bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
TiPARP forms nuclear condensates to degrade HIF-1α and suppress tumorigenesis
Authors: Zhang Lu , Cao Ji , Dong Longying , Lin Hening
Published: June 2020

Significance

Our study establishes TiPARP as a turning-off mechanism for a number of important transcription factors, including HIF-1, c-Myc, and estrogen receptor. The study also establishes that TiPARP forms nuclear condensates in an ADP ribosylation-dependent manner, which provides important insights to understand how condensates formation is regulated by protein posttranslational modifications. On the therapeutic front, our study suggests that small molecules that activate TiPARP can be anticancer agents.
Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction
Authors: Ceballos Gerardo , Ehrlich Paul R. , Raven Peter H.
Published: June 2020

Significance

The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible. Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human caused and accelerating. The acceleration of the extinction crisis is certain because of the still fast growth in human numbers and consumption rates. In addition, species are links in ecosystems, and, as they fall out, the species they interact with are likely to go also. In the regions where disappearing species are concentrated, regional biodiversity collapses are likely occurring. Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking massive global actions to save humanity’s crucial life-support systems.
Organ of Corti size is governed by Yap/Tead-mediated progenitor self-renewal
Authors: Gnedeva Ksenia , Wang Xizi , McGovern Melissa M. , Barton Matthew , Tao Litao , Trecek Talon , Monroe Tanner O. , Llamas Juan , Makmura Welly , Martin James F. , Groves Andrew K. , Warchol Mark , Segil Neil
Published: June 2020

Precise control of organ growth and patterning is executed through a balanced regulation of progenitor self-renewal and differentiation. In the auditory sensory epithelium—the organ of Corti—progenitor cells exit the cell cycle in a coordinated wave between E12.5 and E14.5 before the initiation of sensory receptor cell differentiation, making it a unique system for studying the molecular mechanisms controlling the switch between proliferation and differentiation. Here we identify the Yap/Tead complex as a key regulator of the self-renewal gene network in organ of Corti progenitor cells. We show that Tead transcription factors bind directly to the putative regulatory elements of many stemness- and cell cycle-related genes. We also show that the Tead coactivator protein, Yap, is degraded specifically in the Sox2-positive domain of the cochlear duct, resulting in down-regulation of Tead gene targets. Further, conditional loss of the
Yap
gene in the inner ear results in the formation of significantly smaller auditory and vestibular sensory epithelia, while conditional overexpression of a constitutively active version of
Yap
,
Yap5SA
, is sufficient to prevent cell cycle exit and to prolong sensory tissue growth. We also show that viral gene delivery of
Yap5SA
in the postnatal inner ear sensory epithelia in vivo drives cell cycle reentry after hair cell loss. Taken together, these data highlight the key role of the Yap/Tead transcription factor complex in maintaining inner ear progenitors during development, and suggest new strategies to induce sensory cell regeneration.
Spiking activity in the human hippocampus prior to encoding predicts subsequent memory
Authors: Urgolites Zhisen J. , Wixted John T. , Goldinger Stephen D. , Papesh Megan H. , Treiman David M. , Squire Larry R. , Steinmetz Peter N.
Published: June 2020

Encoding activity in the medial temporal lobe, presumably evoked by the presentation of stimuli (postonset activity), is known to predict subsequent memory. However, several independent lines of research suggest that preonset activity also affects subsequent memory. We investigated the role of preonset and postonset single-unit and multiunit activity recorded from epilepsy patients as they completed a continuous recognition task. In this task, words were presented in a continuous series and eventually began to repeat. For each word, the patient’s task was to decide whether it was novel or repeated. We found that preonset spiking activity in the hippocampus (when the word was novel) predicted subsequent memory (when the word was later repeated). Postonset activity during encoding also predicted subsequent memory, but was simply a continuation of preonset activity. The predictive effect of preonset spiking activity was much stronger in the hippocampus than in three other brain regions (amygdala, anterior cingulate, and prefrontal cortex). In addition, preonset and postonset activity around the encoding of novel words did not predict memory performance for novel words (i.e., correctly classifying the word as novel), and preonset and postonset activity around the time of retrieval did not predict memory performance for repeated words (i.e., correctly classifying the word as repeated). Thus, the only predictive effect was between preonset activity (along with its postonset continuation) at the time of encoding and subsequent memory. Taken together, these findings indicate that preonset hippocampal activity does not reflect general arousal/attention but instead reflects what we term “attention to encoding.”
MHC-II alleles shape the CDR3 repertoires of conventional and regulatory naïve CD4+T cells
Authors: Logunova Nadezhda N. , Kriukova Valeriia V. , Shelyakin Pavel V. , Egorov Evgeny S. , Pereverzeva Alina , Bozhanova Nina G. , Shugay Mikhail , Shcherbinin Dmitrii S. , Pogorelyy Mikhail V. , Merzlyak Ekaterina M. , Zubov Vasiliy N. , Meiler Jens , Chudakov Dmitriy M. , Apt Alexander S. , Britanova Olga V.
Published: June 2020

T cell maturation and activation depend upon T cell receptor (TCR) interactions with a wide variety of antigenic peptides displayed in a given major histocompatibility complex (MHC) context. Complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) is the most variable part of the TCRα and -β chains, which govern interactions with peptide–MHC complexes. However, it remains unclear how the CDR3 landscape is shaped by individual MHC context during thymic selection of naïve T cells. We established two mouse strains carrying distinct allelic variants ofH2-Aand analyzed thymic and peripheral production and TCR repertoires of naïve conventional CD4+T (Tconv) and naïve regulatory CD4+T (Treg) cells. Compared with tuberculosis-resistant C57BL/6 (H2-Ab) mice, the tuberculosis-susceptible H2-Ajmice had fewer CD4+T cells of both subsets in the thymus. In the periphery, this deficiency was only apparent for Tconvand was compensated for by peripheral reconstitution for Treg. We show that H2-Ajfavors selection of a narrower and more convergent repertoire with more hydrophobic and strongly interacting amino acid residues in the middle of CDR3α and CDR3β, suggesting more stringent selection against a narrower peptide–MHC-II context. H2-Ajand H2-Abmice have prominent reciprocal differences in CDR3α and CDR3β features, probably reflecting distinct modes of TCR fitting to MHC-II variants. These data reveal the mechanics and extent of how MHC-II shapes the naïve CD4+T cell CDR3 landscape, which essentially defines adaptive response to infections and self-antigens.
Monotonicity in inverse obstacle scattering on unbounded domains
Authors: Albicker Annalena , Griesmaier Roland
Published: June 2020

We consider an inverse obstacle scattering problem for the Helmholtz equation with obstacles that carry mixed Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. We discuss far field operators that map superpositions of plane wave incident fields to far field patterns of scattered waves, and we derive monotonicity relations for the eigenvalues of suitable modifications of these operators. These monotonicity relations are then used to establish a novel characterization of the support of mixed obstacles in terms of the corresponding far field operators. We apply this characterization in reconstruction schemes for shape detection and object classification, and we present numerical results to illustrate our theoretical findings.
Enhanced parametric pulse amplification in a comparable-mass plasma affected by charge state
Authors: Chen Y , Zheng C Y , Liu Z J , Cao L H , Feng Q S , Xiao C Z
Published: June 2020

Enhanced stimulated Brillouin scattering and stimulated Raman scattering are shown in comparable-mass plasma by considering charge state through a simplified theoretical model and particle-in-cell simulations. We present a more general dispersion relation of plasma wave with arbitrary mass ratio

(
β
=

m

e

/

m

i

)

and charge state

(
Z
=

Z

i

,

Z

e

=
1
)

compared to the previous electron–positron plasma study. Further, the ion-bulk mode is responsible for Brillouin amplification from kinetic analysis. Higher intensities of seed laser pulse amplification through stimulated Brillouin scattering are observed in βZ = 1 type plasmas and β = 1 type plasmas as Z increases; the former is caused by kinetic effects, while the latter is due to the higher growth rates of instability. Our results will have potential application in pulse amplification in the comparable-mass plasmas with charge state Z > 1, such as plasma of

C

60

−

/

C

60

+

,

C

60

2
+

,

C

60

3
+

.
Spatial measurement of axial and radial momentum fluxes of a plasma expanding in a magnetic nozzle
Authors: Takahashi Kazunori , Sugawara Takeharu , Ando Akira
Published: June 2020

Spatial profiles of axial and radial momentum fluxes of a plasma expanding in a magnetic nozzle is revealed by using a momentum vector measurement instrument located downstream of a radiofrequency plasma source, where the radial and axial forces exerted to the detector plate facing the source side are independently, directly, and simultaneously obtained. It is shown that a conical structure having high electron temperature and plasma density is significantly responsible for the axial momentum flux, which corresponds to the thrust in an electric propulsion device. The radially outward momentum flux is detected at the outer region of the conical structure, where the electron pressure gradient is formed; implying that the ions are radially accelerated by an electric field. The increase in the radially integrated axial momentum flux along the axis is demonstrated, where the gain of the axial momentum flux occurs at the radially peripheral region of the plasma expanding along the magnetic nozzle.
Global Argo data fast receiving and post-quality-control system
Authors: Li Z Q , Liu Z H , Lu S L
Published: June 2020

Within the past 20 years, the international Argo program has acquired more than 2 million temperature and salinity profiles throughout the global ocean. It has become the most efficient means of obtaining ocean observations from upper–intermediate layers. The profile data provided by the Argo Global Data Assembly Centres (GDACs) are submitted by 11 data centres in 9 countries after undergoing quality control. However, because the quality of the submitted data lacks uniformity, users must conduct post-quality-control processing prior to using the data. For this purpose, the China Argo Real-Time Data Centre (CARDC) has developed a system to achieve both rapid global Argo data reception and post-quality-control processing of all temperature and salinity profiles. Already in operation, the system allows daily transfer of global post-quality-controlled Argo data to various operating divisions. The system synchronizes with the GDAC server once each day, extracts all updated Argo profiles, and then automatically reads the data and performs a post-quality-control process comprising 15 quality control tests. The automatic post-quality-control system can detect errors in observation time and satellite fix, as well as identify temperature and salinity spikes, frozen profiles, density inversions and salinity drift/offset. The data quality following the post-quality-control processing has been shown improved effectively. In the future, it is expected that CARDC will update the Argo global ocean observational data set once a quarter.
Hexahedral prism and IMU installation error calibration technique based on turntable transmission
Authors: Ruan Shuangshuang , Guo Xiangxin , Shao Huichao , Liu Jian , Tu Zhen
Published: June 2020

A hexahedral prism and IMU installation error calibration technique based on turntable transmission is proposed. It effectively simplifies the calibration process of precise POS and SAR radar installation errors. Based on the zero position of the turntable, high-precise optical equipment was used to calibrate the hexahedral prism and the zero position of the turntable, then calibrated IMU and turntable zero position to realize the installation error of hexahedral prism and IMU through the error attitude matrix conversion. The calibration method is much simple and accurate. Test result shows that the heading angle and attitude angle calibration repeatability is better than 5”.
Training strategy of CNN for remote sensing image classification with active learning
Authors: Lei Liu Xiao , Peng Liu
Published: June 2020

With the rapid development of remote sensing image classification technology, remote sensing image classification is more and more widely used in forest vegetation detection, land use and land cover, environmental monitoring, geographic information system and so on. However, because of the large amount of remote sensing image data, it is extremely difficult to select a large number of effective annotated data from the massive data. Especially when the classifier is oriented to deep learning, the sample labeling strategy of remote sensing image is particularly important. In the training process of remote sensing image classification based on CNN, the labeling strategy needs to consider both the uncertainty of samples and the representativeness of samples. In this paper, an active deep learning sample labeling strategy for remote sensing image classification is proposed. In the training process of VGG-16 convolutional neural network model, a density-based spatial clustering of application with noise is added, and information entropy is combined to improve the labeling strategy. This method focuses on the analysis of sample information, mining the intrinsic features contained in the sample, taking into account the uncertainty and correlation of the sample, and ultimately achieves the selection of the most informative sample for model training. Experiments show that this method effectively improves the labeling efficiency of samples and achieves higher classification accuracy under the same number of conditions.
Detection of Small Changed Regions in Remote Sensing Imagery Using Convolutional Neural Network
Authors: Cao Zhaobin , Wu Mengmeng , Yan Rui , Zhang Fa , Wan Xiaohua
Published: June 2020

As a crucial application in remote sensing, change detection can detect semantic change of the land use in multi-temporal aerial imagery. Especially, with the improvement of the spatial resolution of remote sensing imagery, more and more small objects have been taken into account. Although several methods based on deep learning have been proposed to solve change detection in satellite imagery, most of existing methods cannot properly handle the small changed regions and the class imbalance, which are extremely serious in satellite imagery. In this paper, we propose a Siamese High-Resolution Network (Si-HRNet) to detect the small changed regions in remote sensing imagery. To our best knowledge, this is the first time to transfer High Resolution (HR) module into the Siamese network, so that our network can maintain high-resolution representation throughout the whole process and repeatedly fuse multi-resolution representations to obtain rich feature representations, especially can reduce information loss for small objects. In addition, to handle the class imbalance issues, we combine weighted binary cross entropy (BCE) and inverse volume weighted generalized dice loss (GDL) in small objects change detection. Experimental results show that the proposed Si-HRNet achieves state-of-the-art performance in both DigitalGlobe dataset and WHU Building change detection dataset, and the F1 score is improved by 3.35% ∼ 3.43%.
Modeling Urban Ecological Security in Yangtze River Delta based on Machine Learning
Authors: Sun H , Li W , Zhang J , Gao J
Published: June 2020

Gradually deteriorating eco-systems have been threatening the sustainable development of cities. With time, more negative impacts will emerge and affect national security. Cities face significant challenges in ecological forward with sustainable development. Yangtze River Delta is recognized as one of the sixth largest urban agglomeration in the world, its economic development plays a significant role in the country and its ecological security cannot be ignored. In order to model and evaluate the urban ecological security of the Yangtze River Delta, Machine Learning method was integrated with the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) model. On comparison with the traditional methods, the process for modeling urban ecological security is more efficient, reliable, comprehensive and objective. The results show that (1) The ecological security of the Yangtze River Delta has been generally improved from the past 10 years; (2) Industrial smoke (powder) dust emissions, per capita park green area, and science technology expenditures in fiscal expenditure are the three most influencing indicators with aspect to nature, society, and economy. This research could provide guidance to the construction and maintenance of urban ecological security.
Global ocean wave analysis based on the 10-year ENVISAT/ASAR wave mode data
Authors: Huang BingQing , Li Xiao-Ming
Published: June 2020

The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Wave Mode (WM) is an imaging mode dedicated to ocean surface wave observation. Since the first used in the ERS-1/SAR in 1991, this imaging mode has been continuously acquired by ERS-2, ENVISAT/ASAR, Sentinel-1A/1B and the GaoFen-3, and has been providing ocean wave observation data for almost 30 years. As the Envisat/ASAR has the longest archived WM data, we used a parametric model named CWAVE_ENV to retrieve ocean wave parameters of significant wave height (SWH) and mean wave period (MWP) from all the ASAR WM data in its lifetime from December 2002 to April 2012. By comparing with the ECMWF and NDBC buoy data, we found good agreements between the ASAR retrieved results and the buoy measurements. The retrieved ASAR integral wave parameters are further calibrated using the buoy measurements based on the Reduced Majored Axes (RMA) regression method. By calibration, the bias of SWH and MWP are improved from −0.06 m to 0.00 m and from −0.19 s to 0.00 s. Cross-validation of the calibrated ASAR wave parameters with the JASON-1 Radar Altimeter SWH also shows a good consistency, with the correlation coefficient of 0.93, the bias and RMSE of 0.18 m and 0.53 m, respectively. The proposed 10-year global wave product could be a good complementary to the Radar Altimeter product and possible good dataset for wave climate study. A preliminary result of using these data for global wave analysis is shown as well in this paper.
Validation of Sentinel-1-derived sea ice cover data in the Arctic
Authors: Zhang Qiang , Guo Shibo , Sun Yan , Dou JianPing , Li Xiao-Ming
Published: June 2020

The Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instrument can image the polar regions with a large area and high temporal and spatial resolutions, which is particularly suitable for sea ice monitoring in the Arctic. In a previous study, a support vector machine (SVM)-based method was developed to automatically extract the sea ice cover from Sentinel-1 SAR Extra Wide (EW) swath mode data in cross-polarization (horizontal-vertical, HV, or vertical-horizontal, VH). For validation, 468 Sentinel-1 EW HV-polarized images acquired in the Arctic are used to derive the sea ice cover with a spatial resolution of 0.96 km. We then compared the SAR-derived sea ice cover with the Ice Mapping System (IMS) dataset, which has a resolution of 1.0 km, and the AMSR-2 sea ice concentration (SIC, 15% is used as a threshold for deriving sea ice cover) dataset, which has a resolution of 3.125 km, based on pixel-by-pixel matching. The accuracies of the comparisons with the IMS and SIC data are 85.01% and 88.69%, respectively. The comparison shows that the IMS dataset is mostly overestimates the sea ice cover, while the AMSR2 dataset is relatively underestimates the sea ice extent. On the other hand, the sea ice cover information derived from the Sentinel-1 images by using the proposed method well characterizes the details of the marginal ice zone (MIZ). Furthermore, through the analysis of individual cases, the main factors that affect accuracy are drift (or pack) ice and a high land proportion in some areas.
Vector dataset for river systems originating in Eurasia to the Arctic Ocean
Authors: Wenshan Liang , Yubao Qiu , Pengfei Xie , Lijuan Shi , Xingxing Wang
Published: June 2020

Arctic rivers are part of the freshwater resources for the Arctic and are of great significance to research into changes in the Arctic Ocean. However, global river datasets do not describe rivers in Eurasia in sufficient detail. Based on a 30-m resolution land surface water dataset in 2010 together with global river width data (GRWL) and reference SRTM 30-m digital elevation data, the river systems in each Arctic basin were identified. Google Earth images were used for verification and the resulting accuracy was 93.96%. The areas of the rivers in each country studied were also analyzed and it was found that Russia has the largest area of rivers and Mongolia has the highest ratio of river area to country area. Based on these river datasets, the river ice phenology for the Ob River basin was analyzed using cloud-free binary snow-cover data obtained by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The result showed that the open-water period for the Ob River is from June to October.
Effect of partial Ni substitution in V85Ni15 by Ti on microstructure, mechanical properties and hydrogen permeability of V-based BCC alloy membranes
Authors: Jiang Peng , Sun Bolin , Wang Haichuan , Peng Guosheng , Ma Yangzhou , Song Guangsheng , Dolan Michael
Published: June 2020

Vanadium-based alloy membranes with body-centred-cubic (BCC) structure are considered as one of the leading alternatives to Pd-based alloys for hydrogen separation applications due to their lower cost and higher permeability. As permeability and mechanical properties depend on what microstructure can be produced mainly by alloy composition under same processing conditions, the effect of alloy composition on microstructure, mechanical properties and hydrogen permeability has been investigated for the V85Ni15 and V85Ni10Ti5 (at%) alloys prepared by a same process route. All Ni atoms dissolve into the V-matrix to form a single highly supersaturated solid solution with dendritic segregation of Ni-solute atoms in the binary alloy. A part of Ni replacement with 5 at% Ti leads to the formation of small interdendritic phases NiTi and NiTi2 in addition to major phase of V-based solid solution. The mechanical property testing shows that the ultimate strength of the ternary alloy is higher than that of the binary alloy, but the elongation and rollability are lower due to a combination of solid solution hardening and particle strengthening effect. The addition of Ti can greatly increase permeability about 4 times greater than the binary alloy at a permeation testing of 400 °C. But the presence of small amounts of interdendritic compounds provides a barrier to hydrogen migration, resulting in a relatively lower hydrogen diffusion coefficient. In theory, the diffusivity and solubility of hydrogen atom in the presence of alloying element Ti is higher than that in the presence of alloying element Ni in vanadium. This is demonstrated using first principles calculation which further explains the mechanism of hydrogen permeation.
Significantly improved non-ohmic and giant dielectric response in CaCu3Ti4O12 ceramics by incorporating Portland cement
Authors: Phromviyo Nutthakritta , Sirikamalat Saowarat , Chanlek Narong , Thongbai Prasit , Amornkitbamrung Vittaya , Chindaprasirt Prinya
Published: June 2020

The giant dielectric and nonlinear current–voltage properties of CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) incorporating Portland cement (PC) were investigated. Analysis revealed that the microstructure of the CCTO/PC ceramics was highly dense. Using the microstructure analysis and theoretical calculation, the elements in PC (i.e., Al, Si, Fe, K, Cr, and Mg) can substitute into the CCTO structure, giving rise to enhanced electrical properties of the grains and grain boundaries. As a result, the giant dielectric and nonlinear current–voltage properties of CCTO/PC were significantly improved. The low–frequency loss tangent of CCTO/PC was greatly reduced, by a factor of 10, while the dielectric permittivity of the ceramics was still large (∼104) over a frequency range of 102–106 Hz. Interestingly, the nonlinear coefficient (α) and electric field breakdown (Eb) of the CCTO/PC ceramics were greatly enhanced by factors of 2 and 30, respectively. Impedance spectroscopy analysis revealed large increases in α and Eb, as well as a decrease in the loss tangent due to a significant increase in the grain boundary resistance of CCTO/PC ceramics. Changes in giant dielectric and nonlinear electrical properties can be well described by the internal barrier layer capacitor model based on space charge polarization at the internal interfaces.
Towards scalable bosonic quantum error correction
Authors: Terhal B M , Conrad J , Vuillot C
Published: June 2020

We review some of the recent efforts in devising and engineering bosonic qubits for superconducting devices, with emphasis on the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill (GKP) qubit. We present some new results on decoding repeated GKP error correction using finitely-squeezed GKP ancilla qubits, exhibiting differences with previously studied stochastic error models. We discuss circuit-QED ways to realize CZ gates between GKP qubits and we discuss different scenarios for using GKP and regular qubits as building blocks in a scalable superconducting surface code architecture.
Parody and Pastiche
Authors: Diepeveen Leonard
Published: June 2020

Parody is the name given to a range of representational practices that involve citation of an earlier work, but an inexact citation—citation with polemical difference, always purposive, and often to comic effect. Arguments over parody as a category inevitably establish a position on how specific an activity it is and how far it reaches into culture, even into the nature of language itself. Parody’s range is at times understood to be quite general; at others, it is presented as a very specific artistic process. Thus, some argue that parody is at the heart of language itself, that all language is parodic, while others limit parody to the affectionate discrepant citation of another text or work of art. Pastiche, as a subcategory of parody, generally is considered to be less polemical about its sources, less satirical, more flat, and less focused. All parody (including pastiche) is interpretive of its source, and in interpreting that source it makes an argument about that source—its features and the value of those features. In making that argument, parody establishes or reacts to a norm, a norm at times in line with a cultural dominant and at other times opposed to it. While that relationship to a norm often raises the question whether parody is inherently dispersive and liberatory or whether it exists to affirm a status quo, historical practice reveals that there is no inherence here; parody can move in either direction. Parody is always in some relation to a norm, a relationship that points to the heart of its activities: to the consequences of citation, the place of personal expression, and polemics.
Australian Climate Fiction
Authors: Milner Andrew
Published: June 2020

Climate is an important part of fictional scene setting, whether it be geographical—is the scene in the desert or in the tropics?—or seasonal—is it winter or is it summer? And this is perhaps especially true of Australian literature, where the majority of writers are still descendants of Anglo-Celtic settlers, living in more or less uneasy relationship with a distinctly non-Anglo-Celtic natural environment. Climate has thus been a characteristically Australian literary preoccupation: the titles of Vance Palmer’s Cyclone (1947), for example, or Patrick White’s Eye of the Storm (1973) speak for themselves. But “cli-fi” in the sense of the term coined by Dan Bloom in 2007 refers, not to climate per se, nor even to climate change per se, but much more specifically to fictions concerned with the effects of anthropogenic climate change, that is, to the literature of global warming. This is a much more recent preoccupation, which dates only from the late 1970s when the US National Research Council and the World Meteorological Organization first published predictions that then current levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would result in significant increases in average global temperatures. The short history of Australian “cli-fi” can be traced from the first publication of George Turner’s The Sea and Summer in 1987.
Latinx Communities, the Criminal Justice System, and Literature
Authors: Morín José Luis
Published: June 2020

Racially demeaning representations of persons of Latin American origin, also known as Latinas/os or the more gender inclusive Latinx, as criminally inclined can be found throughout US literature—broadly defined in this article to include laws, fiction and nonfiction, news stories, as well as movie, television, and theatrical scripts. Rooted in a history of conquests, hemispheric domination, and an expansionist ideology premised on the myth of Anglo-American racial superiority, this literature promotes the idea that Latinx populations are racially alien and inferior. These depictions involve negative stereotypes depicting Latinxs as criminals. For instance, in the period following the US war against Mexico through which the United States wrested half of Mexico’s land base by 1848, popular novels about the post-conquest era typically depicted Anglo-American settler colonialists as noble and heroic, while persons of Mexican ancestry were commonly portrayed as bandidos (bandits) and denigrated as “greasers”—shiftless, deceitful criminal threats to white society. Mexican women were typecast as devious “halfbreed harlots.” Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Colombians and other groups of people of Latin American descent continue to be portrayed as innately criminal in novels, newspapers, movies, and other media, whether it be as greasers, pachucos, knife-wielding gang members, or drug traffickers. These abject characterizations are a recurring trope in some of the most popular and iconic works of fiction and entertainment media. Even in popular social science literature—from the controversial 1960s “culture of poverty” to the discredited 1990s “superpredators” theory—deviance, depravity, and criminality are presented as being at the core of Latinx nature and the problems their communities face. Since the late 1970s, a range of writers, scholars, activists, and organizations have sought to present a counter-discourse to these ubiquitous dehumanizing and demeaning caricatures. Often equipped with empirical data and social scientific analyses, a more accurate account of the lives of Latinx persons in relation to criminal justice issues in the United States has been emerging. These efforts notwithstanding, racist and negative narratives associating Latinxs with illicit drug cartel operations and other criminal activity endure, influencing and distorting the public discourse and the perceptions about Latinx communities in contemporary US society.
Long- and Short-term Memory Structure in Political Decision Making
Authors: Jaccard James
Published: June 2020

Cognitive models of political behavior and political decision making have been a staple of research in political science for decades. Recent advances in cognitive psychology and behavioral decision making underscore the utility of models that incorporate memory dynamics for understanding a wide range of political behaviors at the individual level. Four memory systems are relevant; sensory memory, short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory stores, a subset of which is then acted upon by working memory. Working memory manipulates its contents through processes such as reasoning, comprehension, attention, integration, and retrieval of supplementary information from long-term memory. Working memory ultimately holds and processes the thoughts and feelings that are salient to an individual at a given point in time. Memory models of decision making elaborate what cognitions and emotions are likely to enter working memory and how those cognitions and emotions are combined and integrated when making a behavioral decision.
Subsidiarity as a Subject of Battle in European Union Politics
Authors: van Kersbergen Kees , Verbeek Bertjan
Published: June 2020

Since the Maastricht Treaty (1993), subsidiarity has guided the political process surrounding the distribution of competences between administrative layers in the European Union (EU). The EU’s subsidiarity regime affects the politics and governance of the EU, because the notion of subsidiarity allows for continuous negotiation over its practical use. The constant battle over subsidiarity implies that the notion changes its meaning over time and alters the power relations between different actors within the EU. Since the Lisbon Treaty (2009), subsidiarity has mainly strengthened the position of member states at the expense of the Commission.
Hungary and the European Union
Authors: Csehi Robert
Published: June 2020

Hungary became a member of the European Union (EU) alongside nine other, mainly East-Central European (ECE) countries in 2004. Although Hungary was one of the leading candidates from the former Soviet bloc to join the EU after the transition in 1989–1990, this positive view and the advantage that the country enjoyed seemed to gradually disappear by the mid-2000s. Hungarian experience with the EU is quite ambivalent. Economically speaking, on the one hand there is a slow but steady convergence to the EU average, which is largely due to the net beneficiary status of the country within the Community, and employment levels have increased considerably. On the other hand, the Country-Specific Recommendations (CSRs) point to shortcomings related to competitiveness, and labor productivity, which indicate some missed opportunities. Similarly, although budgetary deficit and public debt have been under control lately, sustainability concerns still remain. Additionally, even though the country’s prospects to join the common currency area are quite promising, political willingness is still lacking to make a lasting commitment to the Euro. While the socio-economic expectations of EU membership before accession were quite high and rather unrealistic, although economic growth decreased the level of overall poverty, socioeconomic inequalities have increased lately because of government policies. As far as politics is concerned, even the consensus of the political elite to support liberal democracy as a political system and further integration of the EU as a policy strategy have been questioned by the main governing party lately. Instead, a more Eurosceptic tone and an incremental democratic decline characterizes everyday politics, which has led to recurring criticism within the Community, and the eventual triggering of an Article 7 Procedure.
Framing and Political Decision Making: An Overview
Authors: Oxley Zoe
Published: June 2020

Political communicators have long used framing as a tactic to try to influence the opinions and political decisions of others. Frames capture an essence of a political issue or controversy, typically the essence that best furthers a communicator’s political goals. Framing has also received much attention by scholars; indeed, the framing literature is vast. In the domain of political decision making, one useful distinction is between two types of frames: emphasis frames and equivalence frames. Emphasis frames present an issue by highlighting certain relevant features of the issue while ignoring others. Equivalence frames present an issue or choice in different yet logically equivalent ways. Characterizing the issue of social welfare as a drain on the government budget versus a helping hand for poor people is emphasis framing. Describing the labor force as 95% employed versus 5% unemployed is equivalency framing. These frames differ not only by their content but also by the effects on opinions and judgements that result from frame exposure as well as the psychological processes that account for the effects. For neither emphasis nor equivalence frames, however, are framing effects inevitable. Features of the environment, such as the presence of competing frames, or individual characteristics, such as political predispositions, condition whether exposure to a specific frame will influence the decisions and opinions of the public.
LGBT Military Service Policies in the United States
Authors: Goodhart Andrew , Taylor Jami K.
Published: June 2020

For most of its history, the U.S. military has maintained a policy of exclusion toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people serving in uniform. The justifications for these exclusions have included the view that being homosexual or transgender is a psychological disorder, that it undermines military morale and effectiveness, and a fear that LGBT people would be vulnerable to foreign espionage. Explicit policies banning consensual homosexual sex—and excluding from service those who engage in it—date to the period between World Wars I and II, but de facto efforts at exclusion have existed since the early days of the republic.

Regulations governing homosexuals in the military came under pressure in the 1970s and 1980s as societal views toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people changed, and those LGB service members discharged under the policy increasingly challenged their treatment in court. (Public pressure to change regulations governing transgender people in the military arose mostly in the 2000s, though litigation efforts date to the 1970s.) In addition to general shifts in public and legal opinion, the debate over LGB people serving in the U.S. military was affected by the experience of foreign militaries that allow LGB people to serve. United States law began to loosen formal restrictions on LBG people serving in uniform with the passage of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) in 1994, but it still required LGB people to serve in secret. Changing public perceptions of LGB people and problems implementing the ban galvanized support for eliminating such restrictions. In 2010, President Obama signed legislation repealing DADT and removing all restrictions on LGB people serving in the military. However, transgender people do not enjoy the same rights. The Trump administration has revised Obama-era rules on transgender service members to enable greater exclusion. The issue is being contested in the courts and appears ripe for further political and legal dispute.
Party Organizational Structure in Latin America
Authors: Petrova Ana
Published: June 2020

Partisan organizations are the set of structured patterns of interaction among political cadres and members alike that are prescribed either by formal rules of procedure or by traditions and unwritten rules. Scholars of Latin America have generally described local partisan organizations as weak but have also devoted significant attention to the study of informal party structures, whose robustness and complexity have tended to contrast with the general fragility of their formal counterparts. Although important data-related challenges have precluded more systematic and generalizable analyses of the causes and consequences of party organizations, meticulous theoretical works and case studies have explored the questions of what organizations look like, how they operate, how they were built, and what outcomes they result in. This literature has identified ideational and tangible resources as the primary predictors of organizational strength. Strong and easily identifiable party brands provide both politicians and partisans with incentives to join and remain in a political party even in times of bad electoral performance and limited selective benefits. Material resources are shaped by countries’ institutional frameworks and structure politicians’ priorities in terms of their career ambitions and their relationships to voters and partisans. In turn, robust organizations have been associated with longer party survival and a narrower margin of action of the party leaderships. The presence of an extended network of party members and sympathizers make parties more resilient to short-term challenges, which is no small feat in a region marked by relatively high electoral volatility and many institutions of fleeting existence. The recent release of several important data sets and the proliferation of knowledge of how parties work create exciting avenues for future research.
Student Movements in Latin America: Decolonizing and Feminizing Education and Life
Authors: Motta Sara C. , Bermudez Gomez Norma Lucia , Valenzuela Fuentes Katia , Dixon Ella Simone
Published: June 2020

Student movements and radical education collectives across Latin America, building on traditions of radical, popular, feminist, and Indigenizing education, are seeking the democratization of the politics of knowledge and education in their regional contexts. Drawing on the cases of Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, it is possible to map and conceptualize a clear autonomous/decolonizing strand within the broader weaving of students’ movements, looking at the pedagogies of emancipation that underpin and are emergent in their praxis.

The process of researching such movements and their politics of knowledge involves a decolonizing and pedagogical approach that embeds the co-creation of knowledges for transformation between researcher and movements. This builds upon work related to prefigurative epistemologies and decolonizing pedagogies of movement scholars such as Motta, Bermúdez, and Valenzuela Fuentes. It foregrounds the work of Neplanteras, of whom Gloria Anzaldúa speaks, those who bridge communities, sociabilities, epistemologies, and subjects on the margins. Nepantleras, as Anzaldúa continues, “are threshold people, those who move within and among multiple worlds and use their movements in the service of transformation.”

Our collaborative research as Nepantleras has identified three broad themes emergent across these political and deeply pedagogical educational struggles and experiences. First is the practices, ethics, and experiences that foreground the prefigurative and horizontal nature of the politics of decolonizing and autonomous knowledge being co-created. Second is the feminization of resistance, involving both the emergence and centering of women and feminized subjects in movement and collective struggles, and the feminization of politics and knowledge making. Third is the key role played by affect and an embodied/enfleshed politics in the three cases, and how they foster the democratization, feminization, and decolonization of education and everyday life.
Albania: Civil-Military Relations in the Post–Cold War Era
Authors: Karabelias Gerassimos
Published: June 2020

Albania’s peaceful exit from the communist world, the adoption of NATO-guided changes in its military institution, the establishment of closer ties with the European Union in conjunction with the strong presence of political leaders in the country’s domestic and internal affairs and its latest economic growth offer the impression of a successful transformation of a former Communist state to a Western-type democratic political model and civil-military relations. However, what is often overlooked is that the country’s political elites, emerging from a lengthy, deeply rooted tradition of clan and tribal power structures, have dominated Albanian politics and its civil-military relations, whether under a monarchical or a communist regime. By combining a pro-Western civilianization profile with an efficient control over Albania’s sociopolitical culture and economic development, these traditional elites permitted the officer corps to take the Western-prescribed necessary steps, during the post–Cold War period, as long as their interests were not deeply affected. The small size of the officer corps, the absence of semiautonomous economic power, as well as of corporate unity in conjunction with the existence of a servile political culture and ideology toward the domestic political elites have forced the country’s civil-military relations to resemble the Western ones only in appearance. The inability/unwillingness of these elites to take some steps towards the country’s social, economic and political advancement raises the question of whether both domestic and external forces are truly committed to democracy or are going to be totally satisfied with only the process of putting “old wine in new bottles.”
Intergroup Attribution
Authors: Pettigrew Thomas F.
Published: June 2020

Intergroup attribution refers to causal attributions that people make about the behavior of out-groups and their own in-group. Attribution theory began in the late 1950s and 1960s. This initial interest was limited to how individuals causally interpreted the behavior of other individuals. But in the 1970s social psychologists began to consider causal attributions made about groups. The guiding theory for research in this area has been largely structured by the predictions of the ultimate attribution error (more accurately described as the intergroup attribution bias). Its principal contentions flow from phenomena already uncovered by attribution research on individual behavior. It holds that group attributions, especially among the highly prejudiced, will be biased for the in-group and against out-groups. Ingroup protection (explaining away negative ingroup behavior as situationally determined – “given the situation, we had to act that way”) is typically a stronger effect than ingroup enhancement (accepting positive ingroup behavior as dispositionally determined – “as a people, we are kind and compassionate toward other groups”). Many moderators and mediators of the effect have been uncovered. Asian cultures, for example, tend to be less prone to the intergroup attribution bias, while strong emotions can induce either more or less of the bias. Similarly, empathy and special training can significantly reduce the bias. Together with such closely related processes as the fundamental attribution error and actor-observer asymmetry, the intergroup attribution bias has proven highly useful in a great variety of applications. Moreover, the intergroup attribution bias serves as an integral component of the intergroup prejudice syndrome.