bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Curse: building expression atlases and co-expression networks from public RNA-Seq data
Authors: Vaneechoutte Dries , Vandepoele Klaas
Published: December 2018

Public RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) datasets are a valuable resource for transcriptome analyses, but their accessibility is hindered by the imperfect quality and presentation of their metadata and by the complexity of processing raw sequencing data. The Curse suite was created to alleviate these problems. It consists of an online curation tool named Curse to efficiently build compendia of experiments hosted on the Sequence Read Archive, and a lightweight pipeline named Prose to download and process the RNA-Seq data into expression atlases and co-expression networks. Curse networks showed improved linking of functionally related genes compared to the state-of-the-art.

Availability and implementation

Curse, Prose and their manuals are available at http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/webtools/Curse/. Prose was implemented in Java.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
miR-338-5p inhibits cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and cisplatin resistance in esophageal squamous cancer cells by targeting FERMT2
Authors: Lin Wen-Chun , Chen Li-Han , Hsieh Yao-Chin , Yang Pei-Wen , Lai Liang-Chuan , Chuang Eric Y , Lee Jang-Ming , Tsai Mong-Hsun
Published: December 2018

Esophageal cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death in the male population of Eastern Asia. In addition, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the major type of esophageal cancer among the world. Owing to the poor overall 5-year survival rate, novel effective treatment strategies are needed. MicroRNAs are important gene regulators that are dysregulated in many cancer types. In our previous study, we applied next-generation sequencing to demonstrate that miR-338-5p was downregulated in the tumor tissue of patients with versus without recurrence. In this study, we further studied the roles of miR-338-5p in ESCC. The expression of endogenous miR-338-5p was at lower levels in ESCC cells compared with normal cells. Functional assays showed that miR-338-5p reduced cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and cisplatin resistance in an ESCC cell line, CE-81T. Potential target genes of miR-338-5p were identified by microarray and prediction tools, and 31 genes were selected. Among these, Fermitin family homolog 2 (FERMT2) plays an oncogenic role in ESCC, so it was chosen for further study. Luciferase assays showed the direct binding between miR-338-5p and the 3′ untranslated region of FERMT2. Silencing of FERMT2 inhibited cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and cisplatin resistance. Pathway analysis revealed that the integrin-linked protein kinase signaling pathway, in which FERMT2 participates, was significantly affected by a miR-338-5p mimic. Our results suggest that miR-338-5p may play an antioncogenic role in ESCC via repressing FERMT2.
Increase in emergency department visits related to cannabis reported using syndromic surveillance system
Authors: Noel G N , Maghoo A M , Franke F F , Viudes G V , Minodier P M
Published: December 2018

Background

Cannabis is illegal in France but, as in many countries, legalization is under debate. In the United States, an increase of emergency department (ED) visits related to cannabis exposure (CE) in infants and adults was reported. In France, a retrospective observational study also suggested an increase of CE in children under 6 years old. This study only included toddlers and the data sources used did not allow repeated analysis for monitoring.

Methods

Our study aimed to evaluate the trend in visits for CE in ED in patients younger than 27 years old in Southern France. A cross-sectional study using the Electronic Emergency Department Abstracts (EEDA) included in the national Syndromic Surveillance System. CE visits were defined using International Classification of Disease (ICD-10).

Results

From 2009 to 2014, 16 EDs consistently reported EEDA with <5% missing diagnosis code. Seven hundred and ninety seven patients were admitted for CE including 49 (4.1%) children under 8 years old. From 2009–11 to 2012–14, the rate of CE visits increased significantly across all age groups. The highest increase was in the 8–14 years old (+144%; 1.85–4.51, P < 0.001) and was also significant in children under 8 (0.53–1.06; P = 0.02). Among children under 8, hospitalization rate (75.5% vs. 16.8%; P < 0.001) and intensive care unit admissions (4.1% vs. 0.1%; P < 0.001) were higher compared with patients older than 8 years.

Conclusion

These trends occurred despite cannabis remaining illegal. EEDA could be useful for monitoring CE in EDs.
A right coronary artery aneurysm 16 years after surgical repair of anomalous origin of the right coronary artery from the pulmonary artery
Authors: Furutachi Akira , Furukawa Kojiro , Komatsu Aiko , Nogami Eijiro
Published: December 2018

Anomalous origin of the right coronary artery (RCA) from the pulmonary artery is a very rare congenital heart disease, and several reports have described long-term events after surgery. We report the case of a 46-year-old woman who underwent reimplantation of the RCA for anomalous origin of the right coronary artery from the pulmonary artery 16 years ago. An RCA aneurysm gradually developed and dilated over time, and we resected the aneurysm and also grafted the right gastroepiploic artery graft to the distal RCA. Careful long-term follow-up is required to avoid overlooking such a rare but life-threatening complication after surgical repair of anomalous origin of the right coronary artery from the pulmonary artery.
Psychosocial support during displacement due to a natural disaster: relationships with distress in a lower-middle income country
Authors: Zahlawi Tatiana , Roome Amanda B , Chan Chim W , Campbell Jacqueline J , Tosiro Bev , Malanga Max , Tagaro Markleen , Obed Jimmy , Iaruel Jerry , Taleo George , Tarivonda Len , Olszowy Kathryn M , Dancause Kelsey N
Published: December 2018

Background

Past studies show relationships between disaster-related displacement and adverse psychosocial health outcomes. The development of psychosocial interventions following displacement is thus increasingly prioritized. However, data from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are lacking. In October 2017, the population of Ambae Island in Vanuatu, a lower-middle income country, was temporarily displaced due to volcanic activity. We analyzed distress among adults displaced due to the event and differences based on the psychosocial support they received.

Methods

Data on experiences during displacement, distress and psychosocial support were collected from 443 adults 2–3 wk after repatriation to Ambae Island. Four support categories were identified: Healthcare professional, Traditional/community, Not available and Not wanted. We analyzed differences in distress by sex and group using one-way ANOVA and generalized linear models.

Results

Mean distress scores were higher among women (1.90, SD=0.97) than men (1.64, SD=0.98) (p<0.004). In multivariate models, psychosocial support group was associated with distress among women (p=0.033), with higher scores among women who reported no available support compared with every other group. Both healthcare professional and traditional support networks were widely used.

Conclusions

Women might be particularly vulnerable to distress during disaster-related displacement in LMICs, and those who report a lack of support might be at greater risk. Both healthcare professional and traditional networks provide important sources of support that are widely used and might help to ameliorate symptoms.
An outcome model approach to transporting a randomized controlled trial results to a target population
Authors: Goldstein Benjamin A , Phelan Matthew , Pagidipati Neha J , Holman Rury R , Pencina Michael J , Stuart Elizabeth A
Published: December 2018

Objective

Participants enrolled into randomized controlled trials (RCTs) often do not reflect real-world populations. Previous research in how best to transport RCT results to target populations has focused on weighting RCT data to look like the target data. Simulation work, however, has suggested that an outcome model approach may be preferable. Here, we describe such an approach using source data from the 2 × 2 factorial NAVIGATOR (Nateglinide And Valsartan in Impaired Glucose Tolerance Outcomes Research) trial, which evaluated the impact of valsartan and nateglinide on cardiovascular outcomes and new-onset diabetes in a prediabetic population.

Materials and Methods

Our target data consisted of people with prediabetes serviced at the Duke University Health System. We used random survival forests to develop separate outcome models for each of the 4 treatments, estimating the 5-year risk difference for progression to diabetes, and estimated the treatment effect in our local patient populations, as well as subpopulations, and compared the results with the traditional weighting approach.

Results

Our models suggested that the treatment effect for valsartan in our patient population was the same as in the trial, whereas for nateglinide treatment effect was stronger than observed in the original trial. Our effect estimates were more efficient than the weighting approach and we effectively estimated subgroup differences.

Conclusions

The described method represents a straightforward approach to efficiently transporting an RCT result to any target population.
The Good of Consequentialized Deontology
Authors: Betzler Monika , Schroth Jörg
Published: December 2018

This chapter critically discusses the hitherto most radical and ambitious proposal for accommodating consequentialism with our commonsense moral intuitions. According to this proposal, which has been most forcefully developed by Douglas Portmore, it is possible to consequentialize every plausible deontological moral theory, i.e., to translate a deontological theory into a consequentialist theory that yields exactly the same moral verdicts as the original deontological theory. The hoped for result of this move is a moral theory that (i) retains the compelling idea of consequentialism, (ii) has no counterintuitive moral implications, and (iii) avoids the paradox of deontology. After describing some of the details of the consequentializing procedure the chapter mounts several objections that lead to the conclusion that the consequentializing project cannot achieve any of its goals.
The Restrictions of Consequentialism
Authors: Gertken Jan
Published: December 2018

Deontic restrictions are widely believed to pose a challenge for consequentialist views of moral rightness. Consequentialists who want to make sense of such restrictions typically appeal to agent-relative value. This chapter argues that it is not our understanding of value, but rather our understanding of outcomes, that is crucial for a consequentialist account of restrictions. First, it is possible to consequentialize restrictions without appealing to agent-relative value, namely by employing an agent-centered conception of outcomes. Second, even consequentialist accounts of restrictions that rely on ascriptions of agent-relative value fail to be satisfying unless they are complemented by an agent-centered conception of outcomes. The chapter concludes by offering some thoughts on how such a conception is best understood and on how it can be supported by further considerations.
New Consequentialism and the New Doing-Allowing Distinction
Authors: Hurley Paul
Published: December 2018

Intuitively, we sometimes have decisive reasons not to do certain things even though such restraint allows something worse overall to happen. Traditional consequentialists challenge the legitimacy of this distinction, but a new wave of evaluator-relative consequentialists endorses this commonsense doing-allowing distinction. This chapter demonstrates that such new wave consequentialists in fact shift their target to a new intuitive distinction, that we sometimes have decisive reasons not to do things even though such restraint allows an evaluator-relatively worse outcome to happen. The chapter argues that the appeal to a “teleological conception of reasons” (TCR) grounds the arguments against this new distinction; that the case for TCR is itself grounded in appeals to outcome-centered accounts of values, attitudes, and actions; that alternative accounts of values, attitudes, and actions do not support TCR; and that acceptance of such alternative accounts undermines the case for consequentialism at the deepest level.
Criminal Law as Public Law II
Authors: Chiao Vincent
Published: December 2018

This chapter develops the “public law conception” of the criminal law. By embodying a form of negative reciprocity, the criminal law plays an important role in stabilizing social cooperation. Stabilizing social cooperation with public institutions is the basic function of the criminal law, in the sense of a function that must be adequately discharged regardless of whatever other functions we might wish to achieve by means of the criminal law. Hence, the criminal law is subject to a “fully political standard of justification”: the criminal law is worth supporting if and only if (1) the institutions whose rules it enforces are worth supporting, and (2) its use in a particular context would be consistent with the principles that make those institutions worth supporting in the first place.
Criminal Law as Public Law III
Authors: Chiao Vincent
Published: December 2018

The previous chapter defended a fully political standard of justification, according to which a justification of the criminal law rests on (1) an account of when the institutions whose rules it enforces are worth supporting, and (2) an account of why its use in a particular context would be consistent with the principles that make those institutions worth supporting in the first place. This chapter offers a substantive interpretation of those more abstract ideas. Starting from a conception of a society of equals, familiar in the works of Pettit, Anderson, and Kolodny, among others, the chapter sketches an account (the political ideal of anti-deference) that is democratic, egalitarian but not equalizing, and focused on a form of freedom—central capability—as its basic evaluative currency. The chapter suggests that institutions committed to democratic equality in this sense would approve the use of the criminal law provided that those under its jurisdiction have an equal opportunity to influence the content of the law, its use does not further entrench an objectionable status hierarchy, and its use optimally protects effective access to central capability for all, criminal accused and victim alike.
Reasons to Criminalize
Authors: Chiao Vincent
Published: December 2018

This chapter extends the public law conception to the theory of criminalization. The first half of the chapter is devoted to considering whether the criminal law has a privileged subject matter or “core,” focusing especially on Feinberg’s influential account of the criminal law as a system of direct prohibitions. The chapter argues that a subject-matter-based approach has difficulty coming to grips with actual criminal law systems in modern administrative states, in which so-called mala prohibita offenses predominate. The second half of the chapter turns to sketching how we might approach the question of criminalization from a public law point of view, both in general and with reference to the political ideal of anti-deference (sketched in Chapter 3) in particular. Along the way, the chapter argues that the (very popular) wrongfulness principle turns out to be either empty or implausible, and hence that we should reject any version of the harm principle, or of legal moralism, that presupposes it.
Performing Antiquity
Authors: Dorf Samuel N.
Published: December 2018

Performing Antiquity investigates collaboration between French and American scholars of Greek antiquity (archaeologists, philologists, classicists, and musicologists) and the performing artists (dancers, composers, choreographers, and musicians) who brought their research to life at the birth of modernism. The book tells the story of performances that took place at academic conferences, the Paris Opéra, ancient amphitheaters in Delphi, and private homes. These musical and dance collaborations were built on reciprocity: the performers gained new insight into their craft while leaning new techniques or repertoire, and the scholars got to see theory become practice; that is, they had a chance to see/hear/feel what they had studied and imagined. The performers received the imprimatur of scholarship, the stamp of authenticity, and validation for their creative activities. Drawing from methods and theory from musicology, dance studies, performance studies, queer studies, archaeology, and classics, Performing Antiquity shows how new scholarly methods and technologies altered the performance and ultimately the reception of music and dance of the past. Acknowledging and critically examining the complex relationship performers and scholars had with the pasts they studied does not undermine their work. Rather, understanding their own limits, dreams, obsessions, desires, loves, and fears enriched the ways they performed the past.
Performing Sappho’s Fractured Archive, or Listening for the Queer Sounds in the Life and Works of Natalie Clifford Barney
Authors: Dorf Samuel N.
Published: December 2018

This chapter excavates the remaining traces of pseudo-ancient Greek musical and dance performance that took place in Natalie Clifford Barney’s Parisian home in the first decades of the twentieth century. Barney’s discovery of Greek antiquity came about at the same time that she became aware of her own sexual identity. She perceived a freedom in the culture of ancient Lesbos and Athens that she felt was lacking in early twentieth-century American and French culture, and she used her passion for studying ancient Greek poetry under the tutelage of the best Greek scholars in Paris to channel both her creative and erotic interests in a very public way. This chapter focuses on the alterity of queer performance and reception within Barney’s Parisian circle by exploring how queer performance and identity were mapped in her cultural salon. The evidence of these performances remains in fragments, scattered across public and private collections, preserved in photographs, memoirs, letters, and anecdotes told third-hand. The chapter draws on theories of performance and queerness to make sense of the archival materials relating to re-enactment of ancient Greek dance and music hosted at the heiress’s home. This illustrates the role of ancient Greek–inspired music and dance in defining queer subjectivity in early twentieth-century Parisian salons. In piecing together fragments, this chapter offers new ways for musicologists to think about performance and the archive.
“To Give Greece Back to the Greeks”
Authors: Dorf Samuel N.
Published: December 2018

Eva Palmer Sikelianos, along with her husband, the poet Angehlos Sikelianos, founded the first modern Delphic Festival in 1927 in an effort to revive the ancient Greek rites that had taken place on that spot more than twenty-five hundred years before. This chapter explores Palmer Sikelianos’s choreography, rituals, music, and dramaturgy for her reconstructed Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus in light of her research on ancient Greek culture, conducted in both Paris and modern Greece. Based on silent film records of Palmer Sikelianos’s 1930 festival, her autobiography, her collaborations with Natalie Clifford Barney on Greek-themed theatricals in the early 1900s, and comparisons to the movement vocabulary and other contemporary stagings of ancient Greek festivals and sport, the chapter demonstrates how Palmer Sikelianos navigated between the needs and methods of the archaeologist and those of the performer. She blended the oldest sources on ancient Greek ritual music and dance that she could find with what she saw as an authentic “spirit” of Greek culture that she observed in modern Greek society. Her performances drew from archival/archaeological courses (ancient treatises, dance iconography) and lived practices (folk song, modern dance, Byzantine chant traditions). Like the Ballets Russes’s re-enactment of ancient Greece in Daphnis et Cholé and L’Après-midi d’un Fauné and pagan Rus’s in Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring], Palmer Sikelianos’s project to re-enact “authentic” Greek theater and choreography illustrates that theories of theatrical historical reconstruction in the early twentieth century were heavily influence by contemporary theatrical, political, and social events.
Scholars and Their Objects of Study; or, Loving Your Subject
Authors: Dorf Samuel N.
Published: December 2018

This concluding chapter directly addresses the relationship between scholars and their objects of study. In two parts, it looks at the relationship between the Parisian archaeologist and art historian Salomon Reinach and Natalie Clifford Barney before turning to analysis of contemporary collaborations between musicologists/dance historians and performers. To better understand ancient Greek artistic and social life, Reinach (the scholar) attached himself to Barney (the living embodiment of the past) and the queer women who performed pseudo-ancient Greek music and dance at her Parisian home (namely, the dancers Régina Badet and Liane de Pougy). Their correspondence reveals a complex system of reciprocity in the relationship among the scholar, his object of study, and the individuals with the power to embody the past through performance. The Barney-Reinach relationship reminds us to continually interrogate the ways musicologists perform scholarship today. As musicologists engage more in the creative realizations of their scholarly projects, and as musicological arguments find their way into performances, the negotiations between the performer and the scholar in the days when the discipline of musicology was forming will prove insightful. Recent calls for a reparative instead of a paranoid musicology emphasize the role of love in the work of music studies. The conclusion echoes calls for a reparative mode of scholarship, but one that doesn’t ignore the blinding power of that love.
Scientific Speculation
Authors: Achinstein Peter
Published: December 2018

The chapter presents a definition of speculation in terms of concepts of evidence the author has introduced in other works. This definition is used to examine three popular views about scientific speculation: never speculate (Newton), speculate freely but test (Whewell), and speculate freely even without testing (Feyerabend). All three views are rejected, and in their place a pragmatic position, suggested by the work of James Clerk Maxwell, is defended. According to the latter, whether and how a scientist should speculate depends on the aims of the investigation and on standards, both epistemic and non-epistemic, different from those utilized for experimental proof.
Holism vs. Particularism
Authors: Achinstein Peter
Published: December 2018

Evidential holism is the view that individual hypotheses do not receive evidential support, only entire theoretical systems do. Evidential particularism is the view that within a theoretical system each hypothesis can and must receive evidential support for the system to be established. Both views are examined, the former as expressed by Whewell, the latter as expressed by Mill. Although each view is different, both adopt an “either/or” attitude toward theory evaluation: either you prove the whole theory, or it remains a speculation. In this chapter, the holist viewpoint is seriously challenged and a form of particularism is defended. However, the “either/or” attitude of both views is rejected in favor of a more nuanced, contextually based method of theory evaluation.
Public Housing, Redevelopment, and the Governance of Poverty
Authors: Vale Lawrence J.
Published: December 2018

This chapter provides a brief overview American public housing history, linked to the broader planning history of slum clearance and urban renewal. It steps back to consider the longer history of efforts to define the problem of poverty and its governance. It then traces the evolution of deeply subsidized housing programs, revealing decades of expansion, followed by a more recent contraction. It next introduces HOPE VI, the main federal program of public housing redevelopment, explaining its policy evolution, efforts to combat concentrated poverty, and links to gentrification. It provides a method for categorizing the significant variety of efforts to implement HOPE VI projects, showing that mixed-income housing can be pursued in many different ways, in accordance with divergent aims. By identifying the larger national pattern of HOPE VI deployment in an unprecedented way, it situates the book’s four detailed case examinations in a more holistic context.
The Rise of Urban Renewal and the Connie Chambers Project
Authors: Vale Lawrence J.
Published: December 2018

Chapters 8 and 9 consider the case of Tucson, which reveals a third possible approach to public housing governance and redevelopment, typifying the Publica Major constellation. This shows what can happen when responsibility for public housing remains more wholly vested in a well-functioning public sector, subject neither to the whims of private developers, as in New Orleans, nor to the sway of empowered low-income tenants, as in Boston. Chapter 8 narrates the complex and reluctant emergence of Tucson’s two-hundred-unit Connie Chambers public housing project, completed in 1967 as a supplement to an earlier project known as La Reforma. Public housing growth remained inseparable from the deeply contested process of urban renewal that decimated eighty acres of the Mexican American downtown barrio and purged its residents. Those contemplating redevelopment of Connie Chambers, which was forged in lingering controversy, knew that they could not repeat the earlier ethnically motivated displacement.
Housing the Poorest: Hoping for More
Authors: Vale Lawrence J.
Published: December 2018

Chapter 13 revisits the four constellations—Publica Major, the Big Developer, Nonprofitus, and Plebs—to compare the four places discussed in the book. These cities of stars reveal how HOPE VI affects governance in two settings: the phased implementation of projects and the management of completed neighborhoods. The relative power of public, private, not-for-profit, and community voices constrains project pace and shapes how much to prioritize on-site rehousing of the existing extremely low-income community. And, following on this, the second key arena of poverty governance entails decisions about selecting and managing residents in the completed development. Reflecting on the lived reality of the four communities provides an opportunity to revisit the stated rationales for income mixing. The chapter assesses the difficulties of redeveloping public housing in the context of ongoing (self-inflicted) economic austerity and lingering resentments and concludes by examining emergent directions for housing and planning policy.
Democracy Inside
Authors: Dzur Albert W.
Published: December 2018

This book develops a grounded theory of democratic change, citizen agency, and institutions as fields of action. Across the United States democratic professionals are creating innovative power-sharing arrangements in institutions that are usually hierarchical and non-participatory. Often involving laypeople who would not consider themselves activists or even engaged citizens, democratic professionals break down internal barriers, foster social proximity, encourage co-ownership of problems previously seen as beyond laypeople’s abilities, and seek out opportunities for collaborative work. The book focuses on democratic professionals’ efforts in participatory innovation in the fields of K-12 education, criminal justice, and city government. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners involved in democratic schools, restorative and community justice, and collaborative city governance, the book investigates specific motivations that arise in each field for sharing power over tasks and decisions commonly treated as professional matters. It seeks to describe and understand the concrete norms, practices, and routines innovators have developed to foster ongoing lay engagement, awareness, and capacity for group dialogue, informal adjudication, and problem-solving. While barriers in each field currently keep these innovations on the margins of professional practice, the book identifies resources in higher education and elsewhere for sustaining them and supporting further growth.
Institutions as Fields of Action
Authors: Dzur Albert W.
Published: December 2018

Institutions shape how citizens think about the social problems they handle, repelling public awareness and involvement by performing tasks in ways that neutralize the citizen’s role. Democratic professionals seek to change this dynamic by building access points and infusing citizen agency at critical junctures throughout major public institutions. The kind of citizen–professional collaborations democratic professionals aim to foster directly address the kinds of counter-democratic tendencies that reinforce callousness and make social problems difficult to handle. The motivations of democratic professionals can be understood through the theory of participatory democracy, which draws attention to the hazards representative governments create by thinking and acting for citizens. Participatory democrats acknowledge the difficulties of fostering civic agency in modernity and attempt to theorize how citizens can occupy a more active role in contemporary political culture and take up a civic responsibility for the public goods and social harms produced by their institutions.
Democratic Innovation in Public Administration
Authors: Dzur Albert W.
Published: December 2018

City and local governments have welcomed public participation, in short-term ways, on issues such as crime prevention, affordable housing, urban planning, service provision, and general budgeting. They have been reluctant, however, to include citizens in substantive, long-term collaborative governance. At a time of budget constraints, multifaceted social problems, declining public trust, changing citizen expectations, and social media transparency, public administrators are motivated to experiment, but only incrementally. Drawing from interviews with reformers, this chapter discusses ad hoc strategies of citizen involvement directed toward specific policy problems, environmental commitments to participation involving multiple forms of citizen engagement, educational innovations such as citizens’ academies, and power-sharing innovations such as participatory budgeting. While some participatory innovations dissipate after a few months, others take root in a self-sustaining civic environment. Factors relevant to sustainability include divisions of labor between citizens and city managers, persistent outreach, substantive work done by citizens, and real power-sharing opportunities.
Conclusion
Authors: Dzur Albert W.
Published: December 2018

This concluding chapter discusses ways democratic professionalism can be cultivated. To share information and experiences, existing networks of reform-minded professionals in fields such as education, criminal justice, and public administration can be supported by nonprofit organizations concerned with citizen agency and democratic renewal. There is also a role to be played by colleges and universities, whose specialized degrees and advanced training are gateways to the professional world. Unfortunately, non-participatory managerial tendencies are common in higher education. To foster democratic professionalism rather than reproduce social trustee attitudes, universities need greater power-sharing on campus and a different conception of professional education. To be contributors rather than barriers to an emerging culture of participatory innovation, academics need to listen more, take up the knowledge of people outside normal disciplinary channels, and learn about different modes of task-sharing, collaboration, and co-ownership pioneered by non-academic innovators.
A Heuristic Model of School Violence and Bullying in Evolving Nested Contexts
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter presents an integrated ecological theoretical model of school violence in evolving and nested contexts. In contrast to other models that put the student in the center, this heuristic model puts the school in the center of nested contexts, such as the student body, family, community, and culture. The school is also embedded in a hierarchical organizational structure, being part of a district, county, state, and country that also affect the school. All these outside contexts overflow into the school and influence internal school violence and safety. The school’s internal context, including the school organization and climate, moderates and mediates outside influences and helps shape the students’ experiences, perceptions, emotions, and behaviors Finally, the model suggests that school violence, bullying, safety, and student outcomes are dynamic and ever evolving, reflecting changes in norms and contexts. The dynamics of the school context impact all the external ecological layers as well.
Victimization
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines the definitions of bullying and school violence, suggesting that the use of the term “bullying” needs to be more specific and concrete, referring to behaviors that are intended to cause social, physical, emotional, sexual, or property damage. The chapter presents a wide range of victimization types that vary widely in terms of their prevalence in schools, their nature, and the severity of their impact on victims. It presents factor analyses that examine the relationships among different types of behaviors and reveal six distinct yet interrelated categories: verbal (e.g., humiliating), physical (e.g., pushing and shoving), threats, indirect social (e.g., spreading mean rumors), sexual, and cyber. Additionally, the chapter uses latent class analysis to examine how different groups of students experience multiple types of bullying and school victimization. Four groups (classes) were identified, each with a different profile of student background characteristics.
Understanding Suicide in the School Context
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines the relationships between suicide ideations and behaviors and school victimization, bullying, and school climate. The chapter reviews the evidence on the prevalence of suicide among youth and its relationships with peer victimization and identifies gaps in knowledge. The chapter suggests that the social context and the climate of the school are moderating the relationships between bullying and suicide. Despite the importance of school experiences for adolescents, only a few studies have attempted to conceptualize and empirically investigate the relationships between school-level contextual characteristics and suicidal ideation. Based on the model of school violence and bullying in context, the chapter presents a study of suicide ideation among high school students in California. The study examined student-level, school-level, and cross-level interactions predicting suicide ideation. The chapter discusses the implications of the findings for a public health approach to the prevention of students suicide ideation.
Cyberbullying
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter explores the emerging issues surrounding cyberbullying. It discusses the role of the school regarding cyberbullying victimization (even when it does not take place on school grounds) and the shift toward schools taking more responsibility over these behaviors. The chapter examines critically multiple definitions of cyberbullying and their implications for research and policy. It identifies specific types and manifestations of cyberbullying (e.g., social and sexual victimization). The chapter reviews some of the findings on prevalence, correlates, and consequences of cyberbullying and discusses interventions, policies, and legal frameworks that address these issues. The chapter presents a case study of a large national sample of Israeli students that examines the prevalence of cyberbullying, traditional bullying, and their interrelationships in the context of school climate, both on the student and the school level.
School Climate
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter reviews the conceptualization and definitions of school climate and examines evidence regarding its correlates and consequences. The review indicates that there are multiple ambiguities in current conceptualizations of climate. The roles of school violence, bullying, and safety are not consistent across definitions. Most definitions focus on climate as it relates to individuals. Far less attention has focused on the school as whole, overlooking to a large extent school level issues, including school subcontexts that have particular subclimates (e.g. “unowned spaces”). The role of the district is also sorely missing. It discusses the importance of conceptualizing and measuring multiple perspectives on school climate, both on the individual and school level. The chapter presents a cross-lagged study of the relationships between school climate, violence, and academic achievement over time in a large and representative study of all schools in California. Finally, the chapter discusses climate improvement programs, interventions, and practices.
Future Theory, Research, and Policy
Authors: Avi Astor Ron , Benbenishty Rami
Published: December 2018

This chapter focuses on issues of theory, research, and policy that should be considered in the future, especially issues germane to the theoretical model of school violence in evolving contexts. The chapter elaborates on the importance of including the temporal-historical context in future study and the methodological and conceptual implications of the recent revolution in data infrastructure, including the need to build collaborations with other “big data” organizations. The chapter outlines the need to develop conceptual and methodological tools of analysis with “the school at the center,” including school profiles as analytic tools and identifying classes of schools sharing similar profiles, and calls for studying how schools are nested in multiple ecological contexts, including the hierarchical educational structures of districts, counties, states, nations, and the global context, including the role of technology and media. Finally, the chapter discusses the need to study the impact of the school on its context.
“Arlen and Harburg and More, Oh My!”
Authors: Broadhurst Laura Lynn
Published: December 2018

The extant sources for the songs in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz— draft lyrics, studio piano-vocal manuscripts, early screenplays, production records, etc.—afford fascinating insight into their creation. Drawing from such largely untapped archival materials, this chapter reveals that each song within the completed film—as an individual, fixed “work”—was created via cumulative authorship along a figurative assembly line. To demonstrate this phenomenon, the evolution of the songs is traced through their successive developmental stages over the course of the film’s three production phases: Pre-Production (genesis of the songs by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, arrangement by MGM staff, orchestration by yet different studio personnel, prerecording with orchestra); Production (shoot-to-playback); Post-Production (underscoring by MGM music director Herbert Stothart and staff, continued development of the songs by Stothart and staff, previews and musical editing, final cut released).
“Sounds Must Stir the Fantasy”
Authors: Platte Nathan
Published: December 2018

Chapter 4 discusses the musical underscore in The Wizard of Oz. Contemporary discourse on the musical soundtrack has emphasized its role in underscoring—literally and figuratively—the film’s extraordinary content, often stressing its “special” and “effect”-like qualities. Studio publicists plugged the score’s idiosyncratic length and complexity, and Herbert Stothart also drew connections between music and elaborate illusions: “music and sound must be highly imaginative, unreal while super-realistic. Here sounds must stir the fantasy. . . . The difficulty is to blend music and the special sound effects.” Elsewhere Stothart averred that the striking hues of Technicolor warranted special musical treatment. From studio records, contemporary newspaper accounts, the conductor’s score, and the film itself, musical gestures are identified in the underscore that work as and in tandem with special effects.
“Dancing through Oz”
Authors: Funder Claudia
Published: December 2018

This chapter examines the contribution of the often overlooked dance sequences in The Wizard of Oz. It explores the social and cultural significance of the choreographed musical numbers and how they contribute to the film and to its immense popularity over the last seventy-five years. Close analysis is given to the jitterbug scene, which was cut from the original film. The choreography and “The Jitterbug” song are examined in detail, providing an excellent comparison point from which to explore other dance numbers, such as the Yellow Brick Road reprisal skipping sequence and the scarecrow’s dance. Within this discussion, key cultural and social themes are also addressed, specifically issues of race and social-dance and performance-dance practices. Finally, the question of why dance numbers were eliminated from the final cut is raised.
“The Merry Old Land of Oz”?
Authors: Birkett Danielle
Published: December 2018

Few movie musicals have experienced the long-term success of The Wizard of Oz. This chapter investigates its complex reception history to assess why this film has stood the test of time, despite the lukewarm response to it in 1939. In particular, five themes are central to this discussion: the adaptation of Baum’s familiar text; the handling of the fantasy setting; the philosophy presented within the story; the innovative filmic devices; and the star casting. An array of archival documents from 1939 to the present day is used to address each of these points from both the writers’ perspective and a critical viewpoint. In addition, the legacy of this iconic movie is explored to reveal the significance of The Wizard of Oz in American culture today.
“Friends of Dorothy”
Authors: Robbins Hannah
Published: December 2018

This chapter explores the cultural value of the MGM Wizard of Oz as an artifact of queer culture. Using insights from personal discourses and queer theory, it appraises how The Wizard of Oz facilitates individual assimilation and celebrates nonnormative identities for generations of audiences. Through this lens, it highlights how tangible details manifested in the film musical transcend Baum’s original series of novels, facilitating both aesthetic and emotional assimilation for its audiences. Drawing on ideas of camp, the symbolism of Harburg and Arlen’s iconic “Over the Rainbow,” and the iconic performance delivered by Judy Garland, it considers how MGM’s The Wizard of Oz has become intertwined with public and personal symbolism surrounding modern queer identities.
“Ease on Down the Road”
Authors: Bunch Ryan
Published: December 2018

Chapter 9 considers how the adaptation of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz has provided opportunities to recast the tale to speak to a specific audience while still retaining broad appeal. It explores both the 1975 stage production and the 1978 film adaptation of The Wiz, outlining how The Wizard of Oz story is reinvented as an urban, contemporary narrative of mobility informed by the African American and pan-African histories of diaspora and migration. At the same time, by examining the musical’s production history, content, and reception, the discussion also shows The Wiz to be adaptable in its ability to speak to multiple, fluid, and intersectional identities. Promoted as the “Super Soul Musical” version of The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz engaged with authenticating images and discourses of black representation that were current in the 1970s but sustained broad appeal beyond a single demographic, resulting in an interesting performance and reception history.
“The Wizard of Oz and Wicked”
Authors: Laird Paul R.
Published: December 2018

This chapter brings new insights to Wicked, the most successful attempt to rework Baum’s story since the 1939 movie. Wicked is the biggest musical hit of the early twenty-first century, but its phenomenal success would never have been possible without its close ties to The Wizard of Oz. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel by the same name that turns L. Frank Baum’s story on its head, the musical Wicked makes the Wicked Witch of the West a misunderstood young woman doing battle with a wizard who is an interloper from another world that has taken over Oz and made the Talking Animals scapegoats for all of the land’s ills. Despite their new interpretation of the familiar tale, the show’s creators wanted to include as many resonances as possible from the famed MGM film, a crusade that took them into difficult legal waters that resulted in unwelcome changes to the show courtesy of lawyers at Universal Pictures, the show’s principal producer. This chapter is a consideration of how Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, the writers of Wicked, appropriated narrative and musical aspects of Baum’s original book and the 1939 film, where they ran into problems in doing so, and how some of those problems were solved.
“Beyond the Rainbow”
Authors: Frisch Walter
Published: December 2018

To paraphrase one of the most famous lines in movie history, we are not in Kansas—or in Oz—anymore. Nevertheless, the songs of The Wizard of Oz have continued to resonate well beyond the 1939 MGM film, extending deep into the political, cultural, and social contexts of the early twenty-first century. This chapter explores something of the afterlives of the songs, with a special focus on the most popular one, “Over the Rainbow,” which has achieved iconic status over the past eighty years. And if there is any overarching legacy of the songs, it is perhaps the idea that however much we dream or hope, we should not give up our home, our roots.
Among the Scientologists
Authors: Westbrook Donald
Published: December 2018

The Church of Scientology is one of the most recognizable American-born new religious movements, but perhaps the least understood. Based on six years of interviews, fieldwork, and research conducted among Scientologists in the United States, this groundbreaking work examines features of the new religion’s history, theology, and praxis from 1950 to 2018. While academics have begun to pay more attention to Scientology, the subject has received remarkably little qualitative attention in the secondary literature. Indeed, no work has systematically addressed questions such as: What do Scientologists have to say about their religion’s history, theology, and practices? How does Scientology act as a religion for them? What does “lived religion” look like for a Scientologist? When Scientology is viewed from the standpoint of its members, how might that perspective inform and modify existing scholarship? In response to these and other questions, this work puts forward an ethnographically informed historical and theological narrative of how and why Scientology functions as a religion in the lives of practicing members of the church, who are usually on the margins of discourse on the subject.