving as an inland polity’s outlet to the sea, so the key is to understand who could benefit from investing in this region, and especially in the Yarkon basin. A center in Samaria or the Hebron hill country would have had better port cities – Dor or Ashkelon, respectively. Only a polity with a center in the area around Jerusalem could benefit – and greatly so – from a port in the Yarkon basin. This, along with other lines of evidence (e.g., Excursus 8.1), suggests that the highland polity expanded to this area and controlled it for a few generations. Once the United Monarchy collapsed, there was no incentive to maintain the swampy region and the settlements were gradually abandoned.

The term “acute leukemia” actually covers a large number of different diseases. This is mostly related to the lineage involved, yet, even in a single lineage, differences exist according to the differentiation stage where maturation blockade occurred or to the type of chromosomal/molecular anomalies associated with the disease. This chapter provides a guide of how immunophenotypic anomalies, typically identified very early in the diagnosis process, can orient further cytogenetic or molecular investigations, allowing for a faster integrated diagnosis and better focused patient management.

This chapter first discusses how Bitcoin works in functional terms (as opposed to technical aspects), focusing on the structure of a decentralized, pseudonymous payment system. The chapter next discusses possible applications of the underlying blockchain technology, such as stock trading, property records, peer-to-peer sharing services, and smart contracts. Turning to the law, the chapter discusses several matters that the Uniform Commercial Code Amendments in 2022 addressed: A legal definition applicable to blockchain technologies, the negotiability of digital assets, the use of digital assets as collateral, and whether cryptocurrencies are money. The chapter then discusses some remaining issues, such as whether bitcoin transactions be traced and whether smart contracts are subject to contract law, and whether parties could opt out of contract law. Finally, the chapter looks specifically at the application of secured lending law to analogous transactions using smart contracts.

The rules which govern sacrifice and killing, their associated groups and inter-relations on a daily basis in Nepal are an extension of a larger socio-sacrificial cosmogony, one which exposes the causal relationship between blood sacrifice and socio-political organisation, in much the same way as they did in ancient Greece (Vernant 1979).

Two main principles emerge from the ethnography of sacrificial practices in western Nepal: first, that whosoever is entitled to kill is also entitled to sacrifice (with the result that killing and sacrificing are little differentiated in practice) and, second, that only those who are entitled to kill can themselves be killed. The right to kill thus traces lines of partition within society, lines which trace out a social structure which is parallel to that of the castes.

Whosoever can kill can sacrifice

In the region formerly occupied by the Twenty-Four and the Twenty-Two Kingdoms, apart from the Brahmins, who are forbidden to kill any animal whatsoever, any man can be a sacrificator or butcher, in the absence of caste-based specialisation in these roles, as is seen in the Kathmandu Valley. Killing is thus strongly associated with masculinity and takes on an initiatory character. Since childhood, boys aspire to be entrusted with this responsibility and it is not uncommon to see them insisting on the right to kill their first chicken. Permission is granted to them by their parents only once they are old enough not to cause the animal undue harm. Indeed, causing the victim to suffer is a fault, pāp, one which brings harmful consequences to the one who causes it. If a young boy kills a chicken in the wrong way, a member of his family rushes to blow phuphu on the sickle used in order to ‘drop the blame’. Sometimes even in a ritual context, a botched sacrifice must be repaired by another small sacrifice, of a baby chick.

Anyone who is entitled to kill can also sacrifice, at least for themselves. There are some Nepalis who have never killed an animal nor consumed meat outside of a sacrificial framework, like a Sārkī family I met in Dullu in 2012, for instance.