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The preemptive turn in counterterrorism has turned future uncertainties into key objects of contemporary security governance. From an empirically grounded perspective, this article contributes with novel insight into the everyday practices of preemptive politics. Focusing on Ghana as a unique case through which to trace how the mobilization of affect accelerates the transnational proliferation of counterterrorism measures and the commodification of future uncertainty, it shows how the global War on Terror has shaped the emergence of counterterrorism in a context characterized by the absence of terrorist attacks on home soil. Exploring how preemption animates outreach activities, simulation exercises, and nighttime patrols, it shows how police officers attempt to make uncertain futures tangible and actionable through practices of imagination and performance. Aimed at assessing terrorist threats that have not (yet) materialized, the article argues that preemptive policing practices cause a conflation of ordinary crime and extraordinary terror that inflates already existing uncertainties and subverts the institutional security logics of preemption.

While divided cities are characterized by spatially cemented segregation and polarized divisions, the trembling city is organized around transient and transformative borders. We conceptualize this notion of urban space to capture Freetown’s war-peace transition in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ex-combatants settled on the city margins, bringing with them spatial strategies from war-fighting into the city by recreating a system of bases. The Sierra Leone Police (SLP) re-emerged with external support, seeking to compartmentalize and fixate Freetown through a combination of force and negotiation. We use borders and bordering to understand policing as attempts by both ex-combatants and the SLP to border in as well as out; defensively against external interference and offensively to make territorial claims. By extension, it is tensions in these practices between attempts to defend and harden borders, and at the same time, expand and soften them that trigger a tremble. The city tremble was a reminder of the possibility of war that Freetown very easily could return to. It also became a more general and inconspicuous condition of the city as an inhabited space, where multiple and often incompatible and conflictual spatial logics, strategies, and practices of policing clashed, overlapped and co-existed uneasily.

This special issue introduces a conceptual framework for ethnographies of urban policing that foregrounds how defining features of the city produce police work, and in turn, how police work produces the city. To address how the mutually productive relationship of policing and the city shape current transformations in the ordering of urban space, the notions of borders and bordering are invoked. In contemporary cities across the global North and South, borders and bordering practices are reconfigured to address mobilities and flows deemed to threaten social order and have thus become manifestations of fear and anxiety linked to these mobilities and flows. At the core of our framework is the argument that urban policing is principally a practice of bordering. By approaching urban policing as a practice of bordering that is informed by material and imaginary manifestations, tensions between (de)territorializing and (de)stabilization are highlighted as both the vehicle and outcome of bordering practices. These tensions, we propose, can be captured through the concept of trembling. Trembling implies both a physical and emotional response to anxiety, excitement and frailty that is paradoxically built into borders and bordering practices.

Through the case of Ghana, this article proposes a link between international peacekeeping deployments and national processes of stabilisation. Based on fieldwork among soldiers and police officers, it explores how peacekeeping experiences are transferred and translated into security provision at home within the field of counterterrorism. Introducing the notion of the ‘peacekeeping-counterterrorism assemblage’ as an analytical lens for unpacking the co-production of external and internal security provision and, more specifically, the processes and practices through which international peacekeeping experiences become entangled with national counterterror policing, the article empirically unfolds the relational and societal impact of peacekeeping on domestic security. The exposure to the human consequences of warfare in peacekeeping missions, the article shows, has nurtured a profound awareness of keeping war at a distance, which may have a preventive effect on the policing of the threat of terrorism, as well as on the broader dynamics of domestic security and stability in Ghana

Arterial vasodilation and hyperdynamic circulation are considered hallmarks of the pathophysiological mechanisms of decompensation in cirrhosis. However, detailed characterization of peripheral, splanchnic, renal, and cardiac hemodynamic have not previously been published in a spectrum from healthy stage to advanced decompensated liver disease with hepatorenal syndrome-acute kidney injury (HRS-AKI).We included 87 patients with cirrhosis and 27 healthy controls in this prospective cohort study. The population comprised patients with compensated cirrhosis (n = 27) and decompensated cirrhosis (n = 60); patients with decompensated cirrhosis were further separated into subsets of responsive ascites (33), refractory ascites (n = 16), and HRS-AKI (n = 11). We measured portal pressure and assessed regional blood flow by magnetic resonance imaging.Patients with compensated cirrhosis experienced higher azygos venous flow and higher hepatic artery flow fraction of cardiac index than controls ( Plt; 0.01), but other flow parameters were not significantly different. Patients with decompensated cirrhosis experienced significantly higher cardiac index ( Plt; 0.01), higher superior mesenteric artery flow ( P = 0.01), and lower systemic vascular resistance ( Plt; 0.001) compared with patients with compensated cirrhosis. Patients with HRS-AKI had the highest cardiac output and lowest renal flow of all groups ( Plt; 0.01 and P = 0.02, respectively). Associations of single hemodynamic parameters were stronger with model for end-stage liver disease than with portal pressure.The regional cardiocirculatory changes seem closely linked to clinical symptoms with 3 distinguished hemodynamic stages from compensated to decompensated cirrhosis and, finally, to HRS-AKI. The attenuated renal perfusion despite high cardiac output in patients with HRS-AKI challenges the prevailing pathophysiological hypothesis of cardiac dysfunction as a causal factor in HRS-AKI. Finally, magnetic resonance imaging seems an accurate and reliable noninvasive method to assess hemodynamics and has potential as a diagnostic tool in patients with cirrhosis.

As part of risk assessment for helicopter hoisting operations a measurement campaign for practical evaluation of charge voltage and energy of an aircraft was performed.An electrostatic field meter setup was developed and tested using a drone setup and a helicopter setup. The measurement capability of the setups was demonstrated as being useable. The conversion factor between static field meter reading and the helicopter to ground potential as function of distance (height above ground) for the test setup has been derived and showed an inverse square root proportionality. This allowed for a helicopter potential measurement system without conductive wires between the helicopter and ground. The generation of electrostatic charging for a helicopter was confirmed using the developed test setup although weather conditions only allowed retrieval of one data series.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) denotes a condition with excess fat in the liver. The prevalence of NAFLD is increasing, averaging > 25% of the Western population. In 25% of the patients, NAFLD progresses to its more severe form: nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and >25% of these progress to cirrhosis following activation of inflammatory and fibrotic processes. NAFLD is associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes, and the metabolic syndrome and represents a considerable and increasing health burden. In the near future, NAFLD cirrhosis is expected to be the most common cause for liver transplantation. NAFLD patients have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease as well as liver-related morbidity. In addition, hepatic steatosis itself appears to represent an independent cardiovascular risk factor. In the present review, we provide an overview of the overlapping mechanisms and prevalence of NAFLD and cardiovascular disease.

LBA3514 Background: Organ preserving treatment strategies based on chemoradiotherapy may spare rectal cancer patients of major surgery and stoma. We suggest substantially improved tumor control by increasing the radiotherapy dose, without significant increase in the rate of late effects. We designed a prospective phase II trial to test high-dose radiotherapy of low rectal cancer for organ preservation in a multicenter setting. Methods: We enrolled patients with localized T1-3 N0-1 M0 rectal cancer within 6 cm from the anal verge and in performance status 0-2. Any N1-nodes had to be at the level of the tumor and included in the primary tumor-volume. Radiotherapy consisted of 62 Gy to the tumor and 50.4 Gy to the regional lymph nodes, delivered in 28 fractions using intensity modulated radiation therapy and daily image guidance. Capecitabine 825 mg/m2 BID. Patients with clinical complete response (cCR) 6–12 weeks after end of treatment were allocated to follow-up. Surgery was offered only in case of residual cancer or later re-growth. The primary endpoint was the proportion of patients with locoregional tumor control after two years by chemoradiation alone. Secondary endpoints included long-term side effects (CTCAE grading), cCR, rate of distant metastases, and overall survival. Results: Three Danish centers enrolled 107 patients between 2015 and 2019. Baseline classifications were T1/T2/T3 and N1 in 15%/54%/31% and 29%, respectively. The median age was 71 years and 64% were male. 92 (86.0%) had cCR and were allocated to observation. Four patients drew consent or died leaving 103 observed for at least 2 years. 23 had regrowth after cCR, five of whom had organ preserving transanal endoscopic microsurgery, 15 other curative surgery, and three palliation. 63 had no locoregional regrowth. Thus 61% (63/103) of patients with 2 years of follow-up had locoregional tumor control with chemoradiation alone. The actuarial estimate of locoregional control at 2 years from start of observation was 73.8% (95%CI 63.2-81.8). Calculated from time of enrollment, metastasis-free and overall survival at 30 months was 85.4% (95%CI 76.5-91.1) and 94.8% (95%CI 87.8-97.8). In the 63 patients with complete response at 2 years, ‘Low Anterior Resection Syndrome-score’ was None=37%, Minor=28%, and Major=35%. The most severe toxicity was erectile dysfunction grade 3 (n=3), grade 2 (n=4), grade 1 (n=6), and grade 0 (n=26). Grade 2 diarrhea, constipation, fecal incontinence, rectal bleeding and decreased libido were each reported in one case, while urinary frequency grade 2 was seen in four patients. Conclusions: The vast majority of patients with low rectal cancer can be cured by modern radiotherapy 62 Gy in 28 fractions with excellent patient-reported outcomes, toxicity, tumor control, and survival. The treatment is feasible in a multicenter setting. We suggest this approach as a standard of care option. Clinical trial information: NCT02438839.