bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
RETRACTED ARTICLE: A modified multilocus sequence typing protocol to genotype Kingella kingae from oropharyngeal swabs without bacterial isolation
Authors: El Houmami Nawal , Bzdrenga Janek , Pons Jean-Christophe , Minodier Philippe , Durand Guillaume André , Oubraham Anis , Ceroni Dimitri , Yagupsky Pablo , Raoult Didier , Bidet Philippe , Fournier Pierre-Edouard
Published: September 2017

Background

Outbreaks of Kingella kingae infection are an emerging public health concern among daycare attendees carrying epidemic clones in the oropharynx. However, genotyping of such epidemic clones from affected cases is limited by the low performance of current methods to detect K. kingae from blood samples and lack of specimens available from infected sites. We aimed at developing a modified multilocus sequence typing (MLST) method to genotype K. kingae strains from oropharyngeal samples without prior culture. We designed in silico MLST primers specific for K. kingae by aligning whole nucleotide sequences of abcZ, adk, aroE, cpn60, recA, and gdh/zwf genes from closely related species belonging to the Kingella and Neisseria genera. We tested our modified MLST protocol on all Kingella species and N. meningitidis, as well as 11 oropharyngeal samples from young children with sporadic (n = 10) or epidemic (n = 1) K. kingae infection.

Results

We detected K. kingae-specific amplicons in the 11 oropharyngeal samples, corresponding to sequence-type 6 (ST-6) in 6 children including the epidemic cases, ST-25 in 2 children, and 3 possible novel STs (ST-67, ST-68, and ST-69). No amplicon was obtained from other Kingella species and N. meningitidis.

Conclusions

We herein developed a specific MLST protocol that enables genotyping of K. kingae by MLST directly from oropharyngeal samples. This discriminatory tool, with which we identified the first K. kingae outbreak caused by ST-6 in Europe, may be used in further epidemiological investigations.
Associations Between Sexual Orientation and Overall and Site-Specific Diagnosis of Cancer: Evidence From Two National Patient Surveys in England
Authors: Saunders Catherine L. , Meads Catherine , Abel Gary A. , Lyratzopoulos Georgios
Published: September 2017

Purpose

To address gaps in evidence on the risk of cancer in people from sexual minorities.

Patients and Methods

We used data from 796,594 population-based English General Practice Patient Survey responders to explore the prevalence of self-reported diagnoses of cancer in the last 5 years among sexual minorities compared with heterosexual women and men. We analyzed data from 249,010 hospital-based English Cancer Patient Experience Survey responders with sexual orientation as a binary outcome, and International Classification of Diseases, Tenth, Revision, diagnosis as covariate—38 different common and rarer cancers, with breast and prostate cancer as baseline categories for women and men, respectively—to examine whether people from sexual minorities are over- or under-represented among different cancer sites. For both analyses, we used logistic regression, stratified by sex and adjusted for age.

Results

A diagnosis of cancer in the past 5 years was more commonly reported by male General Practice Patient Survey responders who endorsed gay or bisexual orientation compared with heterosexual men (odds ratio [OR], 1.31; 95% CI, 1.15 to 1.49; P < .001) without evidence of a difference between lesbian or bisexual compared with heterosexual women (OR, 1.14; 95% CI, 0.94 to 1.37; P = .19). For most common and rarer cancer sites (30 of 33 in women, 28 of 32 in men), the odds of specific cancer site diagnosis among Cancer Patient Experience Survey respondents seemed to be independent of sexual orientation; however, there were notable differences in infection-related (HIV and human papillomavirus [HPV]) cancers. Gay or bisexual men were over-represented among men with Kaposi’s sarcoma (OR, 48.2; 95% CI, 22.0 to 105.6), anal (OR, 15.5; 95% CI, 11.0 to 21.9), and penile cancer (OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 0.9 to 3.7). Lesbian or bisexual women were over-represented among women with oropharyngeal cancer (OR, 3.2; 95% CI, 1.7 to 6.0).

Conclusion

Large-scale evidence indicates that the distribution of cancer sites does not vary substantially by sexual orientation, with the exception of some HPV- and HIV-associated cancers. These findings highlight the importance of HPV vaccination in heterosexual and sexual minority populations.
Student Perspectives on Faith in the Classroom
Authors: Thomson-Bunn Heather
Published: September 2017

Drawing from surveys and interviews with Christian students at a large public university, this essay articulates how understanding these students' perspectives can help instructors identify strategies for responding to religious discourses in the classroom and equip them to help students capitalize on the rhetorical possibilities of these discourses.
“In My End Is My Beginning”
Authors: Hawkins Peter S.
Published: September 2017

A vertical reading of the Commedia exposes Dante's practice of continually revising his text, such that it looks back on itself as it moves forward. The poet accomplishes this in part through dramatic contrasts and reversals. One way to follow these “repetitions-with-difference” is to observe their relationship with a theme that Dante explores throughout his career: loss. The loss of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova becomes the loss of Florence in Dante's works written in exile. It then becomes the spiritual desolation explored among those in the Inferno who have lost “the good of the intellect.” Looking back from the end of the Commedia, however, reveals that what has been lost is eventually found in a new form. In the beatific “white rose” of Paradise we recall the “dark wood” of the poem's opening; when Beatrice is no longer by the pilgrim's side in the Empyrean we remember the tragic disappearance of Virgil on the top of Mount Purgatory; anticipating the joys of the City of God not only mitigates the pain of Dante's Florentine exile but also gives the poet a foretaste of true citizenship.
Just Look through the Eagle's Eye
Authors: Wilson Jessica Hooten
Published: September 2017

This article offers a vertical reading of cantos 19 of the Divine Comedy, which emphasizes Dante's maturing ideas of justice and provides pedagogical exercises that invite students to grow alongside the pilgrim.
What Would Lady Mary Do?
Authors: Delsandro Erica Gene
Published: September 2017

This article examines how the popular television series Downton Abbey, functioning in tandem with twentieth-century novels, provides students with a cultural forum that opens up a cultural, literary, and historical period that would otherwise remain distant. By encouraging students to perceive television as participating in what Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch call “public thinking,” the article highlights the way the PBS period drama offers students the means to engage critically and empathetically with a historically distant cultural moment. Ultimately, the author argues that incorporating Downton Abbey and related social media to the study of novels of the early twentieth century enlivens the material, motivating students to enter into a period of history through its literature in service of not only increased historical and literary knowledge but also a more nuanced understanding of the importance of the humanities in examining society and its values, the very elements television both shapes and reflects.
Why Front?
Authors: Grady Kyle
Published: September 2017

This essay considers the importance of nonstandard English to fostering a more inclusive and incisive Shakespeare classroom. Grady focuses on his experience as the instructor of a Shakespeare course that occasionally employed African American Vernacular English in its analysis of texts. His reflection considers how taking such language seriously encourages more genuine participation from a wide range of students. While this pedagogical approach offers one manner in which the field of early modern studies might expand points of access and foster cross-cultural dialogue, it also stands to deepen the analytic possibilities of the Shakespeare classroom. Grady uses the example of African American Vernacular English to demonstrate that nonstandard English can offer particularly nuanced means through which to investigate and discuss Shakespeare's works.
One Mandarin Benefits the Whole Clan: Hometown Favoritism in an Authoritarian Regime
Authors: Do Quoc-Anh , Nguyen Kieu-Trang , Tran Anh N.
Published: September 2017

We study patronage politics in authoritarian Vietnam, using an exhaustive panel of ranking officials from 2000 to 2010 to estimate their promotions' impact on infrastructure in their hometowns of patrilineal ancestry. Native officials' promotions lead to a broad range of hometown infrastructure improvement. Hometown favoritism is pervasive across all ranks, even among officials without budget authority, except among elected legislators. Favors are narrowly targeted toward small communes that have no political power, and are strengthened with bad local governance and strong local family values. The evidence suggests a likely motive of social preferences for hometown. (JEL D72, H76, O15, O17, O18, P25, Z13)
Customary Norms, Inheritance, and Human Capital: Evidence from a Reform of the Matrilineal System in Ghana
Authors: La Ferrara Eliana , Milazzo Annamaria
Published: September 2017

We study the role of traditional norms in land allocation and human capital investment. We exploit a policy experiment in Ghana that increased the land that children from matrilineal groups could inherit from their fathers. Boys exposed to the reform received 0.9 less years of education—an effect driven by landed households, for whom the reform was binding. We find no effect for girls, whose inheritance was de facto unaffected. These patterns suggest that before the reform matrilineal groups invested more in education than they would if unconstrained, to substitute for land inheritance, underscoring the importance of cultural norms. (JEL D64, I21, J16, O15, O17, Z13)
The Impact of Maternal Literacy and Participation Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in India
Authors: Banerji Rukmini , Berry James , Shotland Marc
Published: September 2017

Using a randomized field experiment in India, we evaluate the effectiveness of adult literacy and parental involvement interventions in improving children's learning. Households were assigned to receive either adult literacy (language and math) classes for mothers, training for mothers on how to enhance their children's learning at home, or a combination of the two programs. All three interventions had significant but modest impacts on childrens math scores. The interventions also increased mothers' test scores in both language and math, as well as a range of other outcomes reflecting greater involvement of mothers in their children's education. (JEL I21, J13, J16, O15)
Persuasion: A Case Study of Papal Influences on Fertility-Related Beliefs and Behavior
Authors: Bassi Vittorio , Rasul Imran
Published: September 2017

We study the persuasive impacts of non-informative communication on the short-run beliefs and long-run behavior of individuals. We do so in the context of the Papal visit to Brazil in October 1991, in which persuasive messages related to fertility were salient in Papal speeches during the visit. We use individual's exposure to such messages to measure how persuasion shifts short-run beliefs such as intentions to contracept and long-term fertility outcomes such as the timing and total number of births. To measure the short-run causal impact of persuasion, we exploit the fact the Brazil 1991 DHS was fielded in the weeks before, during, and after the Papal visit. We use this fortuitous timing to identify that persuasion significantly reduced individual intentions to contracept by more than 40 percent relative to pre-visit levels, and increased the frequency of unprotected sex by 30 percent. We measure the long-run causal impacts of persuasion on fertility outcomes using later DHS surveys to conduct an event study analysis on births in a five-year window on either side of the 1991 Papal visit. Estimating a hazard model of fertility, we find a significant change in births 9 months post-visit, corresponding to a 1.6 percent increase in the aggregate birth cohort. Our final set of results examine the very long-run impact of persuasion and document the impacts to be on the timing of births rather than on total fertility. (JEL D83, J13, N36)
Do College Graduates Serving as Village Officials Help Rural China?
Authors: He Guojun , Wang Shaoda
Published: September 2017

This study estimates the effect of improved bureaucrat quality on poverty alleviation by exploring a unique human capital reallocation policy in China—the College Graduate Village Officials (CGVOs) program. We find that introducing CGVOs into the village governance system improves the targeting and implementation of the central government's social assistance programs. CGVOs help eligible poor households understand and apply for relevant subsidies, thus increasing the number of pro-poor program beneficiaries. Further analysis suggests that CGVOs change bureaucrat quality, rather than quantity, of village governance, and their presence reduces elite capture of pro-poor programs. (JEL D73, H83, J24, O17, O18, P25, P26)
Conflict and the Persistence of Ethnic Bias
Authors: Shayo Moses , Zussman Asaf
Published: September 2017

How persistent are the effects of conflict on bias toward co-ethnics? What are the channels of persistence? We employ a measure of ethnic bias derived from decisions made by Israeli Arab and Jewish judges to study the levels and determinants of bias during the 2000–2004 conflict and its aftermath (2007–2010). Despite the fall in violence, we find no evidence of a general attenuation in bias. Furthermore, bias remains positively associated with past intensity of violence in different localities. This persistence does not appear to be due to judges' personal exposure to violence but rather to different dynamics in afflicted areas. (JEL D74, J15, K41)
There Will Be Killing: Collectivization and Death of Draft Animals
Authors: Chen Shuo , Lan Xiaohuan
Published: September 2017

The elimination of private property rights can lead to ineffcient use of productive assets. In China's collectivization movement from 1955 to 1957, instead of transferring draft animals to the ownership of the collectives, peasants slaughtered them to keep the meat and hide. By comparing 1,600 counties that launched the movement in different years, the difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the animal loss during the movement was 12 to 15 percent, or 7.4–9.5 million head. Grain output dropped by 7 percent due to lower animal inputs and lower productivity. (JEL N45, N55, O13, P26, P32, Q11)
Case Report: Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor causes formation of an ileal conglomerate in a patient previously treated for Wilms’ tumor
Authors: Leganger Julie , Raagaard Soerensen Rikke , Rosenberg Jacob , Burcharth Jakob
Published: September 2017

Introduction: Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors (IMTs) are uncommon mesenchymal lesions classified by WHO as neoplasms of uncertain behavior. Morphologically, IMTs are composed of proliferating spindled myofibroblastic cells accompanied by a marked - usually chronic - inflammatory infiltrate. The etiology is unknown, but several theories have been suggested, including an association with Wilms’ tumor. IMTs are rarely diagnosed in adults and have been reported in various organs. IMTs are considered benign but with a potential to recur at their primary site.

Case report: A 44-year-old female experienced intermittent severe abdominal pain, loose stools and a visible abdominal bulge. In early childhood the patient had been treated for a Wilms’ tumor. At admission Meckel’s diverticulitis was suspected, but during surgery a tumor in the terminal ileum, creating a conglomerate of small intestinal loops, was observed and completely resected.  The pathology report characterized the tumor as a histologically benign inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. Postoperatively, the patient experienced several complications including an anastomotic leakage and subsequent formation of an abscess and transcutaneous fistula.

Discussion: IMTs rarely arise in the small intestine, and to our knowledge the manifestation of a small intestine conglomerate has not been described previously. Making the diagnosis is difficult, and numerous differential diagnoses were possible in this case. Approximately 8-25% of IMTs in the gastrointestinal tract recur locally. Complete surgical resection is the treatment of choice, and re-excision is the preferred therapy for local recurrence.  To our knowledge, no guidelines concerning follow-ups are available.

Conclusion: IMTs in the terminal ileum can mimic Meckel’s diverticulitis and present with symptoms of obstructive ileus due to the formation of a conglomerate of small intestinal loops. Furthermore, IMTs should be considered as a diagnostic possibility in patients with a past medical history of Wilms’ tumor.
The evaluation of a virtual education system based on the DeLone and McLean model: A path analysis
Authors: Mahmoodi Zohreh , Esmaelzadeh- Saeieh Sara , Lotfi Razieh , Baradaran Eftekhari Monir , Akbari Kamrani Mahnaz , Mehdizadeh Tourzani Zahra , Salehi Katayoun
Published: September 2017

Background: The Internet has dramatically influenced the introduction of virtual education. Virtual education is a term that involves online education and e-learning. This study was conducted to evaluate a virtual education system based on the DeLone and McLean model.

Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted using the census method on all the students of the Nursing and Midwifery Department of Alborz University of Medical Sciences who had taken at least one online course in 2016-2017. Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire based on the DeLone and McLean model in six domains and then analyzed in SPSS-16 and LISREL-8.8 using the path analysis.

Results: The goodness of fit indices (GFI) of the model represent the desirability and good fit of the model, and the rational nature of the adjusted relationships between the variables based on a conceptual model (GFI = 0.98; RMSEA = 0.014).The results showed that system quality has the greatest impact on the net benefits of the system through both direct and indirect paths (β=0.52), service quality through the indirect path (β=0.03) and user satisfaction through the direct path (β=0.73).

Conclusions: According to the results, system quality has the greatest overall impact on the net benefits of the system, both directly and indirectly by affecting user satisfaction and the intention to use. System quality should therefore be further emphasized, to use these systems more efficiently.
Case Report: Mucus plug in bronchus mimicking a bronchial solid foreign body obstruction
Authors: Devkota Kiran , He Miao , Zhang You Wei
Published: September 2017

Bronchial foreign body obstruction is common in all clinical settings. Obstruction of the airway due to foreign bodies and foreign body aspiration are major causes of childhood mortality and morbidity, which are a big challenge to manage. Occasionally, bronchial obstruction may be due to mucus plugs or other endogenous factors. Here we describe a case of bronchial obstruction caused by mucus plug formation that was managed conservatively in a one-year old boy. The patient was suffering from a cough and noisy breathing for 2 days prior to coming to our hospital, when he experienced sudden onset of difficulty in breathing and a severe cough. At the time of presentation his vital sign readings were:- HR 186 bpm, RR 46/min, BP 78/40 MmHg, temp 36.9°C and SPO2 68%. He was given oxygen immediately and nebulization was started. Chest CT scan was performed that suggested the presence of a right bronchial foreign body with right sided obstructive emphysema. The patient was stable with oxygenation and nebulization with ipratropium bromide, albuterol, normal saline and budesonide before the CT scan. Therefore, we conclude that symptoms resembling foreign body obstruction are not always aspirated or inhaled, and sometimes secreted sputum forms a plug, which mimics the symptoms of foreign body obstruction.
The Contingent Wisdom of Dyads: When Discussion Enhances vs. Undermines the Accuracy of Collaborative Judgments
Authors: Minson Julia A. , Mueller Jennifer S. , Larrick Richard P.
Published: September 2017

We evaluate the effect of discussion on the accuracy of collaborative judgments. In contrast to prior research, we show that discussion can either aid or impede accuracy relative to the averaging of collaborators’ independent judgments, as a systematic function of task type and interaction process. For estimation tasks with a wide range of potential estimates, discussion aided accuracy by helping participants prevent and eliminate egregious errors. For estimation tasks with a naturally bounded range, discussion following independent estimates performed on par with averaging. Importantly, if participants did not first make independent estimates, discussion greatly harmed accuracy by limiting the range of considered estimates, independent of task type. Our research shows that discussion can be a powerful tool for error reduction, but only when appropriately structured: Decision makers should form independent judgments to consider a wide range of possible answers, and then use discussion to eliminate extremely large errors.

Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2823 .

This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, judgment and decision making.
Do General Managerial Skills Spur Innovation?
Authors: Custódio Cláudia , Ferreira Miguel A. , Matos Pedro
Published: September 2017

We show that firms with chief executive officers (CEOs) who gain general managerial skills over their lifetime of work experience produce more patents. We address the potential endogenous CEO–firm matching bias using firm–CEO fixed effects and variation in the enforceability of noncompete agreements across states and over time during the CEO’s career. Our findings suggest that generalist CEOs spur innovation because they acquire knowledge beyond the firm’s current technological domain, and they have skills that can be applied elsewhere should innovation projects fail. We conclude that an efficient labor market for executives can promote innovation by providing a mechanism of tolerance for failure.

The Internet appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2828 .

This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.
The Bull of Wall Street: Experimental Analysis of Testosterone and Asset Trading
Authors: Nadler Amos , Jiao Peiran , Johnson Cameron J. , Alexander Veronika , Zak Paul J.
Published: September 2017

Growing evidence shows that biological factors affect individual financial decisions that could be reflected in financial markets. Testosterone, a chemical messenger especially influential in male physiology, has been shown to affect economic decision making and is taken as a performance enhancer among some financial professionals. This is the first experimental study to test how testosterone causally affects trading and prices. We exogenously elevated testosterone in male traders and tested testosterone’s effect both on their trading behavior in experimental asset markets and on the size and duration of asset price bubbles. Using both aggregated and individual trading data, we find that testosterone administration generated larger and longer-lasting bubbles by causing high bids and the slow incorporation of the asset’s fundamental value.

The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2836 .

This paper was accepted by Uri Gneezy, behavioral economics.
Dual Coproduct Technologies: Implications for Process Development and Adoption
Authors: Chen Ying-Ju , Tomlin Brian , Wang Yimin
Published: September 2017

Many industries operate technologies in which multiple outputs (coproducts) are jointly produced. In some settings (“vertical”) the coproducts differ along a performance dimension and are substitutable. In other settings (“horizontal”) the coproducts differ in their applications and are not substitutable. In both cases, three important attributes of a coproduct technology are its processing cost, overall yield, and coproduct split, i.e., the proportion of each output produced. For both vertical and horizontal settings with deterministic market sizes, we characterize the optimal pricing and production decisions of a monopoly firm with two technologies. We establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for dual activation (i.e., using both technologies) to be optimal. Dual activation is driven by differences in marginal costs across the two technologies. There is an additional motive for dual activation in the horizontal setting: the desire to generate a product mix that better resembles the market mix. Building on the optimal production analysis, we characterize the optimal adoption-and-usage strategy of a firm with one incumbent technology considering a new technology. We establish the conditions for which a new technology will displace the incumbent or be used with the incumbent, and highlight some important adoption and usage differences between vertical and horizontal settings. Results are extended to the setting with uncertain market size(s).

The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017.0637 .
Supply and Demand Functions in Inventory Models
Authors: Feng Qi , Shanthikumar J. George
Published: September 2017

The central issue in supply chain management is to match supply with demand, and the heart of a planning model is the modeling of supply and demand functions. To allow for analytical tractability, the existing literature often assumes almost surely linear supply and demand functions, which greatly limits the applicability of the models. The goal of this paper is to provide a unified approach to analyze general random supply and demand functions. By transforming the problem into one defined on a higher dimension, we show that many of the seemingly highly nonlinear supply and demand functions (in the almost sure sense) are linear in the stochastic sense. With this new notion of linearity, called stochastic linearity in midpoint, our ability to analyze supply chain problems is much enhanced. We are able to prove the concavity of the profit function in the transformed supply and demand decisions for a general class of supply and demand functions that include, but are not restricted to, the ones studied in the existing literature. Thus, many of the challenging problems now become tractable. Moreover, we characterize a set of easy-to-verify conditions for stochastic linearity in midpoint.

The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2017.1648 .
A Uniformization Approach for the Dynamic Control of Queueing Systems with Abandonments
Authors: Legros Benjamin , Jouini Oualid , Koole Ger
Published: September 2017

We consider queueing systems with general abandonment. Abandonment times are approximated by a particular Cox distribution with all phase exponential rates being the same. We prove that this distribution arbitrarily closely approximates any nonnegative distribution. By explicitly modeling the waiting time of the first customer in line, we obtain a natural bounded jump Markov process allowing for uniformization. This approach is useful to solve, via dynamic programming, various optimization problems where the objectives and/or constraints involve the distributions of the performance measures, not only their expected values. It is also useful for the performance analysis of queueing systems with general abandonment times.
Optimal Metering Point Configurations for Optimized Profile Descent Based Arrival Operations at Airports
Authors: Solak Senay , Chen Heng
Published: September 2017

Optimized profile descent (OPD) is an arrival procedure for the Next Generation Air Transportation System, which has been demonstrated to effectively decrease noise, emissions, and fuel costs. Implementation of OPD operations requires effective metering policies because of the increased role of uncertainty in aircraft trajectories during descent. While optimal sequencing and spacing of OPD flights have been studied in the literature, any potential savings resulting from possible changes in metering point configurations have not been addressed. In this paper, we develop models to further increase the value of OPD operations over conventional arrival procedures by optimizing metering point configurations, which include identification of the optimal number and locations of metering points to use during OPD. We derive an algorithmic framework based on implementations of a stochastic dynamic programming model and a nonlinear stochastic integer program to identify best metering point configurations where resulting computational difficulties are addressed through convex approximation and Lagrangian decomposition procedures. We also describe numerical results based on actual traffic information at major U.S. airports, which indicate that the total potential savings in the top 10 major airports could be up to $22 million a year if the proposed policies are implemented.

The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2017.0788 .
Back to Nature
Authors: Johnson Benjamin Heber
Published: September 2017

This chapter demonstrates how conservationists pursued their central goal—a material balance and psychic renewal with a nature they thought endangered—in private lives as well as public actions. In a time when the built world had grown so complicated and consuming as to alienate many from the natural world, conservationists sought a “return to nature” in outdoor recreation, the study of nature in schools, literature, and domestic architecture. Conservation was as much about cultural change as it was an economic doctrine or a set of policies. Like conservation politics, conservation culture was aimed at escaping the artificiality and destructiveness of industrial life. By returning to nature, conservationists hoped that Americans would revitalize themselves and deepen their appreciation of the environment.
Fighting over Conservation
Authors: Johnson Benjamin Heber
Published: September 2017

This chapter highlights the split between Gifford Pinchot and Horace McFarland, showing how it wrecked any hopes that conservationists could benefit from a broad-based national organization that would press for material and aesthetic measures in cities, suburbs, and the countryside. But it was only one of many splits between conservationists. The demographic and ideological heterogeneity that endowed conservation with so much of its appeal and reach also pitted different kinds of conservationists against one another, fragmenting and ultimately weakening the movement. Ironically, the considerable political victories of the early twentieth century—metropolitan park systems, federal bureaucracies, and an extensive domain in the West for conservation—exacerbated this divisiveness, since conservationists had gained something worth fighting over.
Apportioning and Governing an Empire (c. 1221–c. 1260)
Authors: Jackson Peter
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the complex layers of the Mongol imperial administration under the qaghans from Ögödei (r. 1229–1241) to Möngke (r. 1251–1259) and the distribution of appanage lands among the members of Chinggis Khan's dynasty. It first provides a background on Chinggis Khan's empire before discussing the succession to Chinggis Khan. It then considers the disputed successions of 1241–1246 and 1248–1251, the distribution of appanages among the imperial family, and the role of elite women under the Mongols and in steppe polities in general. It also describes the administrative structure of the Mongol empire as well as the system of taxation, Mongol law, the centralisation of imperial authority under Möngke, and the rise of the Jochids in Western Asia. The chapter concludes with an assessment of various elements that helped maintain the unity of the Mongol empire.
Devastation, Depopulation and Revival in the Age of Conquest
Authors: Jackson Peter
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the extent of the devastation inflicted on the Dār al-Islām by the Mongol invasions and such recovery as occurred prior to the 1260s, whether as a result of local initiative or at the instigation of Mongol rulers. It first describes the Mongols' massacres of urban populations throughout the urban world of the Islamic East before discussing their conduct of war under Ögödei and Güyüg. It also considers the Mongols' reactions to the urban and other sedentary populations in the path of their advance, the use of violence by Hülegü's forces (1255–1262), contemporary figures on the extent of the slaughter and depopulation resulting from the Mongol conquest. Finally, it assesses the economic dislocation and cultural decline brought by Chinggis Khan to Western Asia, along with Hülegü's reconstruction efforts for the lands he devastated.
Pax Mongolica and a Transcontinental Traffic
Authors: Jackson Peter
Published: September 2017

This chapter examines the conditions created by the Mongol conquests, summed up in the phrase Pax Mongolica, and the role of the Silk Roads in the transcontinental travel andcommunication to which the Mongols had given impetus. It begins with a discussion of commodities traded in Mongol Asia, including spices, silks and other luxury textiles, pearls, precious stones, bullion and furs. It then considers the Mongols' diversion of trade routes within Western Asia and their role in the emergence of new termini, along with the steps taken by Mongol khans to foster trade. It also analyses the obstacles and risks involved in overland trade and travel in the era of the successor-states, the growth in the maritime trade of Asia during the Mongol epoch, and the limits of cultural diffusion brought by transcontinental trade across Mongol Asia.
Conclusion
Authors: Jackson Peter
Published: September 2017

This conclusion summarises the book's main findings about the Mongols' conquest of the Islamic world and their eventual conversion to Islam. It first considers the damaging effects of the Mongol invasions on Islamic lands and their people before discussing the weaknesses of the Mongol empire, partly due to the absence of fixed rules for succession. It then examines the Mongol overlordship of many sedentary regions both in the Ilkhanid territories and in Central Asia under client Muslim princes, the fragmentation of the Mongol empire that hastened the development of its constituent parts along divergent lines, and the Islamization of Mongol rulers. It also describes the Mongols' efforts to rehabilitate their conquered territories and the positive results of Mongol rule in the eastern Islamic lands.
Social Infertility and the Quest for Parenthood
Authors: Daar Judith
Published: September 2017

This chapter talks about how for many couples, their physical expressions of love will never yield a baby. The largest faction of this cohort consists of the medically infertile—those who lack the physical capacity to accomplish the reproductive cycle of conception, gestation, and childbirth through heterosexual intercourse. The other faction of the “nonproductive lovemaking” cohort includes those with social infertility—the inability to conceive and maintain a pregnancy within a particular social structure without medical assistance. People with social infertility may or may not be medically infertile, but the structure of their intimate social relationships, or lack thereof, make sexual reproduction an impossibility. The socially infertile include single and transgender individuals and same-sex couples who lack access to natural reproduction.
The New Eugenics
Authors: Daar Judith
Published: September 2017

This chapter calls for the democratization of ART. Exposing the many ways in which reproductive assistance is withheld, denied, deprived, and revoked is to also reveal the widespread need and desire for its adoption. The mismatch between the current use and current need for ART motivates these analyses that critique the law and policy that permit access barriers to persist. The actionable recommendations set out herein can help shift the course of ART access to a more democratic future. Even if no such reforms are taken up, the chapter remains hopeful that external factors will coalesce to widen access to reproductive technologies. Global and national changes that, in some instances, are seemingly unrelated to ART will usher in an era of greater availability and access to reproductive assistance.
Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag
Authors: Alexopoulos Golfo
Published: September 2017

This book is a new and chilling study of lethal human exploitation in the Soviet forced labor camps, one of the pillars of Stalinist terror. The book is a shocking study of life and death in Stalin's Gulag. It demonstrates how the ruthless exploitation of prisoners, their hunger, and a lack of medical care turned the camps into destructive-labor camps, and suggests that these forced labor camps were often administered as death camps. Examining the Gulag penal system through the lens of health, medicine, and human exploitation, this book draws from previously inaccessible archives to offer a chilling new view of one of the pillars of Stalinist terror.
Food
Authors: Alexopoulos Golfo
Published: September 2017

This chapter focuses on the ways in which the Stalinist regime willfully denied food to many prisoners and created an institution of mass starvation. Working citizens were an important part of the Communist regime, and this emphasis on labor was clearly stated in the popular slogan, “Whoever does not work, shall not eat!” The Stalinist regime took this Soviet work ethic to extremes by making hunger both an incentive in the Gulag and a punishment. The most productive earned more food, but they had to exert themselves more to receive more, and the Gulag ration was not sufficient to compensate for energy expended. The Stalinist leadership thus created a punitive and inadequate feeding system by design, which willfully starved less productive prisoners.
Health
Authors: Alexopoulos Golfo
Published: September 2017

This chapter discusses the official perceptions of inmate health within the Gulag system. Rather than being concerned over the people's health, Gulag officials were more interested in their “physical labor capability” (kategoriia fizicheskoi trudosposobnosti). Gulag administrators needed people who could perform hard manual labor in logging, mining, and construction, so they examined and documented the bodies of prisoners to determine who was “fit for physical labor.” Inside the barbed wire, individuals constituted simply bodies, either “fit” or “weakened.” This chapter shows how individual bodies were perceived and treated within the Gulag health system and how prisoners were shuffled from one physical labor category to another.
Releases
Authors: Alexopoulos Golfo
Published: September 2017

This chapter describes the Gulag policy for releasing their “inferior workforce,” also known as the “ballast.” Camp officials referred to the process of discharging terminally or severely ill prisoners as “unloading” (razgruzka), and it involved many types of releases, including medical discharges and special amnesties. Just as Stalin selected German POWs for repatriation who were invalids, and whose labor could no longer be exploited in camps, he unloaded sick and emaciated Gulag prisoners. Terminally ill prisoners who had been fully exploited were callously discarded, and many died shortly after their release. Medical releases and amnesties of dying prisoners thus constituted a fundamental Gulag practice applied on a massive scale. It effectively kept official mortality rates low, and thus concealed the destructive nature of the Gulag.
Epilogue
Authors: Alexopoulos Golfo
Published: September 2017

This concluding chapter examines the ways in which the Gulag was able to hide its true nature from the public eye. For most of its existence, the Gulag had operated under a heavy veil of secrecy. Routine silences and distortions made it possible for the violent exploitation to persist for decades. The chapter looks at the Gulag's methods of concealing information outright, as well as the manipulation of facts which did enter the public eye. Some of these methods are efficient enough to make present-day investigations into the Gulag rather challenging. In addition, the chapter also briefly discusses the gradual dismantling of Stalin's labor camp system, which began with the large-scale release of the Gulag's majority prisoner population.
Translator’s Introduction
Authors: al-Qarafi al-Maliki Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Idris
Published: September 2017

This chapter provides an overview of the present volume, which is the first English translation of the Al-I ṭk ām fī Tamyīz al-Fatāwa ʿan al-Aṭkām wa Taṣarrufāt al-Qāḍīwa'l-Imām (The Criterion for Distinguishing Legal Opinions from Judicial Rulings and the Administrative Acts of Judges and the Ruler [hereafter, “the Criterion”]) by Shihāb al-Dīn Ahmad b. Idrīs al-Qarāfā. This work is neither of theoretical jurisprudence nor of substantive law, but exists at the intersection of both. The Criterion aims to reconcile the idea of divinely revealed law with the fact that the practical norms of Islamic law can be applied only through the actions of particular human institutions.
People of Color and the Promise Betrayed
Authors: Brown Richard D.
Published: September 2017

In its 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme Court ruled that “negroes” were not, and never had been, citizens of the United States. Two justices dissented, declaring that when the Constitution was adopted free blacks possessed the rights of citizens, including suffrage, in seven states. The rights of free blacks, like other citizens, were thereby protected. But the Court majority, conflating slavery with race, denied citizenship to people of color. In fact, starting in 1776 a majority of states recognized the rights of people of color for at least a generation. Only after the free black population grew into the tens of thousands did states north and south act to curtail those rights. The new restrictions rested on old prejudices reinforced by the new “science” of race. Nature, it was claimed, warranted the denial of equal rights. So in new northern states—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan—as well as old ones like Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut, equality was written out of law. By 1858, when Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas for election to the Senate from Illinois, some public figures explicitly denied the self-evident natural rights of the Declaration. But Lincoln made the Declaration’s self-evident truths his cornerstone. Regardless of race or nationality, he argued, natural rights applied to all men.
Equal Rights and Unequal People
Authors: Brown Richard D.
Published: September 2017

Though Americans have favored the idea of equal rights and equal opportunity, they recognize that differences in wealth and social advantage, like differences in ability and appearance, influence the realization, or not, of equal rights, including equality before the law. In the generations after 1776 the rights of creditors, for example, often overrode the rights of debtors. And criminal trials demonstrate that in courtrooms equal treatment was most often achieved when defendant and victim came from the same social class. Otherwise if they came from different classes social realities, including ethnicity, color, and gender could shape court officials and public opinion. And when a woman’s sexual virtue was compromised, her credibility was almost always discounted. In principle officials paid homage to the ideal of equality before the law, but in practice unequal rights often prevailed.
Equal Rights, Privilege, and the Pursuit of Inequality
Authors: Brown Richard D.
Published: September 2017

While cherishing ideas of equal rights and equality, Americans have simultaneously sought inequality. The Revolution of 1776 committed Americans to the idea of equal rights, but just as fundamentally it dedicated the United States to the protection and increase of individual property and the power to direct it to heirs. Although equal rights and individual property rights have proved compatible with religious and ethnic equality, social and economic inequality, both meritocratic and inherited, have been integral to the American social and political order. Moreover, based on the emerging biologies of race and sex, the idea of equal rights for people of color and for women faced new barriers in nineteenth-century America and beyond into the twenty-first century.
The Period of Mature Rule in England and Scandinavia
Authors: Bolton Timothy
Published: September 2017

This chapter looks at how Cnut experienced the first period of peace, prosperity, and stability he had known in his adult life. He was most probably in his thirties, and had lived through a little over a decade of near-constant activity. He had security in power in both England and Scandinavia that he had never enjoyed before, and had extended the boundaries of rule considerably further than any Scandinavian or English predecessor. Moreover, he was approaching a decade of peaceful rule in Denmark, and appears to have emerged the victor from a co-ordinated civil war and invasion by the Norwegians and Swedes. This peace brought prosperity in the form of renewed trade and commerce, and his consolidation of power across his realms continued without check or hindrance.
1941–1944
Authors: Formakov Arsenii
Published: September 2017

After he was sent to a Siberian labor camp in 1941, Formakov lost contact with his family. They remained behind in Nazi-occupied Latvia, and he could not contact them by mail until Soviet forces recaptured Daugavpils and Riga in 1944. This chapter contains the letters that Formakov wrote to his family beginning in the summer of 1944 and also some poems, addressed to them, that he had composed in 1941-1943 and sent in early communications. The letters provide a detailed view of Formakov’s living conditions in Kraslag, a labor camp in Kansk in the Krasnoiarsk region. They offer information about the operations of Kraslag’s Cultural-Educational Sector, which put on film screenings, concerts, and theatrical productions in camp. They also describe a special cafeteria for inmates who exceeded production targets and Formakov’s efforts to secure adequate food for himself.
1946
Authors: Formakov Arsenii
Published: September 2017

The letters that Formakov sent home in 1946 describe his contributions to cultural work in camp and his return to indoor work assignments. In this year he worked in a needle-making workshop, where he had also been delegated in 1944-1945; he later went on to serve as a bread-cutter and a norm-setter. He also toured for a time with Kraslag’s Central Cultural Brigade, giving shows in other camp outposts and area collective farms. Such privileged assignments were hard to secure. They gave inmates better access to food and significantly increased their chances of survival. At various points in the correspondence, Formakov discusses his efforts to remain in favor with the camp authorities.
Toward a Taxonomy of Scientific Replication
Authors: Shavit Ayelet , Ellison Aaron M.
Published: September 2017

This chapter suggests a taxonomy of the concept of replication that can be used to build bridges among different research cultures in the biological sciences—lab or field-based; observational or experimental; ecological, agricultural, medical, or physiological—while minding the gaps between these cultures. It first defines and characterizes the concept of replication. It then discusses the phases of research and types of replication. Replication is not one type of “thing” in either its definition or its application. The challenges that scientists face in doing replicable research vary with the different phases of their research project. There are five different phases of a project, and in each phase a different type of replication tends to overshadow the practice. The chapter also explains the two different operational concepts of generalization that suggest different approaches to each of the three meanings and the five stages of replication.