bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Enhanced myogenesis through lncFAM-mediated recruitment of HNRNPL to the MYBPC2 promoter
Authors: Chang Ming-Wen , Yang Jen-Hao , Tsitsipatis Dimitrios , Yang Xiaoling , Martindale Jennifer L , Munk Rachel , Pandey Poonam R , Banskota Nirad , Romero Brigette , Batish Mona , Piao Yulan , Mazan-Mamczarz Krystyna , De Supriyo , Abdelmohsen Kotb , Wilson Gerald M , Gorospe Myriam
Published: December 2022

The mammalian transcriptome comprises a vast family of long noncoding (lnc)RNAs implicated in physiologic processes such as myogenesis, through which muscle forms during embryonic development and regenerates in the adult. However, the specific molecular mechanisms by which lncRNAs regulate human myogenesis are poorly understood. Here, we identified a novel muscle-specific lncRNA, lncFAM71E1-2:2 (lncFAM), which increased robustly during early human myogenesis. Overexpression of lncFAM promoted differentiation of human myoblasts into myotubes, while silencing lncFAM suppressed this process. As lncFAM resides in the nucleus, chromatin isolation by RNA purification followed by mass spectrometry (ChIRP-MS) analysis was employed to identify the molecular mechanisms whereby it might promote myogenesis. Analysis of lncFAM-interacting proteins revealed that lncFAM recruited the RNA-binding protein HNRNPL to the promoter of MYBPC2, in turn increasing MYBPC2 mRNA transcription and enhancing production of the myogenic protein MYBPC2. These results highlight a mechanism whereby a novel ribonucleoprotein complex, lncFAM-HNRNPL, elevates MYBPC2 expression transcriptionally to promote myogenesis.
Molecular heterogeneity of pediatric choroid plexus carcinomas determines the distinctions in clinical course and prognosis
Authors: Zaytseva Margarita , Valiakhmetova Andge , Yasko Ludmila , Samarin Alexey , Papusha Ludmila , Shekhtman Anastasia , Usman Natalia , Voronin Kirill , Karachunskiy Alexander , Novichkova Galina , Druy Alexander
Published: December 2022

Background

Choroid plexus carcinomas (CPCs) are rare aggressive pediatric tumors of the brain with no treatment standards. Genetic profiling of CPCs is often confined to possible association with Li–Fraumeni syndrome, though only about a half of CPCs develop from syndromic predispositions. Whole-chromosome gains and losses typical of CPCs reflect genomic instability of these tumors, but only partially explain the aggressive clinical course.

Methods

This retrospective study enrolled 25 pediatric patients with CPC, receiving treatment between January 2009 and June 2022. Molecular-genetic testing was performed for 20 cases with available tumor tissue and encompassed mutational status, chromosomal aberrations, and gene expression profiles. We analyzed several factors presumably influencing the outcomes, including molecular profiles and clinical parameters. The median follow-up constituted 5.2 years (absolute range 2.8–12.6 years).

Results

All studied CPCs had smooth mutational profiles with the only recurrent event being TP53 variants, either germline or somatic, encountered in 13 cases. Unbalanced whole-chromosome aberrations,  notably multiple monosomies, were highly typical. In 7 tumors, chromosome losses were combined with complex genomic rearrangements: segmental gains and losses or signs of chromothripsis. This phenomenon was associated with extremely low 5-year survival: 20.0 ± 17.9% vs 85.7 ± 13.2%; P = .009. Transcriptomically, the cohort split into 2 polar clusters Ped_CPC1 and Ped_CPC2 differing by survival: 31.3 ± 17.8% vs 100%; P = .012.

Conclusion

CPCs split into at least 2 molecular subtypes distinguished both genomically and transcriptomically. Clusterization of the tumors into Ped_CPC1 and Ped_CPC2 significantly correlates with survival. The distinction may prove relevant in clinical trials for dedicated and patient-oriented optimization of clinical protocols for these rare tumors.
An Analysis of Twitter Posts About the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Menthol Ban
Authors: Allem Jon-Patrick , Donaldson Scott I , Vogel Erin A , Pang Raina D , Unger Jennifer B
Published: December 2022

Introduction

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned characterizing flavors in cigarettes in 2009, this initial ban exempted menthol. After examining numerous reports on the adverse health effects of menthol cigarettes, the FDA proposed a menthol ban in April 2022. This study analyzed Twitter data to describe public reaction to this announcement.

Aims and Methods

Posts containing the word “menthol” and/or “#menthol” were collected from April 21, 2022 to May 5, 2022 from Twitter’s Streaming Application Programming Interface (API). A random sampling procedure supplied 1041 tweets for analysis. Following an inductive approach to content analysis, posts were classified into one or more of 11 themes.

Results

Posts discussed the FDA announcement (n = 153, 14.7%), racial discrimination (n = 101, 9.7%), distrust in government (n = 67, 6.4%), inconsistencies between policies (n = 52, 5.0%), public health benefits (n = 42, 4%), freedom of choice (n = 22, 2.1%), and health equity (n = 21, 2.0%). Posts contained misinformation (n = 20, 1.9%), and discussed the potential for illicit markets (n = 18, 1.7%) and the need for cessation support (n = 4, 0.4%). 541 (52.0%) tweets did not fit into any of the prescribed themes.

Conclusions

Twitter posts with the word “menthol” commonly discussed distrust in government and mentioned racial discrimination. Findings demonstrated the possibility of near real-time Twitter monitoring of public opinion on a menthol ban. These data may be valuable for designing tobacco control health communication campaigns in the future.

Implications

The U.S. FDA proposed a ban on menthol cigarettes in April 2022. This study’s content analyzed Twitter posts over a 2-week period to understand the public’s response to the proposed menthol ban. Twitter posts with the word “menthol” often discussed distrust in government and mentioned racial discrimination. Findings demonstrated the possibility of near real-time Twitter monitoring of public opinion of regulatory action. Findings underscore the need to educate the public about the potential health benefits of banning menthol from cigarettes, particularly for populations that experience tobacco-related health disparities.
Examination of the Potential Functional Role of Competition-Induced Testosterone Dynamics
Authors: Reside Tracy-Lynn , Robinson Brittney A. , Carré Justin M.
Published: December 2022

Across the animal kingdom, testosterone levels change rapidly within the context of competitive and/or mating related interactions. It has been speculated that such acute changes in testosterone concentrations may ultimately function to regulate ongoing and future behaviors, such as aggression, competitiveness, mate-seeking, and risk-taking. In this chapter, the authors review the growing body of evidence suggesting that competition-induced changes in testosterone positively map onto competitive, aggressive, risk-taking, and mating-related psychological and behavioral processes. The authors also review evidence from single dose pharmacological challenge studies that attempt to draw more substantial causal claims concerning testosterone’s role in promoting these psychological and behavioral processes.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Involvement in African Affairs and Pan-Africanism
Authors: Sinitiere Phillip Luke
Published: December 2022

As a scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois presented his expansive perspective toward Africa in books, essays, and speeches. As a creative intellectual, he crafted poetry, novels, and plays about African history and culture. As an activist, he provided strategic leadership championing African liberation within the organizations for which he worked. Above all, his critical reflections over time demonstrated a global grasp of the complex interdependence between achieving freedom for African-descended people in the United States and the liberation of all people of color subject to imperial White supremacy. This chapter explores Du Bois’s multifaceted involvement in African affairs and Pan-Africanism through his participation in Pan-African congresses between 1900 and 1945 and through the historical documentation and political insight about Africa presented in his books, essays, journalism, and lectures. This chapter concludes with an account of how Du Bois’s family and descendants have meaningfully maintained his legacy in the half century following his death.
Conceptualizing and Framing Archaeologies of Indigenous Australia and New Guinea
Authors: McNiven Ian J. , David Bruno
Published: December 2022

Australia and New Guinea are two of the largest islands in the world, but during the last glacial cycle when sea levels were lower and the continental shelf was exposed, they combined to form Sahul, then the largest island in the world. This chapter introduces how this Handbook approaches the archaeology of Australia, New Guinea, and the islands in-between: the conceptual framework that underpins its structure, and the topics covered. The archaeological histories of Australia and New Guinea prior to European colonial encounters of the past 500 years is singularly Indigenous and can be traced back archaeologically for at least 65,000 years. To showcase the range of archaeological approaches of the extraordinary cultural and environmental diversity and complexity that characterise the Indigenous histories of Australia and New Guinea, we have divided the Handbook into eight major thematic sections comprising 41 chapters. These chapters review and showcase the social dynamics and processes, and cultural responses to long-term and short-term environmental changes, that shaped the Indigenous histories of both regions.
Globalization and the Hip Hop Dance Cipher
Authors: Osumare Halifu , Ofosu Terry Bright Kweku
Published: December 2022

Hip hop dance was the first of the culture’s elements around the globe, becoming a complex bodily text. We investigate the internationalization of Hip Hop dance in Hawai‘i and Ghana, with the cipher as a site for reinforcing and subverting local traditions and social orders. “Performance” is the transference of accepted American Hip Hop dance lexicons, while “performativity” encompasses local indigenous styles. The two mingle and transform during improvisation within the cipher, creating an Intercultural Body. Hawai‘i dance clubs offer a variety of styles from freestyle “house” to traditional breaking, reflecting the multicultural Asian-Polynesian mix of the islands. Ghanaian dance ciphers deconstruct the social complexities of a poor African country, while reinforcing traditional war dance elements of several ethnic groups. The global Hip Hop dance cipher is a microcosm of international forces, as US Hip Hop is exported and local sites grapple with imitation and adaptation to create their own reinscribed frameworks and meanings.
Streetdance and Black Aesthetics
Authors: Macalalad Bragin Naomi
Published: December 2022

The contemporary global hyperconsumption of Hip Hop dance—spanning Hollywood, TV and film, international competition circuits, dance festivals, commercial industry studios, and social media—emphasizes high-intensity, choreocentric group routines and rapid-fire replication of steps. Yet cultural practitioners relate Hip Hop dance historically to a network of streetdances—cultural practices based in black social life that undo the Western neoliberal dance industry’s prevailing hierarchy of choreography over improvisation. Streetdance practitioners incorporate choreographic structures within improvisational practices of rhythm-making like bouncing and grooving, which provide alternatives to a Eurocentric construct of linear time. This chapter draws on the embodied and verbal discourse of streetdancers who teach in studios, as they navigate logics of studio dance technique to translate the “street.” I attend to little pedagogical moments when black aesthetic activity surfaces in the context of studio teaching, considering how streetdancers use these moments to shape ethical relationships of cultural exchange. Black aesthetics call for different investments of practitioners to actively refuse the global extraction, objectification, and commodification of streetdance.
Kung Fu Fandom
Authors: Pellerin Eric
Published: December 2022

This chapter suggests that kung fu films should be examined as a “body genre.” Positioning kung fu films as a body genre promoting visceral responses starts to explain how these films had such a dramatic impact on audiences, and subsequently led to the genre’s memorable fandom in b-boy culture. The chapter shows that kung fu films should be added to the cinematic aesthetics of breaking battles and choreographed routines in New York City. By foregrounding how the films were distributed and exhibited, the chapter demonstrates how a film’s context shapes its reception. It also offers insights into how these films informed the lives and dance practices of some New York City b-boys, and situates a meeting between a legend of Hip Hop culture and a kung fu film star in Hong Kong.
Jean-Louis Florentz and Spectralism
Authors: Sholl Robert
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines the French composer Jean-Louis Florentz’s (1947–2004) engagement with spectralism and it identifies various spectral processes and types of spectral material present in his music. Using unpublished material and radio interviews, it examines Florentz’s inspiration in the natural world (especially birdsong), the relationship between his voyages, and his music. It reveals that his sense of the sacred, the role of the composer, his restless searching throughout the world for the experience of alterity, enabled the creation of a spectral music that was an offering, a form of meditation, of testament, and of praise. It shows how Florentz translated ethnographical sources, especially Ethiopian liturgical chant, through mode, and it differentiates his work from that of Olivier Messiaen. Florentz extended Messiaen’s apocalyptic language of revelation and the communication of his own faith through the spectral resources of the organ and through his thinking about musical materiality to figure his particular vision of religious thought. This chapter understands Florentz’s spectral thought as manifestations of beauty and mysticism, and of alterity and the liminal that are empowered through his use of spectralism.
Dark Tourism as History
Authors: Seaton Tony
Published: December 2022

Dark tourism or, thanatourism, a term used as an encyclopaedic alternative (Jafari 1996, 578)1, only emerged as a collective area of named study in the last decade of the twentieth century. Both terms had their origins in the recognition of the long history and widespread occurrence of traveling encounters with different kinds of engineered and orchestrated remembrance of the dead. Many may have originally been an accidental or incidental by-product of travel, but increasingly they became deliberate goals of different kinds of pilgrimage, the most important being religious, but others being more secular (e.g. visiting the graves of writers, historic battlefields). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these occasional, sepulchral encounters were increasingly transformed into purposeful, mass tourism practices, induced by new ideologies of an evolving, European modernity, among them: antiquarianism, Romanticism, the gothic and patriotic displays of national pageantry and imperial display. Dark tourism’s identifying activity, visitation to commemorative sites, inherently makes it a travel form likely to feature more frequently in debates around “the politics of remembrance,” an expanding multi-cultural domain about the continuing status of historical events and figures. The chapter finishes with an illustrative, case history exemplifying some of the main issues in remembrance and remembrancing, in the context of a recent addition to dark tourism repertoires—the visitation of flooded villages as industrial disaster sites.
Old and New Trial Designs
Authors: Weijer Charles , Hey Spencer Phillips
Published: December 2022

Informed consent and equipoise are key components in the ethical analysis of clinical trials. However, these concepts were developed during a time when “clinical trial” primarily referred to an individually randomized controlled trial. In the twenty-first century, there has been considerable innovation in trial design. Cluster randomized trials, biomarker-stratified or enrichment trials, and multi-arm platform trials are increasingly used. In this chapter, the authors show how each of these innovative designs raises new challenges for understanding and operationalizing ethical judgments regarding consent and equipoise. The features of innovative designs that drive the need for ethical concepts to evolve and adapt differ. In cluster randomized trials, the need to adapt is driven by the broader scope of such trials in terms of interventions and participants; in biomarker-stratified and enrichment designs, it is the complexity of the scientific hypothesis; and in multi-arm platform designs, it is the evolving set of interventions. Despite the sometimes quite dramatic changes to the structure and hypotheses of randomized controlled trials, the ethical concepts of equipoise and consent remain relevant for all randomized controlled trials.
Trade Law in Europe
Authors: Hestermeyer Holger P.
Published: December 2022

The European Union is one of the three largest actors in world trade and one of the world’s most influential regulators. This chapter gives an overview over the European Union’s rules for intra-EU trade, describing the EU customs union and its internal market including the ‘four freedoms’ as well as other EU treaty provisions on the internal market and legislative measures taken to further strengthen the market. It then proceeds to explain the European Union’s external trade policy. Finally, the chapter explains how the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union and the consequences of this process with regard to both EU-UK trade and UK trade with other states. For readers who are not familiar with the European Union and EU law, the chapter begins with an overview of the EU legal order. Readers familiar with EU law are invited to skip this section.
Eurasian Economic Union and Trade and Investment Liberalization
Authors: Trunk-Fedorova Marina
Published: December 2022

The Eurasian Economic Union is an organization of regional economic integration—a customs union created in line with WTO rules. It maintains, inter alia, a common customs policy and the Eurasian Single Customs Tariff. Although the EAEU is not a WTO Member, a number of its measures have been challenged at the WTO against individual EAEU Member States. The EAEU Treaty provides for the creation of an economic space with free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. It also contains a chapter on investment regulation in the EAEU, which is formulated as a regional agreement on protection of foreign investments.
Trade in Agriculture
Authors: Smith Fiona
Published: December 2022

This chapter reflects on what effects regional trade agreements have on international agricultural trade regulation. It questions the established view that regional trade agreements indicate the further fragmentation of international trade law, and instead proposes a new theoretical perspective grounded on the notion of trade rules’ stability. Focusing on stability reveals new perspectives about how international agricultural trade rules function and why formal regulation seems unable to resolve ongoing political disagreements about the relationship between trade and non-trade values at the WTO. Questions about rules’ stability are not unique to international agricultural trade law and can be extended to reveal new challenges in all areas of international economic law.
Trade Remedies in International Trade
Authors: Perezcano Díaz Hugo
Published: December 2022

Antidumping duties, countervailing duties, and safeguards are trade remedies allowing a country to protect its domestic industry from import competition. Some view them as barriers to trade; others as safety nets that allow States to more confidently agree to greater liberalization. Dumping is defined as the introduction of a product into the commerce of another country at is less than its normal value. The antidumping system is ultimately about price comparability to determine if there is price discrimination. In contrast, subsidies are used to pursue wide-ranging governmental objectives. A subsidy involves the transfer of an economic benefit by government to the recipient’s advantage. Safeguards are measures that temporarily restrict imports that, as a result of unforeseen developments and trade liberalization, are causing or threatening to cause serious injury to domestic producers of like or directly competitive products. Their purpose is to offer protection from import competition so that the domestic industry can make the necessary adjustments that will allow it to compete. Despite their economic inefficiencies, trade remedies play an important role in the world trading system, and will likely do so into the future. That is not to say, however, that the world should be complacent. Trade remedies are not a cure for all trade ailments. They are intended to remedy very particular situations and should be used accordingly. The sheer number of cases involving trade remedies indicates that they have not been. Efforts to progressively discipline them should continue.
Balancing Market and Non-Market Objectives
Authors: Watal Jayashree
Published: December 2022

Lack of access to medicines could be either because they are not available or because even when available, they are not affordable to most patients in a country as the prices are disproportionately high compared to average income levels in the country. The focus of the criticism of the current pharmaceutical innovation model is the alleged use (or misuse) of the intellectual property system that allows the originator to control both the availability and affordability of essential medicines during the patent or market exclusivity term. However, patents are found to be uniquely important to capture profits from innovation in the chemicals and pharmaceutical sectors. In an attempt to balance market and public health objectives, the WTO TRIPS Agreement obliges the acceptance of product and process patents for pharmaceuticals while permitting several solutions, such as compulsory licensing or parallel imports, to attenuate problems of availability and affordability. These TRIPS solutions were the result of hard-fought North-South negotiating battles during the Uruguay Round and have been reiterated in 2001 through the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health. A new TRIPS provision, Article 31bis, permits 100 per cent exports of pharmaceutical production under special compulsory licences to countries that have no manufacturing capacity. Perceived gaps in the TRIPS text are sought to be filled in by the demandeurs for stronger intellectual property protection through provisions in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), on test-data protection, patent-term extension and patent linkage, among others. Properly balancing market and public health objectives may entail an international agreement in future to encourage differential pricing of patented medicines that would ensure affordable prices in all countries.
Privacy and Data Protection
Authors: Burri Mira
Published: December 2022

Against the background of the centrality of data for contemporary economies, the chapter contributes to a better understanding and contextualization of data protection and its interfaces with global trade law. It looks at existing international, transnational, and selected national frameworks for privacy protection and briefly sketches their evolution. The chapter then explores the application of the WTO rules, which admittedly are in a pre-Internet state, to situations where privacy concerns are affected. Subsequently, the data-related frameworks of FTAs, where most of the new rule-making occurs, are explored. The chapter concludes with an appraisal of the state of affairs and an outlook on the linkages between trade law and data protection in the digital economy.
The Development of the Regulation of International Trade
Authors: McRae Donald
Published: December 2022

International trade regulation based on agreement and the MFN principle has developed from bilateral FCN agreements to a multilateral arrangement under the GATT with diverse ancillary decisions, understandings, and agreements, to its modern form of comprehensive multilateral agreement under the WTO. A critical part of trade regulation has been the role of dispute settlement where under the WTO the Appellate Body became the authoritative decision-maker on the scope or ambit of the obligations under the WTO agreements. However, since the WTO, preferential trade agreements have proliferated at the bilateral, regional, and plurilateral levels, often deepening the areas of obligation from those under the WTO or expanding to new areas not covered by the WTO agreements. Most recently, this has taken the form of a mega-regional arrangement, the TPP, transformed into the CPTPP, characterized by the number of parties and the size of markets and coverage of areas not found in the WTO or other trade agreements, and without a constitutional role being granted to dispute settlement. The future of international trade regulation, given the present economic and political conditions, is uncertain. The comprehensiveness of mega-regulation is a model, but a reinvigoration of the WTO is unlikely. Retrenchment to traditional bilateral or small-scale regional forms of regulation of much narrower scope cannot be ruled out.
Fisheries
Authors: Young Margaret A.
Published: December 2022

Fisheries policy provides fundamental insights for trade lawyers. The scholar and practitioner of international trade law learns from a study of the utilization and trade of marine living resources about common dilemmas: the pressure that trade places on the sustainability of production; the constraints on consumers seeking to discriminate on the basis of ethical sensibilities; the difficulties of norms and institutions interacting with other regimes of international law; and the complexity of overlapping regional and multilateral trade governance, comprising World Trade Organization and regional trade agreements. The COVID19 pandemic adds further challenges. This chapter investigates the dilemmas in three dominant areas: (i) the negotiation of new trade rules, particularly within subsidy disciplines; (ii) the implementation of trade measures on fisheries, such as import bans for fish implicated in ‘illegal, unreported and unregulated’ (IUU) fishing; and (iii) the settlement of trade disputes. Drawing on treaties, case-law and institutional developments, this chapter assesses global and regional regulation of fish production and consumption, including new developments in the blue economy, and provides insight into the role of trade law in modern international governance.
Institutions
Authors: Unterhalter David , Schneidereit Erika
Published: December 2022

This chapter discusses the dispute settlement system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and dispute settlement under regional and bilateral trade agreements. The WTO dispute settlement system evolved from a system predicated upon consent under the GATT 1947 into a system of compulsory and contentious jurisdiction that results in the adoption of binding resolutions to the disputes of members. The distinctive institutions, principles, rules and practices that comprise this system are given treatment in this chapter. Some emphasis is given to the Appellate Body, the institution born of the Uruguay Round, that was intended to lend stability and certainty to the system. The Appellate Body has attracted praise and criticism. Its principal critic, the United States, has rendered the Appellate Body currently inoperative. The chapter considers these issues and whether the system might be reformed so as to secure its continuation. Finally, the chapter discusses the expansion of bilateral and regional trade agreements, their dispute settlement provisions, and their cohabitation with WTO dispute settlement.
Remedies and Compliance
Authors: Vidigal Geraldo
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines the remedies that prevail in international trade adjudication, often known as ‘prospective’, ‘forward-looking’ or ‘compliance-oriented’. These terms are justified by the lack of awards for reparation for injury in this field, where remedies have evolved to focus not on past injury but on re-establishing conduct that complies with substantive obligations. The primary remedy available to trade adjudicators is an impartial determination of breach, coupled with an instruction for its cessation. These primary remedies are usually accompanied by the possibility of follow-up adjudication on compliance with them, and potentially by the threat of an authorization of retaliation in case of non-cessation of the violation. The authorization to apply regulated retaliation may be considered as a remedy in its own right, available in case the primary remedies prove insufficient to induce compliance. However, authorized retaliation should not be confused with awards for damages or analysed as a functional equivalent to monetary compensation. The practice shows that complainants in trade disputes do not request adjudication seeking retaliation and seldom implement it when authorized to do so. The right to retaliate is not perceived as a benefit in itself, but as an instrument whose threat can be used to induce performance of obligations or a settlement satisfactory to the complainant.
Stakeholders in International Trade Law Dispute Settlement
Authors: Friedbacher Todd , Connolly Katherine
Published: December 2022

This chapter identifies the range of stakeholders in international trade dispute settlement. The community of stakeholders is diverse, and begins with Member states, which have standing to bring disputes, participate in disputes as third parties, and (in the WTO) are the ultimate source of legal authority in the dispute settlement system, through their participation in the Dispute Settlement Body. Industries are the actors who actually engage in trade across borders; they cannot initiate disputes, or participate directly, but their knowledge of how the substantive rules work ‘on the ground’ makes their involvement and cooperation key to a successful dispute, and to making the most out of Members’ legal rights and obligations. Adjudicators are the ‘deciders’, whose independence and impartiality are of fundamental importance to the legitimacy of any dispute settlement system. Accountability of the adjudicators is paramount, and they must both be, and appear to be, independent and impartial in their decision-making. The WTO Secretariat is an important source of institutional support and consistency over time, although also a source of controversy over the appropriate boundaries of its role vis-à-vis the adjudicators. Finally, experts are an often overlooked stakeholder, but increasingly crucial as disputes grow more complex, technical and scientific. Each stakeholder participates in dispute settlement in a different way, for different reasons, and each makes its own contribution to the effective functioning of the various systems.
Alternative Dispute Settlement in the GATT and the WTO
Authors: Porges Amy
Published: December 2022

Governments have settled disputes in the GATT/WTO system not just through formal panel procedures and negotiation, but also through arbitration, mediation, conciliation, good offices, and other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. Trade disputes typically begin in negotiation, and it is negotiation that determines post-litigation outcomes. Parties may seek mediation or other ADR as a substitute or addition to WTO litigation, and they may also use party-controlled arbitration. This chapter provides a history of WTO/GATT ADR and discusses possible use of WTO arbitration in the proposed Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) or otherwise.
The Influence of International Trade Law on International Law
Authors: Crawford James , Baetens Freya
Published: December 2022

Numerous commentators have lauded international trade law, and the WTO dispute resolution mechanism in particular, as vehicles for change in international law more generally. In the sense that new rules of international trade law enhance international law, by creating new rights and obligations for the States parties to trade agreements, it is true that international trade law develops international law generally. In preparing the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts for example, the International Law Commission (ILC) had frequent regard to international trade law and the WTO. However, the influence of international trade law remains curtailed within the wider field of international law, outside the realm of WTO adjudication. Such influence in non-trade areas has been restricted for reasons such as its jurisdictional separateness, its limited relevance as part of the applicable law or even source of interpretation (due to the distinct or ‘sui generis’ character of trade law) and the informal hierarchy of international norms. But, there is room for non-trade-related areas of international law, and associated dispute resolution institutions, to learn from international trade law and in particular from the WTO as an institution.
North American Trade
Authors: Brookfield Robert , Di Pierdomenico Lori
Published: December 2022

On 16 August 2017, Canada, the United States, and Mexico officially launched the ‘re-negotiation’ of the NAFTA, which up until that point had presided over nearly a quarter century of North American trade. US President Trump made it clear that unless drastic changes were made to it, the US would withdraw from the NAFTA. In some respects, it had become clear that an agreement first implemented during the pre-digitalized age, and well-before issues like environment and labour standards were comprehensively addressed within FTAs, was badly in need of changes and modernization. Given its dissatisfaction with the agreement and other issues, the United States was engaging in the politics of breakdown in the rule of law to force change. Once the dust had settled and the new agreement in place, however, it was remarkable in that despite the ringing criticisms, it was clear the NAFTA was mostly left in place, but with a few key improvements, updates, and additions to signal a revised commitment of the Parties to North American trade.
Managing Creativity under Uncertainty
Authors: Zhou Jing
Published: December 2022

Uncertainty permeates the creative process. Managing creativity under uncertainty hence is a fundamental topic for research and management practice. Little prior work has provided a focused and holistic analysis on how uncertainty is related to various aspects of the creative process. In this chapter, the author discusses three aspects of the relation between uncertainty and creativity: uncertainty as an opportunity for creativity, uncertainty in the creative process, and uncertainty in creativity evaluation. The author reviews previous studies in the creativity literature that suggest how to deal with uncertainty in each of these three aspects and evaluates extant work. This review and appraisal underscore the need for greater attention on the role of uncertainty in the creative process than what has been done to date, and suggest exciting directions for future theoretical development and empirical investigation. Overall, the review and discussion provide implications not only for future research but also for management practice.
Samuel Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Anxieties of the American Middlebrow
Authors: Dupuis Jacques
Published: December 2022

This chapter examines Samuel Barber’s diminutive 1959 opera, A Hand of Bridge, as a case study of American operatic representations of the midcentury middlebrow. The piece’s status as an outlier in Barber’s oeuvre serves as the entry point for a close reading of the opera as an intentioned critique of mid-twentieth-century American culture and, more specifically, middlebrow intellectualism. To shed light on the opera’s particular musical style and au courant topicality, frameworks underpinning Weimar Era Zeitoper are applied to A Hand of Bridge and comparisons are drawn to other American operas that address similar themes. The chapter concludes by considering broader cultural trends of American midcentury anxiety relevant to the opera.
Race, Racism, and Well-Being Impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia
Authors: Brinckley Makayla-May , Lovett Raymond
Published: December 2022

Race has been (re)constructed over time by those in power to oppress and regulate the lives of Indigenous Peoples and people of color. In settler-colonial states like Australia, race is weaponized to justify settler-colonial violence and to control Indigenous lives. The Indigenous Peoples of Australia have been racialized since first contact, which has resulted in racism and oppression, with present-day implications for health and well-being. To examine the health and well-being impacts of racism exposure, this chapter uses self-report exposure to interpersonal racism and health and well-being outcomes data from Mayi Kuwayu: The National Study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wellbeing, an Indigenous designed, led, and governed Australian cohort study. The analysis shows that experiencing interpersonal racism has a range of negative consequences on health and well-being. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People exposed to any level of interpersonal racism have poorer general health and mental health outcomes. Additionally, experiencing any level of interpersonal racism is linked to lower levels of cultural participation. Understanding the history of race and the impacts that racism has on health and well-being is necessary to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
Gender and Agency in Digital Religion
Authors: Lövheim Mia
Published: December 2022

Gender has become a prominent theme in research on digital religion, as part of a focus on the particular social, cultural, and embodied context. The most salient issue has been women’s religious agency, in particular within certain gender-traditional communities. The chapter presents three themes emerging in research on gender and digital religion since the year 2000 and discusses how these connect to current approaches to women’s agency within religious studies. The first theme focuses on how digital media enhances women’s agency through expressing religious experiences and connecting to a larger public. The second theme concerns uses of digital media to handle tensions between gender-traditional norms in religious communities, and ideals of gender equality and women’s independence in the wider society. The third theme bring out how digital technology enhances but also challenges women’s agency in new ways. The chapter ends with highlighting critical issues on agency within the area of digital religion that should be attended to in future studies.
Mediatization and Religious Authority in Scandinavia
Authors: Christensen Henrik Reintoft
Published: December 2022

This chapter presents the Scandinavian context and the theory of mediatization arguing that it is a relevant perspective for understanding religion and media in Scandinavia and similar societies. The Scandinavian countries used to be members of a group of countries in which state, nation, ethnicity, language, and religion overlapped almost perfectly. Among the more recent sources of this homogeneity were the national churches and media institutions. This background is important for understanding the theory of the mediatization of religion. However, parts of the mediatization theory are based on theories from classical modernity especially with regard to the diagnosis of society and authority. From a society of singularities perspective, this chapter shows how a late modern approach can be integrated with the theory of mediatization.
Considering Religious Education and Online Pedagogy
Authors: Callaway Kutter , Lister Tommy , Wells Sara
Published: December 2022

This chapter contends that online pedagogies in the context of Christian theological higher education are most effective when they not only draw upon the best pedagogical theories for online teaching and learning but also when they embody and perform the distinctives of the particular theological tradition into which they are forming students. It begins with an overview of the current state of research taking place in the domain of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). It then considers the important discourse surrounding educational psychology. The chapter then shifts to focus on spiritual formation as a learning outcome that is perhaps unique to religious higher education, which indicates that the best online pedagogies are always already formative, even if they are not explicitly religious. Finally, it concludes by considering how this area of research is related to and can be seen as situated within the area of digital religion studies.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Garfinkel Ben
Published: December 2022

This chapter argues that artificial intelligence is beginning to emerge as a general purpose technology. Exploring historical examples of general purpose technologies, such as electricity and the digital computer, could help us to anticipate and think clearly about its future impact. One lesson from history is that general purpose technologies typically lead to broad economic, military, and political transformations. Another lesson is that these transformations typically unfold very gradually, and in a staggered fashion, due to various frictions and barriers to impact. This chapter goes on to argue that artificial intelligence could also constitute a revolutionary technology. If it ultimately supplants human labor in most domains, then it would likely catalyze a period of unusually profound change. The closest analogues to this period in world history would be the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.
Challenges to Higher Education in Africa and the Decolonized “Academia We Want”
Authors: Scherer Christine
Published: December 2022

This chapter focuses on higher education in Africa. Against the backdrop of Africa’s colonial and postcolonial legacies, it discusses how decolonial discursive approaches to epistemological diversity are becoming increasingly important within and beyond the continent. The chapter presents a typology of the pertinent literature on and about the future design of higher education, with a particular emphasis on research with African authorship. By considering the systemic relational dependencies in the global higher-education context, it examines the narrative of marginality of African higher education. The question is: What can be demanded from higher education in Africa for future generations? The chapter concludes by describing why modes of “doing” science can be challenged from the Global South, and how Africa can offer new impulses toward, not only a continental Agenda 2063 in preparation of the “Africa We Want”, but for an academia Africa wants.
Structures and Agents of Mission
Authors: Goheen Michael W.
Published: December 2022

The changing view of mission in the past half-century raises new questions about the agents and structures of mission. In the colonial paradigm issues of agency centered on the role of missionary societies and Western missionaries, and their relationship to the Western and non-Western church. Today, the discussion has shifted to a new understanding of mission that sees the church as missionary by its very nature as it participates in the narrative of God’s mission. This shift means that the primary agents of mission are local congregations and the laity. A need for cross-cultural missionaries remains, but a global church and new initiatives reframe issues of agency. These changes in agency demand a rethinking of structures for mission—congregational, ecumenical, and missionary. This remains an unfinished agenda. This chapter addresses these questions within the context of historical and theological reflection on mission today within the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions.
Proselytism in Christian Churches
Authors: Robert Marie-Hélène
Published: December 2022

In Europe, and particularly in France, the word proselytism sometimes evokes suspicion, sometimes praise. Among the historic churches proselytism tends to be synonymous with infringement of freedom, while in Pentecostal and Evangelical circles it often means a positive missionary zeal, both outside and inside the churches. But behind the word itself, rivalry among Christians can awaken missionary zeal in faith communities and prompt them to analyze their missionary tactic according to the spirit and the methods of the Gospel. Many ecumenical dialogues call for an ethical and evangelical position: methods must respect individual consciences and stories; churches must try to foster positive relationships with each other and try to work together more closely. A witness that has lost the urgency of spreading the Gospel is one only in name; an evangelization that bypasses a common witness produces scandal and is thereby impoverished.
Mission and Healing
Authors: Lakawa Septemmy Eucharistia , Fitchett-Climenhaga Alison
Published: December 2022

Trauma challenges Christian approaches to suffering and healing, for the unnarratability and the unspeakability of trauma fundamentally disrupt our understanding of witness and its relationship with healing. Although missiological reflection on healing and reconciliation has not adequately grappled with trauma’s implications for the theology and practice of mission, historical examples of women’s healing mission practice show the capacity for trauma healing embedded in the Christian tradition and afford resources for developing a trauma-centered account of healing mission for the twenty-first century. Reading the story of the hemorrhaging woman (Mark 5:25–34) from a trauma-centered perspective alongside case studies from Indonesia reveals healing as an ongoing, multidimensional process known and witnessed through embodied experience. The chapter proposes an aftermath model of mission centered on “poetic witnessing” as a model of healing mission capable of addressing trauma’s physical, psychological, social, and spiritual effects.
Christian Mission in World History
Authors: Jalagin Seija
Published: December 2022

This chapter discusses the role of Christian mission in global history from the seventeenth to the late twentieth century. Catholic and Protestant missions are addressed as transnational religion on the move, which have for the most part remained in the margins of world and global history studies as well as of mainstream church histories. Closer attention is paid to Eurocentrism and missions—recognizing the connections and effects that went beyond the intentions and domination of foreign missionaries and their Western supporters—as well as to imperialism, colonialism, and modernization, highlighting how missions paved the way for secular internationalism and transnationalism. The chapter suggests that more research is needed on local variations of missionary influence, particularly from a gender perspective. More intensive cooperation between researchers with different regional backgrounds, crossing the North/South and Western/non-Western divisions, would benefit the study of how local and global were mutually constitutive in mission history.