bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Magnetic phase diagram of the austenitic Mn-rich Ni–Mn–(In, Sn) Heusler alloys
Authors: Bonfà P , Chicco S , Cugini F , Sharma S , Dewhurst J K , Allodi G
Published: March 2022

Heusler compounds have been intensively studied owing to the important technological advancements that they provide in the fields of shape memory, thermomagnetic energy conversion and spintronics. Many of their intriguing properties are ultimately governed by their magnetic states and understanding and possibly tuning them is evidently of utmost importance. In this work we examine the

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alloys with density functional theory simulations and 55Mn nuclear magnetic resonance and combine these two methods to carefully describe their ground state magnetic order. In addition, we compare the results obtained with the conventional generalized gradient approximation with the ones collected using the strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) semilocal functional for exchange and correlation. Experimental results eventually allow to discriminate between two different scenarios identified by ab initio simulations.
Latent demand for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa: a review
Authors: Van-Hein Sackey Charles , Levin Todd , Nock Destenie
Published: March 2022

Universal access to electricity is an essential part of sub-Saharan Africa’s path to development. With the United Nations setting Goal 7 of its sustainable development goals to be universal access to clean, reliable and affordable electricity, substantial research efforts have been made to optimize electricity supply based on projected demand in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Our study reviews the literature on electricity demand, with a specific focus on latent demand (i.e., electricity demand that would exist if the necessary techno-economic conditions were met) in SSA. We found that out of 57 electricity demand papers reviewed, only 3 (5%) incorporated latent demand in their electricity demand projections. Furthermore, majority of the literature on electricity consumption and demand estimation in SSA use econometric models to identify determinants of electricity consumption and project future demand. We find that population density, urbanization, household income, electricity price, market value of crops and availability of natural resources to be significant determinants of electricity consumption in SSA. We conclude the review by proposing a methodology, and providing an initial proof of concept, for more accurately projecting latent demand in sub-Saharan Africa. Incorporating latent demand in electrification models would help inform energy sector stakeholders (e.g., investors and policymakers) about which sectors and geographic locations hold potential for wealth creation via electricity access.
Differential equations of quantum mechanics
Authors: Sigal I.
Published: March 2022

We review very briefly the main mathematical structures and results in some important areas of Quantum Mechanics involving PDEs and formulate open problems.
Experiments in Organization and Management Research
Authors: Bitektine Alex , Lucas Jeff , Schilke Oliver , Aeon Brad
Published: March 2022

Experiments randomly assign actors (e.g., people, groups, and organizations) to different conditions and assess the effects on a dependent variable. Random assignment allows for the control of extraneous factors and the isolation of causal effects, making experiments especially valuable for testing theorized processes. Although experiments have long remained underused in organizational theory and management research, the popularity of experimental methods has seen rapid growth in the 21st century.

Gatekeepers sometimes criticize experiments for lacking generalizability, citing their artificial settings or non-representative samples. To address this criticism, a distinction is drawn between an applied research logic and a fundamental research logic. In an applied research logic, experimentalists design a study with the goal of generalizing findings to specific settings or populations. In a fundamental research logic, by contrast, experimentalists seek to design studies relevant to a theory or a fundamental mechanism rather than to specific contexts. Accordingly, the issue of generalizability does not so much boil down to whether an experiment is generalizable, but rather whether the research design matches the research logic of the study. If the goal is to test theory (i.e., a fundamental research logic), then asking the question of whether the experiment generalizes to certain settings and populations is largely irrelevant.
Visual Methodologies: Theorizing Disasters and International Relations
Authors: Jauhola Marjaana
Published: March 2022

There is an increase in extreme weather conditions due to human-induced climate change. Their impacts are most severely felt by the marginalized and the poor in the Global South. Increasingly, study of international relations focuses on the varied forms of disasters and the global politics that emerge around them. Disaster studies scholarship actively challenges the myth of existence of “natural disasters.” Instead of defining them as being “natural,” disasters are conceived as serious disruptions to the functioning of a community or a society with human, material, economic, or environmental losses. The disaster concept is thus separated, first, from hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, and floods, and “disaters” are not limited to events resulting from natural hazards. Disasters emerge also as a result of major economic and political instabilities due to the nature of the contemporary global political economy and global financial crises. Disasters also include those that often go unnoticed such as violent conflicts or famines, and also include global pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19. Disasters understood in this way also include aftermaths of resource extractivism and settler coloniality.

The intersection of disasters and visual methodologies offers insights into theorizing International Relations nature, the everyday, and the politics of disasters. This article focuses on such visual and audiovisual scholarship that has predominantly emerged from, and actively engages with, collaborative visual methodologies and a rethinking of research processes. Such works offer insights into critical exploration of academic knowledge production processes and praxis, suggesting that visual is not a method, but a methodological and ethical choice. Research processes adopting photo-elicitation, graphic novels and comics, and films in specific disaster contexts challenge text-dominated scholarship and offer reflection on the roles between the researcher and researched, and on the question of authorship. Turning to visuals also brings to the fore questions of representations and the strategic use of the visual in the overall scholarly storytelling practice. Further, scholars have suggested that instead of focusing on the visual devices, or the visual products, visual methodologies as a process orientation allow questions related to democratizing and accessibility to the research process to be addressed, weighing up whose priorities matter, that is, making research useful for (Indigenous) communities and resisting legacies of the imperial shutter.
Member-State Structures in Federations: Creation and Implications
Authors: Anderson George
Published: March 2022

While member-state structures—the number, relative sizes, and demographic characteristics of states in federal regimes—could be thought to be one of the defining features of different federations, the comparative literature has paid relatively little attention to this important topic. There is the well-known distinction between “coming together” and “holding together” federations, but this has not led to comparative examinations of how these different formative experiences relate to the member-state structure of a federation, its evolution over time, and the processes for defining new or revised member-states. There has been more comparative attention to differences between “ethnic” and “territorial” federations, but often with limited linkage to other variables, such as the number and relative sizes of the member-states. For example, the literature on consociational power-sharing arrangements in central federal governmental institutions has largely neglected consideration of how the member-state structure and the pattern of territorial cleavages in the society affect the likelihood or form of power-sharing arrangements. This relates to the need to see the political geometry of federations in their broader social context: how the member-state structure compares with the underlying social and territorial cleavages in the country. While these cleavages may affect the member-state structure of the federation, they will certainly affect the political dynamics as institutional arrangements and societal pressures interact.
The International Politics of Memory
Authors: Klymenko Lina
Published: March 2022

Like the contested remembrance of historical events, collective memory shapes interstate relations, foreign and security policy, and global politics. International relations (IR) scholars studying the relationship between collective memory and international politics link the memory concept to the notions of security, power, language, emotions, gender, identity, trauma, justice, law, and the like. The study of the international politics of memory relies on a plurality of theoretical approaches gained from interdisciplinary works on collective memory. Although collective memory is viewed as a variable influencing foreign policymaking in structural terms within a positivist paradigm in IR scholarship, from an interpretive perspective, collective memory is a practice of remembrance that constitutes a state’s foreign and security policy. Following the advances of the interpretive paradigm in the social sciences, it is expected that more interpretive studies on the international politics of memory will appear. .
Germans in the Habsburg Empire in South America (Colonial Venezuela)
Authors: Montenegro Giovanna
Published: March 2022

In 1528, the Welsers, bankers of Augsburg, received a capitulación (contract) from Charles V, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain, to govern the Province of Venezuela for the Spanish Crown. The territory, located in the northwestern region of modern-day Venezuela, was ruled by a joint German-Spanish administrative team that was plagued by chaos and distrust. In addition to undertaking conquest expeditions, the Welsers engaged in both the African and the indigenous slave trade and experimented with the extraction and export of medical plants such as balsam. The Spaniards, anxious about the Welsers’ access to power in the conquest and colonization of the “Spanish” Indies, saw the Welser governors as Lutheran barbarians. Most of the Spanish historiography did the same. In any case, the colony ended officially in 1556, soon after Juan Carvajal tried to administer the colony and had Philipp von Hutten, the colony’s governor, and Bartholomäus Welser VI, the eldest son of the company’s boss, assassinated. The colony was mostly forgotten in Germany until the 19th century, when German imperialists used it as an example to further colonization in parts of Africa and the South Pacific. Venezuelans, after gaining independence from Spain, maintained a pro-Spanish view of the colonization of the nation’s western territory into the early 21st century.
Sign Languages in the Romance-Speaking Countries
Authors: Quer Josep
Published: March 2022

Sign languages in the Romance-speaking countries constitute a rather representative sample of the languages in the visual–gestural modality documented to date throughout the world in many respects. The types of historical and thus linguistic relations that exist among them have to do with the history of education for the deaf, colonization, and missionary work. Contact phenomena with spoken languages are attested in certain parts of the grammar and the lexicon, but they also arise among sign languages. The existing language types can be classified into urban versus rural sign languages, which determines certain aspects of the languages and their sociolinguistic setup. The transmission patterns rely on educational institutions and Deaf organizations because most deaf people are born into hearing and non-signing families. Despite non-negligible differences among regions in the world (e.g., between European and West African countries), the underlying sociolinguistic issues in Deaf communities are similar, and the cross-linguistic and typological variation and similarities observed among them are comparable to those found in other sets of sign languages but also reflect the range of variation found across spoken languages. The state of research, still incipient but steadily growing, also reflects the overall situation of the field more generally.
Economics and Disaster Risk Management
Authors: Mahefasoa Randrianalijaona , Thierry Razanakoto , Julien Salava , Holimalala Randriamanampisoa , Pierre Lazamanana
Published: March 2022

Economics is the science of wealth, the main objective of which is to satisfy human needs within the constraint of limited available resources. The production and consumption patterns of economic agents are examined in order to identify the most efficient and optimal ways of meeting needs. At the same time, redistribution problems have an important place in economic science, and they lead to questions of development and economic growth.

Since the 1990s, officially declared by the United Nations as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), the relatively frequent occurrence of devastating disasters, induced mainly by natural hazards but also by human activities, development efforts and economic growth have been seriously threatened. Poverty alleviation efforts undertaken by nations in the Global South and supported by international donors, as well as development outcomes worldwide, are suffering from disasters. The international community has become more and more aware of the need to systematically mainstream disaster risk reduction in development policy and strategy. Therefore, disaster risk reduction economics is becoming a priority and part of economics as a science. For more than three decades, based on risk assessment, risk prevention and mitigation strategies, including structural and nonstructural measures, such as but not limited to, risk retention and transfer, preparedness as well as ex-post activities such as response, recovery and reconstruction are using economic variables and tools since mid-2000s to become more efficient. Furthermore, protecting economic growth and development benefits is possible only if enough attention is given to risk science. From this perspective, risk science is becoming part of economics, as evidenced by the new branch called risk reduction economics, which is essential to the attainment of sustainable development goals and resilient societies.
Digital Technology
Authors: Griffin Gina
Published: March 2022

As technological advances continue to develop, delivering macro human service through social work innovations becomes a new priority for the discipline. Digital technologies offer potential applications using tablets, smartphones, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and wearable technology to enable whole new possibilities for human services. As a result, policymakers and community organizers alike can access the existing information much faster, and potentially connect with hard-to-reach communities to make meaningful decisions. Incorporating the latest digital trends from business and industry settings to macro social work practice are highlighted. By utilizing digital technology, human service organizations can become more proactive and citizen-centered, potentially transforming personal and economic capacity.
FlexDotPlot: a universal and modular dot plot visualization tool for complex multifaceted data
Authors: Leonard Simon , Lardenois Aurélie , Tarte Karin , Rolland Antoine D , Chalmel Frédéric
Published: March 2022

Motivation

Dot plots are heatmap-like charts that provide a compact way to simultaneously display two quantitative information by means of dots of different sizes and colors. Despite the popularity of this visualization method, particularly in single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) studies, existing tools used to make dot plots are limited in terms of functionality and usability.

Results

We developed FlexDotPlot, an R package for generating dot plots from multifaceted data, including scRNA-seq data. It provides a universal and easy-to-use solution with a high versatility. An interactive R Shiny application is also available allowing non-R users to easily generate dot plots with several tunable parameters.

Availability and implementation

Source code and detailed manual are available on CRAN (stable version) and at https://github.com/Simon-Leonard/FlexDotPlot (development version). Code to reproduce figures is available at https://github.com/Simon-Leonard/FlexDotPlot_paper. A Shiny app is available as a stand-alone application within the package.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Advances online.
An incrementally updatable and scalable system for large-scale sequence search using the Bentley–Saxe transformation
Authors: Almodaresi Fatemeh , Khan Jamshed , Madaminov Sergey , Ferdman Michael , Johnson Rob , Pandey Prashant , Patro Rob
Published: March 2022

Motivation

In the past few years, researchers have proposed numerous indexing schemes for searching large datasets of raw sequencing experiments. Most of these proposed indexes are approximate (i.e. with one-sided errors) in order to save space. Recently, researchers have published exact indexes—Mantis, VariMerge and Bifrost—that can serve as colored de Bruijn graph representations in addition to serving as k-mer indexes. This new type of index is promising because it has the potential to support more complex analyses than simple searches. However, in order to be useful as indexes for large and growing repositories of raw sequencing data, they must scale to thousands of experiments and support efficient insertion of new data.

Results

In this paper, we show how to build a scalable and updatable exact raw sequence-search index. Specifically, we extend Mantis using the Bentley–Saxe transformation to support efficient updates, called Dynamic Mantis. We demonstrate Dynamic Mantis’s scalability by constructing an index of ≈40K samples from SRA by adding samples one at a time to an initial index of 10K samples. Compared to VariMerge and Bifrost, Dynamic Mantis is more efficient in terms of index-construction time and memory, query time and memory and index size. In our benchmarks, VariMerge and Bifrost scaled to only 5K and 80 samples, respectively, while Dynamic Mantis scaled to more than 39K samples. Queries were over 24× faster in Mantis than in Bifrost (VariMerge does not immediately support general search queries we require). Dynamic Mantis indexes were about 2.5× smaller than Bifrost’s indexes and about half as big as VariMerge’s indexes.

Availability and implementation

Dynamic Mantis implementation is available at https://github.com/splatlab/mantis/tree/mergeMSTs.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
MetaSquare: an integrated metadatabase of 16S rRNA gene amplicon for microbiome taxonomic classification
Authors: Liao Chun-Chieh , Fu Po-Ying , Huang Chih-Wei , Chuang Chia-Hsien , Yen Yun , Lin Chung-Yen , Chen Shu-Hwa
Published: March 2022

Motivation

Taxonomic classification of 16S ribosomal RNA gene amplicon is an efficient and economic approach in microbiome analysis. 16S rRNA sequence databases like SILVA, RDP, EzBioCloud and HOMD used in downstream bioinformatic pipelines have limitations on either the sequence redundancy or the delay on new sequence recruitment. To improve the 16S rRNA gene-based taxonomic classification, we merged these widely used databases and a collection of novel sequences systemically into an integrated resource.

Results

MetaSquare version 1.0 is an integrated 16S rRNA sequence database. It is composed of more than 6 million sequences and improves taxonomic classification resolution on both long-read and short-read methods.

Availability and implementation

Accessible at https://hub.docker.com/r/lsbnb/metasquare_db and https://github.com/lsbnb/MetaSquare

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Study on the Correlation Between the Appearance Traits and Intrinsic Chemical Quality of Bitter Almonds Based on Fingerprint-Chemometrics
Authors: Zhang Guoqin , Li Huanhuan , Sun Lili , Liu Yi , Cao Ying , Ren Xiaoliang , Liu Yanan
Published: March 2022

Bitter almond is a well-known and commonly used traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for relieving coughs and asthma. However, the bioactive chemical composition of bitter almonds, especially their amygdalin content, which determines their quality for TCM use, is variable and this can cause problems with formulating and prescribing TCMs based on bitter almonds. Therefore, a simple method was developed to evaluate the compositional quality of bitter almonds from their appearance traits, based on a combination of chromatographic fingerprinting and chemometrics. Bitter almonds were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal components analysis (PCA) were applied to classify bitter almonds, which split the samples into two independent clusters. Three chemical markers (amygdalin, prunasin, and one unidentified component) were found by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). What’s more, a new PLS-DA model was reconstructed to confirm the obtained chemical markers from PLS-DA. Additionally, the appearance trait indices and amygdalin content of bitter almond were determined and the classification was confirmed by one-way analysis of variance. This method can easily determine the quality of bitter almonds from their appearance alone, high quality correlated closely with kernels that were larger, oblong in shape and heavier.
Comparison of Mold Active Triazoles as Primary Antifungal Prophylaxis in Patients With Newly Diagnosed Acute Myeloid Leukemia in the Era of Molecularly Targeted Therapies
Authors: Rausch Caitlin R , DiPippo Adam J , Jiang Ying , DiNardo Courtney D , Kadia Tapan , Maiti Abhishek , Montalban-Bravo Guillermo , Ravandi Farhad , Kontoyiannis Dimitrios P
Published: March 2022

Background

Multiple factors influence the choice of primary antifungal prophylaxis (PAP) in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) undergoing remission induction chemotherapy (RIC) given the recent incorporation of targeted leukemia therapies into these regimens.

Methods

We evaluated the incidence and characteristics of breakthrough invasive fungal infections (bIFI) in 277 adult patients with newly diagnosed AML undergoing RIC with high-intensity, or low-intensity venetoclax-containing therapy. Patients receiving posaconazole (PCZ), voriconazole (VCZ), or isavuconazole (ISA) for > 5 days as PAP during RIC were included. Echinocandin use prior to, but not concomitantly with, the PAP azole was allowed. IFI (modified EORTC/MSG criteria) occurring after > 5 days of continuous azole exposure or within 14 days of discontinuation were considered bIFI.

Results

Proven or probable bIFI were observed in 11 patients (4%). The incidence of bIFI was 2.9% for PCZ, 4.8% for VCZ, and 5.7% for ISA (P = .55). In total, 161 patients (58%) received echinocandin prophylaxis prior to azole initiation. Neither echinocandin exposure nor chemotherapy intensity impacted bIFI rate. Patients with bIFI had a lower rate of absolute neutrophil count recovery > 1000 cells/µL (64% vs 90%, P = .021) or complete remission (CR; 18% vs 66%, P = .002) after RIC. Thirty-eight patients (14%) discontinued PAP due to toxicity, most often hepatotoxicity. Discontinuation due to hepatotoxicity was similar among azoles (PCZ: 13%; VCZ: 15%; ISA: 13%).

Conclusions

The rate of bIFI is low during RIC in patients with newly diagnosed AML receiving any of the mold-active triazoles as PAP. Neutrophil recovery and achievement of CR are important for bIFI risk.
5-Year results from the prospective European multi-centre study on decellularized homografts for pulmonary valve replacement ESPOIR Trial and ESPOIR Registry data
Authors: Bobylev Dmitry , Horke Alexander , Boethig Dietmar , Hazekamp Mark , Meyns Bart , Rega Filip , Dave Hitendu , Schmiady Martin , Ciubotaru Anatol , Cheptanaru Eduard , Vida Vladimiro , Padalino Massimo , Tsang Victor , Jashari Ramadan , Laufer Günther , Andreas Martin , Andreeva Alexandra , Tudorache Igor , Cebotari Serghei , Haverich Axel , Sarikouch Samir
Published: March 2022

OBJECTIVES

Early results from the prospective ESPOIR Trial have indicated excellent results for pulmonary valve replacement using decellularized pulmonary homografts (DPH).

METHODS

A 5-year analysis of ESPOIR Trial patients was performed to provide an insight into the midterm DPH performance. ESPOIR Trial and Registry patients were matched with cryopreserved homografts (CH) patients considering patient age, type of heart defect and previous procedures to present the overall experience with DPH.

RESULTS

A total of 121 patients (59 female) were prospectively enrolled (8/2014–12/2016), median age 16.5 years (interquartile range 11.2–29.8), and median DPH diameter 24 mm. One death (73 year-old) occurred during a median follow-up of 5.9 years (5.4–6.4), in addition to 2 perioperative deaths resulting in an overall mortality rate of 2.5%. One case of endocarditis in 637 patient-years was noticed, resulting in an incidence of 0.15% per patient-year. At 5 years, the mean peak gradient was 19.9 mmHg (9.9), mean regurgitation 0.9 (0.6, grade 0–3) and freedom from explantation/any reintervention 97.5% (1.5). The combined DPH cohort, n = 319, comprising both Trial and Registry data, showed significantly better freedom from explantation for DPH 95.5% (standard deviation 1.7) than CH 83.0% (2.8) (P < 0.001) and less structural valve degeneration at 10 years when matched to 319 CH patients [DPH 65.5% (standard deviation 4.4) and CH 47.3% (3.7), P = 0.11].

CONCLUSIONS

The 5-year data of the prospective ESPOIR Trial show excellent performance for DPH and low rates of adverse events. ESPOIR Registry data up to 15 years, including a matched comparison with CH, demonstrated statistically significant better freedom from explantation.
Feature selection algorithm based on density and distance for fault diagnosis applied to a roll-to-roll manufacturing system
Authors: Oh Hyogeun , Lee Yoonjae , Lee Jongsu , Joo Changbeom , Lee Changwoo
Published: March 2022

Roll-to-roll systems that include rotary components such as driven rolls and idle rollers have significant potential for application in fabrication of flexible functional devices. They are inexpensive, mass producible, and environmentally friendly; however, even minor defects in their component bearings can render them susceptible to severe damage, which necessitates accurate diagnoses of bearing quality. The main steps in machine learning for fault diagnosis include feature extraction and selection. In the case of high-dimensional feature data, critical study is required to identify the best feature combination for proper diagnosis. Thus, this study aims to develop a method that extracts fault characteristics of a bearing from the measured signal and qualify the bearing according to the Mahalanobis distances and differences in density between normal and faulty data groups. Features extracted from vibration data collected from industry-scale roll-to-roll systems and CWRU data were trained with principal component analysis, other modern feature selection techniques, and the proposed algorithm-based eight classifiers. Compared with the existing algorithm, the accuracy increased by up to 9.24%, the training time decreased by up to 34.46%, and the number of features to obtain the maximum accuracy decreased by up to 59.92%. Thus, the proposed algorithm provides an effective and time-efficient approach to improve the accuracy of fault diagnosis of rotary components.
Positive Selection during Niche Adaptation Results in Large-Scale and Irreversible Rearrangement of Chromosomal Gene Order in Bacteria
Authors: Cao Sha , Brandis Gerrit , Huseby Douglas L. , Hughes Diarmaid
Published: March 2022

Analysis of bacterial genomes shows that, whereas diverse species share many genes in common, their linear order on the chromosome is often not conserved. Whereas rearrangements in gene order could occur by genetic drift, an alternative hypothesis is rearrangement driven by positive selection during niche adaptation (SNAP). Here, we provide the first experimental support for the SNAP hypothesis. We evolved Salmonella to adapt to growth on malate as the sole carbon source and followed the evolutionary trajectories. The initial adaptation to growth in the new environment involved the duplication of 1.66 Mb, corresponding to one-third of the Salmonella chromosome. This duplication is selected to increase the copy number of a single gene, dctA, involved in the uptake of malate. Continuing selection led to the rapid loss or mutation of duplicate genes from either copy of the duplicated region. After 2000 generations, only 31% of the originally duplicated genes remained intact and the gene order within the Salmonella chromosome has been significantly and irreversibly altered. These results experientially validate predictions made by the SNAP hypothesis and show that SNAP can be a strong driving force for rearrangements in chromosomal gene order.
Economic Production and Exchange of States and Societies in Precolonial Nigeria
Authors: Usman Aribidesi
Published: March 2022

This chapter explains the economic production and exchanges in states and societies in precolonial Nigeria. It highlights the prehistoric period in modern-day Nigeria's territories, from the earliest archaeological findings in the Late Stone Age (LSA) to the Iron Age. It also describes socio-political complexity, and cultural and economic changes that took place in various territories that later became modern-day Nigeria from the year 1000 CE. The chapter recounts how iron tools had begun to replace stone tools, and trade routes began to link various societies. It discusses the different types of economic productions and trade, parameters for exchange, organization of trade, and changes from the late eighteenth century to the eve of the colonial conquest in the late nineteenth century.
Gender, Class, and Culture in Colonial Nigeria
Authors: Agbaje Funmilayo Idowu
Published: March 2022

This chapter provides an overview of gender, class, and culture in the colonial society in Nigeria between the latter half of the nineteenth century and 1960. It illustrates how Nigeria was marked by administrative, economic, and sociocultural diversities before it became a colony of Britain, which is a far cry from the framework that British colonial rule subsequently sought to construct in that territory. It also points out the comprised multiplicity of groups of peoples, communities, and kingdoms in Nigeria that have advanced and complex systems of governments that developed over long periods of independent existence. The chapter elaborates on the natural foundations of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria in the contacts and interactions among the diverse peoples and communities from the precolonial era. It discusses the debate on the extent of the impact of colonial rule on gender, class, and culture and across the broad spectrum of African history and society.
Federalism and the First Republic of Nigeria, 1960–1966
Authors: Suberu Rotimi T.
Published: March 2022

Contemporary celebrations of Nigeria’s First Republic as a moment of benign and truly decentralized federalism belie the federal system’s fraught origins, profound contradictions, and violent disintegration. Although it creatively fostered regional self-rule while encouraging collegiate parliamentary coalitions at the center, federalism in the First Republic embodied fundamental flaws. The British colonial government’s promotion of a federation of three regions, one of which was larger than the other regional units combined, was especially detrimental to post-independence democratic stability in Nigeria’s deeply multi-ethnic context. Such structural imbalance explosively compounded and gravely polarized inter-regional, inter-ethnic, and inter-party conflicts in the First Republic. The First Republic’s federal system’s current idealizations should be nuanced by a more balanced acknowledgment of the system’s chronic failures and modest achievements.
The Nigerian Civil War and Its Legacies
Authors: Doron Roy
Published: March 2022

This chapter refers to the end of the Nigerian Civil War on January 15, 1970, which concluded with Yakubu Gowon, Nigeria’s Federal Military Government (FMG) head, embracing Philip Efiong, Biafra’s second president. It reviews the civil war’s literature, which is replete with amplifications of the most extreme views and promotions of unfounded and irresponsible ideas regarding the war's genesis, ending, and enduring legacies. It also discusses how Biafran prospects as a viable nation-state never materialized and how the war on 1970 with the country’s reabsorption into Nigeria. The chapter cites Gowon’s 1970 proclamation about the conflict having no victors nor vanquished, which restricted debate to tropes that did not openly challenge the concept of Nigerian unity. It talks about how serious discourse about the civil war was harshly suppressed until the latest transition to civilian rule in 1999.
Islamic Education in Nigeria
Authors: Kurfi Mustapha Hashim
Published: March 2022

This chapter traces the origins, forms, structure, forms, stages, and classifications of Islamic education vis-à-vis the traditions of Qurʾānic, Islamic, and Ajami knowledge systems in Nigeria during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. It shows that the Islamic knowledge system entails more than the study of Islamic sciences and deals with all activities of the intellectual development of humankind, including technology, culture, mysticism, history, dream interpretation, language, entertainment, and so on. It shows how organized and sufficient the system had been, demonstrating the breadth and depth of approaches to the past that Nigerians have engaged with. The chapter posits that there is persistence in this knowledge system’s relevance despite disruption by some factors including lack of funding, coordination, and supervision in the Nigerian education system. The chapter also provides policy recommendations to salvage and sustain the Islamic knowledge system in Nigeria.
An Afrocentric Overview of Education, Health, and Welfare Service in Twenty-First-Century Nigeria
Authors: Abidogun Jamaine M.
Published: March 2022

This chapter uses the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Indicators to demonstrate where Nigeria, as an African nation-state, depends on African ethnonational-based institutions that run parallel to and/or are combined with Western institutions to support Nigerians beyond what is reflected in the global indicators. The analysis is set in Afrocentric terms to counter the false idea that African institutions are marginalized or non-existent in the twenty-first century. This chapter demonstrates Nigeria’s dual system's viability and the need to adequately recognize and support African institutions in collaboration with nation-state Western-style institutions through brief histories and descriptions of the African education, health, and welfare institutions.
Federalism and Politics in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic
Authors: Obi Cyril , Onuoha Godwin
Published: March 2022

This chapter explores the complex dynamics and tensions besetting federalism since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999 and its implications for national cohesion, unity, and development. It provides a background to the nature of Nigeria’s federalism under military rule and how the opening of democratic space in the post-transition years has unleashed current demands for political restructuring. This is followed by analyzing several factors and the politics driving or obstructing demands for restructuring Nigeria’s federalism from 1999 to date. These include quests for decentralizing power, reforming the country’s fiscal federalism and revenue allocation system, the politics of zoning and power-sharing between geopolitical regions, and the festering citizenship and the national question. Based on the foregoing analysis, the chapter provides deeper insights into the protests against the Nigerian federation’s structural inequities and the clamor for political restructuring by various groups across Nigeria’s geopolitical regions. The concluding section sums up the growing distrust of the federal government and its institutions and the broader implications for Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.
Dimensions of Nigeria’s National Security and Development Challenges in Changing Global Contexts
Authors: Mimiko N. Oluwafemi
Published: March 2022

Effective organization of the security and welfare of society is the raison d’être of the modern state. It is the critical nexus of state–society relations, and the essence of national and human security in any social formation. In the manner in which it is composed and organized, the Nigerian state has not delivered on this mandate. Thus, it has created an enduring basis for insecurity, such as has manifested in different forms, as the country evolved from colonialism, through bouts of civil and martial rule, in the context of a monocultural economy of grossly limited productive capacity. The past twenty years of civil but limited democratic rule has not significantly enhanced the responsiveness of the Nigerian state to the aspirations of a preponderance of its society, especially the youths that constitute an overwhelming majority of the total population, yet grossly excluded from the nation’s economic and political processes. A re-casting of the governance structure is imperative to reposition and imbue the state with the capacity and commitment to deliver on critical social needs that can be the basis for national security.
Nigeria’s Impact on Diasporic Cultures in the Americas
Authors: Childs Matt D.
Published: March 2022

Abstract: This chapter analyzes the impact of captives taken from the Bights of Benin and Biafra in forging diasporic cultures in the Americas. After a survey of theories used to study the role of the Yoruba and Igbo in the African Diaspora, the chapter examines the enslavement process in the Bights of Benin and Biafra that laid the foundations for diasporic cultures to be transferred to the Americas. In particular, a focus is placed on how enslaved Africans recreated Yoruba and Igbo customs and traditions from their homelands and modified them to the New World through such belief systems as Santería, Vodun, and Candomblé. The prominence of people of Nigerian ancestry in the African Diaspora tells a much larger history of how the customs and cultures of the Bights of Benin and Biafra not only survived in the minds, thoughts, and actions of their descendants but also reshaped the empires and nations of the Americas.
Nigeria and the Global Umma
Authors: Kendhammer Brandon
Published: March 2022

Despite often being reduced to a peripheral role in wider scholarly and journalistic stories of global Islam, Nigeria has long been at the center of many of Islam’s most important international developments. From early ties built around long-distance trade and the emergence of a Sahelian Islamicate world to regional powers like Bornu and the Sokoto Caliphate and the crucial development of colonial indirect rule systems incorporating Muslim leadership, the region has been at the forefront of wider global changes that shape the faith. Today, Nigeria’s place in the global umma is driven by the connections forged in the independence era and shaped by Muslims’ newfound mobility for business, education, and in recent years, violent extremism.
The Origins of Kingdoms and Empires in Precolonial Nigeria
Authors: Hiribarren Vincent
Published: March 2022

This chapter offers a summary of the main academic debates surrounding state formation in precolonial Nigeria. It provides a multidisciplinary discussion on the evolution of the scholarship on statehood’s origins in different polities now part of modern-day Nigeria (Benin, Borgu, Borno, Hausa cities, Oyo). Not surprisingly, the quest for origins always tends to be teleological, as one needs to understand the golden age of one polity by examining the seeds of what would become one day a kingdom or an empire. This chapter aims to show that it is impossible to understand the myths surrounding the creation of Nigerian kingdoms and empires without analyzing the political regimes and scholarly paradigms since the nineteenth century. In other terms, the myths of creation have their own history and are constantly changing in Nigeria.
The Cross-National Epidemiology of Mental Health Disorders
Authors: Scott Kate M.
Published: March 2022

This chapter presents an overview of the recent findings from the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys Initiative. Many consistent patterns of association emerge in all countries: mental disorders begin relatively early in the lifespan; they are most prevalent among the young and the socially disadvantaged; they are often highly impairing and frequently comorbid with other disorders; and they are greatly undertreated. These findings have important policy implications indicating the need to prioritize the detection and treatment of mental disorders in young people, to upscale treatment services in low- and middle-income countries in particular, and to coordinate the health policy response with other relevant agencies to reduce the incidence and improve the outcomes of mental disorders among the socially vulnerable. Substantial cross-national variation is also evident, with both prevalence and impairment being lower in low-income countries than in high-income countries. These cross-national patterns are provocative but difficult to interpret given the inability to tease apart the respective contributions of methodological and substantive factors to the cross-national variation observed. A good deal of further research into the ways cultures interact with both the expression and the assessment of mental disorders is required.
Acculturation by Plasticity and Stability in Neural Processes: Considerations for Global Mental Health Challenges
Authors: Goh Joshua O. S.
Published: March 2022

The cultural environment can have significant influence on the brain. This is not surprising given that plasticity with respect to environmental stimulation defines neural morphological changes and functioning that instantiate cognitive operations in the brain. Nevertheless, certain aspects of neural structure and function such as neurophysiological regulatory mechanisms at the cellular level and neural processing of informational commonalities should also remain stable across different environments. This chapter considers how the interplay between neuroplasticity with stability might be a general principle for brain and behavioral acculturation such as in the processing of physical regularities, social mores, self-related information, causal inference, and biological homeostasis. Gleaning from work on prediction error processing, the chapter presents a framework that views stability and plasticity as neural mechanisms that habitualize behaviors or make them extinct, and also considers clinical implications when these mechanisms are dysregulated. From this, the presence of cultural differences in social interactions between people groups is suggested to reflect the brain’s normative solution to solving the problem of dynamic environments. The chapter incorporates this perspective of brain acculturation into applications for global mental health challenges, particularly in light of the advancement in communication technology and globalization that has resulted in increased cultural interactions and cultural mixing.
Conclusion
Authors: Chiao Joan Y. , Li Shu-Chen , Turner Robert , Lee-Tauler Su Yeon , Pringle Beverly A.
Published: March 2022

This chapter presents an overview of the recent findings from the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys Initiative. Many consistent patterns of association emerge in all countries: mental disorders begin relatively early in the lifespan; they are most prevalent among the young and the socially disadvantaged; they are often highly impairing and frequently comorbid with other disorders; and they are greatly undertreated. These findings have important policy implications indicating the need to prioritize the detection and treatment of mental disorders in young people, to upscale treatment services in low- and middle-income countries in particular, and to coordinate the health policy response with other relevant agencies to reduce the incidence and improve the outcomes of mental disorders among the socially vulnerable. Substantial cross-national variation is also evident, with both prevalence and impairment being lower in low-income countries than in high-income countries. These cross-national patterns are provocative but difficult to interpret given the inability to tease apart the respective contributions of methodological and substantive factors to the cross-national variation observed. A good deal of further research into the ways cultures interact with both the expression and the assessment of mental disorders is required.
Developmental Plasticity and Global Aging
Authors: Li Shu-Chen
Published: March 2022

Brain aging at the neurochemical, anatomical, and functional levels has direct implications for various cognitive, motivational, and affective functions in old age. With global population demographics heading towards a faster-growing trend in the population aged 60 and above than all other age groups, the task to maintain and enhance cognitive, motivational, and affective vitality in old age beyond merely reducing or treating physical illnesses plays an increasingly important role for global mental health. Albeit the brain is aging, the aging brain still possesses a substantial amount of plasticity at different levels. Selective recent research findings on cognitive and brain plasticity in old age, focusing on the effects of cognitive and physical fitness interventions as well as lifestyle dietary and social participation factors, are reviewed here. Outlooks on technologies as modern drives for cultural changes as well as prospects of new technological developments in internet-based behavioral interventions are highlighted.
The Feldenkrais Method
Authors: Paparo Stephen A.
Published: March 2022

This chapter offers an introduction to the Feldenkrais Method (FM) of somatic education as a means of enhancing practice and performance for musicians. Because musicians’ ability to move determines the quality of their singing or playing, learning to move more efficiently can positively impact their performance. The FM involves self-observation during specifically designed movement lessons that refine awareness and increase movement possibilities. Key Feldenkrais principles and their application to musicians include the following: (a) learning is a process; (b) posture as dynamic equilibrium; (c) exploratory versus performative movement; (d) whole versus part learning; and (e) repetition and variation. A conceptual model for the relationship between expanded repertoire of movements, repertoire for sounds, and musical understanding is also presented. An overview of relevant research from the medical, rehabilitation, and arts literature provides growing evidence of the efficacy of the FM with various populations. The chapter also includes a self-guided Awareness Through Movement lesson as a means to experience these Feldenkrais principles firsthand. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the applications to practice and performance for musicians of all levels.