bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Electrocardiogram morphological arrhythmia classification using fuzzy entropy-based feature selection and optimal classifier
Authors: Chaubey Krishnakant , Saha Seemanti
Published: August 2023

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal analysis has become significant in recent years as cardiac arrhythmia shares a major portion of all mortality worldwide. To detect these arrhythmias, computer-assisted algorithms play a pivotal role as beat-by-beat monitoring of holter ECG signals is required. In this paper, a morphological arrhythmia classification algorithm has been proposed to classify seven different ECG beats, namely Normal Beat (N), Left Bundle Branch Block Beat (L), Right Bundle Branch Block Beat (R), Atrial Premature Contraction Beat (A), Premature Ventricular Contraction Beat (V), Fusion of Normal and Ventricle Beat (F) and Pace Beat (P). A novel feature set of 25 attributes has been extracted from each ECG beat and ranked using the Fuzzy Entropy-based feature selection (FEBFS) technique. In addition, two distinct classifiers, support vector machine with radial basis function as the kernel (SVM-RBF) and weighted K-nearest neighbor (WKNN), are used to categorize ECG beats, and their performances are also evaluated after adjusting vital parameters. The performance of classifiers is compared for four different ECG beat segmentation approaches and further analyzed using three similarity measurement techniques and two fuzzy entropy methods while feature selection. The classifier results are also cross-validated using a 10-fold cross-validation scheme, and the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database has been used to validate the proposed work. After selecting 21 highly ranked features, WKNN achieves the best results with the nearest neighbor value K = 3 and cityblock distance metrics, with Average Sensitivity (Sen) = 94.89%, Positive Predictivity (Ppre) = 97.13%, Specificity (Spe) = 99.72%, F1 Score = 95.95%, and Overall Accuracy (Acc) = 99.15%. The novelty of this work relies on formulating a unique feature set, including proposed symbolic features, followed by the FEBFS technique making this algorithm efficient and reliable for morphological arrhythmia classification. The above results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than many existing state-of-the-art works.
Bio-functionalized, elongated hexagonal bi-pyramidal, citrus limetta/ZnO nanostructures as potential photocatalytic and seed germinating agents
Authors: Gaur Jyoti , Kumar Sanjeev , Pal Mohinder , Kaur Harpreet , Rana Ramneet Kaur , Bala Kanchan , Singh Prit Pal , Rajesh Changanamkandath , Supreet
Published: August 2023

In this research, the photocatalytic and seed germination potentials of bio-functionalized, as-synthesized zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) were investigated. ZnO NPs were created by reducing zinc acetate hexahydrate with a citrus limetta (C. limetta) peel extract. The hexagonal wurtzite crystal was observed in C. limetta/ZnO NPs, with crystallite diameters ranging from 50 to 60 nm and an energy-band gap of 3.08 eV. Fourier-transform infrared spectrum confirmed the presence of phytochemicals from C. limetta on the surface of the resultant ZnO. The unique, elongated hexagonal bi-pyramidal nanostructures were spread evenly across a vast region, as validated by High-resolution transmission electron microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscope. The highly porous microstructure of C. limetta/ZnO and its large specific surface area of 80.72 m2 g−1 were established by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis. The catalytic performance of C. limetta/ZnO for the decomposition of the industrial reactive yellow 18 dye (RY18) was examined. Under UV light, RY18 dye could be broken down by more than 98% in 100 min. With a minimal energy consumption of 4.34 × 1022 J mol−1, the C. limetta/ZnO NPs demonstrated excellent performance (a quantum yield of 1.79 × 10−4Ϣ and a figure-of-merit of 2.92 × 10−10 mol l J−1g−1h−1). The seed germinating capability of C. limetta/ZnO was investigated first time for the Brassica juncea crop. The germination and development of Brassica juncea seed were greatly enhanced by priming with C limetta/ZnO. Hence, C. limetta/ZnO NPs are identified as photocatalytic and seed-germinating agents with remarkable efficiency.
Transition phase in the static thrust generation of the biomimetic fin with low oscillating frequency
Authors: Jaya Arie Sukma , Kartidjo Muljo Widodo , Riyandwita Byan Wahyu , Buys Yose Fachmi
Published: August 2023

Biomimetic fin propulsion could be a promising solution for an efficient underwater propulsion mechanism. It could be designed to generate thrust for underwater locomotion efficiently. Many studies have proposed that the flexibility characteristics of the fin affect its effectiveness in thrust generation; for example, a flexible fin generates more thrust than a rigid fin. In this regard, the rigid fin may suffer a mechanical disadvantage in thrust generation. This study introduces the presence of thrust generation phases in biomimetic fins. The phases could be caused by the interaction of the fins and the surrounding fluid. To distinguish the phases clearly, the experimental setup in this study was designed for no-flow conditions. This study presents three phases of thrust generation: negative, transition, and positive. The existence of the negative and transition phases explains the mechanical disadvantages of the rigid fin. Within the range of evaluated fin frequencies, approximately 80% of the average net force of the rigid fin is in the negative and transition phases, compared to only 20% in flexible fins. In comparison to less flexible and rigid fins, a flexible fin could maximize positive thrust production three times higher at high frequency. The vector composition analysis and dye-injection flow visualization reveal the transition phase by emphasizing the balancing process between the surface friction of the fin and the inertial component of the force of the fluid and fin interaction. This study demonstrates the independence of the transition phase from the flexibility characteristics of the biomimetic fin. Because the bending characteristic of the flexible fin could direct more vectors in thrust generation, the fin could act as a thrust vectoring agent. The findings of this study could be used as a guide in designing and implementing high-performance fin propulsion in low-speed underwater locomotion.
Tribo-performance analysis of white ark shell powder/grewia optiva fiber reinforced brake friction composites
Authors: Nain Sunil , Kumar Ankit , Ahlawat Vishal
Published: August 2023

This work presents a comparative tribo-performance of two eco-friendly brake friction composites (EBFC’s), developed using white ark shell powder (WASP) and treated Grewia Optiva (GO) fibers as key ingredients, with a commercial brake friction material (CBFM). EBFC-1 and EBFC-2 were developed with 30/5: WASP/GO fiber and 25/10: WASP/GO fiber respectively using compression molding. The physico-mechanical properties of the developed samples were investigated as per IS2742: Part 3 standards. Thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) was performed up to 800 °C to predict the thermal stability. The specimens were characterized for friction and wear properties using a tribo-test setup as per ASTM G99 standards under the normal loads varying from 100 N to 200 N at 1.7 m s−1 and 3.3 m s−1 of sliding velocities. The EBFC specimens offered lower friction coefficient and better wear resistance than the CBFM. The developed EBFCs offered better stability coefficient than the CBFM. The EBFC specimens showed good compatibility and integrity with the resin material as compared to the CBFM as evident from SEM analysis. Based on the performance, WASP may be recommended as a potential filler and GO fibers as reinforcement in brake friction compositions to enhance wear resistance, stability and minimizing the friction fluctuations.
(Post)colonial Indigenous Anglophone Fiction of the Pacific Islands
Authors: Powell Emma Ngakuravaru , Hogue Rebecca H.
Published: August 2023

(Post)colonial Anglophone fiction of the Pacific Islands is produced by Indigenous Pacific peoples who belong to the region, which is loosely marked by Hawai‘i to the north, Rapa Nui [Easter Island] to the east, Aotearoa [New Zealand] to the south, and Papua New Guinea and Belau to the west. Pacific fiction is as vast as the ocean itself, inspired by a variety of oral, visual, and material storytelling practices that are ever-changing. Independence movements swept the region in the 1960s and 1970s and with them came a proliferation of cultural expression both as part of those movements and after. However, many scholar-writers question the “post” of postcolonial approaches and the applicability of Western literary constructs when discussing Pacific literary expression. Instead, Samoan writer Albert Wendt offers that for postcolonial Pacific fiction, the “post in post-colonial does not just mean after; it also means around, through, out of, alongside, and against.” From short fiction in literary journals, periodicals, and anthologies from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Aotearoa in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, to novels and international prize-winning short fiction from Samoa, Hawaiʻi, and Tonga at the turn of the 21st century, to 2020s Pacific fiction anthologies by women from across Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, Pacific writers continue to reckon with ongoing colonial occupation across what Tongan writer Epeli Hauʻofa called “our vast sea of islands.”
Yiddish in Interwar Berlin
Authors: Caplan Marc
Published: August 2023

Berlin in the interwar era of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) was not a center for Yiddish culture so much as a periphery dependent upon more dominant locations of Jewish life such as the United States, Poland, and the Soviet Union. In this respect, the status of Yiddish reflects a greater sense of marginality and dislocation then characterizing German culture, which, at the time, felt unmoored from its imperial coordinates of the 19th century and under the sway of more innovative international cities such as Leningrad, Paris, New York, and especially Hollywood. The draw of Berlin for Yiddish-language writers or community activists was therefore not the allure of Weimar culture or the hopes of attracting large audiences among German Jews. Instead, the economic disorder of the Weimar Republic, paradoxically, offered financial windfalls and business opportunities for migrants with foreign currency—particularly for writers with contacts to the American Yiddish press. Moreover, Germany, unlike Poland, maintained diplomatic and economic relations with the Soviet Union, which allowed writers and activists sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution a safe haven while the home front remained riven by military conflicts, scarcity of basic necessities, and an uncertain political future. The heyday of Yiddish activism in Berlin was relatively short-lived, only dating from about 1921 until about 1926. After that date, the Soviet Union had achieved political stability and began to invest, at least for the next decade, in a wide series of Yiddish-language cultural institutions including publishing houses, newspapers, centers of higher education, and popular entertainment. Although it would be an exaggeration to claim that Yiddish culture made a deep or lasting impact on the German culture of the Weimar Republic, for Yiddish readers, the literature produced in Germany ranks among the most important and innovative achievements in Yiddish culture of the 1920s. The most significant writers to have resided in Berlin during this era include Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister (Pinkhes Kahanovitsh), and Moyshe Kulbak.
The Image of the Karaites in 19th- and 20th-Century Literature
Authors: Kizilov Mikhail
Published: August 2023

The article analyzes the image of the Karaites in Karaite, Jewish, European, and Russian literatures in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The Karaites are Jews who do not accept the teaching of the Talmud and the Rabbinic concept of the “Oral Law.” Many well-known 19th- and 20th-century belletrists were attracted to the Karaites’ unusual Judeo-Turkic culture as well as their influential status in the Russian empire, their wealth, and their intellectual achievements. It appears that there was no unified image of the Karaites among the authors of this period: Men of letters of various countries, religions, and ethnicities presented the Karaites as marginal Jewish sectarians, a “nation of traders,” descendants of the Turkic Khazars and Cumans, true Israelites, and even as “sons of Japheth.” Why were these images so contradictory? There is no doubt that it was, at least in part, due to the Karaites themselves, who by altering their ethnic identity in the 19th and 20th centuries, transformed the perception of their community in the eyes of external observers—thus leading modern belletrists to portray them in such contradictory ways.
The Impact of Diversity Training Programs in the Workplace and Alternative Bias Reduction Mechanisms
Authors: Kalev Alexandra
Published: August 2023

Corporations often start their diversity journey by providing their managers or all workers with diversity training. These trainings were first offered as race-relations sessions in the 1960s and are among the most popular tools for diversity managers. Diversity training programs have changed their content during the decades, but they usually include live or online explanations about unlawful discrimination and bias, often supplemented by discussions of cultural differences and business needs for diversity. Despite their popularity and often high costs, a large body of research conducted over decades shows that most diversity training programs do not lead to long-term improvements in participants’ bias, attitudes, behavior, or workforce diversity. Some studies also show that training has negative effects on bias and diversity.

Factors that impede the success of diversity training or make them backfire include the hardwiring of cognitive biases and people’s complex reactions to direct attempts to change their biases, as well as the broader systemic biases rooted in everyday organizational routines. These suggest that common diversity training simply may not be the right tool for reducing bias and generating the changes needed for increasing workplace diversity. Some studies suggest that trainings’ effects could be improved by carefully designing them. This includes: avoiding training features that increase participants’ alienation, such as mandatory attendance, quizzes, and legalistic content; designing long-term training such that meaningful learning can be achieved; calibrating training to specific organizational challenges rather than using off-the-shelf content; and including ongoing collaborative contact with members of underrepresented groups and integrating training as part of broader diversity and accountability efforts. More research is needed to determine whether these types of training indeed produce sustained improvements in bias and diversity.

Alternative bias reduction mechanisms can be found in popular management models that increase collaboration between workers, such as cross-functional teams and cross-training. Such collaborative teams and training improve corporate performance and, as a byproduct, also reduce bias. Cognitive biases are affected by the work contexts in which individuals operate. Highly segregated workplaces, where White people and men meet women and people of color (or other underrepresented groups) primarily in marginalized jobs, deepen group boundaries and strengthen stereotypes. When organizations create cross-functional collaborations using self-directed teams and cross-training, workers from different groups have more opportunities to collaborate and, as studies show, biases and group boundaries are reduced, and leadership diversity increases.
From Absorptive Capacity in International Business to Strategic Flexibility of Multinational Corporations
Authors: Peeters Carine
Published: August 2023

Both the absorptive capacity (AC) and international business (IB) literatures are interested in knowledge processes and learning in organizations. Although originating from different streams of research, AC and IB were thus meant to meet and reinforce each other.

Fundamentally, the role of AC in IB is to condition the performance outcome of firms’ internationalization efforts. Firms benefit from their IB activities conditional on being able to absorb new knowledge and learn. In other words, multinational corporations (MNCs) need to have the necessary AC to overcome their liabilities of foreignness and outsidership. Short of AC, the costs and challenges of entering foreign markets and operating across countries are likely to outweigh potential performance gains. Moreover, AC plays a role in the technological upgrade and economic development of nations, as it helps firms in emerging economies to benefit from spillovers of foreign direct investments by MNCs from more economically advanced economies. And national governments can play an important role to facilitate this effect by developing appropriate economic and innovation policies that support knowledge creation and learning.

Firms can also proactively develop AC. For instance, MNCs can nurture a broad knowledge base that can be leveraged in different contexts and opt for a decentralized structure with mechanisms that help subsidiaries access the knowledge base of the parent organization. They can also practice specific routines to identify and access relevant knowledge from their external environment, transfer that knowledge in their organization, and assimilate it in their own knowledge creation processes. Moreover, MNCs can adopt human resources management practices that help raise the capacity and motivation of their employees to acquire and exploit new knowledge.

Ultimately, the most important contribution of AC in IB might be to help MNCs develop the strategic flexibility that enables them to thrive in dynamic environments. High-AC MNCs may indeed be in a better position than other firms to (a) build diverse options to prepare for uncertain evolutions in the market, (b) access flexible resources to allocate to new courses of actions, and (c) redeploy resources across options over time. Unpacking the exact mechanisms as well as boundary conditions for the role of AC in building strategic flexibility offers ample opportunities for future research on a highly relevant topic for MNCs.
North Korean Migration, Communication, and Identity
Authors: Song Jay
Published: August 2023

For a multitude of economic, social, and environmental factors, a large number of North Koreans explored various migratory routes into and outward from China. An increasing number of these migrants eventually choose to settle in South Korea. Consequently, this development has led to significant ramifications individually and across South Korean society with regard to identity transformation, coethnic dynamics, and contemporary conceptualizations of nationhood, which ultimately affect potential reunification scenarios between the Koreas. This article critically reviews how North Korean migrants have transformed their identities through various interactions and communication with the Korean-Chinese, South Koreans, and Korean-Americans during their journeys from North Korea through China and Southeast Asia to South Korea, as well as the South Korean and Western media portrayals of North Koreans. The study utilizes existing literature on the topic, official statistics of North Korean arrivals in South Korea, and public polls on unification as well as the author’s own interviews of approximately 500 North Korean migrants in China and South Korea since 1999. It argues that while North Koreans in South Korea have successfully transformed their legal identity from the socialist northern to the capitalist southern citizenship, their socioethnic identities are still in the making. Coethnic tensions among Koreans with different nationalities have formed a kind of hierarchical nationhood among them and placed them in a certain socioeconomic order. This hierarchy and othering among ethnic Koreans based on birthplace and residence has important policy implications for any future unification scenario. Younger South Koreans have ambivalent attitudes toward North Koreans, taking a pragmatic economic approach to reunification as peace, rather than an ethnocentric national unity and political union.
Conflict and Newspapers (De)-Escalation of the North-South Polarization of Polio-Eradication in Nigeria: Implications for Sustainable Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Initiatives
Authors: Oyewo Olusola Oyeyinka , Oyewo Ayanfeoluwa
Published: August 2023

Since Nigeria’s inception as a nation in 1914, Nigerian society has been deeply polarized along a north-south dichotomy. This divide has resulted in a lot of conflicts between the north and the south. This divide manifested in various sectors of Nigerian society, including the media. The current media, especially the print media in Nigeria, are produced and published predominantly in the south, with a few in the north. As a result, the media constantly reproduce social norms, stereotypes, and prejudices from southern Nigeria to the chagrin of the North. Media researchers contend that the Nigerian media heighten the current pressure in the country through one-sided reporting dependent on religious, political, and social inclinations. Of the many conflicts that have plagued the nation, the focus here is the polio eradication crisis of 2013, which resulted in the deaths of health worker volunteers during a routine polio vaccine exercise. This violence was a direct result of vaccine refusals on religious grounds by people in northern Nigeria. These refusals were informed by claims that polio vaccines contained anti-fertility properties that were designed by the “West” to reduce the Muslim population of the world, beginning with northern Nigeria.

Based on the peculiarities of the Nigerian print media, the coverage of the polio eradication controversy by two newspapers—Punch and Daily Trust—following the killings of the health workers is worth studying. Daily Trust is situated in northern Nigeria, while Punch is situated in the South. The decisions of these newspapers depend on the contention that the Nigerian press has been blamed for raising pressure in the country, since they see numerous parts of the Nigerian reality from the focal points of religious, political, and cultural biases. The locations of the newspapers determined their positioning in the struggle between the federal government and northern Nigeria related to the polio eradication initiative. Although Punch and Daily Trust newspapers are based in the South and North, respectively, by emphasizing the negativity of the North’s vaccine refusals and the killings of the health workers, they both contribute to the animosity between North and South in their representations. A study of the two may be useful to extrapolate the wider news media operations in Nigeria.
Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Communication in Africa: An Intersectional Perspective
Authors: Skare Orgeret Kristin
Published: August 2023

When examining diversity in mediated spheres of communication, crucial questions to be asked would be whose stories are told and through which voices, to be relevant for the widest spectrum of a society and secure an informed citizenry. Approaching questions of access and representation in media and communication, it is valuable to allow for intersecting perspectives. Instead of the binary terms associated with power relations and oppression the intersectional model references the ability of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation (oppressions) to mutually construct one another and ensures a broader scope of relevant representations and mediated stories. Hence it is necessary to combine knowledge from several sources, such as the Négritude movement, feminism, and queer theories. An intersectional approach proves relevant when discussing African contexts where specific historical, cultural, and economic/political contexts play together and the populations are often complex and manifold, as, for example, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign and the media coverage of athlete Caster Semenya show.
The Ethnic Undercurrents in the Ethiopian Media
Authors: Skjerdal Terje
Published: August 2023

The ethnic aspect of Ethiopian media development can be described in four phases: During the Ethiopian empire, a lasting media policy was established reflecting Amharic hegemony. In the years of the communist Derg regime (1974–1991), cultural origin was suppressed for the sake of political control. With the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) (1991–2018), the media sector developed through emerging ethnic representation and regional self-governance. After Abiy Ahmed came to power and transformed the EPRDF into the Prosperity Party (2018–), media markets became freer and ethnic frictions surfaced.

Ethnicity transpires as an undercurrent in all of Ethiopia’s media history as well as in newsrooms. The situation is reflective of a society of more than 80 ethnic groups and a similar number of languages. The political history of the country can be read as a contestation between different regions and peoples and between ethno-nationalistic and unitarian preferences. Fault lines in the media sector can be understood in similar terms. Ethnification of the media augmented after 2018, witnessed not least by the rise of ethno-nationalistic media channels established by the returned digital diaspora. The armed conflict which broke out between the federal government and the Tigray region in 2020 amplified the ethnic discord in the media. The media in Tigray pledged allegiance to its region, while the federal media remained loyal to the central government. Various newsrooms and departments in Ethiopia news organizations appear as professional monocultures where groups among staff have a similar ethnic background. The identity question has gained little attention in Ethiopian media analysis, but recent studies have put the issue on the research agenda.
Group Socialization
Authors: Leonardelli Geoffrey J.
Published: August 2023

Group socialization refers to the psychological process by which individuals and groups mutually influence each other’s experience of being a group member. It is a significant topic, considered central to group members’ experience of group living, adjustment, and well-being, and it can be hotly contested, affecting groups of people that include less than a handful to thousands, millions, or more. Group socialization is most regularly interpreted to refer to how groups influence individuals’ transition to becoming group members. However, group socialization includes other membership transitions, too (e.g., becoming full members or exiting the group). Individual members can also influence what defines group membership for themselves and others. Social and self-categorization processes describe how people internalize group socialization, not only in terms of how socializing content is cognitively represented as a group prototype, but also in how people come to see themselves as group members through a process called self-stereotyping. Group socialization is different from, but can inform, group development (i.e., how groups change over time) and is a topic that is regularly negotiated by group members, as the literatures on socialization attitudes (e.g., assimilation, segregation, multiculturalism) and subjective group dynamics attest. Future research would benefit from understanding which principles of group socialization apply to all groups or specific types (small groups, categories). It would also benefit from understanding how multiple and competing group prototypes can be reconciled, the role of the intergroup context in group socialization, and the conditions under which group socialization is negotiated or simply internalized.
Militarization of Law Enforcement in America
Authors: Lemieux Frederic
Published: August 2023

Police militarization refers to the process by which law enforcement agencies (LEAs) increasingly acquire and use military-grade equipment, tactics, and training in their operations. This includes the use of weapons, vehicles, and tactics that were previously associated with military operations, such as armored vehicles, assault rifles, and Special Weaponry and Tactics teams. Militarization of the police can also refer to adopting a more aggressive and confrontational approach to policing, which emphasizes the use of force and intimidation to maintain order, rather than community engagement and problem solving. This approach can lead to a breakdown of trust between law enforcement officials and the communities they serve, and can exacerbate tensions between police and marginalized communities. The increasing militarization of police forces in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, when the U.S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation With Law Enforcement Act, which allowed the military to provide local LEAs with surplus military equipment. This program was expanded in the 1990s and 2000s, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 1033 Program. These policies and strategies directly contributed to the use of aggressive and lethal tactics by LEAs in the United States and abroad.
Organizational and Organized Cybercrime
Authors: Zeng Yongyu , Buil-Gil David
Published: August 2023

Cybercrime has been on the rise since the 1990s, affecting individuals, private organizations and public agencies. There is an increasing involvement of organizations, both legitimate businesses and organized crime groups, in cybercrime, either as offenders or facilitators, but also as victims of cybersecurity attacks and cyber-enabled fraud. Since the “organizational” aspect of cybercrime is growing rapidly, this chapter urges cybercrime research to shift the attention toward better understanding, theorizing, and preventing cybercrimes with a direct or indirect involvement of organizations. This chapter describes the state of the art of organizational and organized cybercrime research. That is, the chapter describes what research has found regarding the role of organizations, both legitimate businesses and organized crime groups, in cybercrime, either as offenders, facilitators, or victims. Consequently, the chapter identifies common themes emerging from criminological studies, and illustrates research findings with case studies of cybercrimes recorded in France, the United States, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom. Studies focusing on organized cybercrime groups show that offending networks have a spectrum of organizational complexity—from one extreme of loosely connected actors driven by common interests instead of stated leaders, to the other extreme of enduring and tightly connected groups of core members who coordinate the division of labor—with both illicit online sites and pre-existing relations in offline settings playing important roles in criminal network development. Cybercriminals may be parasitical on legitimate organizational structures and procedures in creating an outlook of legitimacy for concealment. Legitimate businesses may also facilitate white-collar cybercrime by providing the organizational means and resources for employees to carry out generally low-tech data breaches during their occupations, as well as directly engaging in cybercriminal activities such as cyber-espionage and cyber-enabled tax avoidance. Regarding the role of organizations as victims of cybercrime, research shows that the risk, nature, and harm of cybersecurity incidents varies extensively depending on the sector and size of organizations, and while not all forms of technical protection equally prevent organizational cybercrime victimization, improving cybersecurity awareness of employees (e.g., through training and seminars) seems to have strong impacts in preventing future incidents. The chapter then identifyies gaps in research and points researchers toward areas in which further research is needed.
Social Engineering
Authors: Steinmetz Kevin F. , Cross Cassandra
Published: August 2023

This entry reviews the concept of social engineering, the use of deception to circumvent information security measures. While the term social engineering traces its roots back to attempts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to manipulate social groups, the contemporary use of the term is rooted in the mid-20th century and its use among telephone enthusiasts or “phone phreaks.” Despite its associations with contemporary information and computer security, social engineering is fundamentally a social process that parallels the kinds of deceptive strategies and relational practices found in other forms of fraud and deception. As such, it involves the exploitation of human psychology and the rules governing social interactions. Social engineering may have significant impacts on victims beyond financial damages including emotional, psychological, relational, lifestyle, and employment harms. Relying on law enforcement to prevent these crimes is fraught with challenges. To prevent social engineering attacks, organizations may consider adopting a variety of policies and practices including providing education for organizational members on proper security practices, creating clear and strong policies to guide member decision making, ensure onboarding procedures for new employees involve security awareness training and related protocols, creating an organizational culture that values security, employing technologically based fraud prevention measures, and regularly engaging in social engineering penetration testing.
The Insect Central Complex
Authors: Heinze Stanley
Published: August 2023

The central complex (CX) is the only unpaired brain region of the insect brain. It is located at the interface of sensory processing and motor control and plays a vital role in context dependent action selection. The CX has four main tasks. First, the encoding of the insect’s orientation in space, i.e., the generation of an internal head direction signal based on both rotational self-motion and external sensory signals. Second, the generation of goal direction representations. Third, the selection of an appropriate goal direction based on context, internal state, and previous experience. And finally, the initiation of motor steering signals based on comparing heading direction and goal directions. The highly regular, almost crystalline neuroarchitecture of repeating computational elements provide the structural basis for these computations. These tight structure function relationships have revealed that the CX performs highly efficient, vector-based computations, in which vectors are encoded as sinusoidal activity patterns across populations of neurons. The deep insight into the computational algorithms implemented in this brain area have made the CX a prime model system to study the neural basis of context-dependent action selection and behavioral decisions, as well as the mechanisms of circuit evolution.
Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging
Authors: Bernard Jessica A. , Hicks Tracey H.
Published: August 2023

The cognitive neuroscience of aging is a large and diverse field seeking to understand cross-sectional differences and longitudinal changes in brain structure and function. Research in this field also investigates how brain differences or changes influence behavior in later life. There is consistent evidence indicating that cross-sectionally the brain is smaller in older adults (OA) relative to younger adults (YA), and this is due to longitudinal change over time. Furthermore, there are differences in functional activation patterns and the functional network architecture in the aging brain, both of which may contribute to the behavioral differences experienced by OA. Most notably, the differences in functional activation patterns suggest that perhaps the aging brain may compensate for the impacts of aging in an attempt to preserve performance. As such, several frameworks for understanding the processes of aging have taken hold resulting in testable hypotheses that link brain function and structure to behavior. Finally, in Alzheimer’s Disease, cognitive neuroscience methodologies have provided additional insights into the impacts of the disease on brain structure, function, and behavior.
Ojibwe Language Education in Minnesota and Wisconsin
Authors: Hermes Mary
Published: August 2023

The Ojibwe language, also referred to as Anishinaabemowin, is the language of the Ojibwe people in the Great Lakes region of North America. It has many mutually intelligible dialects and variations, making it one of the largest Indigenous languages in North America. While Ojibwe is an endangered language, with most speakers in the United States over the age of 70, it is also one that is being revitalized. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, the Ojibwe language is very widely taught and supported in both formal and informal educational contexts. It is taught in many preschools, elementary schools, and secondary schools and in tribal colleges and universities. Outside of institutions, families and individuals have made great strides to reclaim Ojibwe as their home language. Language camps, family language gatherings, and language tables are popular and can be found throughout the year. One of the most outstanding examples of reclamation is the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion Institute in northern Wisconsin. Waadookodaading impacts the entire area’s Ojibwe language-learning communities by showing that an immersion school can indeed produce highly proficient second-language speakers. Immersion schools, preschools, and family language camps are numerous throughout the midwestern United States and Canada, and many families now trying to use Ojibwe as their home language. However, the economic hurdle remains; that is, jobs that demand Ojibwe language as a daily useful skill are sparse. Although there are many institutions that teach Ojibwe as a subject, this teaching can sometimes only be a doorway to language appreciation rather than fluency. Despite these challenges, the resilient spirit of individuals connecting language and identity loss directly to the colonization of Ojibwe and other Indigenous people is a fierce one.
Systemic Supports for Antiracist Practice in International Baccalaureate Classrooms
Authors: Hegseth Whitney M.
Published: August 2023

When considering how to (re)build educational systems for equity, one might explore the potential of a system’s supports to facilitate changes in perceptions and pedagogy in classrooms, so that both become increasingly antiracist. A disciplinary incident in an International Baccalaureate (IB) elementary classroom in Washington, D.C., helps illustrate how the IB system’s educational infrastructure can support teachers in (re)framing and responding to problems in their classrooms. The infrastructure that may support such (re)framing includes system-level guidance around (a) outcomes, (b) instructional methods, and (c) the use of local resources. Although the IB system is not yet an antiracist system, its educational infrastructure can support a transformation in perception and pedagogy for IB teachers. This existing infrastructure, then, has the potential to help IB teachers and schools move toward increasingly antiracist practice. Exploring such a synergy between infrastructure and antiracist practice may help the IB system, and other educational systems, in their efforts to (re)design system supports to redress long-standing inequities in schools and society.
Shadow Education as Sociological Field
Authors: Dooley Karen
Published: August 2023

Research on curriculum and shadow education (also known as private or supplementary tutoring) is increasing and diversifying. Shadow education can be understood as out-of-school formal education. Although separate from the school program, it is directed toward that program. Shadow education often targets aspects of the curriculum of mass schooling that are most tightly controlled by the state through curricular prescription and high-stakes assessment. In terms of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, that control can be understood as the “institutionalization” of curriculum in an educational “field.” Internationally, shadow education suppliers variously prepare students for assessments that are conducted in school, are authorized by the state to award the institutionalized cultural capital of grades, or are otherwise involved in partnerships with schools.

Since the 1990s, policy-oriented researchers (many influenced by the research synthesis work of Mark Bray in forums of global educational governance) have addressed impacts of shadow education on curricula. They have identified risks to the curricular work of state, bureaucracy, and school, highlighting impacts on the efficacy of systemic equity measures designed to extend the benefits of schooling to all. More recently, Young Chun Kim, Jung-Hoon Jung, and colleagues have been bringing postcolonial, feminist, and critical traditions of curriculum scholarship to the study of shadow education. Offering a critique of the Eurocentric normativities of global agenda in educational practice and research, they celebrate the use of shadow education in East Asia, and studies of the benefits of such.

Neither of the two extant strands of research on shadow education and curriculum have attended to curriculum as institutionalized formal education. To rectify this, it is useful to articulate concepts about the making and remaking of the content of formal education developed by Michael Connelly, Jean Clandinin, and Water Doyle to Bourdieusian theory. This enables understanding of the curriculum-making work of instructors and students, as well as program writers and policymakers, in fields and subfields of education that involve school and shadow education organizations. Among other things, this perspective offers ways of understanding the work of shadow education in the construction of subject matter content in instructional, programmatic, and institutional domains of curriculum.
Capitalism, Growth, and Social Relations in the Middle East: 1869–1945
Authors: Adney Kaleb Herman , O'Sullivan Michael
Published: August 2023

This contribution has three goals: one empirical, another historiographical, and still another methodological. The first is to provide a brief empirical survey of commercial developments across the modern Middle East in the period in question, with passing reference to their temporal and spatial parameters. The second is to reflect on historiographical trends and suggest avenues for further research related to these themes. The third is to stress the potential synchronicity between social history and macroeconomic frameworks in the study of commerce, time, and space in the Middle East. Both approaches tend to talk past each other, yet when integrated, they have the potential to breathe new life into scholarship on the political economy of the Middle East and, more broadly, the global South as a whole.

More specifically, the present approach advocated here serves the purpose of revising dependency-theory narratives that present the 19th- and early 20th-century Middle East as irreversibly subordinated to a single world economy as a supplier of raw materials. Yet a more variegated picture emerges when the region is broken up into smaller geographic units, the temporal scale is compressed, and endogenous institutions are analyzed in tandem with global trends. Above all, when social relations are foregrounded as the touchstone of analysis, then a textured, context-specific narrative begins to emerge that both complements and unsettles the accepted wisdom of economic powerlessness.

Furthermore, a diachronic account of economic transformation relates that commercial institutions, fiscal policies and capacity, and political reforms in the region frequently modulated and frustrated the logics of economic dependency. A diachronic account likewise draws attention to the demonstrable continuities in Ottoman and Qajar finance, trade, and labor practices from earlier centuries. Some of these continuities persisted into the interwar period. If market dynamics and the social relations inherent within a capitalist global economy are often framed as an imposition by Europe on the Middle East, when local and regional instantiations of capitalist processes are taken seriously, then the caricatures of an earlier historiography begin to give way. This article strikes a middle ground between narratives of subordination and dynamism, contending that the constraints upon economic growth in the Middle East need to be carefully considered, without losing sight of the social realities on the ground that shaped the Middle East’s integration into the global economy and the international state system.
The Sino-Tibetan Borderlands
Authors: Gros Stéphane
Published: August 2023

The Sino-Tibetan borderlands cover a vast mountainous expanse inhabited by agricultural and pastoral communities of various ethnicities, predominantly Tibetan-speaking groups. An area of mutual interest, rivalry, and conflict, it has been the scene of lively religious and commercial exchanges, remarkable cultural flows, and circulations, which have involved many diverse peoples who were part of varying motley sociopolitical entities (kingdoms, estates, tribal federations, etc.) on various scales. Central Tibet, Mongolia, and China have historically exerted a strong political influence that has greatly contributed to shaping local political formations, religious landscapes, and cultural identities. For a proper understanding of this diversity, an anthropological history of this area cannot be limited to Sino- or Tibeto-centric narratives but needs to take into account multipolar perspectives. However, very few sources provide a borderland-centered history and, where written sources do exist, they generally portray the view held by the centers of power. A more kaleidoscopic view of this mountainous area can complement a social history of Sino-Tibetan relations and of the associated processes that have contributed to shaping the region into a borderland by restoring the multiplicity of historical experiences of the communities in between.
The Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong
Authors: Cheng Edmund W.
Published: August 2023

The Umbrella Movement, emerging from the planned Occupy Central, was a spontaneous mass movement that erupted in Hong Kong between September 26 and December 15, 2014. While the planned occupation campaign derived from frustrations over a protracted democratization process and the rise of a radical political force since the late 2000s, the movement’s spontaneous outbreak was a backfire against protest policing in September 2014. People from all walks of life, often with no organizational affiliations, rallied to occupy three business districts for seventy-nine days. Throughout the occupation sites, the prevalence of formal and informal leaders facilitated a wide range of innovative repertoire and plebian experiences but also hampered decision-making. Meanwhile, the state responded with an attrition strategy that tolerated protests ostensibly but adopted proactive means to increase the cost of participation. The purpose was to wear out protest strength and appeal to the public’s desire for law and order without making political concessions. When the movement reached a deadlock, the leadership of the veteran democrats and student activists was challenged by a radical political force known as the localists. The complex interactions within civil society and between state and society nonetheless marked Hong Kong’s departure from its moderate political culture and deprived the democratic opposition of its legitimacy and authority to broker the prodemocracy movement. The Umbrella Movement’s profound impacts in deepening political cleavages, fostering movement networks, and triggering state control were not fully manifested until another peak of street mobilization in the summer of 2019.