bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What is the evidence for potential health impacts from wind power?
Authors: Carey Marion
Published: August 2017

Wind power is a major renewable energy source without most of the environmental pollution associated with the fossil fuel industries. It therefore has great potential to protect and improve health through reducing ambient air pollution, maintaining healthy ecosystems and reducing the risks of climate change. Climate change is in itself a major threat to human health, so a rapid transition to renewable energy is vital. In recent years in Australia, however, anti-wind groups have claimed that wind turbines can cause a wide array of health impacts including ‘wind turbine syndrome’. These claims and anecdotal reports are commonly found on internet searches and reported in the media. The focus of these claims has been primarily on suggested impacts from low frequency sound, particularly infrasound1. The issue has become highly politicised, so separating out the facts from the hyperbole can be difficult. Despite arguments being played out in the media and in the courts, and an Australian Senate Inquiry, there is a paucity of high quality research in the peer-reviewed literature directly on the health impacts of wind turbines. Nevertheless, there is some published evidence, primarily relating to perception and impacts of noise, and what relevant scientific evidence exists has been extensively reviewed. Over a dozen reviews of the literature have been undertaken over the last decade internationally,3 and in Australia a review has been undertaken by both the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Victorian Department of Health.
Coal and health in Australia
Authors: Selvey Linda
Published: August 2017

It is worth remembering that perhaps the biggest health impact of mining and burning coal today is the impact on our climate due to the CO2 that will be released from coal combustion. At Copenhagen in December 2009, world leaders agreed on a target of 2°C warming. At current global emissions we are way off that target, and are set for at least 4°C warming by 2100. If we are going to meet the 2°C degree target, then the world can only emit 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2000 and 2050. In the first 13 years of the century, we’ve already burned 40% of that. If we were to mine and then burn Australia’s known coal reserves, on their own, would use up one-twelfth of the remaining global carbon budget. Whether we burn our coal here or sell it to China, it’s all the same to the atmosphere
Coupling between
d
-3-phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase and
d
-2-hydroxyglutarate dehydrogenase drives bacterial
l
-serine synthesis
Authors: Zhang Wen , Zhang Manman , Gao Chao , Zhang Yipeng , Ge Yongsheng , Guo Shiting , Guo Xiaoting , Zhou Zikang , Liu Qiuyuan , Zhang Yingxin , Ma Cuiqing , Tao Fei , Xu Ping
Published: August 2017

Significance

d
-3-Phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase (SerA) is a key enzyme in
l
-serine biosynthesis. It couples the dehydrogenation of
d
-3-phosphoglycerate to 3-phosphohydroxypyruvate and the reduction of 2-ketoglutarate to
d
-2-hydroxyglutarate (
d
-2-HG). This provides an example of how nonenergetically favorable and energetically favorable reactions are linked together to allow metabolic processes to proceed.
d
-2-HG is often considered as an abnormal metabolite produced by several enzymes with “promiscuous” activities. Our findings offer insights into how an enzymatic reaction that was considered promiscuous or accidental plays a key role in metabolism. We have identified a bacterial
d
-2-hydroxyglutarate dehydrogenase (D2HGDH), which converts
d
-2-HG produced during
l
-serine biosynthesis back to 2-ketoglutarate.
d
-2-HG is a normal metabolite that is simultaneously produced and catabolized without accumulation in bacterial metabolism.
Dynamic connectivity modulates local activity in the core regions of the default-mode network
Authors: Tang Wei , Liu Hesheng , Douw Linda , Kramer Mark A. , Eden Uri T. , Hämäläinen Matti S. , Stufflebeam Steven M.
Published: August 2017

Significance

When a person is at wakeful rest, not paying particular attention to the environment, his/her brain activity will not drift into random noise. Instead, it maintains robust dynamical structures to support ongoing cognition. Previous studies on the resting state have focused on either connectivity features across brain regions or local activity features within regions. Here, we show that the interactions between regions are dynamic and covary with local activity. This covariation provides insights into the neural underpinnings of ongoing cognition that is driven by the brain’s intrinsic network interactions.
Structures of phlebovirus glycoprotein Gn and identification of a neutralizing antibody epitope
Authors: Wu Yan , Zhu Yaohua , Gao Feng , Jiao Yongjun , Oladejo Babayemi O. , Chai Yan , Bi Yuhai , Lu Shan , Dong Mengqiu , Zhang Chang , Huang Guangmei , Wong Gary , Li Na , Zhang Yanfang , Li Yan , Feng Wen-hai , Shi Yi , Liang Mifang , Zhang Rongguang , Qi Jianxun , Gao George F.
Published: August 2017

Significance

Bunyaviruses are emerging zoonotic pathogens of public-health concern. Lack of structures for proteins on the viral membrane (“envelope”) surface limits understanding of entry. We describe atomic-level structures for the globular “head” of the envelope protein, glycoprotein N (Gn), from two members, severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) and Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV), of
Phleboviruses
genus in the bunyavirus family, and a structure of the SFTSV Gn bound with a neutralizing antibody Fab. The results show the folded Gn structure and define virus-specific neutralizing-antibody binding sites. Biochemical assays suggest that dimerization, mediated by conserved cysteines in the region (“stem”) connecting the Gn head with the transmembrane domain, is a general feature of bunyavirus envelope proteins and that the dimer is probably the olimeric form on the viral surface.
Human genetic variation in
VAC14
regulates
Salmonella
invasion and typhoid fever through modulation of cholesterol
Authors: Alvarez Monica I. , Glover Luke C. , Luo Peter , Wang Liuyang , Theusch Elizabeth , Oehlers Stefan H. , Walton Eric M. , Tram Trinh Thi Bich , Kuang Yu-Lin , Rotter Jerome I. , McClean Colleen M. , Chinh Nguyen Tran , Medina Marisa W. , Tobin David M. , Dunstan Sarah J. , Ko Dennis C.
Published: August 2017

Significance

Salmonella enterica
serovar Typhi (
S
. Typhi) causes ∼20 million cases of typhoid fever every year. We carried out a genome-wide association study to identify genetic differences that correlate with the susceptibility of cells from hundreds of individuals to
S
. Typhi invasion. A SNP in
VAC14
was associated with susceptibility to
S
. Typhi invasion and
VAC14
expression. Cells mutated for
VAC14
displayed increased
S
. Typhi docking due to increased plasma membrane cholesterol levels. The same SNP was associated with risk of typhoid fever in a Vietnamese population. Furthermore, treating zebrafish with a cholesterol-lowering drug reduced their susceptibility to
S
. Typhi infection. Therefore, this work demonstrates the power of coupling multiple genetic association studies with mechanistic dissection for understanding infectious disease susceptibility.
Indoles from commensal bacteria extend healthspan
Authors: Sonowal Robert , Swimm Alyson , Sahoo Anusmita , Luo Liping , Matsunaga Yohei , Wu Ziqi , Bhingarde Jui A. , Ejzak Elizabeth A. , Ranawade Ayush , Qadota Hiroshi , Powell Domonica N. , Capaldo Christopher T. , Flacker Jonathan M. , Jones Rhienallt M. , Benian Guy M. , Kalman Daniel
Published: August 2017

Significance

Increases in human life expectancy over the next century will be accompanied by increased frailty and massive and unsustainable health care costs. Developing means to extend the time that individuals remain healthy and free of age-related infirmities, called healthspan, has therefore become a critical goal of aging research. We show that small molecules produced by the microbiota and related to indole extend healthspan in geriatric worms, flies, and mice, without attendant effects on lifespan. Indoles act via the aryl hydrocarbon receptor and cause animals to retain a youthful gene expression profile. Indoles may represent a new class of therapeutics that improve the way we age as opposed to simply extending how long we live.
Redox properties of birnessite from a defect perspective
Authors: Peng Haowei , McKendry Ian G. , Ding Ran , Thenuwara Akila C. , Kang Qing , Shumlas Samantha L. , Strongin Daniel R. , Zdilla Michael J. , Perdew John P.
Published: August 2017

Significance

We propose, and preliminarily confirm with experiments, a theoretical model to understand various structure–performance dependences of layered-structure birnessite as an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalyst. Besides the well-accepted importance of Mn(III), we emphasize the critical importance of a nonuniform distribution of Mn(III) to OER catalytic activity. Such a distribution contributes to the reduction of the overpotential by building an internal potential step. We further propose the small polaron as a common concept to link the fields of oxygen evolution catalysis and Li-ion batteries, suggesting a promising candidate space for oxygen evolution reaction catalysts.
Parity-dependent hairpin configurations of repetitive DNA sequence promote slippage associated with DNA expansion
Authors: Huang Tze-Yun , Chang Chung-ke , Kao Ya-Fen , Chin Chih-Hao , Ni Cheng-Wei , Hsu Hao-Yi , Hu Nien-Jen , Hsieh Li-Ching , Chou Shan-Ho , Lee I-Ren , Hou Ming-Hon
Published: August 2017

Significance

We found that TGGAA DNA repeats, which are involved in the neurological disease spinocerebellar ataxia 31, are capable of assuming two different hairpin structures depending on repeat number parity. We determined the interconversion kinetics by single-molecule spectroscopy and probed the interconversion mechanism through elucidation of the TGGAA repeat stem structure. Our results suggest that the two hairpin structures interconvert through motion slippage, and the process can be explained by the overall stem stability and local destabilization of the kinked GGA motif. Divalent cations and stem length affected the equilibrium and kinetics of slippage. Our findings suggest a mechanism by which a binary dynamic property of DNA repeats may affect repeat expansion and may be applicable to other repetitive DNA systems.
Paradoxical enhancement of chemoreceptor detection sensitivity by a sensory adaptation enzyme
Authors: Lai Run-Zhi , Han Xue-Sheng , Dahlquist Frederick W. , Parkinson John S.
Published: August 2017

Significance

Escherichia coli
cells track chemical gradients with high sensitivity over a wide dynamic range, using a feedback-controlled sensory adaptation system. CheR, a receptor methyltransferase, is a key component of the adaptation system. We discovered that CheR can enhance the response sensitivity of chemoreceptor molecules, a role that opposes the known signaling consequences of its catalytic activity. This enhancement effect requires CheR-receptor binding interactions, but is quantitatively inconsistent with a simple equilibrium binding mechanism. Rather, CheR binding appears to promote a long-lasting conformational or covalent change that enhances the affinity of chemoreceptor molecules for their attractant ligands. The CheR response enhancement effect opens a new window on the functional architecture of chemoreceptor molecules and their interactions with sensory adaptation enzymes.
Moral Theological Analysis of Direct versus Indirect Abortion
Authors: Haas John M.
Published: August 2017

Cases of a vital conflict, where the lives of both the mother and child are at risk during pregnancy, have been the subject of recent vigorous debate. The basic principles put forth in the Ethical and Religious Directives are reviewed, as is the principle of double effect. An illustrative case of severe cardiomyopathy in a pregnant woman is described and it is noted that the principle of double effect would not apply. Counter arguments are noted, focusing on Martin Rhonheimer who posits that in the case of vital conflicts, such as performing a craniotomy on a baby stuck in the birth canal, taking the baby's life does not constitute a direct abortion because moral norms do not apply in the extreme conflict situation where both mother and child will die. He states that the death of the fetus is not intentional in these cases. He overlooks “how the life is being saved” and that a choice has been made, which implies a moral act, not just a physical one. Rhonheimer wants to make his moral judgment solely on the basis of intention, prescinding from what actually occurs in the physical world of cause and effect. This is clearly against the teaching in Evangelium vitae. Ethics deal with the deliberate chosen actions in space and time of embodied human beings; it deals inescapably with material actions, with specifications of intentions. Rhonheimer states, “a killing or an abortion is ‘direct,’ not because the death of the fetus is caused in some physically direct way, but because it is willed as the means to an end.” However the death of the child cannot be excluded from the act and is therefore of necessity included in it. What the acting person chooses includes what happens physically in this act. If the action theory proposed by Rhonheimer is accepted, it could be very difficult to avoid death-dealing actions from taking place in Catholic hospitals.

This is a moral analysis of cases of “vital conflicts,” where the lives of both the mother and child are at risk during a pregnancy. It is stated by some ethicists that directly killing the baby to save the life of the mother is morally justified, even when the direct action of the doctor is to kill the baby. Examples are provided to illustrate how Catholic moral principles apply. It is concluded that direct killing, regardless of the intention, is not justified. The doctor should always work to try and save the lives of both the mother and the child. One should never be directly killed even if the intention is to save the life of the other.
Variation of loganin content in Cornus officinalis fruits at different extraction conditions and maturation stages
Authors: Ahn Jong Hoon , Mo Eun Jin , Jo Yang Hee , Kim Seon Beom , Hwang Bang Yeon , Lee Mi Kyeong
Published: August 2017

Efficient preparation of loganin from Cornus officinalis fruits was investigated. First, effect of extraction conditions on loganin yield was measured. The loganin content in C. officinalis extract was greatly affected by ethanol concentration and extraction time whereas extraction temperature exerted relatively little effect. Response surface methodology with Box–Behnken design suggested optimized extraction condition for maximum loganin yield as ethanol concentration, 32.0%; temperature 46.2 °C and extraction time, 46.7 min, which yielded 10.4 μg loganin/mg dried fruit. Next, the effect of maturation stage of C. officinalis fruits on loganin content was investigated. The loganin content in the extract of C. officinalis fruits was decreased as the maturation process. The loganin content in the unripe fruits was 18.0 μg/mg extract whereas reduced to 13.3 μg/mg extract for ripe fruits. Taken together, our present study suggested the importance of extraction condition and maturation stages for efficient preparation of loganin from C. officinalis fruits.
Report on AFRIMETS supplementary comparison: platinum resistance thermometer and digital thermometer calibrations against ITS-90 over the range -50 °C to 450 °C (AFRIMETS.T-S1)
Authors: Liedberg Hans , Abdelaziz Yasser , Tesfaye Fitsum , Egadwa Wilson , Norranim Uthai , Rwashana Simon , Kagoma Alphonce , Ziagi Adam , Kwong Christian Ng Ha , Madeleine Gilbert
Published: August 2017

A Regional Metrology Organization (RMO) supplementary comparison of platinum resistance thermometer and digital thermometer (AFRIMETS.T-S1) was carried out by the National Metrology Institute of South Africa (NMISA), National Institute for Standards Egypt (NIS), National Metrology Institute of Ethiopia (NMIE), Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), National Institute of Metrology Thailand (NIMT), Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS), Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Mauritius Standards Bureau (MSB) and Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS) between March 2008 and October 2010. The temperature range of the inter comparison is -50 °C to 450 °C. The results of this comparison are reported here, along with descriptions of the Artefacts and devices used during measurement. This report also presents the uncertainty budget. The results are analysed and normalized error (En) values are reported.

Main text

To reach the main text of this paper, click on Final Report. Note that this text is that which appears in Appendix B of the BIPM key comparison database kcdb.bipm.org/.

The final report has been peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the CCT, according to the provisions of the CIPM Mutual Recognition Arrangement (CIPM MRA).
Effects of long-term rainfall decline on the structure and functioning of Hawaiian forests
Authors: Barbosa Jomar M , Asner Gregory P
Published: August 2017

Climate change is altering the dynamics of terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioning of Earth’s biomes and the provisioning of ecosystem services. Changes in forest dynamics due to drought events or short-term drying trends have been described at different ecological scales, but few observational studies have determined the relative effects of short- and long-term precipitation trends (e.g. decade and century, respectively) on forest canopy structure and functioning. Using gridded annual precipitation maps from 1920 to 2012, and temporal data from airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), we present evidence for a large-scale decline in forest canopy volume (area vs. height) and greenness (a metric of photosynthetic function) driven by a long-term drying trend on Hawaii island. Decreases in canopy greenness were observed in step with shorter-term (10 y) precipitation declines, but decreases in greenness were two-fold greater where longer-term (∼100 y) precipitation declines had occurred. Canopy volume mainly reduced where long-term precipitation declines occurred. We conclude that long-term precipitation trends critically impact forest canopy structure and functioning, which likely has cascading consequences for numerous ecological processes such as subcanopy light availability, species interactions, carbon storage, and animal habitat.
Children’s Expressive Handling of Objects in a Shared World
Authors: Andrén Mats
Published: August 2017

Theories of embodied interaction and environmental coupling are now successfully struggling with the slippery notions of mind, matter, and sociality, but more empirical work is required, especially in relation to children. At the heart of the development of sociality is how the handling of objects in parent-child interaction may stand out as having expressive (gestural) qualities over and above their instrumental aspects. What sort of expressive qualities may be found in such actions, and what provides for them? In short, how do they come to mean? Using longitudinal recordings of five Swedish children between 18 and 30 months, the empirical part of this paper identifies microecologies of expression that have their basis in how human bodies handle objects. This accompanies an approach to intersubjectivity—building on the work of Schutz, Mead and Merlau-Ponty—that views it as emergent from embodied interaction.
Challenges of Conducting Interaction with Technologically Mediated Bodies
Authors: Keating Elizabeth
Published: August 2017

Technologically mediated interaction challenges people’s habitual ways of acting interdependently and intercorporeally with others. This chapter discusses strategies observed in two different groups, computer gamers playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), and engineers, as each group collaborates in goal-directed activities where technology significantly alters the reciprocal sharing of body experience. The gamers and engineers are challenged to render their bodies meaningful through interactive digital environments in order to effectively coordinate actions. As bodies are able to be extended through space, the technology which makes this possible also reduces key aspects of visual and sensory fields, including the arrangement of bodies in space and movement. This in turn affects the achievement of focused interaction, the transfer of skills, and the understanding of checks and alignment.
De Aetna in the Context of Quattrocento Venetian Humanism
Authors: Williams Gareth D.
Published: August 2017

After our introduction to Ermolao Barbaro in Chapter 3, the story of his estrangement from Venice is taken up in Chapter 4, but in the context of our larger coverage of the shift that is discernible in Venetian patrician humanism of the late Quattrocento—a shift away from the disciplined devotion to public duty and the common cause that characterizes the distinctly Venetian strain of civic humanism earlier in the century. Whatever the extent to which Barbaro’s estrangement from the Republic may have influenced Pietro’s ambivalence toward the conventional patrician career path, Bembo’s detachment from Venice as portrayed in De Aetna is related in the rest of Chapter 4 to these broader currents in the evolution of Quattrocento Venetian humanism.
The Bembo Collection, and Evocations of Noniano
Authors: Williams Gareth D.
Published: August 2017

Chapter 7 focuses on Pietro Bembo’s renown as a collector of antiquities, books, manuscripts, contemporary art, and scientific instrumentation. De Aetna’s relevance to this topic lies partly in its credentials as a work of naturalist collection in itself, recording the physical and topographical features that Pietro encountered on Etna. The chapter further explores the ways in which, later in his life, De Aetna is nostalgically evoked in the material arts. The main exhibits are the portrait medal Pietro commissioned in the early 1530s from the eminent Valerio Belli, and two portraits of Cardinal Bembo by Titian. The chapter also considers the controversial case of Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Man of c. 1505, not to argue that Bellini’s sitter in this painting is in fact Pietro, but rather to illustrate the interplay claimed for De Aetna between its content and form, its typeface and verbal portraiture.
Loneliness: The Character of a Single Life?
Authors: Bennett Jana Marguerite
Published: August 2017

The author broadly defines singleness as including never-married, people in casual relationships as well as committed unmarried relationships, same-sex attracted and unattached people, widowed, divorced, and single parents; these are also called “states of singleness.” Singleness is usually identified with loneliness, having no sex, and having no romantic relationships. Focusing on any one of those identifications should be troubling for Christians, though, especially since Christian tradition has often praised and privileged single life. Loneliness is not the one central characteristic that should define any state of singleness (nor should no sex, or no romantic relationships). In this book, instead, each chapter focuses on a different state of singleness, and a corresponding holy person or Christian guide who inhabited that state of life and who wrote about Christian discipleship.
Choice: Never Married and Paul
Authors: Bennett Jana Marguerite
Published: August 2017

Being never-married is culturally presented as a choice a person makes—especially a consumer-driven choice—in which one chooses to be married, or not. One result is that people (especially women) and sexual relationships become objects for consumption, driven by desire. Sexual desire becomes a consumer desire that can be gotten at will, like a product in a store. Consumer desire in turn shows up in the descriptions people have about wanting to get married. At the same time, remaining unmarried continues to be seen as a mistaken consumer “choice,” especially among Christians. The Apostle Paul, a never-married man, offers new possibilities for thinking about choices. His focus is not on whether to remain single or get married, but rather to choose to engage each relationship (whether romantic or not) with the care and love it deserves.
Perfection: Committed Relationships and John Wesley
Authors: Bennett Jana Marguerite
Published: August 2017

Committed unmarried relationships include being engaged and some forms of cohabitation and dating. Committed unmarried relationships place a premium on avoiding divorce. Christians emphasize their ideals about marriage in their discussions of premarital relationships. Those ideals foster anxiety that is unhelpful for Christian life and may, in fact, support exactly a climate ripe for divorce. John Wesley, the 18th-century founder of the Methodist movement, offers a view of Christian perfection that is an antidote to contemporary anxiety about marriage. He also brings wisdom from his own near-engagements and engagements, to show us that premarital committed relationships can be imperfect—or rather, help us understand perfection in more godly ways.
Grace: Divorce and Stanley Hauerwas
Authors: Bennett Jana Marguerite
Published: August 2017

Divorce is a much maligned state of life, especially because it spells failure—not only of a marriage relationship, but even of Christian ideals about marriage. Some Christians repeatedly emphasize a Christian vision about marriage. Others want to make Christian doctrine on divorce more realistic by changing the ideals. Neither idealism nor realism are helpful Christian approaches to divorce. Stanley Hauerwas discusses the importance of Christian discipleship in the midst of failure, and especially grace, alongside his own poignant account of divorce. Lauren Winner also provides some commentary on divorce, showing that divorce teaches Christians about the immeasurable beauty of God’s grace.
Conclusions
Authors: Bennett Jana Marguerite
Published: August 2017

This chapter draws conclusions from across the book. In bringing together the various states of singleness, we see how current debates about both gender and same-sex attraction have impacted discussions of singleness in ways that are detrimental to a Christian vision of singleness. We also see that single Christians have been drawn to life in communities, broadly understood. At the same time, Christian communities have often failed at supporting single life. Yet single life tells the church important things about what it means to be a follower of Jesus together with other followers. Spiritual friendship, new understandings of family, and better thinking about the Gospel are part of what we learn. The author also suggests future paths for research.
An Educational Avant-Garde
Authors: Tobias James
Published: August 2017

This chapter looks at the role of music and voice-over in constructing and deconstructing highly political messages in the experimental documentary format. It argues that Julien Bryan’s films on Latin America for the Office of Inter-American Affairs do not operate as US wartime propaganda, as is often believed, but are rather highly musical pedagogical essays challenging prevailing tendencies in US wartime communications by presenting progressive reforms proceeding in Latin America as more advanced than was politically feasible in the United States. These claims are dramatised and softened by complex synchronised scores. The films demonstrated the very problem of middle-class development as a highly gendered negotiation of national development. Bryan’s constructionist film education of often xenophobic US audiences on Latin America reframed the role of the spoken voice-over familiar from early cinema’s film lecturer, while deploying the newer, through-composed musical synchronisation of the sound film.
Discontinuities and Resynchronisations
Authors: Muzyczuk Daniel
Published: August 2017

This chapter explores three distinct attempts in Polish film history to use the medium for research into synaesthesia. The first can be found in the films of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson made before the Second World War and after their emigration to Great Britain. Their experimental attitude is exposed through analysis of their work from 1944 entitled The Eye and the Ear. Second, the Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, established in the wake of Stalinism, became an important space where new approaches into investigating of the sound and vision relationship could develop. Primarily oriented towards electroacoustic composition, the studio was also used for producing scores for popular cinema. The third site for exploration was the Workshop of Film Form, a group of artists-filmmakers based in Łódź whose work exposed the primary elements of film language. Their research resulted in some of the best-developed experiments in synaesthesia.
Meaning and Musicality
Authors: Birtwistle Andy
Published: August 2017

The chapter critically reappraises the work of the British experimental filmmaker John Smith, drawing on analyses of key films and interview material to explore his use of sound, music and voice. Smith’s films often engage self-reflexively with how sound creates or accepts meaning within an audiovisual context. Influenced by structural film practice of the 1960s and 1970s, and underpinned by a Brechtian concern with the politics of representation, Smith’s often humorous work both foregrounds and deconstructs the sound-image relations at work in dominant modes of cinematic representation. This analysis of Smith’s work identifies the political dynamic of the filmmaker’s use of sound, and addresses what is at stake—for both Smith and his audience—in the self-reflexive concern with audiovisual modes of representation. Examined within this context are Smith’s creative focus on the production of meaning and how this relates to aspects of musicality and abstraction in his work.
The Music of Gustav Mahler in Experimental Film Contexts
Authors: Barham Jeremy
Published: August 2017

The anniversary years of the composer Gustav Mahler (150 years of his birth in 2010, 100 years of his death in 2011) took place in the age of digital media, whose technological possibilities afforded strikingly diverse opportunities to mark the occasion. Various experimental sound and video artists, produced audiovisual translations and interpretations of the composer’s music at this time, including Danish composer Henrik Marstal with VJ Dark Matters, and Austrian experimental composer Fennesz with Berlin-based video artist Lillevan. Building on a tradition which had begun in the 1990s, this repertoire is examined here from the theoretical and historical perspectives of “visual music” and intermediality.
The Age of Diversity and Disintegration (1000–1100 CE)
Authors: Arnold Felix
Published: August 2017

This chapter describes how Islamic palatial architecture in Western Mediterranean grew more diverse and adventurous as the Umayyad Caliphate in the Iberian Peninsula and the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa disintegrated into a multiplicity of polities. In the former territory of the Fatimids, the Banī Ḥammād, for example, set up smaller independent states, founding new cities like Qalcat Banī Ḥammād and Biǧāya and employing innovations like the muqarnaṣ-decoration in palace design. On the Iberian Peninsula after the fall of Córdoba to civil strife, the tā’ifa-kings first erected separate city-palaces, castles, and estates, but then began building a kind of blended palatial complex called a qaṣaba. Differences in the palatial architecture between former Umayyad and former Fatimid regions may be attributed to diverging conceptions of space and attitudes about rulership. Islamic architecture also influenced the evolution of Gothic style in the Christian world of the Twelfth Century.
Early Modern Period (1500–1800 CE)
Authors: Arnold Felix
Published: August 2017

This chapter surveys the limited evidence on Islamic palatial architecture in the Western Mediterranean during the Early Modern Period. Northern Africa was weakly incorporated into the Ottoman Empire as the Barbary States. In the capital cities– Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers – leaders took on the trappings of traditional Islamic rulers and preserved the earlier architectural styles and concepts of space in their palace designs. In Morocco a succession of Berber and Arab dynasties resisted the Ottomans and united the far-western Maghreb. These rulers underpinned their rule by religious ideology and built huge palatial cities featuring a diversity of architectural forms at the “royal cities” (Fes, Marrakesh, Rabat and Méknes) – though, for the most part, the chief typologies and spatial concepts were developed in previous centuries. Towards the end of the period, the growing influence of European colonialism brought an end to the tradition of Islamic architecture in both regions.
Conclusion
Authors: Arnold Felix
Published: August 2017

On the evidence of the 75 palaces discussed in the book’s previous chapters, the conclusion distills four major concepts of space in the palatial architecture of the Islamic West and synthesizes their development from the arrival of Islam in in the region through the Early Modern Period. Planar, view-framing, linear, and interior understandings of space reflect answers to evolving questions about the nature of rulership during a span of history marked by dramatic shifts in power. Each concept of space makes a distinct statement about how rulers relate to society. Within the same palace, the seemingly incoherent combination of spatial concepts may articulate the political and ideological tensions of the moment. All four spatial concepts can, nevertheless, be understood as variations on the idea that space is infinite, which may be considered the uniting characteristic of Islamic palatial architecture in the western Mediterranean.
Nerva as Supreme Military Commander
Authors: Elkins Nathan T.
Published: August 2017

As Nerva’s coinage has been studied almost exclusively with historical hindsight, and with the biases of later historians in mind, there is an impulse to read Nerva’s “weak” character into his coinage. This bias is most pronounced on his coinage bearing military themes, which are interpreted as “apologetic,” “hopeful,” or a “desperate plea” to the army to forestall mutiny. State-sanctioned art did not operate in this way and always presented the emperor positively. Reinterpreted in the context of historical representations, the martial imagery on the coinage was traditional and to be expected of the emperor, who had always played the role of supreme military commander. Although often understood as courting the sympathies of the army, many types are excessively rare, suggesting they had little communicative potential in the Roman world. Those proclaiming the “harmony of the armies” are common throughout the Roman Empire and spoke to a broad audience.
Nerva and the Roman Empire
Authors: Elkins Nathan T.
Published: August 2017

While denotative images celebrating aspects of Nerva’s policy have attracted most scholarly study, their importance is overemphasized since the most common images on Nerva’s coinage are personifications of imperial ideals such as Libertas, Aequitas, and Fortuna. Many scholars have dismissed such images as generic and repetitive. There is a strong correspondence between the personifications and contemporary writers who ascribe the same qualities to Nerva. These coins thus visualize the written and spoken praise directed at Nerva by contemporaries. The frequency and widespread distribution of these images obviates the interpretation that the images were directed exclusively at the Senate. The generality of personifications allowed viewers to bring their own interpretation to them. Libertas, for example, is one of the most common images on Nerva’s coins, and could be understood in different ways by viewers. In addition to freedom from tyranny (a senator’s understanding), Libertas also could evoke freedom from taxation.
The Changing Landscape of Trade and Trade Knowledge
Authors: Guisinger Alexandra
Published: August 2017

Because Americans’ understanding of their own and others’ connections to trade underpins their beliefs about trade’s costs and benefits, chapter 2 investigates what Americans know—or think they know—about trade and trade policy. It examines how trade has reshaped post-NAFTA America and argues that the new economic conditions of post-industrial America require expanding our analysis of factors shaping trade preferences beyond the traditional categories of skill level and industry. Additionally, the chapter identifies new sources of information uncertainty and in doing so provides a series of tables and figures detailing the changing composition of the U.S. economy and manufacturing; the changing influence of trade and specific trading relationships; and the convergence of major political parties’ policies. Furthermore, by analysing voters’ knowledge of roll call votes on a range of issues, the chapter offers a comparison of the political salience of trade with other important ideological and economic issues.
Community and Trade Preferences
Authors: Guisinger Alexandra
Published: August 2017

This chapter describes the impact on trade preference of two aspects of a community that, according to the model of preference formation proposed, influence individuals’ information-gathering costs: the concentration of import-competing jobs and residential turnover. Chapters 5 argues that the extent and effectiveness of this incorporation of sociotropic considerations depends greatly on how easily individuals can tap into community concerns. In our post-NAFTA economy, diminished concentrations of import-competing industries and increased community turnover have muddied traditional sources of local information about economic impacts and increased the difficulty of individuals’ determining what is best for their community. Using three decades of survey data, chapter 5 shows the strong impact of high residential turnover and low import-competing employment concentration on increased uncertainty about benefits of trade at the regional level and lower levels of support for trade protection. Analysis of voters’ knowledge of roll call (recorded) vote during the 109th Congress finds that these community factors relate to the political salience of trade policy in communities. The chapter concludes with illustrations from Texas and New York about how politicians in low information districts are able to take stances regarding trade in opposition to the majority of their constituents.
Racial Diversity and White Americans’ Support for Trade Protection
Authors: Guisinger Alexandra
Published: August 2017

Chapter 6 argues that the redistributive nature of trade policy also affects individuals’ trade preferences. Trade protectionism differs from other redistributive policies both in its mechanism for redistribution and the most common portrayal of its beneficiaries. As shown by analysis of trade-related ads from multiple election cycles, images in political ads overwhelmingly present white workers as the beneficiaries of trade protectionism. The chapter describes an original survey experiment that found whites’ support for trade protection depended on the depicted race of trade protection beneficiaries in a newspaper article provided to survey respondents. Analysis of three decades of US public opinion data provides evidence that white support of redistribution via trade protection is higher and support for redistribution via welfare is lower in communities where high levels of racial diversity heighten in- and out-group dynamics. The chapter concludes with a discussion the mobilization of race-based protectionist sentiment in the 2016 election cycle.
Politicians, the Media, and Negative Perceptions of Trade’s National Effect
Authors: Guisinger Alexandra
Published: August 2017

Chapter 7 explores how the framing of trade in public discourse – mass media and political campaigns –supports the disconnect between mass and elite opinion: while academic elites have stressed the benefits of free trade and political elites have supported trade liberalization, the mass public continues to express a negative assessment of trade’s economic impact on the U.S. This chapter describes past and current public beliefs about trade’s effect at the national level and characterizes two common sources of Americans’ economic knowledge – the national media and federal-level political campaigns. Analysis of decades of trade–related evening news coverage, illustrates both the correlation between bad trade indicators and trade coverage and the frequency and tone of evening news coverage. Additionally, the chapter offers qualitative analysis of the content of trade-related political campaign ads as well as two maps showing the concentration of trade-related ads in the 2000 and 2008 elections. This analysis of the content of TV news coverage of stories about international trade and political campaign ads that mention trade makes it clear that the messages communicated to the mass public differ from the academic/elite consensus.
Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu
Authors: Altman Michael J.
Published: August 2017

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans did not write about Hinduism. They did write a lot about India, however. In their representations of India, American writers described “heathens,” “Hindoos,” and, eventually, “Hindus.” Before Americans wrote about “Hinduism,” they wrote about “heathenism,” “the religion of the Hindoos,” and “Brahmanism.” This book argues that Americans debated the nature of religion, sought alternatives to American Protestantism, and hailed the supremacy of white Protestant American identity through their representations of religion in India. Representations of India reflected debates about America. Americans used the heathen, Hindoo, and Hindu Other as a foil for representing themselves. Americans of all sorts imagined India for their own purposes. Cotton Mather, Hannah Adams, and Joseph Priestley engaged the larger European Enlightenment project of classifying and comparing religion in India. Evangelical missionaries used images of “Hindoo heathenism” to raise support at home. Unitarian Protestants found a kindred spirit in the writings of Bengali reformer Rammohun Roy. Popular magazines and common schoolbooks used the image of dark, heathen, despotic India to buttress Protestant, white, democratic American identity. Transcendentalists and Theosophists imagined the contemplative and esoteric religion of India as an alternative to materialist American Protestantism. Hindu delegates and American speakers at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions engaged in a protracted debate about the definition of religion in the industrializing United States. The questions of American identity, classification, representation, and the definition of “religion” that animated descriptions of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus in the past still animate American debates today.
Hindoo Religion in American National Culture
Authors: Altman Michael J.
Published: August 2017

This chapter argues that representations of “Hindoo religion” functioned in American national culture to reinforce a white Protestant American identity. The chapter analyzes representations of “Hindoo religion” in American public school textbooks and the popular magazine Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. Public school textbooks constructed an anthropology through which they understood human difference. These textbooks ranked human difference across categories of race, civilization, and religion. They taught American children that they were part of a superior enlightened, white, Protestant identity. Similarly, magazines such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine use “Hindoo religion” as a foil for superior white American Protestantism. American popular culture thus constructed American identity by representing the Hindoo Other.
Transcendentalism, Brahmanism, and Universal Religion
Authors: Altman Michael J.
Published: August 2017

This chapter argues that Transcendentalist writers represented India as a land of contemplative and mystical religion. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau saw the mystical religion of India and Asia in general as an alternative to the rational and materialist Protestantism of America. Later Transcendentalists categorized the religion of India as “Brahmanism.” James Freeman Clarke, Lydia Maria Child, and Samuel Johnson described Brahmanism in various works of comparative religion. These Transcendentalists compared religions in order to discover the one Universal Religion that would unite mankind spiritually. They described Brahmanism as the religion that contributed contemplation, unity, and mysticism to this transcendent Universal Religion.
Epilogue
Authors: Altman Michael J.
Published: August 2017

The epilogue examines what the genealogy of “heathen,” “Hindoo,” and “Hindu” means for the study of American religious history and religious studies. It argues that the various projects of comparative religion that included representations of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus must be incorporated into the larger history of religious studies. As the previous chapters have shown, definitions of heathen, Hindoo, Hindu, and Hinduism emerged from American debates about the category “religion.” The epilogue gestures toward a history that would locate religious studies within the history of religion in the United States and cites William James as a possible starting point for such a history.
Digital DNA
Authors: Cowhey Peter F. , Aronson Jonathan D.
Published: August 2017

Digital DNA identifies how the disruption of digital information and production technologies transforms how companies and national economies are innovating. Wisely guiding this transformation is an enormous challenge because innovation promotes global economic prosperity. Economic tensions and market surprises are inevitable. Part I reviews the challenges we face and argues that national and international policies require experimentation and flexibility to address them. The case studies in Part III probe issues tied to the rise of cloud computing and transborder data flows, international collaboration to reduce cybersecurity risks, and the consequences of different national standards of digital privacy protection. Significant diversity in individual national policies is inevitable, but an international baseline of policy fundamentals to facilitate “quasi-convergence” of national policies is needed. Moreover, expert multistakeholder organizations that facilitate the implementation of formal government policies hold promise but should operate across national boundaries because the implications of digital technologies are global. Parts II and IV propose a strategy for using international regulatory and trade agreements to revamp the international governance regime for digital technologies. Better measures to safeguard digital privacy and cybersecurity can improve both market access and the welfare of users. A “Digital Economy Agreement” that embraces “soft rules” requiring governments to achieve certain objectives without specifying how, can achieve sufficient quasi-convergence of national policies for innovation to flourish. The political legitimacy and flexibility of international governance regimes likely will be better if multistakeholder organizations are involved in their negotiation.
Information and Production Disruptions
Authors: Cowhey Peter F. , Aronson Jonathan D.
Published: August 2017

Digital technology (digital DNA) has catalyzed information and production disruptions—ranging from cloud computing and machine learning to 3D printers—that are sweeping across firms and markets. Special attention is paid to competition dynamics in digital markets and the creation of a trusted digital environment for digital privacy and cybersecurity. A new system of innovation, digital platform clusters, is emerging that will change both global industrial and regional growth patterns, even in traditional industries like farming. Discussions of the automotive and electric grid industries illustrate the new dynamics. The fate of this new innovation system will depend on making smart choices about national and global economic governance.