bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Divide between War and Peace
Authors: Vestner Tobias
Published: April 2024

This chapter explores the nuanced relationship between war and peace, challenging the simplistic binary classification often employed. International law has evolved in such a way as to encapsulate war with different labels and legal concepts: war is prohibited under the banner of the use of force but fought in the name of international peace and security when authorized by the United Nations Security Council. The chapter argues that due to its conceptualization and evolution, modern international law does not offer much clarity on the divide between war and peace. Rather, it confuses the boundaries and conflates the concepts—implying certain parallels to what Orwell had termed ‘war is peace’—to the extent that there is a relatively broad legal grey zone on the two notions. This results in analytical difficulties but also a certain normative permissibility particularly relevant in the context of hybrid threats, hybrid warfare, and grey zone conflict.
The Colonial Geography of Linguistics
Authors: Braithwaite Ben , Ali Kristian
Published: April 2024

The colonial structure of the field of linguistics is rooted in its history and is also deeply entrenched in its geography. Wealth, power, and prestige are hoarded in elite institutions of the Global North, in ways that shape who can be a professional linguist, and whose concerns are considered important to the field. Drawing on their experiences of being linguists in the Caribbean, the authors discuss some of the ways in which this colonial geography structures and upholds unequal access to opportunities and reproduces a parochial outlook which tends to overlook rich traditions of linguistic study from outside the current centres of institutional power. The chapter provides a brief sketch of one such tradition from the Caribbean and argues that the rootedness in place and explicit commitment to linguistic liberation provides a powerful model for linguists elsewhere committed to advancing liberatory linguistics.
Apolitical Linguistics Doesn’t Exist, and It Shouldn’t
Authors: Clemons Aris Moreno
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses the implications of privileging value-based political research agendas in linguistics and affirms the impossibility of neutral and objective scientific linguistic research. Instead, the author argues that linguists must cultivate a practice of transparency, noting not only their positionalities but also in their political motivations, relationships with the language communities they investigate, and ensuring access to investigative work beyond the academy. In this way decisions about research questions, frames, and interpretations become clearer. Using the traditions of research on African American language (AAL) as a case study, the author argues that linguistic researchers must become transparent about the political goals of their research in order to progress the field in ways that disrupt colonial frames of power. Specifically, the ways in which political transparency has been enacted as Black feminist praxis is reviewed, and several provocations are provided toward a transparency-based approach in linguistics that resists formerly constructed categorizations of linguistics as either theoretical or social. Finally, the chapter discusses the benefits of this practice through an example of a value-based research project, which applied African American English (AAE) research traditions to an exploration of Dominican language practices. Through this application, the author argues for a Hemispheric Black Community of Practice approach to the study of Caribbean Spanish, ultimately destabilizing the generative and variationist approaches that have dominated the study of Caribbean Spanish in linguistic traditions. Este capítulo analiza las implicaciones de privilegiar las agendas de investigación basadas en valores políticas en el campo lingüístico y afirma la imposibilidad de una investigación lingüística científica neutral y objetiva. En cambio, la autora argumenta que los lingüistas deben cultivar una práctica de transparencia, teniendo en cuenta no solo sus posiciones (ver Lin 2015; Clemons y Lawrence 2020 para referencia a estas llamadas) sino también sus motivaciones políticas, relaciones con las comunidades lingüísticas que investigan y garantizar acceso al trabajo más allá de la academia. De esta manera, las decisiones sobre las preguntas de investigación, los marcos teóricos y las interpretaciones se vuelven más claras. Utilizando las tradiciones de investigación sobre la lengua afroamericana (AAL) como estudio de caso, la autora aurgumenta que los investigadores lingüísticos deben practicar una ética de transparencia sobre los objetivos políticos de sus investigaciones. Así podemos progresar en el campo de manera que rompa los marcos coloniales de poder.
Unpacking Experiences of Racism in European Applied Linguistics
Authors: Khan Kamran
Published: April 2024

This chapter focuses on three experiences as a racially minoritized academic in European applied linguistics. These three experiences centre on being unknowingly targeted as a subject of a study, dealing with professional gatekeeping from a white researcher who researched the author’s community and experiences of recruitment. Theoretically, the author analyses these instances using Koritha Mitchell’s know your place aggression to examine how whiteness is present and perpetuated in the European context. The author situates aggressions towards him within broader colonial and racial histories in Europe which perpetuate white supremacy while subordinating racially minoritised people and communities. Using this analysis, he then provides a test with a series of questions to reanalyse scholarship on racially minoritised communities and to reorient future work. This provides a practical activity to create a more socially just field.
Towards a Decolonial Syntax
Authors: Gibson Hannah , Jerro Kyle , Namboodiripad Savithry , Riedel Kristina
Published: April 2024

In this chapter the authors argue that syntacticians and the field of syntax have for too long avoided engaging with the colonial legacies and the implicit racist assumptions that have shaped the discipline. They take three key areas which relate to syntax—teaching, research, and citation practices—and explore the ways in which these have been intricately tied up with, or curtailed as a result of, dominant narratives about language, global hierarchies, the idealised “native-speaker,” and language as a disembodied object. The authors present a case study of citation practices in Bantu linguistics, where there is an underrepresentation of African scholars in the literature. Beyond the critiques that can be directed at the discipline, as scholars who work in this field, the authors argue that there can and must be a decolonial syntax. They provide practical steps for action in the form of provocations which they urge scholars to engage with, reflect on, and implement within their praxis.
Decolonizing Creolistics Through Popular Culture
Authors: Lydner Rashana Vikara
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses popular music, dancehall, as a fruitful site for decolonizing work on Creole languages and Creole-speaking communities. Scholarship in Creolistics in the Global North has primarily been focused on the linguistic structure of creole without much attention to the social context of Creole use and the identities of their speakers. The author urges Creolists to broaden their research agenda and engage with research on the embodied experiences of Creole speakers. Dancehall music and culture is one important focus of such research, because the dancehall space is a site of struggle between high and low culture, underscores the centrality of embodiment, and welcomes the negotiation of intersecting identities. In proposing research on dancehall as a model for decolonizing Creolistics, the author illustrates the possible contributions of popular music to expanding knowledge in Creolistics on race, gender, sexuality, and Creole languages.
The Crisis
Authors: Kus Basak
Published: April 2024

Chapter 6 explores the American government’s response to the financial crisis. This crisis raised two pressing issues. The first demanded swift action: How can we halt the financial freefall? The response was a slew of rapid relief and recovery initiatives. The second issue probed deeper into the fundamentals of America’s financialized landscape: How should the system—both its institutions and policies—that faltered so dramatically be reformed? While immediate measures were evident in the distributed relief—its nature, quantity, and recipients—the reformative journey was more protracted and intricate in terms of its legislative process and intended outcomes.
Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 ce) is the founder of the Madhyamaka or Middle Way school of Buddhist philosophy and the most influential of all Buddhist thinkers following the Buddha himself. Throughout his works, Nāgārjuna repeatedly calls for the complete abandonment of all views. But how could anyone possibly abandon all views? And how could a philosopher of Nāgārjuna’s stature resort to using so self-contradictory a form of argumentation as the tetralemma, which openly negates a position, its contrary, both, and neither? Many scholars have attempted to parameterize Nāgārjuna’s paradoxes in an apologetic effort to justify him to mainstream Western philosophers as being irreproachably logical. This book, however, shows not only how Nāgārjuna’s truly radical teaching of no-view or “abelief” makes perfect sense within his Buddhist philosophy but also how it stands at the summit of his religious mission to care for all living beings. Rather than treating any one aspect of Nāgārjuna’s ideas in isolation, here his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics emerge as forging a single coherent and convincing philosophical-religious system of thought and practice. Overall, this book takes a comprehensive approach to Nāgārjuna’s thought in its Buddhist context, integrating his views on views, belief, and conceptualization; language, mind, and intention; action, attachment, and selfhood; suffering, violence, and peace; and emptiness, nirvāṇa, and Buddhahood. By drawing on Buddhist sources in a way that resolutely strives to move beyond the Christianocentrism and Occidentocentrism still so dominant in scholarship today, this work challenges the very ways in which we think about religion and philosophy.
Abandoning All Views
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

Chapter 4 brings preceding discussions of the tetralemma to bear on the central role that abandoning all views plays within Nāgārjuna’s thought as a whole. For Nāgārjuna’s masterwork opens and closes with salutations to the Buddha as one who taught the “cessation of conceptualization” and the “abandonment of all views.” In addition, this and Nāgārjuna’s other texts contain numerous analogous calls for the complete abandonment of views, which are surveyed and explained. Despite these copious, clear, and comprehensive disavowals of views, contemporary scholars almost unanimously interpret such statements as referring only to “false” views. This chapter argues instead that Nāgārjuna’s insistence on the abandonment of all views—including ultimately his own—constitutes his distinctive epistemological means to the metaphysical “exhaustion” characteristic of nirvāṇa, wherein all views are and must be abandoned as so many subtle affirmations of an only ever empty self.
All-Embracing Emptiness
Authors: Stepien Rafal K.
Published: April 2024

Chapter 5 ties preceding discussions in metaphysics and epistemology to the ethical and soteriological mission undergirding Nāgārjuna’s Buddhist project in its entirety. The perplexing question of how a teaching understood as espousing universal emptiness and the abandonment of all views can nevertheless entail a distinctively Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics is directly addressed. It is argued that, for Nāgārjuna, views are acts, and therefore themselves already enactions of violence. Nāgārjuna’s eschewal of views and espousal of emptiness are thus seen as two paths along the same middle way, leading to an apophatic ethics theorized here as eirenics: the practice of peace. Ultimately, this concluding chapter proposes that the socio-ethical import of Nāgārjuna’s abelief or “position of no-position” undermines the very basis for prejudice, partisanship and, more broadly, rigid adherence to any of the sectarian positions implicated in conflict on the individual, communal, or geopolitical levels.
Reform and Retrenchment
Authors: Boatright Robert G.
Published: April 2024

This book explores changes in primary election laws from approximately 1928 through the 1970s, evaluating arguments about how and why primary election laws changed. It shows that the introduction of the direct primary created far more chaos in American elections than most scholars realize, as political parties, party factions, and reform groups made slight modifications to their states’ primary laws. The United States is again in a period of experimentation with the primary. Most primary reforms have been relatively ineffective, and there is likely little that can be done to improve primaries. Those who seek to change American politics are best off exploring reforms to other areas of elections and governance. This book makes two major contributions to the literature on American elections. First, it is the first to provide a detailed history of primary elections throughout the country following their implementation. It offers a newly created dataset of all primary law changes during the middle decades of the twentieth century, supplemented with archival information on primaries from library collections across the country. Second, it shows how study of these election reforms can help understanding of contemporary reform efforts, summarizing state-level reform efforts in the United States since 2000 and documenting why these reform efforts are likely to yield minimal changes in the conduct of primaries.
Hostile Takeover
Authors: Boatright Robert G.
Published: April 2024

Early twentieth-century critics of primary elections worried that primaries might provide an opportunity for the electoral process to be taken over by organizations whose goals were at odds with those of the party. Such concerns at times resulted in efforts to restrict ballot access or to otherwise enhance party control of the nomination process. This concern has re-emerged in recent years with the success of the Tea Party in securing nominations for its candidates. Yet instances of such “hostile takeover” have been relatively rare. This chapter explores the reasons insurgent groups have had so little success in primaries, paying particular attention to the most successful nonparty organization in this regard, the Nonpartisan League of the 1910s and 1920s, and its effect on subsequent primary laws in the American Midwest.
Taking the Lead
Authors: Schneiderman David
Published: April 2024

The European record as regards the compatibility of the Canada–EU trade and investment agreement (CETA) with national and EU constitutional legal orders is one, mostly, of harmonious co-existence. Constitutional rulings issuing out of France, Germany, and the European Union Court of Justice are united in the view that investment treaties, such as CETA, either pose no threat to their constitutional orders or should they give rise to constitutional concern that discord can be managed. This set of responses is portrayed as exhibiting either hard or soft deference. Hard deference is characterized by denials that there is any encroachment on constitutional space (as in France and the Court of Justice of the European Union). Soft deference is exemplified by reassurances that, though there might be tension with constitutional law, a court need not do much about it (as in Germany). Extrapolating from the European experience, it can be said that apex courts in capital-exporting states will behave in deferential ways so that they will not impede the spread of investment treaty law disciplines.
Shackling the Future
Authors: Schneiderman David
Published: April 2024

The dispute under examination in this chapter concerned a challenge to commitments made by the government of then Prime Minister Netanyahu to refrain from making regulatory changes to the gas industry for a period of 10 years in exchange for the development of four natural gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea. The litigation before the Israeli High Court of Justice concerned these commitments made pursuant to contract, not yet the subject of an investment dispute, triggering review under Israeli administrative law, rather than under Israel’s Basic Laws. At issue in the legal proceedings were elements ordinarily associated with investment treaty law (including ‘stabilization’ and ‘umbrella’ clauses and legitimate expectations doctrine as a component of the treaty standard of ‘fair and equitable treatment’). The High Court maintained that the executive could not bind future legislatures to this sort of commitment. Even though a potential investor–state dispute was looming in the shadows, the ruling rubs against investment law trendlines: no investment tribunal, for instance, has found such clauses to be invalid or unenforceable. The Court’s ruling exhibits soft resistance because it was not inhibited from concluding that such a measure contradicted the sovereign powers of ‘well developed’ states. The reasoning of the High Court of Justice may empower future Israeli governments to resist some investment treaty law disciplines that are viewed as incongruous, even if accepted by other capital-importing states.
The Universalizing Narratives of International Law and their Binary Contestations
Authors: Aral Işıl , d’Aspremont Jean
Published: April 2024

Whilst the modern and cosmopolitan project driving international law since the eighteenth century has been the object of very extensive criticisms, the idea of universality that supports it has rarely been systematically unpacked. With an emphasis on the binaries that accompany the invocation of the idea of universality in international legal discourses, this book sheds a new light on how the idea of universality plays out in international legal discourses and how it provides a site of contestation. Its chapters particularly examine how binaries informing the idea of universality constitute, enable, and delimit a space for contestation of international law in international legal discourses.
The Philosophical Problem of Universals and Universality Binaries in International Law
Authors: Krivenko Ekaterina Yahyaoui
Published: April 2024

The chapter discusses the importance of the philosophical problem of universals for a deeper understanding of the way universality binaries operate in contemporary international law. It compares the views of Leibniz and Hobbes on the philosophical problem of universals and the impact of these views on their conceptualization of law and the state in general and the regulation of the global realm in particular. The chapter demonstrates that the contrasting positions of these two thinkers on the problem of universals led to very different views regarding the possibility and shape of international law. These differences in turn shed new light on some recurrent contemporary debates on universality binaries in international law. Thus, the chapter calls for an explicit engagement with the problem of universals as a way to open new spaces of contestation and constructive engagement with international law’s universality binaries.
The Assumption, Not Invention, of Universality Is the Problem
Authors: Yasuaki Onuma
Published: April 2024

Onuma Yasuaki wrote ‘The Assumption, Not Invention, of Universality Is the Problem’ for the European Society of International Law (ESIL) Annual Conference 2018. This chapter traces his academic career and his main works in light of the antagonism of the universality and the West-centric features of international law studies. It sharply criticizes the idea which equated European or the United States’ norms with general international law. This chapter represents his efforts to overcome such biases embedded in the discipline and to find out and establish the commonly valid idea that can be accepted by people with diverse cultural and civilizational backgrounds.
Universal Human Rights within Social Particulars
Authors: Retter Mark
Published: April 2024

This chapter develops a justification for universal human rights based on a natural law ethics. The core foundations are developed from Alasdair MacIntyre’s practice-based account of the political common good and natural justice. Two key challenges are then addressed. The first concerns the consistency between its commitment to universal human rights and an understanding of moral knowledge formation embedded within the social networks and traditions of localized social practice. The second concerns the consistency of its commitment to universal human rights given certain facts of moral pluralism, and especially the presence of rival human rights theories about the foundations and content of such rights. In responding to these challenges, the chapter points to the need for attunement between human rights theory and practice, and particularly to ethical standards that are fundamental to the successful achievement, in practice, of collaborative social ends between human beings.
Universalisms of Human Dominion
Authors: Lorite Alejandro
Published: April 2024

The universalism of international law, how international law contributes to perfecting a shared universe, is anchored in a history of destructive violence against possible universes. Part of the contemporary state of our unfolding legal universe consists in a network of legal rules and institutions governing human–animal relations on a global scale. I suggest here that the worldwide regulation of animal life rehearses the universalization of received dualisms, in particular by sustaining the construction of animals as mere ontological extensions of humans and organizing on a global scale the erasure of any unmediated animal standing towards the world. Traces of alternative universes, such as they are excavated by the anthropological aspiration to relative universalism, or a universalism of relations among universes, offer the bases for considering global human regulation of animals. I suggest doing so by alluding to two structural homologies with violently constructed spaces of human power over humans, labelled here as totalitarian and colonial. To the illiberal universal rule of Liberalism’s international law over animals I assign the name of Dominionism.
The Universal Recognition of Animal Welfare and its Dark Sides
Authors: Bismuth Régis
Published: April 2024

The fate of animals under human control has become a challenge of our time. One of the key dimensions of the ‘animal turn’ we are witnessing is the concept of ‘animal welfare’. Unlike animal rights or abolitionist doctrines, animal welfare has gained some form of universal recognition. But it has different meanings depending on the context in which it is used. As practised in the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), ‘animal welfare’ is substantially deprived of any ethical foundation and is rather an economic- and efficiency-driven concept that legitimizes the industrial exploitation of animals. In the same vein, the recognition of ‘animal welfare’ as a universal issue by World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement institutions in the Seals dispute should not overshadow its anthropocentric dimension in a way that augments the suspicion that ‘animal welfare’ is a vehicle of cultural imperialism.
Beyond Co-option and Contestation
Authors: Bagchi Kanad , Tahraoui Milan
Published: April 2024

What does the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), touted as one of the most comprehensive and ambitious projects in recent times, mean for the universality of international law? How do we square, on one hand, BRI’s proclaimed rhetoric on creating a new world order of coexistence and peace, while simultaneously being beholden to traditional conceptions of international law? Scholarship so far has adopted a ‘binary’ lens that views the BRI as either ‘strengthening’ or ‘challenging’ the universality of international law. While this has pushed our understanding of the BRI in new directions, we argue that binary logics have also restricted our imagination from considering the possibility of alternative spaces and constructs that lie beyond the binary folds. Through the lens of ‘co-option’ and ‘contestation’ we construct the BRI as aspiring to bring about a new paradigm for international law, that is however mediated not through radical means, but rather through reinforced conservatism.
The Retreat of the State in International Law?
Authors: Meguro Maiko
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses the possibility of new forms of governance of the climate beyond state power, that is, beyond the traditional state-based modes of generating normativity, paying special attention to the Paris Agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In doing so, this chapter engages with recent claims of a de-emphasizing of the role of the state because of the increasing number of transnational actors and activities, the growing role of universal institutions such as the United Nations, the ratification of multilateral treaties that protect international common interests, and the expanding jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals with quasi-compulsory jurisdiction. It argues that the Paris Agreement offers a new understanding of the governance of climate problems in which the state is the coordinator of different governance levels and actors.
Some Experiments Testing CSL
Authors: Pearle Philip
Published: April 2024

This chapter discusses experiments (already performed or proposed), as well as related topics. The “theoretical constraint,” the requirement that a superposition of a visible object not last longer than human perception time, is depicted on a parameter constraint graph (a graph of λ vs. with shaded area representing forbidden parameter values). Discussed experiments include bound state “spontaneous” excitation (electrons knocked out of atoms, deuterium ripped apart), heating (temperature rise of an object, atoms knocked out of a Bose–Einstein concentrate), “spontaneous” radiation of a free charged particle, interference of a “large” object. It also covers topics of special relativity and gravity.
A Stochastic Differential Equation Cookbook
Authors: Pearle Philip
Published: April 2024

This chapter provides a tutorial on stochastic differential equations (SDEs). It starts by suggesting that, if one has a first-order differential equation dx/dt = a(x) + b(x)η(t), where η(t) is a randomly wildly fluctuating function of time, one may wish to approach its solution approximately by using SDE techniques. One starts with the approximation of replacing η(t) by white noise w(t). This then becomes a Stratonovich SDE. The chapter then provides a series of steps, a “recipe,” to obtain a satisfactory resolution of the problem. It explains how to add an “Ito correction term” to the Stratonovich SDE so that it becomes an Ito SDE. The next step is to (easily) pluck, from the Ito SDE, the ensemble mean values of dx/dt and (dx)2/dt (expressed in terms of a, b).The final step is to insert these expressions in the Fokker–Planck equation for ρ(x,t), the probability (density) of x at time t (whose solution gives one what is desired for the original first-order differential equation). Some examples of how this recipe works are provided. So far, as befits a recipe, no justification for these steps was provided. So, the chapter next justifies these steps. It then goes on to treat the general case of a set of first order differential equations, for a set of variables xi and a set of white noise functions wi(t).
The Romantic Lie in the Brain
Authors: Brown Brookes
Published: April 2024

Prominent political philosophers have recently argued that nation-states can be held morally accountable because they qualify as group agents Much of the ensuing debate has focused on the existence of collective agency or its consequences for individual responsibility. Critics deny that groups possess the self-awareness, motivation, or biological material to qualify as agents. Others question what such claims tell us about the answerability of discrete actors such as citizens. Overlooked in these discussions is the fact that claims about national responsibility contain not only theories of group agency but also a theory of states—of what such entities are and what they are like. It is merely assumed that if groups can be held accountable then nation-states bear moral responsibility. The aim of this chapter is to challenge this presumption. Political institutions, the chapter argues, predictably lack the unity and control that accounts of group agency contend moral accountability requires. This tells us something important about the moral landscape. But even more significant is the reason why this misalignment between theory and reality has been overlooked. As the chapter shows, contemporary philosophers take themselves to be able to “reason together without having to argue about what domestic states are actually like.” This, I argue, is an error. As Aristotle wrote, “he who would inquire into the nature and various kinds of government must first of all determine, ‘what is a state?’”
Proportionality and the Prospect of Compensation
Authors: Eggert Linda
Published: April 2024

This chapter examines whether the proportionality requirement in the ethics of defensive harming is sensitive to compensation. May future compensation render otherwise disproportionate harms proportionate? The chapter argues that the prospect of compensation does not render otherwise disproportionate, and hence impermissible, harms proportionate and, to that extent, permissible, and defends an alternative view, which is threefold: (i) failing to discharge duties of compensation constitutes a wrong independently of considerations of proportionality; (ii) what matters for proportionality is not the question of whether harms will be compensated but the degree to which harms are compensable; (iii) harms that are so severe that they cannot be adequately compensated carry more weight in proportionality calculations than harms that are readily compensable. By clarifying whether, and how, discharging compensatory duties bears on the permissibility of doing what gives rise to these duties in the first place, the chapter elucidates the relationship between proportionality, compensation, and permissions to harm.
When the one true faith trumps all: Low religious diversity, religious intolerance, and science denial
Authors: Ding Yu , Johar Gita Venkataramani , Morris Michael W
Published: April 2024

Past theories have linked science denial to religiosity but have not explained its geographic variability. We hypothesize that it springs not only from religious intensity but also from religious intolerance, which depends greatly on the experience of religious diversity and hence on geography. The belief that one's religion trumps other faiths precipitates the stance that it trumps science too. This psychological process is most likely to operate in regions or countries with low religious heterogeneity. We measure the rejection of science not only in people's refusal to follow specific health recommendations, such as taking COVID-19 vaccines, but also in general measures of scientific engagement and attainment. We rule out alternative explanations, including reverse causality and spurious correlations, by conducting controlled experiments and running robustness checks on our statistical models.
Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2023: A ‘High Quality’ Deal: The Business of British Comedy Television in Australia, 1960–90
Authors: Swenson Holly
Published: April 2024

Historians of the late British empire often cite the 1960s and 1970s as a turning point in Commonwealth nationalisms, when British sentiment abroad was in major decline. This article investigates one exception to that phenomenon: Australians’ continued appreciation for British television, especially British comedy television. While other historians have seen this as a symptom of ‘cultural imperialism’, this article argues that Australian stations purchased British comedies for complex commercial reasons that extended beyond imperial sentiment. Australian and British television stations worked together to bring British television programmes to Australia. Public and private British stations sold Australians programmes to finance their domestic activities, claiming their products were uniquely ‘high quality’. Australian stations borrowed British language of ‘high quality’ to describe these programmes, a rhetoric which filtered through to how Australian viewers described their television preferences. Combining international business records with viewers’ opinions, this article demonstrates the role media firms could play in positively framing consumers’ attitudes to Britain even in the post-imperial era.
Using Natural Language Processing to Evaluate the Quality of Supervisor Narrative Comments in Competency-Based Medical Education
Authors: Spadafore Maxwell , Yilmaz Yusuf , Rally Veronica , Chan Teresa M. , Russell Mackenzie , Thoma Brent , Singh Sim , Monteiro Sandra , Pardhan Alim , Martin Lynsey , Monrad Seetha U. , Woods Rob
Published: April 2024

Purpose

Learner development and promotion rely heavily on narrative assessment comments, but narrative assessment quality is rarely evaluated in medical education. Educators have developed tools such as the Quality of Assessment for Learning (QuAL) tool to evaluate the quality of narrative assessment comments; however, scoring the comments generated in medical education assessment programs is time intensive. The authors developed a natural language processing (NLP) model for applying the QuAL score to narrative supervisor comments.

Method

Samples of 2,500 Entrustable Professional Activities assessments were randomly extracted and deidentified from the McMaster (1,250 comments) and Saskatchewan (1,250 comments) emergency medicine (EM) residency training programs during the 2019–2020 academic year. Comments were rated using the QuAL score by 25 EM faculty members and 25 EM residents. The results were used to develop and test an NLP model to predict the overall QuAL score and QuAL subscores.

Results

All 50 raters completed the rating exercise. Approximately 50% of the comments had perfect agreement on the QuAL score, with the remaining resolved by the study authors. Creating a meaningful suggestion for improvement was the key differentiator between high- and moderate-quality feedback. The overall QuAL model predicted the exact human-rated score or 1 point above or below it in 87% of instances. Overall model performance was excellent, especially regarding the subtasks on suggestions for improvement and the link between resident performance and improvement suggestions, which achieved 85% and 82% balanced accuracies, respectively.

Conclusions

This model could save considerable time for programs that want to rate the quality of supervisor comments, with the potential to automatically score a large volume of comments. This model could be used to provide faculty with real-time feedback or as a tool to quantify and track the quality of assessment comments at faculty, rotation, program, or institution levels.
Hemoglobin Drop is Associated with Early Post-operative Stroke Following Revascularization Surgery for Moyamoya Disease
Authors: Ran Kathleen R. , Nair Sumil K. , Srinivas Tara , Xie Michael E. , Kilgore Collin B. , Ye Xiaobu , Yedavalli Vivek S. , Sun Lisa R. , Jackson Christopher M. , Caplan Justin M. , Gonzalez L. Fernando , Tamargo Rafael J. , Huang Judy , Xu Risheng
Published: April 2024

Background:

Postoperative stroke is a potentially devastating neurological complication following surgical revascularization for Moyamoya disease. We sought to evaluate whether peri-operative hemoglobin levels were associated with the risk of early post-operative stroke following revascularization surgery in adult Moyamoya patients.

Methods:

Adult patients having revascularization surgeries for Moyamoya disease between 1999-2022 were identified through single institutional retrospective review. Logistic regression analysis was used to test for the association between hemoglobin drop and early postoperative stroke.

Results:

In all, 106 revascularization surgeries were included in the study. A stroke occurred within 7 days after surgery in 9.4% of cases. There were no significant associations between the occurrence of an early postoperative stroke and patient age, gender, or race. Mean postoperative hemoglobin drop was greater in patients who suffered an early postoperative stroke compared with patients who did not (2.3±1.1 g/dL vs. 1.3±1.1 g/dL, respectively; P=0.034). Patients who experienced a hemoglobin drop post-operatively had 2.03 times greater odds (95% confidence interval, 1.06-4.23; P=0.040) of having a stroke than those whose hemoglobin levels were stable. Early postoperative stroke was also associated with an increase in length of hospital stay (P<0.001), discharge to a rehabilitation facility (P=0.014), and worse modified Rankin scale at 1 month (P=0.001).

Conclusion:

This study found a significant association between hemoglobin drop and early postoperative stroke following revascularization surgery in adult patients with Moyamoya disease. Based on our findings, it may be prudent to avoid hemoglobin drops in Moyamoya patients undergoing surgical revascularization.
A Theory of Transitions Influencing Diabetes Self-management Among Emerging Adults With Type 1 Diabetes
Authors: Hanna Kathleen M. , Alazri Zeinab , Eisenhauer Christine M.
Published: April 2024

Emerging adults with type 1 diabetes are experiencing numerous transitions, potentially affecting diabetes self-management. For example, when transitioning to college, these emerging adults may experience changes in their daily routines and usual reminders or triggers for habitual behavior such as checking blood glucose levels. In turn, these emerging adults may omit checking glucose levels, impacting decisional and adaptational diabetes self-management behavior associated with their insulin dose or bolus. Thus, we propose a theory on transitions influencing daily routines, diabetes self-management habitual behavior triggers, and, in turn, diabetes self-management habitual and decisional/adaptational behaviors for emerging adults with type 1 diabetes.
Epidemiological characterization of clubfoot: a population-based study of a surveillance program in Colombia
Authors: Portilla-Rojas Esteban , Pineda-Sanabria Pablo , Ramírez Lina , Cuevas Maria Isabel , Lores Juliana , Sarmiento Karen , Zarante Ignacio
Published: April 2024

Clubfoot is a common musculoskeletal congenital abnormality, with a prevalence of 5–20 cases per 10 000 live births in low to middle-income countries. If left untreated, clubfoot causes severe consequences for the child: gait disturbances, reduced quality of life, and limited work opportunities. Our objective was to characterize clubfoot and determine its prevalence and associated risk factors in Bogotá and Cali, Colombia, from 2002 to 2020. A retrospective case-control study design was employed, analyzing data from birth defect reports provided by the Program for the Prevention and Follow-up of Congenital Defects and Orphan Diseases surveillance system. Cases included live births or stillbirths with clubfoot, while controls consisted of infants without congenital abnormalities, matched in terms of birth date and hospital. Prevalence was calculated considering a 95% confidence interval using Poisson distribution, and risk factors were assessed through adjusted odds ratios obtained by logistic regression model. Of 558 255 births, 861 cases of clubfoot were identified, 48.20% were postural clubfoot, and 15 cases were syndromic clubfoot. In Bogota, prevalence rate was 15.1 per 10 000 live births, whereas in Cali it was 17.29 per 10 000 live births. Family history of clubfoot within first-degree relatives was identified as a risk factor for clubfoot. Investigating risk factors for clubfoot holds significant importance in terms of preventing and reducing morbidity within this population. Helping to drive government and healthcare initiatives aimed at providing timely and effective treatment.
Gaining momentum: stem cell therapies for HIV cure
Authors: Buck Amanda M. , LaFranchi Brian H. , Henrich Timothy J.
Published: April 2024

Purpose of review

Durable HIV-1 remission has been reported in a person who received allogeneic stem cell transplants (SCTs) involving CCR5 Δ32/Δ32 donor cells. Much of the reduction in HIV-1 burden following allogeneic SCT with or without donor cells inherently resistant to HIV-1 infection is likely due to cytotoxic graft-versus-host effects on residual recipient immune cells. Nonetheless, there has been growing momentum to develop and implement stem cell therapies that lead to durable long-term antiretroviral therapy (ART)-free remission without the need for SCT.

Recent findings

Most current research leverages gene editing techniques to modify hematopoietic stem cells which differentiate into immune cells capable of harboring HIV-1. Approaches include targeting genes that encode HIV-1 co-receptors using Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFN) or CRISPR-Cas-9 to render a pool of adult or progenitor cells resistant to de-novo infection. Other strategies involve harnessing multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells to foster immune environments that can more efficiently recognize and target HIV-1 while promoting tissue homeostasis.

Many of these strategies are currently in a state of infancy or adolescence; nonetheless, promising preclinical and first-in-human studies have been performed, providing further rationale to focus resources on stem cell therapies.
The Forgotten Joint Score Is a Valid Outcome Measure for Total Ankle Arthroplasty: A Prospective Study
Authors: Mazzotti Antonio , Zielli Simone Ottavio , Artioli Elena , Astolfi Michele , Langone Laura , Faldini Cesare
Published: April 2024

Background

The success of total ankle arthroplasty (TAA) involves objective and subjective parameters such as joint motion and implant survival. Patient-reported outcome measures provide key context from the patient’s perspective so that we can evaluate the results of these procedures. The Forgotten Joint Score (FJS) has demonstrated validity and reliability in other arthroplasties, but the existing evidence on the FJS in TAA is very limited.

Question/purposes

We aimed to assess the reliability, validity, responsiveness to change, and floor and ceiling effects, as well as to perform a gender analysis, of the FJS in patients who had undergone TAA.

Methods

A prospective, observational study enrolled patients who underwent TAA at our institution between June 2021 and May 2023. The three-component TAA was performed through an anterior approach. A total of 120 patients (mean age 62 ± 10 years) participated, which was 83% (120 of 145) of those eligible, and 77% (92 of 120) of those patients underwent follow-up assessments at 12 ± 1 months after surgery. A cross-culturally adapted and validated version of the FJS in our language (Italian) was used. Additionally, three other commonly used patient-reported outcome measures for TAA were administered: the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) ankle-hindfoot score, the Manchester-Oxford Foot Questionnaire (MOXFQ), and the VAS.

Results

Reliability was demonstrated by excellent internal consistency (Cronbach α coefficient = 0.95) and excellent test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.99; standard error of measurement = 2.7). Robust validity was observed, in that the FJS had a strong correlation with the AOFAS ankle-hindfoot score, the MOXFQ, and the VAS (Pearson and Spearman values consistently above 0.7 or below -0.7). Responsiveness to change was observed between 6 and 12 months (Cohen d = 0.37). Low ceiling and floor effects at both 6 months (4% and 3% reached top and bottom scores, respectively) and 12 months (10% and 0% reached top and bottom scores, respectively) were demonstrated, below the recommended 15% interpretability threshold. No association between outcomes and patient gender was observed.

Conclusion

Test properties and validity of the FJS were strong in patients who underwent TAA. It seems suitable for clinical use, although future studies should seek to replicate or refute our findings in other patient populations.

Level of Evidence

Level II, therapeutic study.
Clinical and Dermoscopic Insights Into Scalp Nevi in Chinese Children
Authors: Chen Zhuo , Wan Pengjie , Chen Ji , He Huan , Deng Dan
Published: April 2024

BACKGROUND

The presence of scalp nevi in children frequently causes apprehension, leading physicians and parents to consider unnecessary biopsies or excisions of scalp nevi in children. There are limited data on the dermoscopic characteristics of scalp nevi in Chinese children.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to comprehensively analyze the clinical and dermoscopic features of scalp nevi in this specific population of Chinese pediatric patients, with a focus on a single pediatric dermatologic surgery practice.

METHODS

This retrospective cohort study investigated patients who underwent surgical excision of scalp nevi. All patients underwent dermoscopy with photographic documentation.

RESULTS

Seventy-two scalp nevi in 56 Chinese children were included. Notably, no melanoma cases were detected. The parietal region (35, 48.6%) was the most frequently affected anatomical site. Clinical asymmetry was more prevalent in nevi with a diameter exceeding 6 mm (p < .05). The predominant dermoscopic pattern observed was the globular pattern (50, 69.4%) while an intriguing rarity of a reverse-eclipse pattern (1, 1.4%).

CONCLUSION

This study revealed that scalp nevi in Chinese children usually did not exhibit concerning behavior. Increasing awareness of the clinical characteristics, dermoscopic features, and the natural progression of scalp nevi in children can potentially help reduce unnecessary surgical interventions.
Applicability of Child-Turcotte-Pugh Score in Anticipating Post-ERCP Adverse Events in Patients With Cirrhosis
Authors: Alsakarneh Saqr , Jaber Fouad , Mohammed Willie , Almeqdadi Mohammad , Al-Ani Abdallah , Kilani Yassine , Abughazaleh Saeed , Momani Laith , Miran Muhammad Shah , Ghoz Hassan , Helzberg John , Clarkston Wendell , Othman Mohamed
Published: April 2024

Limited objective data exist on the comparison of post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) complications in patients with cirrhosis based on the severity of the disease. We evaluated the effectiveness of the Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) score system in anticipating the risk of post-ERCP complications in patients with cirrhosis. The PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane databases were searched from inception through September 2022 to identify studies comparing post-ERCP complications in patients with cirrhosis based on CTP score. Odds ratios (ORs) and their associated 95% CIs were pooled using a random-effect model to calculate effect size. The reference group for analysis was the CTP class C patient group. Seven studies comprising 821 patients who underwent 1068 ERCP procedures were included. The CTP class C patient population exhibited a higher risk of overall post-ERCP adverse events compared with those with class A or B (OR: 2.87, 95% CI: 1.77-4.65, P = 0.00 and OR: 2.02, 95% CI: 1.17-3.51, P = 0.01, respectively). Moreover, CTP class B patients had a significantly higher complication rate than CTP class A patients (OR: 1.62, 95% CI: 1.04-2.53, P = 0.03). However, no statistically significant differences were found in the occurrence of specific types of complications, including bleeding, pancreatitis, cholangitis, perforation, or mortality across the three CTP groups. We demonstrated that the CTP classification system is a reliable predictor of ERCP complications in patients with cirrhosis. Consequently, caution should be exercised when performing ERCP in patients classified as CTP class C.