bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Case Report: Two Cases of Cholangiocarcinoma in Patients with Opisthorchis felineus Infection in Western Siberia, Russian Federation
Authors: Kovshirina Yulia V. , Fedorova Olga S. , Vtorushin Sergey V. , Kovshirina Anna E. , Ivanov Stanislav D. , Chizhikov Andrey V. , Onishchenko Sergey V. , Ogorodova Ludmila M. , Odermatt Peter
Published: December 2018

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a cancer with high mortality owing to its aggressiveness and resistance to therapy. The liver flukes of the Opisthorchiidae family have been recognized as risk factors of CCA. Opisthorchis felineus infection occurs in Western Siberia, the biggest endemic area in the Russian Federation, and is associated with chronic inflammation of the bile ducts, which may be linked to severe hepatobiliary morbidity. We report two cases of confirmed CCA who had a chronic O. felineus infection. Both cases presented unspecific symptoms at the onset of the disease, a stage when severe pathological changes already had occurred. Both patients were living in endemic areas but did not receive any antihelminthic treatment. This report underlines the need for assessment of O. felineus infection as a causative factor of CCA. The results will provide further arguments for control of O. felineus in the Russian Federation.
Responding to the Zika Epidemic: Preparation of a Neurodevelopmental Testing Protocol to Evaluate Young Children in Rural Guatemala
Authors: K. Connery Amy , Berrios-Siervo Gretchen , Arroyave Paola , Bauer Desiree , Hernandez Sara , Paniagua-Avila Alejandra , Bolaños Guillermo Antonio , Bunge-Montes Saskia , M. El Sahly Hana , Calvimontes Mirella , Olson Daniel , M. Munoz Flor , J. Asturias Edwin
Published: December 2018

The ongoing Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic in Latin America presented a unique opportunity to develop a neurodevelopmental assessment protocol for children in a lower middle–income country. Although studies of neurodevelopment in young children have taken place in many diverse global settings, we are not aware of any study that has provided a high level of detail about how a measure was selected and then specifically translated and adapted in a low-resource setting. Here, we describe considerations in measurement selection and then the process of translation and adaptation to assess neurodevelopmental outcomes of infants and young children with postnatal exposure to ZIKV in rural Guatemala. We provide a framework to other research teams seeking to develop similar assessment models across the globe.
Vocabulary learning estrategies: their relation to learning success
Authors: Castellano-Risco Irene
Published: December 2018

En el ámbito de la investigación en enseñanza de segundas lenguas, hay un movimiento reciente que busca identificar las estrategias de aprendizaje de vocabulario. Sin embargo, la mayoría de estos estudios se han centrado en la identificación de las estrategias en sí, más que en la relación de estas con otros aspectos del aprendizaje de vocabulario. Este estudio presenta un análisis del uso de estrategias de aprendizaje de vocabulario y su relación con el nivel de vocabulario receptivo. Para ello, setenta alumnos de cuarto curso de educación secundaria participaron en el estudio. Se les pidió que respondieran el primer nivel del Vocabulary Levels Tests (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001) y un cuestionario sobre el uso de estrategias de aprendizaje de vocabulario, adaptado de la taxonomía de Schmitt (1997). Los datos se examinaron buscando una posible relación entre el tamaño de vocabulario receptivo y un mayor o menor uso de determinadas estrategias de aprendizaje. Los resultados tienen una aplicación práctica en la enseñanza de lenguas, ya que, con la identificación de las estrategias más fructíferas, los docentes podrán facilitar su uso en el aula, convirtiendo así los esfuerzos de los alumnos en experiencias satisfactorias.
La enseñanza de ciencias sociales en la clase de educación física en lengua inglesa. Una propuesta didáctica en un contexto bilingüe
Authors: Ruiz Cordero María Begoña , Rodríguez Morales Aníbal
Published: December 2018

La introducción del bilingüismo en las aulas ha sido y es una de las grandes apuestas del sistema educativo español. Sin embargo, a los docentes nos cuesta usar la metodología adecuada, aunando el contenido y la lengua extranjera en los centros de enseñanza bilingüe. Por este motivo, teniendo en cuenta que resulta muy beneficiosa la creación de unidades didácticas que integran inglés y otras áreas, como Educación Física, Plástica o Ciencias (Alario y Crespo, 2011), y con la finalidad de aportar un enfoque didáctico innovador, vamos a presentar una propuesta de intervención a través de la cual mostraremos que las Ciencias Sociales se pueden trabajar de una manera más lúdica y, a su vez, con unos materiales y en unos espacios poco habituales, como son los que ofrece la asignatura de Educación Física, enseñada en lengua inglesa.
Analysis of the impact of cytoplasmic and mitochondrial inheritance on litter size and carcass in rabbits
Authors: Nguyen Nguyen Thao , Brajkovic Vladimir , Cubric-Curik Vlatka , Ristov Strahil , Veir Zoran , Szendrő Zsolt , Nagy Istvan , Curik Ino
Published: December 2018

The effects of mitogenome variation on economically important traits have been reported in a number of domestic animal species. In this study, the first of its kind on rabbits, we have performed the estimation of the contribution of cytoplasmic and D-loop mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence effects on the litter size and carcass traits in three Pannon rabbit breeds (Pannon Ka, Pannon Large and Pannon White). The observed effects of both estimates, coming from cytoplasmic or D-loop mtDNA variation, were negligible. The most likely explanation for the results obtained is the lack of mitogenome polymorphism in all three populations, as suggested from the analysis performed on the D-loop mtDNA sequence, here assigned to the two most frequent rabbit haplotypes. The extent of potential benefits of the introduction, or alteration, of mitogenome variation in rabbit breeding remains an open question for future research.
Evaluating transit-served areas with non-traditional data: An exploratory study of Shenzhen, China
Authors: Zhou Jiangping , Wang Qihao , Liu Haitao
Published: December 2018

In this study, transit-served areas (TSAs) are defined as areas within a reasonable distance (e.g., 800 meters) of transit services. TSAs have two key dimensions: physical features (e.g., land-use density and mix) and performance (regarding human behaviors). Non-traditional data (NTD) (e.g., social media check-ins and cellular network data) can supplement traditional data (TD) (e.g., interviews and censuses) to enhance studies and monitoring of TSAs. A case study of Shenzhen, China, illustrates how to combine NTD and TD to evaluate the features and performance of 167 TSAs along metro lines. It finds that NTD can be used to formulate new indicators to measure and monitor the two dimensions of TSAs; the features and performance of different TSAs vary significantly; point of interest (POI) efficiency, or the average users attracted by each POI, can be a useful indicator to differentiate TSAs’ performance; the POI efficiency of a single TSA can vary across days and the POI efficiency of an extremely efficient or inefficient TSA can be totally different across days; and the combination of NTD and TD can effectively help locate extreme TSAs and explain factors contributing to the extremity.
Constructing Ethical Corporate Social Responsibility and Citizenship in Auto-Industry Operations: Why Consumers Deserve the Best
Authors: Pech Robert
Published: December 2018

This article focuses on the need to accompany contemporary innovation and manufacturing with ethical management, operations and production. The investigation emphasizes operations in the automotive industry through the spectrum of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship. Corporate Citizenship is seen in a new light. In recent years, the profit versus consumer-safety problem has led to injuries and deaths of hundreds of consumers in the automobile industry, some of which are evidently the result of human negligence and abnegation of responsibility often in efforts to reduce overheads and maximize profits. This erosion of corporate social responsibility may not only lead to consumer death, injury or disillusionment but also to company ruination because it sets in motion a downward spiral in consumer confidence, followed by investigations, law-suits, and fines resulting in corporate disarray. The research draws a distinction between CSR and CC to help analyze the auto-industry.
Value Creation and Contestability: Findings From Italian Market
Authors: Intrisano Carmelo , Palomba Giovanni , Calce Anna Maria , Nallo Loris Di
Published: December 2018

The idea of this research starts from the debate about the efficiency of the Italian capital market. In an increasingly globalized context, where Italian companies have to compete not only among themselves but also with foreign forces, the inefficiency of the capital market could be a fundamental discriminant. This paper aims to analyze the contestability in the Italian market. As it is known, it has some peculiarities. If compared with the other market, the Italian one is strongly characterized by the presence of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), most of them family-run. In the Italian listed companies the entrepreneur and the manager are the same person, often chosen in the same family that exercises control. So the Italian market has a low contestability. Furthermore, the analysis conducted allows determining the existence of a relationship between value creation and contestability.
Dispositional causation
Authors: Copley Bridget
Published: December 2018

There are a number of phenomena where an apparent animacy requirement exceptionally admits some inanimate causers as felicitous. In this paper I argue that these should be explained not by a syntactically visible animacy feature but rather by a “what-can-cause-what” approach. In this kind of approach, judgments of felicity occur exactly when, conceptually speaking, the causing eventuality is able to cause the effect eventuality. I show how a what-can-cause-what approach for futurates and have causatives explains their felicitous inanimate causer exceptions, as well as other behavior such as interactions with aspect, using a novel notion of “dispositional causation”. The dispositions in question include both intentions of animate entities and physical tendencies. Dispositions, as well as the holders of dispositions and the causal relation, can either be represented explicitly in the syntactic structure, or can be merely implicitly available, through the accommodation of a conceptual model of dispositional structure.
Engaging Creative Media Students’ Motivation: The Influence of Autonomy, Peer Relationships, and Opportunities in the Industry
Authors: Oh Jae Eun , Ho Jeffrey C. F. , Shaw Chris , Chan Justin
Published: December 2018

Motivating students in creative media courses can be a challenge due to the demand for creativity which is hard to betaught. Hence, motivation needs to be re-identified and re-addressed for the creative disciplines. Conventionally,creative media courses adopt the studio-based learning, and with this unique dynamic teaching approach, students arerequired to have face-to-face tutorial sessions with their tutors on a regular basis, as well as participate in groupprojects and produce creative artefacts of industry standard quality. In this paper, we investigate the criticalmotivators for creative media students and identify those factors throughout the study. The study aims to examinehow crucial and influential the autonomy, peer relationship and the future career opportunities for students’motivation. Research includes a survey with questions based on a conceptual framework adopted fromself-determination theory. The results suggest that autonomy, peer relationships and the opportunity for future careersare the primary motivators for students in the programme. The implications of the findings are discussed, andrecommendations are provided to faculty members in the creative programmes.
The Use of Brainstorming Strategy Among Teachers of Arabic for Speakers of Other Languages (ASOL) in Writing Classes
Authors: ALRababah Ibrahim , Rababah Luqman
Published: December 2018

Although brainstorming strategy is not a new concept, the practice is relatively new in the Arab region, especially, in Jordan, where the old approaches are still widely used. This qualitative study examined the attitudes of Arabic language lecturers at Language Center, University of Jordan towards utilizing brainstorming in their instruction. With the help of convenience sampling, ten lecturers were selected to participate in the study. To reach a clear understanding of this issue, the study utilized a qualitative design and semi-structured interviews and observations were used as a tool to collect the data. The findings revealed that the attitudes and the actual use of brainstorming strategy by ASOL lecturers in their instruction were generally positive. A key recommendation of the study is that further research needs to be conducted into the reasons why some instructors opt not to use brainstorming strategy in their instruction.
The Relationship Between EFL Students’ Perceptual Learning Styles and Their Language Learning Strategies in Saudi Arabia
Authors: Alnujaidi Sulaiman
Published: December 2018

This study investigated the relationship between EFL students’ Perceptual Learning Styles (PLS) and their Language Learning Strategies (LLS). A group of (155) college-level EFL students in Saudi Arabia was surveyed. Reid’s learning styles model was employed to identify the participants’ PLS. Oxford’s language learning strategies model was used to identify the participants’ LLS. The study’s results showed that the most preferred learning styles among students were kinesthetic, auditory, and group PLS respectively. It was also found that the most frequently used language learning strategies among students were metacognitive, social, and cognitive LLS respectively. The study revealed a statistically significant relationship between participants’ perceptual learning styles and their language learning strategies.
The Significance of Ìrìráábú Musical Satire in the Ékpè Dance Festival Amongst the Obohia-Ndoki People of Nigeria
Authors: Igbokwe Ubochi Stella
Published: December 2018

Ékpè can be understood as a spirit-manifest or masquerade as well as a festival, and Ìrìráábú is a part of the music performed during the Ékpè dance festival. The Ékpè dance festival is part of my cultural heritage—I am part of this culture and have been an active participant-observer in this festival since my childhood.
Politely Different: Queer Presence in Country Dancing and Music
Authors: Alexander Kathryn
Published: December 2018

I walked into the Round-Up Saloon and stood transfixed by the scene out on the dance floor. Surrounded by a wooden corral, the sleek and shining floor was filled with couples taking wide, gracefully fluid steps. Clad in immaculate cowboy hats, crisp work shirts tucked into jeans, and of course boots, the men spinning together around the floor were to me an entirely new form of queer dance. The comfortable intimacy of their bodies was unlike the bump and grind of the dance I was used to encountering at urban American gay bars, and the DJ's musical selections kept well away from pop divas and electronic dance music. At urban gay bars like Dallas' Round-Up Saloon and at other non-bar venues, queer two-step and line dancing, and country music itself, offers space for a performative queerness that counterbalances not only mainstream perceptions of country music and dance as heterosexualized and antagonistic towards other sexualities, but expands understandings of queer dance practice as well. In this article, I draw on my fieldwork in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I spent six months in 2016 and 2017 learning to two-step and line dancing with an LGBT country dance organization.
Modeling the impacts of agricultural best management practices on runoff, sediment, and crop yield in an agriculture-pasture intensive watershed
Authors: Rasoulzadeh Gharibdousti Solmaz , Kharel Gehendra , Stoecker Arthur
Published: December 2018

Best management practices (BMPs) are commonly used to control sediment yields. In this study, we modeled the Fort Cobb Reservoir watershed located in southwestern Oklahoma, USA using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and evaluated the impacts of agricultural five different BMP scenarios on surface runoff, sediment load, and crop yield. The hydrological model with 43 sub-basins and 15,217 hydrological response units was calibrated (1991 ̶ 2000) and validated (2001 ̶ 2010) against the monthly observations of streamflow, sediment grab samples, and crop-yields. The coefficient of determination (R2), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NS) and percentage bias (PB) were used to determine model performance with satisfactory values of R2 (0.64) and NS (0.61) in the calibration period and a good model performance (R2 = 0.79; NS = 0.62) in the validation period for streamflow. We found that contouring practice reduced surface runoff by more than 18% in both conservation tillage and no-till practices for all crops. In addition, contour farming with either conservation tillage or no-till practice reduced sediment yield by almost half. Compared to the conservation tillage practice, no-till system decreased sediment yield by 25.3% and 9.0% for cotton and grain sorghum, respectively. Using wheat as cover crop for grain sorghum generated the lowest runoff followed by its rotation with canola and cotton regardless of contouring. Converting all the crops in the watershed into Bermuda grass resulted significant reduction in sediment yield (72.5-96.3%) and surface runoff (6.8-38.5%). The model was capable of providing precise information for stakeholders to prioritize ecologically sound feasible BMPs at fields that are capable of reducing overland soil erosion and sediment delivery to channels while increasing crop yield.
A Natural History of Natural Theology
Authors: De Cruz Helen , De Smedt Johan
Published: December 2018

An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God.

Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition.

De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.
Preterm Babies, Fetal Patients, and Childbearing Choices
Authors: Lantos John D. , Lauderdale Diane S.
Published: December 2018

Why preterm birth rates in the United States remain high even as access to prenatal care has improved and infant mortality has steadily dropped.

The United States has one of the highest rates of premature birth of any industrialized nation: 11.5%, nearly twice the rate of many European countries. In this book, John Lantos and Diane Lauderdale examine why the rate of preterm birth in the United States remains high—even though more women have access to prenatal care now than three decades ago. They also analyze a puzzling paradox: why, even as the rate of preterm birth rose through the 1990s and early 2000s, the rate of infant mortality steadily decreased.

Lantos and Lauderdale explore both the medical practices that might give rise to these trends as well as some of the demographic changes that have occurred over these years. American women now delay childbearing, for example, and have fewer babies. Doctors are better able to monitor fetal health and well-being. Prenatal care has changed, no longer focusing solely on the health of the pregnant woman. Today, the fetus has become a patient, and many preterm births are medically induced because of concern for the well-being of the fetus. Preterm birth is no longer synonymous with a bad outcome. Sometimes, it is necessary for a good one.
Democratic Experiments
Authors: Laurent Brice
Published: December 2018

An examination of nanotechnology as a lens through which to study contemporary democracy in both theory and practice.

In Democratic Experiments, Brice Laurent discusses the challenges that emerging technologies create for democracy today. He focuses on nanotechnology and its attendant problems, proposing nanotechnology as a lens through which to understand contemporary democracy in both theory and practice. Arguing that democracy is at stake where nanotechnology is defined as a problem, Laurent examines the sites where nanotechnology is discussed and debated by scientists, policymakers, and citizens. It is at these sites where the joint production of nanotechnology and the democratic order can be observed.

Focusing on the United States, France, and Europe, and various international organizations, Laurent analyzes representations of nanotechnology in science museums, collective discussions in participatory settings, the making of categories such as “nanomaterials” or responsible innovation” in standardization and regulatory arenas, and initiatives undertaken by social movements. He contrasts American debates, in which the concern for public objectivity is central, with the French “state experiment,” the European goal of harmonization, and the international concern with a global market. In France, public debate proceeded in response to public protest and encountered a radical critique of technological development; the United States experimented with an innovative approach to technology assessment. The European regulatory approach results in lengthy debates over political integration; the United States relies on the adversarial functioning of federal agencies. Because nanotechnology is a domain where concerns over anticipation and participation are pervasive, Laurent argues, nanotechnology—and science and technology studies more generally—provides a relevant focus for a renewed analysis of democracy.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Knowledge Unlatched.
Minitel
Authors: Mailland Julien , Driscoll Kevin
Published: December 2018

The first scholarly book in English on Minitel, the pioneering French computer network, offers a history of a technical system and a cultural phenomenon.

A decade before the Internet became a medium for the masses in the United States, tens of millions of users in France had access to a network for e-mail, e-commerce, chat, research, game playing, blogging, and even an early form of online porn. In 1983, the French government rolled out Minitel, a computer network that achieved widespread adoption in just a few years as the government distributed free terminals to every French telephone subscriber. With this volume, Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll offer the first scholarly book in English on Minitel, examining it as both a technical system and a cultural phenomenon.

Mailland and Driscoll argue that Minitel was a technical marvel, a commercial success, and an ambitious social experiment. Other early networks may have introduced protocols and software standards that continue to be used today, but Minitel foretold the social effects of widespread telecomputing. They examine the unique balance of forces that enabled the growth of Minitel: public and private, open and closed, centralized and decentralized. Mailland and Driscoll describe Minitel's key technological components, novel online services, and thriving virtual communities. Despite the seemingly tight grip of the state, however, a lively Minitel culture emerged, characterized by spontaneity, imagination, and creativity. After three decades of continuous service, Minitel was shut down in 2012, but the history of Minitel should continue to inform our thinking about Internet policy, today and into the future.
Moral Judgments as Educated Intuitions
Authors: Sauer Hanno
Published: December 2018

An argument that moral reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment through episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation.

Rationalists about the psychology of moral judgment argue that moral cognition has a rational foundation. Recent challenges to this account, based on findings in the empirical psychology of moral judgment, contend that moral thinking has no rational basis. In this book, Hanno Sauer argues that moral reasoning does play a role in moral judgment—but not, as is commonly supposed, because conscious reasoning produces moral judgments directly. Moral reasoning figures in the acquisition, formation, maintenance, and reflective correction of moral intuitions. Sauer proposes that when we make moral judgments we draw on a stable repertoire of intuitions about what is morally acceptable, which we have acquired over the course of our moral education—episodes of rational reflection that have established patterns for automatic judgment foundation. Moral judgments are educated and rationally amenable moral intuitions.

Sauer engages extensively with the empirical evidence on the psychology of moral judgment and argues that it can be shown empirically that reasoning plays a crucial role in moral judgment. He offers detailed counterarguments to the anti-rationalist challenge (the claim that reason and reasoning play no significant part in morality and moral judgment) and the emotionist challenge (the argument for the emotional basis of moral judgment). Finally, he uses Joshua Greene's Dual Process model of moral cognition to test the empirical viability and normative persuasiveness of his account of educated intuitions. Sauer shows that moral judgments can be automatic, emotional, intuitive, and rational at the same time.
The Metainterface
Authors: Andersen Christian Ulrik , Pold Søren Bro
Published: December 2018

How the interface has moved from the PC into cultural platforms, as seen in a series of works of net art, software art and electronic literature.

The computer interface is both omnipresent and invisible, at once embedded in everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects. The interface has moved from office into culture, with devices, apps, the cloud, and data streams as new cultural platforms. In The Metainterface, Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold examine the relationships between art and interfaces, tracing the interface's disruption of everyday cultural practices. They present a new interface paradigm of cloud services, smartphones, and data capture, and examine how particular art forms—including net art, software art, and electronic literature—seek to reflect and explore this paradigm.

Andersen and Pold argue that despite attempts to make the interface disappear into smooth access and smart interaction, it gradually resurfaces; there is a metainterface to the displaced interface. Art can help us see this; the interface can be an important outlet for aesthetic critique. Andersen and Pold describe the “semantic capitalism” of a metainterface industry that captures user behavior; the metainterface industry's disruption of everyday urban life, changing how the city is read, inhabited, and organized; the ways that the material displacement of the cloud affects the experience of the interface; and the potential of designing with an awareness of the language and grammar of interfaces.
The Anxious Mind
Authors: Kurth Charlie
Published: December 2018

An empirically informed, philosophical account of the nature of anxiety and its value for agency, virtue, and decision making.

In The Anxious Mind, Charlie Kurth offers a philosophical account of anxiety in its various forms, investigating its nature and arguing for its value in agency, virtue, and decision making. Folk wisdom tells us that anxiety is unpleasant and painful, and scholarly research seems to provide empirical and philosophical confirmation of this. But Kurth points to anxiety's positive effects: enhancing performance, facilitating social interaction, and even contributing to moral thought and action.

Kurth argues that an empirically informed philosophical account of anxiety can help us understand the nature and value of emotions, and he offers just such an account. He develops a model of anxiety as a bio-cognitive emotion—anxiety is an aversive emotional response to uncertainty about threats or challenges—and shows that this model captures the diversity in the types of anxiety we experience. Building on this, he considers a range of issues in moral psychology and ethical theory. He explores the ways in which anxiety can be valuable, arguing that anxiety can be a fitting response and that it undergirds an important form of moral concern. He considers anxiety's role in deliberation and decision making, using the examples of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the abolitionist John Woolman to show that anxiety can be a mechanism of moral progress. Drawing on insights from psychiatry and clinical psychology, Kurth argues that we can cultivate anxiety so that we are better able to experience it at the right time and in the right way.
Body and World
Authors: Todes Samuel
Published: December 2018

Body and World is the definitive edition of a book that should now take its place as a major contribution to contemporary existential phenomenology. Samuel Todes goes beyond Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his description of how independent physical nature and experience are united in our bodily action. His account allows him to preserve the authority of experience while avoiding the tendency towards idealism that threatens both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Todes emphasizes the complex structure of the human body; front/back asymmetry, the need to balance in a gravitational field, and so forth; and the role that structure plays in producing the spatiotemporal field of experience and in making possible objective knowledge of the objects in it. He shows that perception involves nonconceptual, but nonetheless objective forms of judgment. One can think of Body and World as fleshing out Merleau-Ponty's project while presciently relating it to the current interest in embodiment, not only in philosophy but also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and anthropology. Todes's work opens new ways of thinking about problems such as the relation of perception to thought and the possibility of knowing an independent reality; problems that have occupied philosophers since Kant and still concern analytic and continental philosophy.
Computational Philosophy of Science
Authors: Thagard Paul
Published: December 2018

By applying research in artificial intelligence to problems in the philosophy of science, Paul Thagard develops an exciting new approach to the study of scientific reasoning. This approach uses computational ideas to shed light on how scientific theories are discovered, evaluated, and used in explanations. Thagard describes a detailed computational model of problem solving and discovery that provides a conceptually rich yet rigorous alternative to accounts of scientific knowledge based on formal logic, and he uses it to illuminate such topics as the nature of concepts, hypothesis formation, analogy, and theory justification.

Bradford Books imprint
The Euro and Its Central Bank
Authors: Padoa-Schioppa Tommaso
Published: December 2018

History and analysis of European monetary integration and related economic, financial, monetary, and international political issues: an accesible guide.

This history and analysis of the euro and the European Central Bank traces the process of European monetary integration from its beginnings as a utopian vision in the aftermath of World War II through the establishment of a single currency managed by a central bank. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, a central banker who has been involved in the making of European monetary unification since 1979, offers an accessible guide to the euro and the European Central Bank for scholars, students, and the general reader, discussing the related economic, financial, monetary, and international political issues. In the process he also provides an overview of central banking in general and the multiple activities of a central bank; as the case of the European Central Bank illustrates, central banking involves not only monetary analysis and policy but much else, including banknote printing and handling, market operations, payment systems, bank supervision, and coordinating with other public institutions.Padoa-Schioppa begins with the historical background of European monetary integration, starting with the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which lay the foundation for the Common Market, and covering the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the development of an anchor currency, and the "euroskepticism" of the U.K. Subsequent chapters are devoted to economic policy, monetary policy, the euro as unifier in the financial system, the payment system, the euro as an international actor outside "euroland," and the challenges ahead for the still relatively young project of European monetary integration.
Noxious New York
Authors: Sze Julie
Published: December 2018

Examines the culture, politics, and history of the movement for environmental justice in New York City, tracking activism in four neighborhoods on issues of public health, garbage, and energy systems in the context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization.

Racial minority and low-income communities often suffer disproportionate effects of urban environmental problems. Environmental justice advocates argue that these communities are on the front lines of environmental and health risks. In Noxious New York, Julie Sze analyzes the culture, politics, and history of environmental justice activism in New York City within the larger context of privatization, deregulation, and globalization. She tracks urban planning and environmental health activism in four gritty New York neighborhoods: Brooklyn's Sunset Park and Williamsburg sections, West Harlem, and the South Bronx. In these communities, activism flourished in the 1980s and 1990s in response to economic decay and a concentration of noxious incinerators, solid waste transfer stations, and power plants. Sze describes the emergence of local campaigns organized around issues of asthma, garbage, and energy systems, and how, in each neighborhood, activists framed their arguments in the vocabulary of environmental justice. Sze shows that the linkage of planning and public health in New York City goes back to the nineteenth century's sanitation movement, and she looks at the city's history of garbage, sewage, and sludge management. She analyzes the influence of race, family, and gender politics on asthma activism and examines community activists' responses to garbage privatization and energy deregulation. Finally, she looks at how activist groups have begun to shift from fighting particular siting and land use decisions to engaging in a larger process of community planning and community-based research projects. Drawing extensively on fieldwork and interviews with community members and activists, Sze illuminates the complex mix of local and global issues that fuels environmental justice activism.
Pricing Life
Authors: Ubel Peter A.
Published: December 2018

A rational look at health care rationing, from ethical, economic, psychological, and clinical perspectives.

Although managed health care is a hot topic, too few discussions focus on health care rationing—who lives and who dies, death versus dollars. In this book physician and bioethicist Peter A. Ubel argues that physicians, health insurance companies, managed care organizations, and governments need to consider the cost-effectiveness of many new health care technologies. In particular, they need to think about how best to ration health care. Ubel believes that standard medical training should provide physicians with the expertise to decide when to withhold health care from patients. He discusses the moral questions raised by this position, and by health care rationing in general. He incorporates ethical arguments about the appropriate role of cost-effectiveness analysis in health care rationing, empirical research about how the general public wants to ration care, and clinical insights based on his practice of general internal medicine. Straddling the fields of ethics, economics, research psychology, and clinical medicine, he moves the debate forward from whether to ration to how to ration. The discussion is enlivened by actual case studies.
Developmental Robotics
Authors: Cangelosi Angelo , Schlesinger Matthew
Published: December 2018

A comprehensive overview of an interdisciplinary approach to robotics that takes direct inspiration from the developmental and learning phenomena observed in children's cognitive development.

Developmental robotics is a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to robotics that is directly inspired by the developmental principles and mechanisms observed in children's cognitive development. It builds on the idea that the robot, using a set of intrinsic developmental principles regulating the real-time interaction of its body, brain, and environment, can autonomously acquire an increasingly complex set of sensorimotor and mental capabilities. This volume, drawing on insights from psychology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, and robotics, offers the first comprehensive overview of a rapidly growing field.

After providing some essential background information on robotics and developmental psychology, the book looks in detail at how developmental robotics models and experiments have attempted to realize a range of behavioral and cognitive capabilities. The examples in these chapters were chosen because of their direct correspondence with specific issues in child psychology research; each chapter begins with a concise and accessible overview of relevant empirical and theoretical findings in developmental psychology. The chapters cover intrinsic motivation and curiosity; motor development, examining both manipulation and locomotion; perceptual development, including face recognition and perception of space; social learning, emphasizing such phenomena as joint attention and cooperation; language, from phonetic babbling to syntactic processing; and abstract knowledge, including models of number learning and reasoning strategies. Boxed text offers technical and methodological details for both psychology and robotics experiments.
The Trouble with Pleasure
Authors: Schuster Aaron
Published: December 2018

An investigation into the strange and troublesome relationship to pleasure that defines the human being, drawing on the disparate perspectives of Deleuze and Lacan.

Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze's work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In The Trouble with Pleasure, Aaron Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure."

Along the way, Schuster offers his own engaging and surprising conceptual analyses and inventive examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud's theory of neurosis to Spinoza's intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate, among other things, a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.
Flash
Authors: Salter Anastasia , Murray John
Published: December 2018

How Flash rose and fell as the world's most ubiquitous yet divisive software platform, enabling the development and distribution of a world of creative content.

Adobe Flash began as a simple animation tool and grew into a multimedia platform that offered a generation of creators and innovators an astonishing range of opportunities to develop and distribute new kinds of digital content. For the better part of a decade, Flash was the de facto standard for dynamic online media, empowering amateur and professional developers to shape the future of the interactive Web. In this book, Anastasia Salter and John Murray trace the evolution of Flash into one of the engines of participatory culture.

Salter and Murray investigate Flash as both a fundamental force that shaped perceptions of the web and a key technology that enabled innovative interactive experiences and new forms of gaming. They examine a series of works that exemplify Flash's role in shaping the experience and expectations of web multimedia. Topics include Flash as a platform for developing animation (and the “Flashimation” aesthetic); its capacities for scripting and interactive design; games and genres enabled by the reconstruction of the browser as a games portal; forms and genres of media art that use Flash; and Flash's stance on openness and standards—including its platform-defining battle over the ability to participate in Apple's own proprietary platforms.

Flash's exit from the mobile environment in 2011 led some to declare that Flash was dead. But, as Salter and Murray show, not only does Flash live, but its role as a definitive cross-platform tool continues to influence web experience.
Spatial patterning of liver progenitor cell differentiation mediated by cellular contractility and Notch signaling
Authors: Kaylan Kerim B , Berg Ian C , Biehl Matthew J , Brougham-Cook Aidan , Jain Ishita , Jamil Sameed M , Sargeant Lauren H , Cornell Nicholas J , Raetzman Lori T , Underhill Gregory H
Published: December 2018

The progenitor cells of the developing liver can differentiate toward both hepatocyte and biliary cell fates. In addition to the established roles of TGFβ and Notch signaling in this fate specification process, there is increasing evidence that liver progenitors are sensitive to mechanical cues. Here, we utilized microarrayed patterns to provide a controlled biochemical and biomechanical microenvironment for mouse liver progenitor cell differentiation. In these defined circular geometries, we observed biliary differentiation at the periphery and hepatocytic differentiation in the center. Parallel measurements obtained by traction force microscopy showed substantial stresses at the periphery, coincident with maximal biliary differentiation. We investigated the impact of downstream signaling, showing that peripheral biliary differentiation is dependent not only on Notch and TGFβ but also E-cadherin, myosin-mediated cell contractility, and ERK. We have therefore identified distinct combinations of microenvironmental cues which guide fate specification of mouse liver progenitors toward both hepatocyte and biliary fates.
Myocardial NADPH oxidase-4 regulates the physiological response to acute exercise
Authors: Hancock Matthew , Hafstad Anne D , Nabeebaccus Adam A , Catibog Norman , Logan Angela , Smyrnias Ioannis , Hansen Synne S , Lanner Johanna , Schröder Katrin , Murphy Michael P , Shah Ajay M , Zhang Min
Published: December 2018

Regular exercise has widespread health benefits. Fundamental to these beneficial effects is the ability of the heart to intermittently and substantially increase its performance without incurring damage, but the underlying homeostatic mechanisms are unclear. We identify the ROS-generating NADPH oxidase-4 (Nox4) as an essential regulator of exercise performance in mice. Myocardial Nox4 levels increase during acute exercise and trigger activation of the transcription factor Nrf2, with the induction of multiple endogenous antioxidants. Cardiomyocyte-specific Nox4-deficient (csNox4KO) mice display a loss of exercise-induced Nrf2 activation, cardiac oxidative stress and reduced exercise performance. Cardiomyocyte-specific Nrf2-deficient (csNrf2KO) mice exhibit similar compromised exercise capacity, with mitochondrial and cardiac dysfunction. Supplementation with an Nrf2 activator or a mitochondria-targeted antioxidant effectively restores cardiac performance and exercise capacity in csNox4KO and csNrf2KO mice respectively. The Nox4/Nrf2 axis therefore drives a hormetic response that is required for optimal cardiac mitochondrial and contractile function during physiological exercise.
A pilot study of the effect of force feedback training on students learning flexion-distraction chiropractic technique*
Authors: Rowell Robert M. , Gudavalli M. Ram , Silverman Steven
Published: December 2018

Objective:

We compared traditional training alone and with the addition of force feedback training for learning flexion-distraction chiropractic technique.

Methods:

Participants were randomly allocated to two groups (traditional or traditional plus force feedback training). Students' forces were measured before training and after force feedback training. Students rated the helpfulness of the training and the comfort of the force transducer.

Results:

Thirty-one students were enrolled. Both groups delivered similar forces at baseline. Group 1 students' subsequent force measurements were higher after force feedback training. Group 2 students' forces were unchanged. Group 2 students were trained with force feedback for week 2 of the class, and forces were higher after feedback and similar to those in group 1. Students rated the training as very or somewhat helpful. Students also experienced discomfort as a patient and a student-doctor due to the force transducer that was used. Students who received force feedback training learned to deliver higher forces, which were closer to the forces delivered by experienced doctors of chiropractic. Students who did not receive force feedback continued to deliver lower forces.

Conclusion:

Force feedback helped students deliver forces closer to the desired force level and to learn this delivery faster than students who were not trained with force feedback.