bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Nation Fermented
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

How did beer become one of the central commodities associated with the German nation? How did a little-known provincial production standard—the Reinheitsgebot, or Beer Purity Law—become a pillar of national consumer sentiments? How did the jovial, beer-drinking German become a fixture in the global imagination? While the connection between beer and Germany seems self-evident, A Nation Fermented reveals how it was produced through a strange brew of regional commercial and political pressures. Spanning from the late nineteenth century to the last decades of the twentieth, this book argues that the economic, regulatory, and cultural weight of Bavaria shaped the German nation in profound ways. Drawing on sources from more than a dozen archives and repositories, this book weaves together subjects ranging from tax law to advertising, public health to European integration, and agriculture to global stereotypes. Offering a history of the Germany that Bavaria made over the twentieth century, A Nation Fermented both eschews sharp temporal divisions and forgoes conventional narratives centered on Prussia, Berlin, or the Rhineland. In so doing, the book offers a fresh take on the importance of provincial influences and the role of commodities and commerce in shaping the nation.
Introduction
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

This introduction develops the main arguments of the book. From the late 19th century to the end of the 20th, the combined economic and regulatory power of intransigent Bavarian brewers, regulators, and other cultural intermediaries—from consumers to advertisers—shaped many facets of the production, consumption, and political economy of beer in Germany. Brewers across Germany, but particularly in Bavaria, were fiercely loyal to regional traditions, regularly prioritizing local values in their business calculations. The staunch regionalism of Bavarian brewers and their legislative allies fundamentally shaped the production and regulation of beer across several iterations of the German nation-state. Whether in tax law or the fits and starts of European integration, Bavarians’ ongoing intransigence and refusal to compromise on regional tradition informed the economic, political, and social structures of Germany. Culturally, too, Bavarian brewers and legislators led the nation in its embrace of “beer purity” as a hallmark of German commercial sentiments and propped up an international stereotype of the beer-drinking, Oktoberfest German, in many cases stripped of its Bavarian origins.
Integration and Its Discontents
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

This chapter spans from the turn of the twentieth century to the early 1930s, focusing on three tensions of integration that challenged the place of beer within the changing German nation: the regulation of production standards, a shifting federal tax structure, and the growing international temperance movement. In each, brewers, regulators, and social reformers contested how—and what kind of—beer fit in German society. Increasingly homogenous production standards sparked opposition from brewers in northern Germany, where regulations had been most lax and cultures of production were especially diverse. There, brewers advocated for their industrial and social interests in response to state interventions, ranging from the use of sugar in brewing to wartime measures designed to combat material scarcity. In the case of taxation, the stakes were highest in the southern states, which had long retained their own tax revenues on beer but faced a new federal fiscal structure in the Weimar Republic. So intense was the response that provincial disputes over the beer tax even eroded support for the republic itself. While these regulatory pressures prompted varying regional responses—first in the north and later in the south—brewers across Germany were largely united in opposition to the temperance movement. The coordinated and targeted assaults of social reformers increasingly moved brewing trade organizations to advocate for beer as a public good.
Liquid Bread
Authors: Terrell Robert Shea
Published: December 2023

This chapter reveals the crucial role of Bavaria in the emerging structures of the Federal Republic. Faced with the rampant food scarcity of the immediate post-war period, the Allied powers enacted a series of prohibitions on beer in an effort to increase bread production. This strategy backfired, depriving Bavarians in particular of the “liquid bread” which energized farmhands, provided a much-needed sterile beverage in rural areas, and generated by-products that enriched livestock feed. As Bavaria became the breadbasket of western Germany in the fledgling Cold War, those voices insisting on the importance of beer were elevated. As Bavarian political leaders and agrarians reframed beer as a nutritional, agricultural, and ultimately economic necessity, such arguments informed legislative structures—from the lifting of the prohibition to the resolution of decades-old conflicts over the beer tax. Taken together, these changes index a reconfiguration of the relative power of the German lands in divided, post-Prussian Germany.
The Making of the International Solar Alliance
Authors: Jha Vyoma
Published: December 2023

This book is the first empirical account on the making of the International Solar Alliance (ISA). Announced jointly by India and France on the first day of the Paris climate talks in 2015, the ISA was conceived as a coalition of ‘solar-rich’ countries located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn for optimal absorption of the sun’s rays. These ‘solar-rich’ countries are mostly developing countries that witness almost three hundred sunny days in a year, but face major gaps in the deployment of solar energy. In less than two years, the ISA—led by India and backed primarily by developing countries—became a legal entity. With no perceivable competitive advantage in solar manufacturing or technologies, what explains India’s relative success in bringing together countries to form a new international organization focused on solar energy? Why did India insist on a treaty structure for the ISA? What are the transaction costs of bringing the ‘solar-rich’ countries vis-à-vis the ‘solar-poor’ countries on board? What was the role of France in the treaty-making process? Responding to these questions, the book draws on the political economy approach to analyse the motivations for India to steer a new treaty-based international organization. It presents the empirical evidence and arguments using three frames: process, politics, and players. Ultimately, the book illustrates a new kind of Indian economic diplomacy, making the ISA the first deliberate instrument of India’s foreign policy on climate change and energy.
Players
Authors: Jha Vyoma
Published: December 2023

Against the backdrop of India’s engagement with multilateral climate negotiations, this chapter investigates the main players behind operationalizing Modi’s vision for a new, India-led solar alliance. This chapter presents India’s negotiating strategy and legal culture, in order to explain the shift in its foreign policy to capture the political and economic leadership on solar energy. It finds that the dominance of diplomats in India’s negotiating teams, often without legal advisers or international lawyers, is responsible for shaping India’s external climate strategies. Diplomacy sits at the core of India’s international rule-making identity and the process itself is not legalized. Therefore, the broader politico-legal culture of the diplomatic community—a multipolar worldview combined with a long-standing wariness of negotiators to sign onto legally binding provisions—played a determinative role in the choice of legal form of the ISA. Most importantly, the creation of the ISA marks a new kind of economic diplomacy, making it the first deliberate instrument of India’s foreign policy on climate change and energy.
Conclusion
Authors: Jha Vyoma
Published: December 2023

Weaving together all the chapters, the conclusion emphasizes the book’s overall arguments, intentions, and contributions. This book presents an in-depth account of the treaty-making process to argue that the International Solar Alliance (ISA) marks an innovation in the structure of international organizations. The ISA is best described as ‘soft law in a hard shell’: that is, it uses the legal infrastructure of a treaty while relying on the social structure of participating actors for its future implementation. The lessons from unpacking the creation of the new international organization are twofold: first, India’s clear desire and intent to lead on issues of climate change; and second, a ‘flexible multilateralism’, where new institutions are stemming from the interests of the developing world but rest on the faculties and capabilities of non-state actors for future implementation.
Latinization, Citizenship, and the Epigraphic Habit
Authors: Lloris Francisco BeltrÁn
Published: December 2023

This chapter explores the process of Latinization in the Roman West focusing on two main points: first, the role of Latin and Palaeoeuropean epigraphic sources in understanding this linguistic and cultural change, and, second, its connection during the Principate with the spread of Roman citizenship through the foundation of colonies and the grant of the status of Roman and Latin municipia to western communities. The Latinization of the Roman West in the very Late Republic and the Principate can be linked to the combination of the spread of Roman citizen communities and the growth of the Latin written culture, including Roman epigraphic culture—that is, the development of inscriptions as a social medium, which is a prominent feature of the Roman West during the Principate.
Cities, Epigraphies, and Latinization
Authors: Houten Pieter
Published: December 2023

This chapter studies the role cities on the Iberian Peninsula played in the spatial diffusion of Latin within the peninsula using models from geo-linguistics. By combining the geo-linguistic models of contagious and hierarchical diffusion with the gravity model, the different factors that aided in the uptake and spread of Latin within cities and from there into the wider regions are illustrated. Epigraphic and numismatic evidence shows the shift from Palaeohispanic, Greek and Phoenicio-Punic languages to Latin within urban contexts. The organization of the Roman Empire into a wide urban network aided in the spread of Latin in the Roman West. The chapter investigates the local elite in the cities and their attitudes towards Latin as the language of the new power. In combination with the model of contact-induced social stratification, we can understand how the uptake of Latin by the elite spread to other social groups.
Mapping Initiatives Opposing Populist Parties in Europe
Authors: Bourne Angela K.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 2, Mapping Initiatives Opposing Populist Parties in Europe presents a typology for classifying responses to populist parties, or initiatives opposing populist parties (IoPPs). Drawing on but extending existing classificatory frameworks drawn from the literature on militant democracy and democratic defence, it classifies IoPPs along two dimensions. First, it classifies IoPPs according to the type of political actor that initiates a response against populist parties (public authorities, political parties, and civil society actors). The second classificatory criterion is whether the modes of engagement employed by these different types of actor are ‘tolerant’ or ‘intolerant’. Intolerant IoPPs are ‘rights restrictions’ by public authorities, ‘ostracism’ by political parties, and ‘coercive confrontation’ by civil society actors. Tolerant IoPPs are ‘ordinary legal controls and pedagogy’ by public authorities, ‘forbearance’ by political parties, and ‘adversarialism’ by civil society actors.
The History of the Letter
Authors: Baines Robert
Published: December 2023

One of the Wake’s central concerns is the subject of history. When it explores that subject, it usually does so through its principal philosopher of history, Vico. The novel’s fullest engagement with his ideas occurs within book one’s analysis of a mysterious letter. By examining a section of that analysis, this chapter shows how Joyce drew upon Vico’s notion that history follows fixed ideal cycles to create both the Wake’s own cycles and its enormous thunderwords. At the same time, the chapter also demonstrates that, in emphasizing the fluidity of language, Joyce calls into question the notion that the ideal can ever be fixed. The significance of this account of Joyce’s relationship to Vico is that it challenges the widely held idea that Joyce was a disciple of Vico.
Seeing through Balkelly
Authors: Baines Robert
Published: December 2023

Joyce engages with the Irish intellectual tradition in book four through the encounter between Paddrock and Archdruid Balkelly. These characters represent Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick, and Ireland’s greatest philosopher, George Berkeley. This chapter focuses on the character of Balkelly and considers how his ideas relate to those of Berkeley. What it demonstrates is that, while there is some overlap between the ideas of the two, the philosophies of Balkelly and Berkeley are in most key respects quite different. Berkeley would not have subscribed to Balkelly’s grand claims regarding his ability to perceive the Kantian thing in itself. The connection between Balkelly and Berkeley matters because it shows that Joyce’s relationship to philosophy was reciprocal. While he was influenced by a number of philosophers, he also often imposed himself upon particular thinkers by reimagining them in his works.
Flax
Authors: Taylor Colleen
Published: December 2023

Using James Gibson’s concept of affordance, this chapter shows how the eighteenth century’s paternalistic reformulation of Anglo-Irish relations originated in and disseminated through the material process of altering the flax plant into fine, white thread. Female flax dressers and spinners came to be portrayed, like flax itself, as a natural, colonial resource that could be incorporated into the linen industry’s imperial mechanism. However, a new materialist reading of beetling, scutching, and bleaching reveals that flax did not always align with this domesticated ideal. In William Hincks’s plates on the linen industry and Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806), the material subtext of violence intimates Irish women’s active resistance to industrial control. Likewise, the damaging process of bleaching flax affirms the way in which English marketing of white linen correlated to a congealing racism of English ethnic superiority, as seen in Cottage Dialogues (1811), Sketches of Irish Character (1829), and more subversively in Ellen Taylor’s laboring-class poetry.
Mud
Authors: Taylor Colleen
Published: December 2023

This chapter uses new materialism and posthumanism to challenge the mud cabin stereotype, reviewing what comforts and affordances mud cabin living offered the dispossessed Irish tenant, rather than what it did not. Eighteenth-century English writing, especially Arthur Young’s Tour in Ireland (1780), used mud to insinuate a lack of subjectivity and intelligence in the Irish people while vindicating the British mission of civilizing Ireland by literally ‘cleaning up’ private, mud cabin life. However, mud cabins were a space of creative human–nonhuman collaboration. The material fact of mud’s vibrant mutuality and symbiosis with Irish tenant life demands a new reading of native characters in fiction, whose mud cabin living can now be read to hold subversive, anti-imperial narratives. In Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), Ellinor’s mud cabin constructs Ellinor herself as a deep, subversive, and unreadable character, whose true national intentions are hidden from the reader, much like the interior of her cabin is kept out of view.
The social upheavals of a war-torn society
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

The Afghan civil war stirred up private conflicts that laid bare the place of the state in settling disputes and regulating social relations. When the United States intervened militarily in 2001, the twenty-three-year civil war had created deep legal uncertainty. The succession of different authorities from the judicial system of Daoud Khan’s Afghan Republic to that of the Communist regime in 1978, the various mujahideen factions, and the Taliban shook social structures deeply. It put in play social hierarchies, property, and gender relations, especially as the belligerents instrumentalized them. In the 1980s, Marxist parties, like the Islamist parties, espoused a revolutionary agenda to rebuild society on a new footing. The programme of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) called for the recognition of minorities, land redistribution, and gender equality. These reforms, only partially implemented by the time the state’s authority over a large swath of territory evaporated, stirred up private disputes involving multiple and contradictory demands for social, economic, and political rights. Interpersonal disputes centring on property and gender relationships proliferated. They took on an ethnico-confessional colouration as the parties to these disputes mobilized their respective affiliations in the conflict. Insurgency commanders also stoked these conflicts, using them to impose their authority locally, to grab resources, and to enforce their vision of social relations.
A bureaucratic system
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

Establishing a judicial system was part of the Taliban’s strategy of regaining power through armed struggle. From their Pakistani sanctuary, the leaders posed as a legitimate authority that alone was capable of restoring the rule of law, uniting Afghan society, and thus bringing an end to the civil war. In words and deeds, they not only regarded themselves as an ‘armed opposition’, as the Kabul regime and the Western armed forces characterized them, but also claimed legal continuity with the Islamic Emirate of the 1990s. However, in rebuilding their judicial institutions, the Taliban now adapted them to the conditions of war and clandestinity. Structuring the Taliban judicial system required formalizing decision-making processes. The first judges were often appointed in response to local demands, but by the late 2000s the Taliban operated a bureaucratic and centralized system. Inserting judges into the jurisdictional hierarchy required the creation of processes to appoint them and formalize their position and relationship with the Taliban institutions and the court users. Two mechanisms ensured that judges followed procedures: close supervision by Taliban leaders, and regular rotation to guarantee their impartiality. However, operations by Western armed forces hampered centralization of the judicial system by disrupting the Taliban administration. Senior movement officials at times would also interfere in decision-making processes and prioritize strategic issues over procedural compliance. While such interventions appeared to be infrequent, they were reminders of the movement’s political objectives coming first and of the constant tension between immediate needs and the advantage of having a legitimate judicial system.
Introduction
Authors: Shankar Pratyush
Published: December 2023

This chapter introduces the key theoretical concepts that have been used in the book. It has discussions on challenges faced in using different methods of research along with a useful literature survey of existing sources. The various urban form determinants are discussed in this chapter along with the role they play in shaping of settlements. The role played by geographical conditions or other physical contingencies like climate and material is summarized in this chapter along with other factors such as markets or larger political intentions. It also provides a summary of various literatures on larger questions of historical development of Indian cities. This survey is more broad in its intentions and highlights text covering economic, political, cultural, and form based urban history of Indian cities. The chapter also discusses the various approaches that the scholars have used in the past, to decipher the urban history of cities in India.
Cities of Aravalli’s and Deserts
Authors: Shankar Pratyush
Published: December 2023

The unique geography of the westernmost part of the India of Desert and dry hills of Aravalli’s did not allow a strong agricultural surplus economy to emerge. But the communities here developed strong trade practices with networks within the region and throughout the country and beyond. Urbanization in the region can be better understood by correlating it with rise of trade and commerce wherein the whole city worked as a market. The cities in this region are also located on dry sloping terrain. The negotiation with these conditions and strategies to trap surface water for various water structures was another remarkable feature in these cities
Trading Cities of Gujarat Region
Authors: Shankar Pratyush
Published: December 2023

Gujarat region in the western most part of the Indian sub-continent has been a natural place of trade and commerce. Cities of Ahmedabad, Patan, and Surat have been discussed in this chapter. All these cities are marked by a very strong merchant class for whom the stability and upkeep of the city was of prime importance. These cities also enjoyed long periods of stability as they were away from the volatile politics that plagued northern parts of the country. This stability and interest of merchant class in the city led to two major changes in the city; one was development of very strong market spaces and the second was community structures that were result of acts of piety of the merchants. Whereas these cities did manage to create strong mercantile culture and its associated spaces, it still was handicapped by strongly segregated inward-looking housing based on caste and religion. This never really allowed the cities to create a strong public realm. Surat on the other hand was historically cosmopolitan, and afforded spaces for all communities in different parts of the city.
Cities in the Himalayas
Authors: Shankar Pratyush
Published: December 2023

The Himalayan region has been a site of urbanization for hundreds of years. However here the capital cities of small kingdoms present some very interesting patterns especially as related to creation of a very legible city centre in the heart of the city. This city centre which was usually adjacent to the palace and other institutional structures had a strong public place character to them. Even though the state was essentially feudal, these public spaces in the heart of the city led to creation of a public life and allowed communities to mix and thereby integrate together as an urban community. The other distinct feature of the Himalayan cities was the presence of markets, which were an important element, that connected them with the world far beyond. The market street in Leh amongst is a good example of a historic urban setting that was central to the identity of the city.
Gendered Publics
Authors: Medhi Hemjyoti
Published: December 2023

This is a first of its kind comprehensive appraisal of the relatively unexplored but highly impactful women’s association, the Assam Mahila Samiti (1926 cont.) which led one of the most remarkable women’s movements in colonial India; Sucheta Kripalani praised it as the ‘largest democratic women’s association in India’ in 1949. Central to the Assam Mahila Samiti story is its founding Secretary, the firebrand feminist Chandraprava Saikiani (1901–72), who while being an unwed mother and belonging to a lower caste, was a celebrated writer, mobilizer, and publisher. The book traverses these individual and collective journeys from the 1920s to the 1950s, and explores how women’s movements evolve in conversation/contestation with both traditional spaces such as naam kirtan and contemporary ones of tribal-caste associations, anti-colonial movements, and international ideological paradigms such as the Bolshevik revolution. The book also plots through specific examples, such as the controversy surrounding the Samiti’s serving of a legal notice to a groom in 1934 to stop a child marriage, to argue that gender may not function merely as constitutive of the public, but women’s collectives may shape, transform, and orchestrate a veritable gendered public, resistant to both native patriarchy and sometimes to colonial authority. The study makes crucial methodological intervention through an interdisciplinary approach by constantly juxtaposing print sources with handwritten minutes of early mahila samiti meetings, performative spaces such as women’s singing of naam kirtan and women’s weaving, and women’s memory (recorded as part of a digital archive of the mahila samitis in Assam).
The Making of the Aideo: Construction of Gender
Authors: Medhi Hemjyoti
Published: December 2023

Chapter 1, ‘The Making of the Aideo: Construction of Gender’, explores the Asamiya print culture and the colonial archive of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to trace the construction of the aideo (a respectable woman, an ideal Asamiya woman). It argues that the aideo in print was invested with a unique Asamiya identity which sought to demarcate her from the Bengali bhadramahila, the Kirata and the parbatia (tribal and hill) woman, and the coolioni (female coolie). Thus, the print model of the aideo functions as a hegemonic caste Hindu inscription and denies a long and shared history of practices such as clothing that bind her to the so-called others. This chapter plots the dominant construct of the aideo against alternative modes of being and becoming women as conceptualized by progressive male public figures such as Jyotiprasad Agarwala (1903–51) and by the mahila samiti members themselves. The aideo, thus, serves as one of the key pointers to map the diverse range of women’s entry into the public, especially through the formation of mahila samitis in early twentieth-century Assam.
Guided Discovery for Depression and Suicide
Authors: Weishaar Marjorie E.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 3, “Guided Discovery for Depression and Suicide,” addresses therapy with people who experience depression and/or contemplate suicide. These clients are often more passive in therapy, give evidence of highly negative and dichotomous thinking, express frequent hopelessness, and are prone to rumination and relapse. Through in-depth therapist–client dialogues, readers learn how guided discovery methods can be used to engage even highly skeptical or ruminative clients in collaborative therapy approaches. Use of safety plans and strategies for reducing hopelessness are illustrated. Throughout this chapter, helpful Socratic questions are highlighted to help therapists identify and understand beliefs and other factors that interfere with therapy progress. When Socratic dialogue and other methods of guided discovery are used within a structured therapy format, it helps depressed and suicidal clients arrive at their own conclusions to promote a sense of capability and hopefulness. Learning what activities boost mood, acquiring skills for identifying and testing negative beliefs, and practicing problem-solving strategies form a foundation for future relapse management.
The Voices of the Consul
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This book probes the ideology of de lege agraria I and II, Cicero’s first two speeches as consul, delivered to the senate and the people respectively. The book propounds and applies a model of applied discourse analysis to draw out the implicit ideology of the speeches. Thus analyzed, the speeches reveal distinctive visions of dignitas and libertas, cardinal values of each audience. Those visions make clear Cicero’s artful self-fashioning, negotiating the complex cross-currents of late Republican politics, and they make clear as well the depth of his rhetorical art, which draws constantly upon unnamed points of reference, the physical environment, and varied social roles to situate his claims within the psychic imaginary of his audiences. The book thus makes it possible to see that apparent screeds against an agrarian law are thoroughgoing political manifestos—appropriate for the first speeches of a consul.
Anxiety and Responsibility
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter compares two passages (LA 1.8–9, 2.45–6) that imagine abuses of the land commissioners abroad. The identical structure of the passages allows close comparison, which shows how Cicero gives each audience a different view on the abuse: the senate are “up high,” amid the mechanisms of power and the people “down low,” near the suffering. These are not “natural” social positions but deliberate repositionings. The view “from above” is a reminder that innovations can disrupt the competitive balance of the elite—a counter to the opportunism (or indifference) of (some of) the senate. A troubling tableau, only visible from “down low,” is a reminder of how sovereignty can be misused—a counter to the materialism of the people, eager, in hard times, to authorize a land bill for its own succor. Both repositionings gain their strength from allusions to provincial governors, a notoriously abused office.
Responsibility and Anxiety
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter compares two passages that depict an auction of Italian and Sicilian properties under the law (LA 1.3–4, 2.46–9) and which develop the image of the auction in very different ways. The popular version accents procedure: Cicero turns the lists of properties to be sold into a script that dramatically recalls the bonorum venditio, the forced liquidation of a debtor’s assets. The auction thus becomes a tableau of the power of the law—and a prompt to cautious lawcraft. The senate version accents morality: Cicero there concentrates on the figure of the wastrel in a way that recalls legal remedies that could be taken by a family against a spendthrift member in its ranks, which Rullus implicitly becomes. The idea is accompanied by images that cast Rullus’s bill as a transgression of shared norms. Before the senate the auction thus becomes a prompt to collective responsibility.
Ideologies of Identity
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter explores the personae of Cicero and Rullus. Cicero, recounting the details of his own election, redraws the significance of cardinal political terms—nobilis, popularis, otium—so as to make himself the true embodiment of the people’s will. That political manifesto also allows Cicero to turn the unusual electoral mechanism for the land commission into proof that Rullus, the tribune who proposed the bill, is Cicero’s opposite, a schemer interested in his own profit and a would-be tyrant interested in his own power—nobilis in the bad sense, one might say, not only a counterpoint to Cicero but a contradiction in an officer who was supposed to have the people’s interests at heart. The polarity thus developed between tribune and consul is also used to locate Pompey in the political world: the tribune fears him, and he is a principled populist like the consul himself.
Images of Identity
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter illustrates Cicero’s allusive refitting of shared points of reference in depicting himself, Rullus, and Pompey. The bill attached war spoils but excepted Pompey’s (LA 1.11–13, 2.59). Cicero turns the boon into an insult by making Pompey a touchstone of aequitas ‘equitability.’ The bill provided the commissioners with equipment (LA 2.32–33). Cicero lists it in a way that recalls the Second Decemvirate of 450, who turned from champions of the people into tyrants—just as Cicero claims Rullus will. The bill authorized the purchase of land (LA 2.62–71). To show that Rullus, and not the people, will benefit thereby, Cicero evokes the symbolic power of the tribune’s voice: far from ejecting unjust occupiers, it will sing their song. The peroration makes Cicero into the true tribune, loyal to the people and providing them benefits—which here become not material commoda but political otium ‘tranquility.’
Living Together
Authors: Whiting Jennifer
Published: December 2023

This book comprises essays centered on Aristotle’s objectivist conception of eudaimonia, especially the roles played in it by activities of theoretical and practical intellect and the quality of our relationships with one another. Common objections to grounding this conception in the “proper function” of a human being are answered by appeal to the role played by Aristotle’s teleologically driven essentialism. His struggle to reconcile living in accordance with distinctively human virtues with the ideal of living a “divine” contemplative life is explored, along with puzzles about how to reconcile his conception of eudaimonia as the ultimate end of human action with the parallel requirements that virtuous agents choose to engage in virtuous action “for itself” and that friends love their friends “for themselves.” Readings of Aristotle’s “eudaimonism” as a form of rational egoism are challenged by appeal to an original account of the ideal friend as an “other self,” one that stresses appreciation of the friend’s character “for itself” (apart from any relationships in which it happens to stand to the agent’s own needs and/or tastes) but acknowledges the role played by pleasure in “character friendship.” The friend’s good is not, as on “colonizing ego” readings, part of the agent’s own. Rather, the ideal friend recognizes the value her friend’s activity has for him and she take pleasure in his activity as such. This explains why even the maximally self-sufficient (and so most godlike) agent, who needs nothing from a friend, will nevertheless want to have at least one.
Gnostikos
Authors: Young Robin Darling , Kalvesmaki Joel , Stewart Columba , Stang Charles , Dysinger Luke
Published: December 2023

Composed of fifty kephalaia, this work supplements the Praktikos and aims to train the gnostikos for the role of being a teacher among ascetics. It recommends certain actions and warns against others, proposes certain habits of conduct in meetings with various interlocutors, and shows how to interpret scripture for both simpler, practicing monastics and more experienced students. Evagrius recommends a practice of concealment that protects the less-learned from the harmful effects of knowledge without sufficient understanding. At the end of the treatise, five teachings of experienced teachers are quoted before a recapitulation of the difference between practicing and knowing, concluding with a reminder of the purpose of the gnostikos as the teacher who restores human images to their archetype, the logos. The three Syriac versions are translated, in addition to the extant fragmentary Greek kephalaia, and supplemented with cross-references to other ancient literature.
Back to Srinagar, only for a Brief While
Authors: Quraishi Humra
Published: December 2023

He wishes to get back to his Valley. But before that he wants to visit Shaaz’s family. He is advised not to visit them, as that family was facing political pressure for ‘housing’ a Kashmiri Muslim boy without prior police permission. Gull Mohammad is taken back to Srinagar. Sees the changes—His brother and father prematurely aged. His mother dead. As he visits his mother Posh’s grave, he sees more graves. Some freshly dug. His school friends and neighbours were no longer around. As the houseboat owner, Ghulam Meer, said, ‘Sorrow consumed them . . . At least the Pandits found a place to stay in Dilli or Mumbai but Kashmiri Musalmaans hounded there also’. Gull Mohammad’s father pleads that he completes his studies in some other city so that he could take up a job to look after him and his brother.
Plutonic Nature of a Transcrustal Magmatic System: Evidence from Ultrahigh Resolution Sr-Disequilibria in Plagioclase Microantecrysts from the Southern Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand
Authors: Coulthard Jr Daniel A , Brahm Raimundo , Lormand Charline , Zellmer Georg F , Sakamoto Naoya , Iizuka Yoshiyuki , Yurimoto Hisayoshi
Published: December 2023

The residence timescales of antecrystic minerals contribute a key piece of information regarding the petrologic evolution of transcrustal magmatic systems and may be inferred using a combination of observations derived from microanalytical chemistry and diffusion modelling. Here, we present state-of-the-art stacked CMOS-type active pixel sensor (SCAPS) isotopographic images of tephra-hosted plagioclase microantecrysts from Tongariro Volcanic Centre in the southern Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand. These crystals exhibit high-frequency Sr and anorthite zonation at sub-micron spatial resolution. We also find that all crystals display high-frequency intracrystalline Sr chemical potential variations, indicating that they have not resided at magmatic temperature for diffusive relaxation to advance significantly. To quantify crystal residence times at the well-constrained magmatic temperatures of these tephras, we first forward-modeled intracrystalline Sr diffusion over time using numerical methods. Results were then analyzed using novel spatial Fourier-transform techniques developed to understand the systematics the diffusive decay of Sr disequilibria in the spatial frequency domain. This ultimately permitted the estimation of Sr concentration profiles at crystal formation, prior to uptake into the carrier melt at the onset of eruption. Our data imply residence times of hours to days for the studied microantecrysts. This is inconsistent with long antecryst residence times in magmatic mushes at elevated temperatures, pointing instead to a cool plutonic nature of the magmatic plumbing system beneath the southern Taupo Volcanic Zone.
Stem-cell-expressed DEVIL-like small peptides maintain root growth under abiotic stress via abscisic acid signaling
Authors: Yang Liyun , Hu Xiaochen , Ren Mengfei , Ma Fei , Fu Jing , Cui Hongchang
Published: December 2023

Stem cells are essential to plant growth and development. Through data mining, we identified five DEVIL-like (DVL) small peptide genes that are preferentially expressed in the quiescent center of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) root but whose functions are unknown. When overexpressed, these genes caused a dramatic decrease in root length and pleiotropic phenotypes in the shoot. No root-growth defect was observed in the single-gene mutants, but the quintuple mutant exhibited slightly longer roots than the wild type (WT). Through transcriptome analysis with DVL20-overexpressing plants, we found that many genes involved in abscisic acid (ABA) signaling were regulated by these peptides. Consistent with this finding, we demonstrated that, relative to the WT, DVL20-overexpressing plants were more tolerant whereas the quintuple mutant was more sensitive to ABA. Using RT-qPCR, we showed that ABA signaling-associated genes were affected in an opposite manner when the plants were grown in normal or ABA-containing medium. Strikingly, ectopic expression of ABA signaling genes such as PYRABACTIN RESISTANCE 1-LIKE (PYL) 4, 5, or 6 or suppression of HIGHLY ABA-INDUCED 2 (HAI2) and MITOGEN-ACTIVATED PROTEIN KINASE KINASE KINASE 18 (MAPKKK18) not only largely rescued the root growth defects in DVL20-overexpressing plants in normal growth condition but also conferred tolerance to ABA. Based on these results, we propose that DVL1, 2, 5, 8 and 20 function redundantly in root stem-cell maintenance under abiotic stress, and this role is achieved via ABA signaling.
RETRACTED: Salt & Splice: DGCR14L, A new player in mRNA splicing
Authors: Mishra Divya
Published: December 2023

This article has been retracted. Please see: https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiae028
Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare
Authors: Fanciullo James
Published: December 2023

The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: ‘what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone's good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him’. Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be understood. Here, I clarify the sense in which the quote offers a basic constraint on theories of well-being—a constraint that should be adopted by (e.g.) hedonists, desire satisfactionists, and objective list theorists alike. This constraint focuses on affective engagement, or positive affective stances in connection with a proposed good. I show that the constraint explains a near-universal intuition, and rules out a number of well-known theories of well-being.
Folate regulation of planar cell polarity pathway and F‐actin through folate receptor alpha
Authors: Han Xiao , Cao Xuanye , Cabrera Robert M. , Ramirez Paula Andrea Pimienta , Lin Ying Linda , Wlodarczyk Bogdan J. , Zhang Cuilian , Finnell Richard H. , Lei Yunping
Published: December 2023

Folate deficiency contribute to neural tube defects (NTDs) which could be rescued by folate supplementation. However, the underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. Besides, there is considerable controversy concerning the forms of folate used for supplementation. To address this controversy, we prepared culture medium with different forms of folate, folic acid (FA), and 5‐methyltetrahydrofolate (5mTHF), at concentrations of 5 μM, 500 nM, 50 nM, and folate free, respectively. Mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) were treated with different folates continuously for three passages, and cell proliferation and F‐actin were monitored. We determined that compared to 5mTHF, FA showed stronger effects on promoting cell proliferation and F‐actin formation. We also found that FOLR1 protein level was positively regulated by folate concentration and the non‐canonical Wnt/planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway signaling was significantly enriched among different folate conditions in RNA‐sequencing analyses. We demonstrated for the first time that FOLR1 could promote the transcription of Vangl2, one of PCP core genes. The transcription of Vangl2 was down‐regulated under folate‐deficient condition, which resulted in a decrease in PCP activity and F‐actin formation. In summary, we identified a distinct advantage of FA in cell proliferation and F‐actin formation over 5mTHF, as well as demonstrating that FOLR1 could promote transcription of Vangl2 and provide a new mechanism by which folate deficiency can contribute to the etiology of NTDs.
ITIH5 inhibits proliferation, adipogenic differentiation, and secretion of inflammatory cytokines of human adipose stem cells—A new key in treating obesity?
Authors: Ruhl Tim , Sessler Thomas M. , Keimes Jana M. , Beier Justus P. , Villwock Sophia , Rose Michael , Dahl Edgar
Published: December 2023

Inter‐α‐trypsin inhibitor heavy chain 5 (ITIH5) is widely expressed in the human body, and it is detected to be particularly abundant in adipose tissue. ITIH5 expression is increased in people with obesity compared to lean persons and is decreased by diet‐induced weight loss. This suggests that ITIH5 may be involved in the development of adiposity and clinical metabolic variables, although its exact function remains unknown. We measured the protein concentration of ITIH5 in adipose samples from patients undergoing abdominoplasty and tested for correlation with the subjects' BMI as well as inflammatory mediators. We stimulated human adipose stem cells (ASCs) with recombinant (r)ITIH5 protein and tested for an effect on proliferation, differentiation, and immunosuppressive properties when the cells were exposed to an artificial inflammatory environment. We found positive correlations between ITIH5 levels and the BMI (p < .001) as well as concentrations of inflammatory cytokines (TNF‐α, IL‐6, and MCP‐1) in adipose tissue (p < .01). Application of the rITIH5 protein inhibited both proliferation (p < .001) and differentiation of ASCs. Especially, the development of mature adipocytes was reduced by over 50%. Moreover, rITIH5 decreased the release of IL‐6 and MCP‐1 when the cells were exposed to TNF‐α and IL‐1β (p < .001). Our data suggest that ITIH5 is an adipokine that is increasingly released during human adipose tissue development, acting as a regulator that inhibits proliferation and adipogenic differentiation of ASCs. ITIH5 thus presents itself as a positive regulator of adipose tissue homeostasis, possibly protecting against both hyperplasia and hypertrophy of adipose tissue and the associated chronic inflammation.
IGF‐I protects porcine granulosa cells from hypoxia‐induced apoptosis by promoting homologous recombination repair through the PI3K/AKT/E2F8/RAD51 pathway
Authors: Liu Zhaojun , Feng Chungang , Li Chengyu , He Tong , Wu Gang , Fu Chen , Li Hongmin , Shen Ming , Liu Honglin
Published: December 2023

Severe hypoxia induced by vascular compromise (ovarian torsion, surgery), obliteration of vessels (aging, chemotherapy, particularly platinum drugs) can cause massive follicle atresia. On the other hand, hypoxia increases the occurrence of DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) and triggers cellular damage repair mechanisms; however, if the damage is not promptly repaired, it can also induce the apoptosis program. Insulin‐like growth factor‐I (IGF‐I) is a polypeptide hormone that plays essential roles in stimulating mammalian follicular development. Here, we report a novel role for IGF‐I in protecting hypoxic GCs from apoptosis by promoting DNA repair through the homologous recombination (HR) process. Indeed, the hypoxic environment within follicles significantly inhibited the efficiency of HR‐directed DNA repair. The presence of IGF‐I‐induced HR pathway to alleviate hypoxia‐induced DNA damage and apoptosis primarily through upregulating the expression of the RAD51 recombinase. Importantly, we identified a new transcriptional regulator of RAD51, namely E2F8, which mediates the protective effects of IGF‐I on hypoxic GCs by facilitating the transcriptional activation of RAD51. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the PI3K/AKT pathway is crucial for IGF‐I‐induced E2F8 expression, resulting in increased RAD51 expression and enhanced HR activity, which mitigates hypoxia‐induced DNA damage and thereby protects against GCs apoptosis. Together, these findings define a novel mechanism of IGF‐I‐mediated GCs protection by activating the HR repair through the PI3K/AKT/E2F8/RAD51 pathway under hypoxia.
A Feasibility Study to Test the NICU Paternal Needs Inventory
Authors: Merritt Linda , Verklan M. Terese
Published: December 2023

Background:

There has been little research exploring paternal needs while experiencing a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) stay. Some tools exist to measure paternal needs, but do not incorporate items to capture important information about how fathers cope with stress differently, and may have different needs. Therefore, an instrument is needed to measure and prioritize what needs are important to fathers to help facilitate the development of nursing interventions to help fathers cope with the NICU environment.

Purpose:

The purpose of this study was to conduct a feasibility study before large-scale pilot testing the instrument, the NICU Paternal Needs Inventory (NPNI), so we could then determine what are the physical, emotional, and psychological needs of fathers.

Methods:

A nonexperimental, quantitative, and descriptive design was used to address the study's aims. Fathers were recruited from a level IV NICU and asked to complete an online survey (consisting of a demographic survey and the NPNI).

Results:

Needs rated 100% were knowing infant's progress, directions on caring for infant, flexible visitation, and assurance receiving the best care. The remainder showed a wide range of responses suggesting that needs of fathers are individual and varied.

Implications for Practice and Research:

Use of the NPNI to evaluate a father's unique and individual needs would allow for the nurse to develop father-specific, individualized interventions. Findings support that the NPNI is feasible to accomplish measuring fathers' needs, but a larger study is needed to test the reliability and validity of this tool.