bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
WGS characterization of MDR Enterobacterales with different ceftolozane/tazobactam susceptibility profiles during the SUPERIOR surveillance study in Spain
Authors: Hernández-García Marta , García-Fernández Sergio , García-Castillo María , Bou Germán , Cercenado Emilia , Delgado-Valverde Mercedes , Mulet Xavier , Pitart Cristina , Rodríguez-Lozano Jesús , Tormo Nuria , López-Mendoza Diego , Díaz-Regañón Jazmín , Cantón Rafael ,   SUPERIOR study group, Oliver Antonio , Mulet Xavier , Cercenado Emilia , Bou Germán , Fernández M Carmen , Pascual Álvaro , Delgado Mercedes , Gimeno Concepción , Tormo Nuria , Calvo Jorge , Rodríguez-Lozano Jesús , Alonso Ana Ávila , Vila Jordi , Marco Francesc , Pitart Cristina , García del Castillo María , Fernández Sergio García , Hernández-García Marta , Tato Marta , Cantón Rafael
Published: September 2020

Objectives

To analyse by WGS the ceftolozane/tazobactam (C/T) resistance mechanisms in Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. isolates recovered from complicated intra-abdominal and urinary tract infections in patients from Spanish ICUs (SUPERIOR surveillance study, 2016–17).

Methods

The clonal relatedness, the resistome and the virulome of 45 E. coli and 43 Klebsiella spp. isolates with different C/T susceptibility profiles were characterized.

Results

In E. coli, two (C/T susceptible) carbapenemase producers (VIM-2-CC23, OXA-48-ST38) were detected. The most relevant clone was ST131-B2-O25:H4-H30 (17/45), particularly the CTX-M-15-ST131-H30-Rx sublineage (15/17). ST131 strains were mainly C/T susceptible (15/17) and showed an extensive virulome. In non-ST131 strains (28/45), CTX-M enzymes [CTX-M-14 (8/24); CTX-M-15 (6/24); CTX-M-1 (3/24); CTX-M-32 (2/24)] were found in different clones. C/T resistance was detected in non-clonal E. coli isolates (13%, 6/45) with ESBL (4/6) and non-ESBL (2/6) genotypes. Among Klebsiella spp., Klebsiella pneumoniae (42/43) and Klebsiella michiganensis (1/43) species were identified; 42% (18/43) were carbapenemase producers and 58% showed a C/T resistance phenotype (25/43). OXA-48-ST11 (12/18), OXA-48-ST392 (2/18), OXA-48-ST15 (2/18), NDM-1-ST101 (1/18) and OXA-48+VIM-2-ST15 (1/18) isolates were found, all C/T resistant. Correlation between carbapenemase detection and resistance to C/T was demonstrated (P < 0.001). In non-carbapenemase-producing K. pneumoniae (25/43), C/T resistance (28%, 7/25) was detected in ESBL (3/7) and AmpC (2/7) producers. Overall, an extensive virulome was found and was correlated with carbapenemase carriage (P < 0.001) and C/T resistance (P < 0.05), particularly in OXA-48-ST11 strains (P < 0.05).

Conclusions

Prediction of antimicrobial susceptibility profiles using WGS is challenging. Carbapenemase-encoding genes are associated with C/T resistance in K. pneumoniae, but other resistance mechanisms might be additionally involved.
Modelling the effects of post-heading heat stress on biomass partitioning, and grain number and weight of wheat
Authors: Liu Bing , Liu Leilei , Asseng Senthold , Zhang Dongzheng , Ma Wei , Tang Liang , Cao Weixing , Zhu Yan
Published: September 2020

Grain yield of wheat and its components are very sensitive to heat stress at the critical growth stages of anthesis and grain filling. We observed negative impacts of heat stress on biomass partitioning and grain growth in environment-controlled phytotron experiments over 4 years, and we quantified relationships between the stress and grain number and potential grain weight at anthesis and during grain filling using process-based heat stress routines. These relationships included reduced grain set under stress at anthesis and decreased potential grain weight under stress during early grain filling. Biomass partitioning to stems and spikes was modified under heat stress based on a source–sink relationship. The integration of our process-based stress routines into the original WheatGrow model significantly enhanced the predictions of the biomass dynamics of the stems and spikes, the grain yield, and the yield components under heat stress. Compared to the original model, the improved version decreased the simulation errors for grain yield, grain number, and grain weight by 73%, 48%, and 49%, respectively, in an evaluation using independent data under heat stress in the phytotron conditions. When tested with data obtained under field conditions, the improved model showed a good ability to reproduce the decreasing dynamics of grain yield and its components with increasing post-anthesis temperatures. Sensitivity analysis showed that the improved model was able to reproduce the responses to various observed heat-stress treatments. These improvements to the crop model will be of significant importance for assessing the effects on crop production of projected increases in heat-stress events under future climate scenarios.
A Note on the Curious Case of John Bale in Spain
Authors: Dominguez Freddy C
Published: September 2020

A slender folder at the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid contains parts of a story about how John Bale’s Illustrium majoris Britanniae scriptorum … summarium (1548) ended up in sixteenth century Spain. Inquisition documents from 1583 reveal how the book got to Toledo from Lyon and how the Holy Office came to know about it. By briefly telling this story, this short note hopes to pique interest in the documents and to suggest ways in which the archives in which they reside can support further research on censorship and the early-modern book trade.
Intensive disc-reverberation mapping of Fairall 9: first year of Swift and LCO monitoring
Authors: Hernández Santisteban J V , Edelson R , Horne K , Gelbord J M , Barth A J , Cackett E M , Goad M R , Netzer H , Starkey D , Uttley P , Brandt W N , Korista K , Lohfink A M , Onken C A , Page K L , Siegel M , Vestergaard M , Bisogni S , Breeveld A A , Cenko S B , Dalla Bontà E , Evans P A , Ferland G , Gonzalez-Buitrago D H , Grupe D , Joner M D , Kriss G , LaPorte S J , Mathur S , Marshall F , Mehdipour M , Mudd D , Peterson B M , Schmidt T , Vaughan S , Valenti S
Published: September 2020

We present results of time-series analysis of the first year of the Fairall 9 intensive disc-reverberation campaign. We used Swift and the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network to continuously monitor Fairall 9 from X-rays to near-infrared at a daily to subdaily cadence. The cross-correlation function between bands provides evidence for a lag spectrum consistent with the τ ∝ λ4/3 scaling expected for an optically thick, geometrically thin blackbody accretion disc. Decomposing the flux into constant and variable components, the variable component’s spectral energy distribution is slightly steeper than the standard accretion disc prediction. We find evidence at the Balmer edge in both the lag and flux spectra for an additional bound-free continuum contribution that may arise from reprocessing in the broad-line region. The inferred driving light curve suggests two distinct components, a rapidly variable (<4 d) component arising from X-ray reprocessing, and a more slowly varying (>100 d) component with an opposite lag to the reverberation signal.
The ULX source X-3 in NGC 4258: a search for its X-ray and optical properties
Authors: Akyuz A , Avdan S , Allak S , Aksaker N , Akkaya Oralhan I , Balman S
Published: September 2020

We present the results of a search for the nature of ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) X-3 in the nearby galaxy NGC 4258. We use archival data from XMM–Newton, Chandra, NuSTAR, and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations. Total X-ray data were analysed to find that the model parameters of the system are indicative of a stellar-mass black hole, ∼10 M⊙, as the central compact object. Furthermore, analyses of the optical data from HST reveal two optical candidates at 90 per cent confidence level within an error radius of 0.28 arcsec. Assuming the optical emission is dominated by the donor star, both of these candidates are found to have spectral types that lie between B3 and F1 with absolute magnitudes of MV ≈ −6.4. Moreover, the age and mass estimates for the candidates are found to be 10 and 18 Myr and 13 and 20 M⊙, respectively.
An outflow powers the optical rise of the nearby, fast-evolving tidal disruption event AT2019qiz
Authors: Nicholl M , Wevers T , Oates S R , Alexander K D , Leloudas G , Onori F , Jerkstrand A , Gomez S , Campana S , Arcavi I , Charalampopoulos P , Gromadzki M , Ihanec N , Jonker P G , Lawrence A , Mandel I , Schulze S , Short P , Burke J , McCully C , Hiramatsu D , Howell D A , Pellegrino C , Abbot H , Anderson J P , Berger E , Blanchard P K , Cannizzaro G , Chen T-W , Dennefeld M , Galbany L , González-Gaitán S , Hosseinzadeh G , Inserra C , Irani I , Kuin P , Müller-Bravo T , Pineda J , Ross N P , Roy R , Smartt S J , Smith K W , Tucker B , Wyrzykowski Ł , Young D R
Published: September 2020

At 66 Mpc, AT2019qiz is the closest optical tidal disruption event (TDE) to date, with a luminosity intermediate between the bulk of the population and the faint-and-fast event iPTF16fnl. Its proximity allowed a very early detection and triggering of multiwavelength and spectroscopic follow-up well before maximum light. The velocity dispersion of the host galaxy and fits to the TDE light curve indicate a black hole mass ≈106 M⊙, disrupting a star of ≈1 M⊙. By analysing our comprehensive UV, optical, and X-ray data, we show that the early optical emission is dominated by an outflow, with a luminosity evolution L ∝ t2, consistent with a photosphere expanding at constant velocity (≳2000 km s−1), and a line-forming region producing initially blueshifted H and He ii profiles with v = 3000–10 000 km s−1. The fastest optical ejecta approach the velocity inferred from radio detections (modelled in a forthcoming companion paper from K. D. Alexander et al.), thus the same outflow may be responsible for both the fast optical rise and the radio emission – the first time this connection has been observed in a TDE. The light-curve rise begins 29 ± 2 d before maximum light, peaking when the photosphere reaches the radius where optical photons can escape. The photosphere then undergoes a sudden transition, first cooling at constant radius then contracting at constant temperature. At the same time, the blueshifts disappear from the spectrum and Bowen fluorescence lines (N iii) become prominent, implying a source of far-UV photons, while the X-ray light curve peaks at ≈1041 erg s−1. Assuming that these X-rays are from prompt accretion, the size and mass of the outflow are consistent with the reprocessing layer needed to explain the large optical to X-ray ratio in this and other optical TDEs, possibly favouring accretion-powered over collision-powered outflow models.
Revisiting the local star-forming galaxies observed in the HETDEX Pilot Survey
Authors: Shinn Jong-Ho
Published: September 2020

I have reanalysed the data obtained for local (z < 0.15) star-forming galaxies during the pilot survey for the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) – called the HETDEX Pilot Survey (HPS) – which uses an integral-field-unit spectrograph and covers ∼3500−5800 Å at ∼5-Å resolution. I have newly determined the gas metallicities, $12 + \text{log (O/H)}$, following the Bayesian analysis scheme of the previous study, but dealing carefully with the uncertainty of strong-line calibration, performing reproducibility tests with mock data, and monitoring the convergence of the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. From the mock-data tests, I found that the nebular emission-line colour excess E(B − V) can be overestimated by as much as 2σ or more, although the metallicity can recover the input value to within 1σ. The new metallicity estimates on the HPS data are from well-converged MCMC samples (effective sample sizes > 2000), and they are higher than the previous estimates by ∼2σ. Using the HPS data, I also showed that the MCMC sampling can have the statistical accuracy as poor as the one near the iteration start if done without convergence monitoring. The overestimation of E(B − V) indicates the overestimation of the star formation rates (SFRs) in the previous study, which can be as much as a factor of 5. This finding undermines the previous suggestion of a hitherto-unknown galaxy population based on the locations of galaxies in the mass–SFR plane. I found that the independent determination of E(B − V) using either H β-H γ or H α-H β line pair is ideal for the analysis of forthcoming HETDEX data, but it requires additional cost.
Free to Move
Authors: Somin Ilya
Published: September 2020

Ballot box voting is often considered the essence of political freedom. But it has two major shortcomings: individual voters have only a tiny chance of making a difference, and they also have strong incentives to remain ignorant about the issues at stake. “Voting with your feet” is far superior on both counts. In Free to Move, Ilya Somin explains how expanding foot-voting opportunities can greatly enhance political freedom for millions of people around the world. That applies to foot voting in federal systems, foot voting in the private sector, and especially foot voting through international migration. These three types of foot voting are rarely considered together. But Somin explains how they have major common virtues, and can be mutually reinforcing. Free to Move addresses a variety of objections to expanded migration rights, including claims that the “self-determination” of natives requires giving them power to exclude migrants, and arguments that migration is likely to have harmful side effects, such as undermining political institutions, overburdening the welfare state, increasing crime and terrorism, and spreading undesirable cultural values. While these objections are usually directed at international migration, Somin shows how a consistent commitment to such theories would also justify severe restrictions on internal freedom of movement. That implication is yet another reason to be skeptical of such arguments. The book also shows how both domestic constitutional systems and international law can be structured to increase opportunities for foot voting while mitigating potential downsides of freedom of movement.
Teams Are Not All the Same
Authors: Tannenbaum Scott , Salas Eduardo
Published: September 2020

It would be great if all one needed to know were a few universal truths that apply to any team, but teamwork is not that simple. While teams can differ in countless ways, research shows that a few of the differences are particularly important. This chapter introduces five key ways that teams can differ and why these differences matter. It describes five continua and provides a matrix for assessing a team’s (a) reliance, (b) membership stability, (c) task consistency, (d) proximity, and (e) similarity. Understanding these differences allows you to apply the science of teamwork in a targeted, meaningful way. For example, teams with high reliance must continually coordinate with one another, so they are more influenced by collective efficacy than teams with lower reliance, which are more impacted by self-efficacy.
Communication
Authors: Tannenbaum Scott , Salas Eduardo
Published: September 2020

Communication breakdowns make a team vulnerable, but simply communicating “more” won’t necessarily make a team more effective. Communication quality is far more important than communication quantity. The basics of high-quality communication are to share useful information clearly, accurately, and on time to the right people. Beyond the basics, research has shown it is the sharing of unique information the drives team performance. Other hallmarks of effective communication are the use of closed-loop communication and effective boundary spanning with people outside the team. The chapter identifies the most common obstacles and challenges to effective communication, including biases such as “everybody knows” and highlights situations with the greatest risk of communication breakdowns. Advice is given for fostering better team communications and mitigating common risks.
Team Leaders
Authors: Tannenbaum Scott , Salas Eduardo
Published: September 2020

Leading a team can be challenging, but fundamentally, effective team leadership is about: a) ensuring that your team has all of the drivers it needs (i.e., the right capabilities, cooperation, coordination, communication, cognition, coaching and conditions); and b) enabling them to learn and adapt as needed. This chapter offers ten tangible tips specifically intended for people who are in a designated team leader role. The tips are derived from the science of teamwork.
Issues Faced by Faculty in an Industrial-Organizational Master’s Program
Authors: Sachau Daniel A. , Fritzsche Barbara A.
Published: September 2020

This chapter identifies challenges faculty face when teaching in a terminal industrial-organizational psychology master’s program. The authors discuss how faculty, particularly new/junior faculty, can deal with these issues to become productive in teaching, research, service, consulting, and shaping program culture. The authors offer suggestions for creating a successful program tailored to the needs of different types of students (recent graduates versus experienced students), strategies for maintaining an active research program, and ways to integrate consulting into a master’s program. This chapter includes a discussion of the challenges of offering both a master’s and doctoral program, managing administrators, and building a program culture.
A Field-Theoretic Model of Religious Strength
Authors: Vermurlen Brad
Published: September 2020

Chapter 4 develops a field-theoretic model of religious strength. It starts by revisiting the question of religious strength vis-à-vis the secularization thesis, and then it lays out the five leading theoretical frameworks currently on offer in the sociology of religion for making sense of religious vitality. Next, this chapter critically reviews each of these theories, drawing out the “nugget of truth” in each but finally showing how each is ill-suited, or at least incomplete, for explaining the New Calvinist movement sociologically. What each framework gets right is integrated into a new approach to religious strength based on Fligstein and McAdam’s strategic action field theory. After working through some “nuts and bolts” of this theory, the chapter concludes with a systematization of the theory/model, in which seventeen general social mechanisms are specified as causes that together produced the Reformed resurgence.
Demonstration of the Model, Part I
Authors: Vermurlen Brad
Published: September 2020

Chapter 5 presents Part I of a field-theoretic model of religious strength, focusing on the most powerful social mechanisms and ecological factors that precipitated the rise of the New Calvinist movement. The author describes three aspects of the American cultural backdrop along with three discursive opportunities, which together facilitated the onset of contention in the American Evangelical field. The chapter maps the correspondence between Evangelical leaders’ positions in the field and their corresponding religious dispositions. Additional precipitating factors are identified. The chapter ends by empirically establishing the “rules of the game,” which are the elements of the Bebbington Quadrilateral (i.e., crucicentrism, biblicism, activism, and conversionism), to which is added the more all-encompassing field rule of “the Gospel,” broadly defined. These rules are understood as endogenous to the social system such that the battle over American Evangelicalism is a battle with and over these rules.
The Solace
Authors: Glasgow Joshua
Published: September 2020

While navigating his own mother’s cancer diagnosis, the author explores how we might find solace in the fact that we will die. Traditionally, philosophical answers to this question center on two possibilities. First, some argue that death is not bad for the one who dies, because they won’t exist after once they are dead. Second, others argue that because immortality would be bad, death has considerable upside. Finding these two answers less than satisfying, the author explores a third option. This third source of solace starts with the idea that insofar as our lives are worth being grateful for, they must have a value. This book argues that because life is implicated in all of our good projects and relationships, its value radiates out to all of life’s parts, be they good or bad. And because passing away is one of the parts of life, it gets some of this radiant value. Finally, just as we are grateful for the value of our lives, so we can affirm this value in passing away. Gratitude is not the most fitting way of affirming the value in death, since passing away is also bad for those who die by depriving them of life’s good opportunities. A more fitting affirmation of the value that death borrows from life, when passing away also visits so much badness upon us, is to take some solace in the fact that our passing away has a portion of life’s positive value.
Integrating Music Across the Elementary Curriculum
Authors: Harney Kristin
Published: September 2020

This book is designed to support K–5 classroom teachers as they integrate music throughout the elementary curriculum. It contains detailed, practical ideas and examples, including full lesson plans and over a hundred teaching ideas and strategies for integrating music with visual art, language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics. Following an overview of the interdisciplinary approach, the remaining chapters explore connections between music and other areas of the elementary curriculum. Each chapter also includes a section addressing national standards with tables showing the specific standards that are included in each lesson and activity. This text utilizes the most recent National Core Arts Standards (2015) as well as the most recent standards in language arts, social studies, science, and mathematics. All the lessons in this book are designed to be fully taught by classroom teachers; the content is accessible to those who lack formal music training, yet is solidly rooted in research and best practices. While classroom teachers can teach these lessons on their own, this book may facilitate partnerships and collaboration between classroom teachers and music specialists. All the lessons and activities included in this text have been reviewed by practicing teachers, and most have been field-tested in elementary classrooms. Throughout the book, there is an emphasis on interdisciplinary lessons that demonstrate valid connections between disciplines while maintaining the integrity of each discipline involved. The text also includes a model that allows teachers to successfully create their own interdisciplinary lessons.
Introduction
Authors: Wilmarth Jr. Arthur E.
Published: September 2020

Universal banks arose in the U.S. during two periods in the past century—the 1920s and the late 1990s. On both occasions, universal banks in the U.S. and Europe promoted intense boom-and-bust cycles that led to global calamities—the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2007–09. Universal banks received extensive bailouts on both sides of the Atlantic during both crises. Three core features of universal banks cause them to generate destructive boom-and-bust cycles. First, pervasive conflicts of interest prevent them from acting as objective lenders or as impartial investment advisers. Second, bonus-driven cultures encourage their insiders to take speculative risks to produce short-term profits. Third, their ability to convert loans into asset-backed securities allows them to package risky loans into securities sold as purportedly “safe” investments to poorly informed investors. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 broke up universal banks and established structural buffers that prevented spillovers of risk between the banking system and other financial sectors. The U.S. avoided systemic financial crises after World War II until Glass-Steagall was undermined by regulators and ultimately repealed by Congress. Congress failed to adopt similar structural reforms after the Great Recession. As a result, universal banks continue to dominate our financial markets and pose unacceptable systemic dangers. We urgently need a new Glass-Steagall Act to break up universal banks again and restore a more stable and resilient financial system.
‘Inner Necessity’
Authors: Cooper John Michael
Published: September 2020

This chapter argues that Felix Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang represents a profound rethinking of the rhetorical and musical processes of the symphony as a genre. Rather than a unilinear array of symphonic movements whose telos is the coda of its finale, the chapter argues, the Lobgesang is a study in symphonic bitemporality—one in which a central, previously enacted parable-like narrative (Nos. 2–8) is framed by a symphonic introduction (No. 1) and a vocal-symphonic conclusion (Nos. 9–10) whose music and theological import derive from the memory of that central narrative. This view of the Lobgesang as a parable enfolded within a sermon is supported by evidence from the work’s compositional history, texts, and tonal structure.
Form through Sound
Authors: Schmidt Thomas
Published: September 2020

Felix Mendelssohn’s pioneering role in exploring instrumental colours and textures has never been in doubt. As much as that of any nineteenth-century composer, his ‘sound’ is unmistakable across all genres, whether piano, chamber, or orchestral. Yet texture and timbre have always been the poor sisters in the theory and practice of musical analysis, and little work has been undertaken in this field. This chapter offers the first systematic attempt to examine how Mendelssohn achieves his ‘sound’—how he manages, on the same material basis and using the same ensemble types as his contemporaries, to create something that sounds so unmistakably his own. In a second step, the chapter demonstrates how the composer, rather than deploying devices of texture and Klangfarbe as localized programmatic devices, uses them to articulate or indeed generate instrumental form.
Earliest Traces
Authors: McCarthy Kerry
Published: September 2020

The earliest known document of Tallis’s music is the single voice part that survives from an otherwise lost manuscript collection of early-sixteenth-century devotional music. It contains only one work by Tallis (the large votive antiphon Salve intemerata) and many works by other composers, almost all of them older. Some of this music goes back to the generation that produced the Eton Choirbook at the turn of the sixteenth century. It gives us a rare chance to see where Tallis’s musical style came from. This chapter is a detailed exploration of Salve intemerata and the manuscript where it makes its earliest appearance. Topics include early Tudor voice types, musical rhetoric, and the tradition of large polyphonic works Tallis knew during his first years as a composer.
The Uruk Phenomenon
Authors: Selz Gebhard J.
Published: September 2020

The city of Uruk in southern Iraq was the main force for urbanization and state formation in Mesopotamia during the Uruk period (ca. 3800–3300 bc), which takes its name from this “first city.” This chapter discusses this formative period for the social, political, and cultural history of Mesopotamia and beyond, as well as the ensuing transitional period (Uruk III/Jemdet Nasr period; ca. 3300–3000 bc). The focus lies on the key elements of Uruk culture and its spread across Western Asia, including Syria, Anatolia, and Iran; the invention of cuneiform writing; and aspects of social, religious, and political organization of this emergent state. Contextualized in climatic, demographic, and geographic observations, the chapter evaluates key cultural features, stressing the role of population growth intertwined with technological, agricultural, and administrative improvements. These cultural features’ dissemination along trade routes to the Levant, Anatolia, and Iran is linked to the establishment of strongholds that secured the exchange of goods, with the south of Mesopotamia serving as the commercial hub. While the available sources—both textual and iconographic—provide no unequivocal evidence for the alleged monocratic governance of Uruk-period society, the identifiable political structures were strongly intertwined with religious functions, indicating great societal complexity. The alleged collapse of the Uruk culture was predominantly the breakdown of the Uruk (trade) network. Culturally, however, many features of the Uruk phenomenon provided the founding charter for Mesopotamian social structures in subsequent periods.
The Kingdom of Akkad
Authors: Schrakamp Ingo
Published: September 2020

This chapter discusses the foundations and inner structure of the kingdom of Akkad. Based mainly on royal inscriptions and archival records, it argues that this state constitutes a decisive phase in Mesopotamian history and discusses a series of political, ideological, socioeconomic, and administrative transformations that it brought about: the implementation of the concept of the territorial state, borne by an autocratic and conquering kingship with absolute claim to power; an administrative centralization directed toward the capital; the introduction of Akkadian as an official language of administration; and the spread of private landownership, concentrated in the hands of the king and administered through large agricultural estates established throughout the state through purchase and confiscation. These transformations were implemented by means of the standing army, whose upkeep was supported by the agricultural land in the hands of the king. Allocations of royally owned land to other parties established a far-flung network of patronage, which included not only members of the royal family, court, administration, and army but also members of the local elites, thus strengthening the king’s power base. The chapter also discusses how the transformations brought about by the kingdom of Akkad were ambiguously reflected in later tradition, which also made this state a model to be emulated by later rulers.
Developmental Aspects of Political Violence
Authors: Punamäki Raija-Leena
Published: September 2020

This chapter presents developmental and attachment theory approaches to understanding the impacts of political violence on children and families. It argues that each developmental period provides unique resources and vulnerabilities. The chapter focuses particularly on infancy and adolescence. Both are periods in human life when the most intensive socioemotional, neurocognitive, and psychophysiological reorganizations take place. The chapter suggests an attachment theory approach as a way of increasing the understanding of fetal and infant well-being, dyadic interaction, and parenting in conditions of war and political violence. Research based on attachment theory also guides our understanding of adolescents’ socioemotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to political violence and trauma. The chapter discusses the developmental and attachment theoretical implications for interventions with victims of violence and trauma-affected infants, adolescents, and their families.
Children Born of War in Northern Uganda
Authors: Denov Myriam
Published: September 2020

Among the many fallouts arising from systematic wartime rape is the reality of children conceived from sexual violence. The scope of this population remains largely unknown, and research into how children born of wartime sexual violence and their mothers fare within their societies is only recently emerging. To date, little is known about the specific psychosocial consequences for these children. Drawing on the voices of the children themselves, this chapter traces the realities and perspectives of 60 children born in Lord’s Resistance Army captivity in northern Uganda. Born of war, these children are deeply affected by the social upheaval that brought about their conception. Privileging children’s voices, the chapter highlights their lives in the post-war context. Findings reveal the profound stigma and marginalization that these children endure, alongside struggles with issues of identity, belonging, and their perceived needs. The chapter also reveals participants’ use of resistance to counter negative perceptions of them by their families and communities.
Children, Not Soldiers
Authors: Capone Francesca
Published: September 2020

Recruiting children under the age of 15 years and using them to actively participate in hostilities is forbidden under international law and amounts to an international crime. Nonetheless, parties continue to enlist and conscript children, putting their lives in danger by exploiting them, very often not only for military purposes. After outlining the legal foundations of the prohibition on recruiting and using children, this chapter aims at providing an overview of the tools and strategies, including the UN architecture on children and armed conflict, designed and implemented to thwart the phenomenon of child soldiering. The chapter offers some critical reflections on the necessity to implement effective child-friendly post-conflict and peace-building efforts, in particular disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration processes. In fact, those efforts are still predominantly concerned with adult male fighters and, in most instances, they are unable to adequately address the specific needs of children formerly associated with armed forces or armed non-state actors, including groups labeled as terrorist.
The Bundahišn
Authors: Agostini Domenico , Thrope Samuel , Shaked Shaul , Stroumsa Guy
Published: September 2020

The Bundahišn, meaning primal or foundational creation, is the central Zoroastrian account of creation, cosmology, and eschatology and one of the most important of the surviving testaments to Zoroastrian literature and pre-Islamic Iranian culture. Touching on geography, cosmogony, anthropology, zoology, astronomy, medicine, legend, and myth, the Bundahišn can be considered a concise compendium of Zoroastrian knowledge.
The Bundahišn is well known in the field as an essential primary source for the study of ancient Iranian history, religions, literature, and languages. It is one of the most important texts composed in Zoroastrian Middle Persian, also known as Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi, in the centuries after the fall of the Sasanian Empire to the invading Arab and Islamic forces in the mid seventh century. The Bundahišn provides scholars with a particularly profitable window on Zoroastrianism’s intellectual and religious history at a crucial transitional moment: centuries after the composition of the Avesta, the Zoroastrian sacred scriptures, and before the transformation of Zoroastrianism into a minority religion within Iran and adherents’ dispersion throughout Central and South Asia. However, the Bundahišn is not only a scholarly tract. It is also a great work of literature in its own right and ranks alongside the creation myths of other ancient traditions: Genesis, the Babylonian Emunah Elish, Hesiod’s Theogony, and others. Informed by the latest research in Iranian Studies, this translation aims to bring to the fore the aesthetic quality, literary style, and complexity of this important work.
Good Karma
Authors: Jain Andrea R.
Published: September 2020

This chapter argues against the common tropes that bemoan the commodification of spirituality as the loss of an authentic, pure religious expression or spiritual consumers as the passive victims of manipulation, deception, and coercion, as cultural dupes living in a permanent state of false consciousness. It suggests such critiques depend on the ahistorical assumption that there is an original, static tradition to be preserved, one that preexisted the profanation of religion through commodification, and consequently they produce nostalgic representations, mirroring the essentialisms of consumers themselves. Alternatively, this chapter provides an analysis of spiritual consumers, not as duped, but as choosing spiritual commodities because they privilege the culturally dominant neoliberal capitalist values and ideologies they already embrace.
Self Love Club
Authors: Jain Andrea R.
Published: September 2020

The ascent of spiritual industries is no doubt in part about some women’s pursuit of empowerment; yet they are also a site of rampant sexual violence. This chapter looks at attempts to diagnose the problem, which range from blaming the “guru model” to blaming the conservative sexist and heterosexist ideals certain teachers and gurus represent. This chapter complicates these diagnoses, taking the position that attention to different and conflicting narratives of sexual violence sheds light on larger systemic issues, particularly by illuminating the following: a globally pervasive neoliberal logic whereby control over one’s body is valued, but is defined as an individual achievement; policing of deviant bodies or bodies that resist the wellness ideal; and capitalist strategies of commodification that contain dissent against neoliberal individualism through gestural subversions. Together, these brew an industry that neither challenges dominant heteropatriarchal ideologies nor holds industry leaders accountable for sexual violence.
An Inside Job
Authors: Jain Andrea R.
Published: September 2020

To conclude, the author poses the question of how adherents might put spirituality to work to organize the world in ways that counter neoliberal capitalism, asking whether spirituality can resist the neoliberal capitalist demand to achieve perfection through correct production and consumption. The chapter attends to prison yoga and meditation as a way of exploring the question of whether a form of spiritual militancy could attempt to go beyond simply self-describing as “alternative” or “spiritual” and gesturing toward resistance, to facilitating actual structural change. In other words, the chapter poses the question of whether these forms of rehabilitation serve as a counter to or a part of the rise of invocations of spirituality as gestural subversions, concluding that they, like their commodified counterparts, offer defanged subversions of the neoliberal order.
Ethics and Efficacy
Authors: Field Sandra Leonie
Published: September 2020

This chapter schematizes two broad interpretive approaches to Spinoza’s political philosophy, both of which agree that Spinoza’s concept of power as potentia combines efficacy and ethical direction. Supposedly, the distinctive contribution of Spinoza’s political philosophy is the idea of a concrete potentia of the popular multitude that constitutes a normatively appealing limit on sovereign power, a limit that juridical projections of potestas ignore at their peril. Radicals conceive popular power as a prepolitical possession of a virtuous multitude that tends to disrupt oppressive forms of politics; ‘constitutionalists’ claim that only political orders taking a good democratic form can endure. But against the sunny romanticism of these interpretations’ conceptions of popular power, the chapter poses three Hobbesian problems: the problem of the multitude’s inner oligarchy; the problem of nonideal endurance; and the problem of democracy’s perverse effects.
Constitutional Crisis
Authors: Balkin Jack M.
Published: September 2020

Dysfunctional politics in the United States and Donald Trump’s presidency have caused many people to worry that the country is in the middle of a constitutional crisis. That is not the case. A constitutional crisis occurs when a constitution is about to fail at its central purpose—to keep struggles for power within the boundaries of law and the Constitution. Constitutional crises are rare in American history, and the United States is not currently in a constitutional crisis, although it is facing a series of worrisome political crises. When Americans talk about constitutional crisis they are really describing constitutional rot, which is discussed in the next chapter.
Judicial Review in the Cycles of Constitutional Time
Authors: Balkin Jack M.
Published: September 2020

The cycles of constitutional time affect the work of the federal judiciary in multiple ways. Because of life tenure, the judiciary is a lagging indicator of the cycles of politics. Hence judicial time is often out of sync with political time. Judicial review is shaped by the strategy of partisan entrenchment: the political parties attempt to install jurists who will be ideologically sympathetic. The cycles also affect the political supports for judicial review—the reasons why politicians accept judicial review and have helped to construct the power of the federal courts over time. Politicians support judicial review and construct how judges practice it because judicial review performs important tasks and manages problems for politicians over the long run, even if they disagree with particular decisions.
How Cycles of Polarization and Depolarization Shape the Exercise of Judicial Review
Authors: Balkin Jack M.
Published: September 2020

The cycle of polarization and depolarization affects the political supports for judicial review. When politics is depolarized, politicians tend to let judges handle basic constitutional questions so that politicians can fight over the spoils of everyday politics. Judicial review tends to enforce the values of national political elites, especially against state and local governments. When the country is polarized, however, elite consensus evaporates. Political elites disagree about everything, so judicial review cannot do the same work. Instead, judicial review allows polarized political elites to win victories they can no longer win in the political process. As legislative politics becomes mired in polarization, the judiciary becomes an ever more important venue for achieving policy victories. This increases the urgency and bitterness of partisan fights over judicial appointments. Strong polarization encourages the parties to engage in constitutional hardball to secure ideologically aligned judges and prevent the other party from appointing judges.
Law in the Time of Constitutional Rot
Authors: Balkin Jack M.
Published: September 2020

In periods of advanced constitutional rot, judicial decisions become especially polarized. Judicial majorities tend to reach decisions that increase economic inequality, shrink the electorate, and help maintain political oligarchy. Members of the dominant party want judges to help them stay in power, to support politicians’ self-entrenching behavior, to defend and protect politicians from charges of corruption, and to enrich their financial supporters. As a result, the judiciary tends to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Ordinarily, the US Constitution relies on the judiciary to protect democracy and republican government, and to prevent political corruption and self-entrenching behavior. But in periods of advanced constitutional rot, the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary are likely to be ineffective and may even make matters worse.
Judicial Politics and Judicial Reform
Authors: Balkin Jack M.
Published: September 2020

In the early years of the next regime, conservative courts will face off against liberal Democratic politicians. Courts are very unlikely to be able to do much to repair constitutional rot. Constitutional renewal must come from popular mobilizations and demands for reform, including constitutional reform. Growing frustration with the courts will lead to calls for reform of the federal judiciary. Reforms should aim at lowering the stakes of judicial appointments and assisting depolarization. Court-packing proposals achieve neither goal. Three better approaches are (1) instituting regular appointments to the Supreme Court; (2) achieving the equivalent of term limits for Supreme Court justices by changing quorum rules; (3) increasing the Court’s workload (instead of limiting its jurisdiction); and (4) using sunrise provisions that take effect in the future so that partisan advantages are harder to predict. Each of these proposals can be implemented constitutionally through ordinary legislation.
Underemployment in Agriculture
Authors: Panagariya Arvind
Published: September 2020

The chapter begins with a history of agricultural policy in India. It goes on to argue that policies aimed at improving outcomes within agriculture alone cannot bring prosperity to those engaged in it. Today, agriculture employs 44 percent of India’s workforce but produces at most 17 percent of GDP. With the overall GDP per capita itself low, agricultural output per worker is extremely low, indicating gross underemployment of labor. Therefore, marketing reforms that shift prices in favor of the farmer and against intermediaries cannot go very far. With self-sufficiency in agriculture, increases in productivity will likely result in lower prices rather than higher revenues. Besides, agricultural growth rarely exceeds 4.5 percent over even a decade-long period. Scope for increased incomes through diversification within agriculture into horticulture, fisheries, and animal husbandry is also limited. The upshot is that the only avenue to increasing agricultural incomes rapidly is to pave the way for half or more of the farm workforce to migrate into industry and services.
Reforms for Export-Led and Manufacturing-Fed Growth
Authors: Panagariya Arvind
Published: September 2020

The near absence of large enterprises in the manufacture of labor-intensive products and consequent failure of such products in export markets is the reason for the paucity of good jobs for those with limited skills in India. To change this, India needs a clear focus on export expansion. It must avoid falling into the import-substitution trap that kept the country poor for decades. The rupee must depreciate sufficiently to eliminate its current overvaluation. Tariffs must be lowered and rationalized. Particularly important is to eliminate duties on synthetic fabrics and fibers. All indirect taxes must be reimbursed to exporters. Free trade agreements must be forged with countries that have potentially large markets. Trade facilitation must allow rapid movement of goods within the country and at ports. Finally, markets for labor and land must be liberalized. It will be worthwhile, though politically challenging, to experiment with autonomous employment zones that provide flexible land and labor markets within large areas.
Investing Productively: The Banking Sector
Authors: Panagariya Arvind
Published: September 2020

Banks collect savings by households via deposits and channel them to the most productive investors in the form of credit. What happens to bank credit has a determining impact on growth, especially in the formal economy. A key feature of Indian banks has been repeated episodes of accumulation of non-performing assets followed by their recapitalization by the government using public money. These episodes have been concentrated in public sector banks (PSBs), which continue to account for two-thirds of banking assets. This chapter offers a detailed analysis of these episodes and argues that it is time for the government to give serious thought to privatization of PSBs. PSBs are subject to regulation by both the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), but RBI has limited powers over them. On average, private banks outdo PSBs along nearly all dimensions in terms of efficiency.
Sectarianism as a Substitute Identity Sunnis and Shias in Central and South Punjab
Authors: Abou Zahab Mariam
Published: September 2020

This chapter evaluates how the main contradiction of Pakistan has not yet been resolved. Pakistan is highly fragmented and has never been a nation-state. It has failed in integrating the people into a nation by making their Pakistani identity their most treasured possession. People had to find other identities, whether ethnic group, caste, language, biradari or sect. The chapter talks about the political vacuum created in the Zia era that was filled by the emergence of ethnic and sectarian organizations. In the 1970s, ethnicity became a substitute identity, but it was branded as treason and violently suppressed. The chapter also describes the religious environment in the 1980s. Religious identity was fostered by the state and official sanction was given to the religious organizations during the Afghan War in the name of Islam.