bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Small Wonders Figurines, Puppets, and the Aesthetics of Scale in Archaic and Classical Greece
Authors: Neer Richard
Published: October 2020

This chapter addresses the aesthetics of smallness with regard to material from Archaic and Classical Greece (roughly, from the late eighth to the late fourth centuries BCE). It sketches a range of historical possibilities to relate ancient Greek concepts of scale and likeness to the research protocols of art history and archaeology. It explores the ancient concepts and corpora, with two propositions: 1. that smallness in Archaic and Classical Greece could be wonderful, in that it could make a work of craft what the Greeks called a thauma idesthai, “a wonder to behold for itself and oneself”; 2. to show that the comparativist method to accommodate ancient categories in a modern disciplinary infrastructure requires an eclectic and egalitarian approach to evidence that combines archaeological taxonomy with the reading habits of philology and art history, corpus scholarship with close looking.
Thinking Through Scale: The First Emperor’s Sculptural Enterprise
Authors: Hung Wu
Published: October 2020

This chapter confronts the problems of the terminology of “figurine” and that of “yong,” the ancient Chinese word always used to translate “figurine.” Yong does not imply miniature size necessarily and is defined by funerary functions. The issues are exemplified through discussion of the sculptural projects of the First Emperor, including his larger-than-life golden statues in bronze and the famous terracotta army and other sculptures of his mausoleum, including scaled miniatures. The chapter simultaneously confronts the issue of the figurine in the specific context of the third century BCE and explores the problems in using this European concept for the study of non-European art.
Epilogue
Authors: Brittenham Claudia
Published: October 2020

The glory of comparative conversation is the way that it exposes our most deeply-held assumptions. All of us, prior to the conversations that resulted in this volume, had surely used the term “figurine,” unquestioned and unproblematized, in our teaching and writing. And equally surely, other specialists in our respective geographic and chronological subfields knew exactly what we meant. But in speaking to each other across the boundaries of time and place, it became clear that we did not mean the same thing at all, and that for each of us, the boundaries around the category of the figurine were much more porous than we had imagined....
Performing Custom
Authors: Elsky Stephanie
Published: October 2020

Chapter 4 focuses on the relationship between writing and authority within common law. It argues that Philip Sidney’s Old Arcadia reflects on debates about whether to codify England’s unwritten customs that were taking place during this period. He makes use of the tension those debates generate to explore the nature of Renaissance authorship. From the idea of unwritten custom, rooted in practice and performance rather than code and decree, Sidney develops an authorial persona that runs counter to our usual association of the Renaissance artist with loss and melancholy: the aporia or doubt that Sidney’s narrator creates throughout the prose romance and within its pastoral poetry allows him to construct a notion of authorship based on custom and rooted in a connection to an inaccessible past that, ironically, he has no desire to recuperate.
‘Bigness is the Enemy of Humanity’
Authors: Butler Lise
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines Michael Young’s work as Head of the Labour Party Research Department between 1945 and 1951 in the Labour government led by Clement Attlee. It outlines Young’s early life, discussing his close relationship with the philanthropists Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, his education at the progressive Dartington Hall School, and his work for the think tank Political and Economic Planning (PEP) in the 1930s and 1940s. The chapter discusses Young’s central role in PEP’s ‘Active Democracy’ project, which sought to examine citizens’ experience of local government, the social services, and the workplace from a psychological and sociological perspective. It also describes how Young actively sought to promote the social sciences in government, submitting a series of memoranda that called on the Labour Party to incorporate child psychology, industrial psychology, and psychologically informed understandings of urban planning into policy making, and recommended the creation of a Social Science Research Council. The chapter concludes by arguing that while many of Young’s ideas were overlooked by the Attlee government, the networks which he cultivated through the Labour Party and Political and Economic Planning were important to the development of British social science.
1834–1873: Becoming Women and Ogresses
Authors: Conley Carolyn A.
Published: October 2020

In the Victorian period, the urge to match women accused of homicide to stereotypes grew stronger. This was a challenge, since at the same time the number of women tried for killing their own children was skyrocketing. Motherhood was the essential aspect of womanhood, yet the expectations seemed to be driving women to madness. The New Poor Law meant that deaths of children from neglect were being punished more severely while the injustice of the bastardy clause led to greater sympathy for unwed mothers who appeared in court. There was a huge increase in insanity verdicts. Women who killed someone other than their own child were often viewed through a prism created by fictional models as the press attempted to force the woman into an existing model.
British Ethnogenesis
Authors: Woolf Alex
Published: October 2020

This chapter will argue that the ethnogenesis of the Britons was a process which occurred within the Late Antique period. Whilst commentators from Gildas onwards imagined the Britons to have existed as an identifiable group from time immemorial, it is argued here that they arose out of a growing division between more and less Romanized groups within the British provinces, as changes in the way Rome managed its frontiers led to the emergence of semi-barbarian devolved polities close to the limes. It is further argued that it was against these groups in Britain, the cultural forebears of the Welsh, that the provincials of the south-east required aid from the Saxons. Essentialist ideas about ethnicity, from the time of Gildas onwards, have obscured this process.
British Imperialist and/or Avatar of Welshness?
Authors: Hall Edith
Published: October 2020

The WWI recruitment drive in Wales was extraordinarily successful. One strand in the propaganda that encouraged young Welsh men to enlist was the example of Caractacus, the ancient British leader who according to Tacitus had fought against the ancient Romans in Wales and, after capture, had delivered a defiant speech to the Emperor Claudius. Inaugurated by a stage play in Welsh by Beriah Gwynfe Evans, performed at a school in Abergele in 1904, there was an Edwardian craze in Wales for amateur theatrical performances by schoolchildren starring Caractacus. The trend was encouraged by the identification of Lloyd George with the ancient warrior, especially after his ‘People’s Budget’ had won the fervent support of the working classes. Once war was declared, the Caractacus performances in Wales became transparently connected with recruitment, morale, and fund-raising for the war effort. Small Welsh children across the class spectrum were still performing such plays while their elder brothers were dying in the trenches of France.
Civil Justice Reform
Authors: Jackson Rupert
Published: October 2020

This short chapter summarises the philosophy which underlies the package of reforms, for which I was responsible. Controlling costs in advance, either by ad hoc budgeting or by fixed costs for lower value cases was essential. So was the abolition of recoverable success fees and recoverable ATE insurance premiums, since these drove up litigation costs unacceptably. Another essential element of the reforms was increasing the range of methods available for funding litigation. This recommendation has led to an increase in the use of third party funding and the enactment regulations to permit damages based agreements (otherwise known as contingency fees). Those regulations have some technical defects, but there is now a report before the Ministry of Justice explaining how such defects should be put right, and it is hoped those recommendations will be carried forward by the Ministry of Justice.
Reflections from Former Masters of the Rolls on Managing Civil Justice
Authors: O’Regan Kate
Published: October 2020

This edited conversation between Professor Kate O’Regan of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and Lord Neuberger and Lord Dyson reflects on their Lordships’ time as judges and Masters of the Rolls managing the civil justice system in England & Wales. Subjects include: the value of the overriding objective; whether procedural rules should be prescriptive or allow for judicial discretion; the costs and funding crisis facing the justice system, especially for those of limited means, including how legal disputes should be funded and who should be funding them; and how to balance the right to a fair trial with national security interests in a post-September 11 world.
Disclosure
Authors: Hollander Charles
Published: October 2020

Lord Woolf’s Access to Justice Report took the view that disproportionate litigation costs were spent on discovery. The CPR was intended to change that. This short chapter examines the experience of CPR 31 over 20 years and considers whether it would it have been better to retain in substance RSC ord 24 (as for example Hong Kong has done)? Taking the rules on pre-action disclosure, non-party disclosure and inadvertent disclosure of privileged documents as examples, it argues that the reforms have been largely unsuccessful, and that we should have retained the substance of the former rules. Broad discovery obligations do not necessarily lead to excessive courts.
The Long Struggle for Fixed Cost Reform
Authors: Sorabji John
Published: October 2020

The introduction of a fixed recoverable costs regime into English civil procedure was first recommended in the Woolf reforms. It was not however introduced in 1999 when the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) came into force. Since that time there have been repeated calls for the introduction of such a regime by the judiciary, not least Sir Rupert Jackson in his 2009 Costs Review and again in his 2017 Supplemental Report to his Costs Review. This chapter first considers the history of fixed recoverable cost reform. It then considers how, if implemented, such a regime could form the basis for an expansion of legal expenses insurance (LEI) and thus taken together the two could increase effective access to justice.
Alter Egos
Authors: Boggs Colleen Glenney
Published: October 2020

The draft gave rise to a booming economy of substitute brokers. While the so-called principal and his “alter ego” could, in theory, enter into an economic relationship that affirmed novelistic structures of character and personification, the insertion of middlemen brokers disrupted that possibility and posed the threat of turning substitutes into commodities. Tracking the development of this draft economy, the chapter traces its theorizations in diaries, letters, and poems, as well as in the iconography of the new paper currency, the greenback dollar bill. The chapter focuses in particular on the work of Emily Dickinson, whose career-defining interest in economics, embodiment, and split subjectivity took on additional urgency when her brother Austin procured the services of a substitute who was most likely a formerly enslaved black man. Concerned about the ability of poetic substitution to be representative, Dickinson developed an affirmation of substitution that rejected its monetization.
Introduction
Authors: Belavusau Uladzislau , Gliszczyńska-Grabias Aleksandra
Published: October 2020

This Introduction reflects on the significance of Wojciech Sadurski’s scholarship on comparative constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It links his legacy to the rise of mnemonic constitutionalism in post-communist countries in CEE. The mushrooming of memory laws (various forms of—often nationalistic—governance of historical memory) in CEE has taken place in the context of the region’s democratic decline. Countries such as Hungary and Poland are currently in the epicentre of an EU backlash for violation of rule of law standards. The recent wave of memory laws in CEE goes to the heart of constitutional visions and should be analysed in conjunction with their specific historical and present socio-political context marking the rise of illiberal democracies. The wave of mnemonic constitutionalism in CEE fulfils a different self-exculpatory function in projecting a victimhood of states and serving as a shield and sword in the context of memory wars in CEE.
The Rise of Nationalist-Authoritarian Populism and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe
Authors: Bugarič Bojan
Published: October 2020

The central argument of this chapter is that the rise of nationalist-populism in CCE is best explained by using a longue durée historical perspective. I argue that the past legacy of derailed attempts to institutionalize a modern form of liberal democracy in this region decisively contributed to the recent surge of nationalist-populism. Nevertheless, past legacies did not automatically translate into the populist surge. From this perspective, it is interesting to ask why the populists in CEE have been politically more successful in dismantling liberal democracy than their Western European counterparts. I argue that several factors have been at play, but that one of the key reasons contributing to the rise of populism in Hungary then Poland was the absence of credible liberal politico-economic alternatives, which turned out to play a crucial role in helping the populists to fill this political gap and successfully seize political power in Hungary and Poland.
On Legalism, Illiberal Takeover, and the Immune System of Constitutional Democracy
Authors: Mazmanyan Armen
Published: October 2020

This chapter is about legalism and its influence on constitutionalism. It argues that legalism affects democracy and constitutionalism, making them weaker and prone to autocratic or populist hijacking. It distinguishes between two different legalisms: political legalism, or the legalism of the elites who abuse and manipulate law in the name of its letter, and mass, popular legalism which is spread deep in multiple layers of society. Legalism’s persistence in a society’s mindset is one, albeit important, factor making it prone to illiberal takeover. Populism is on the march throughout the world. In some societies, populism affects rhetoric, popular discourse, and sometimes policies, and in others it affects core institutions and the fundamental pillars of social engineering. If populism and its favourite weapon ‘autocratic legalism’ represent an infection, a virus, then the degree of mass legalism within a society represents the state of the immune system called to resist this virus.
Randomizing Development
Authors: Pritchett Lant
Published: October 2020

An important argument for the increased use of randomized control trial methods in development is that the evidence from these studies will encourage the uptake of effective programs and projects (both through discouraging ineffective projects and improving design of new projects) and this will lead to reduced poverty and improved human well-being. However, cross-national evidence shows that the four-fold transformation of national development, to higher productivity economies, to more responsive states, the more capable organizations and administration and to more equal social treatment produces gains in poverty and human well-being that are orders of magnitude bigger than the best that can be hoped from better programs. Arguments that RCT research is a good (much less “best”) investment depend on both believing in an implausibly low likelihood that non-RCT research can improve progress national development and believing in an implausibly large likelihood that RCT evidence improves outcomes.
Reducing the Knowledge Gap in Global Health Delivery
Authors: Garchitorena Andres , Murray Megan B. , Hedt-Gauthier Bethany , Farmer Paul E. , Bonds Matthew H.
Published: October 2020

Randomized control trials (RCTs) are considered to be the gold standard for impact evaluation in international development and they are associated with a new era of evidence-based global health policies. However, there are inherent challenges in using RCTs to answer some of the most important questions in global health: why, if solutions are known, affordable at scale, and supported by existing evidence, do hundreds of millions of people lack access to essential health services? A lack of clarity on appropriate research methods for strengthening health systems has corresponded to a lack of investment in more complex and adaptive systems of integrated care delivery. This chapter reviews the use of RCTs in global health, highlighting major contributions, and addressing some pressing priorities in implementation research at a time when the Sustainable Development Goals emphasize the importance of sector-wide approaches, such as integrated primary care and universal health coverage.
A Place Where Women Shine?
Authors: Emmott Bill
Published: October 2020

Gender inequality lies at the core of Japan’s human capital weakness as well as of its social ailments of declining marriage and low fertility. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo declared his ambition, soon after taking office in late 2012, of achieving much greater female empowerment. Progress has been made, notably in increased childcare provision, but considerable barriers remain. The human capital embodied in Japanese women has improved greatly thanks to the rise in access to university education for female students in the 1990s and 2000s, but this has not yet been translated into leadership roles in part because most organizations use hierarchies ordered strictly by age but also because corporate culture (in the private and public sectors alike) is oriented towards long working hours, enforced socializing, and short-notice job postings, in continued disregard of families and of the now-dominant double-earner households. More women are however fighting back against overt discrimination, the Abe government has introduced a Work-Style Reform Bill to combat long working hours, and more companies are taking the need for diversity seriously. Role models have emerged in a wide range of fields and soon a critical mass of women in decision-making positions will be achieved.
Meditating on the Meditations
Authors: Kukkonen Taneli
Published: October 2020

A common thread runs through Descartes’ First Meditation, the opening part of Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle, and al-Ghazālī’s intellectual autobiography The Deliverer from Error. For spiritual and intellectual progress to occur, each of these authors concurs, one must first divest oneself of previously held certainties, even though evil deceivers will try to assault and halt this process. But what could explain the similarities between the three presentations? And are there philosophical lessons to draw from such comparisons, or are al-Ghazālī’s and Teresa’s meditations destined to remain curiosities and marginal as compared to Descartes’? In this article, I show how al-Ghazālī’s use of the same trope twice can point to a fresh consideration of the relation between Teresa and Descartes.
From the Design of Structures to the Designing of Organizations
Authors: Magalhães Rodrigo
Published: October 2020

The chapter starts with a historical outline of organization design featuring the following trends: • Contingency and configuration • The Simonian design tradition • Institutional organization design • Cognitive, situated, and generative approaches • Systemic approaches from business economics. Next, the chapter turns to an analysis of future trends, based on three proposals. The first concerns the growth of design thinking, which although containing a host of proposals for organization design change, it is so far not seen as an organization designing trend. Second, the trend of managerial choice and action as the focus of organization design is brought back from classical organization theory but with a new twist, that is, the role of the manager is now split into three separate but integrated activities—strategizing, designing, and managing. Third, it is proposed that the turn in some management literature towards language and meaning would become the focus of managerial action under the new design-inspired paradigm.
Conclusion
Authors: Magalhães Rodrigo
Published: October 2020

The book concludes with the suggestion that the key condition for the required paradigm change in organization design is a change in managerial discourse which depends to a large extent on the professional education of managers. According to traditional management education, managers have several roles and although organization design is included in many of them in a more or less implicit manner, designing remains relatively marginal. Organization designing, which is differentiated from managing and strategizing, is defined as comprising the following as a set of activities: creating, monitoring, shaping, reshaping, assessing, and improving artefacts at the three organizational interfaces: the identity and values interface, the market interface, and the internal interface. It is also suggested that for the new design role of managerial activity to flourish and take hold, it must be framed within a new type of culture, that is, a culture of human-centric, leaderful organization design(ing). The chapter ends with a summary of the key concepts used in the book, drawing attention to the issues that managers-as-designers need to be aware of.
A Variety of Causes
Authors: Noordhof Paul
Published: October 2020

Metaphysicians often focus on what is vertically fundamental, appealing to grounding or truth-making, rather than what is horizontally fundamental: what must be common to any metaphysical picture of the universe. There is a case for causation being one such feature. But how should it be characterized? A revised semantics for counterfactuals provides the basis for a new counterfactual analysis of causation that is compatible with Humean supervenience but also appropriate for a non-Humean metaphysical framework. Causes (independently of their competitors) both make the chance of an effect very much greater than its mean background chance in the circumstances and actually influences the probability of the effect in this way at the time at which the effect occurred via a complete causal chain. Causation understood in this way is a non-transitive relation. It is neutral over the metaphysics of causes and effects but allows a natural way for events to be understood as one fundamental type of causation, the other being property causation. Although negative causal statements are true, there are no cases of negative causation. The analysis explains how causation involving substantial processes is only one variety of causation, others include double prevention. It allows for a variety of micro- and macro-properties to be the basis of the difference between cause and effect. Laws are patterns of causation realized in different ways in different metaphysical pictures. The analysis of causation characterizes a horizontally fundamental property whose modal character depends upon its different realizations.
Hittite Religion and its Reception in Anatolia
Authors: Rutherford Ian
Published: October 2020

Chapter 2, which is aimed at those with little knowledge of the Hittites, begins with an overview of Hittite history, looks at various aspects of the religions system: different regional traditions and cultural strata, sacred geography, the pantheon and a number of specific aspects including festivals and myths. The last section looks briefly at continuity of Hittite and Luwian religion in the 1st millennium BC, especially in SE Anatolia and Lycia/
Working with Comparative Data
Authors: Rutherford Ian
Published: October 2020

Chapter 4 develops further the methodological principles sketched in this introduction. The foundation of the subject is comparison of religious practices in different geographical areas, which alows us to chart patterns of both similarities and variations. Ths may sometimes allow to infer influence, though it is much harder to prove borrowing than has sometimes been assumed. In fact, comparison has other functions as well, not least that it allows us to understand what is distinctive about different cultures. In the last section I illustrate my approach with some examples from the history of the subject.
Anatolian–Greek Religious Interaction in the LBA
Authors: Rutherford Ian
Published: October 2020

Chapter 5 looks at contact between the Hittites and Mycenaean Greece and between states of W. Anatolia (e.g. Arzawa) and Mycenaean Greeece in the Late Bronze Age. Evidence for this is limited but significant, e.g. a Hittite text which mentions the presence of gods of Mycenaean greece/Ahhiyawa and Lazpa/Lesbos at the Hittite court, and a treaty between the Hittites and the state of Wilusa (Troy?) which seems to ention a deity Apaliuna, i.e. Apollo. I argue that religious ideas might have moved in either direction as the result of political alliances and diplomatic exchanges, and perhaps participation in common sanctuaries.
Food and agriculture systems foresight study: Implications for gender, poverty, and nutrition
Authors: Lentz Erin C
Published: October 2020

This review evaluates foresight studies to understand how the future agri-food system may impact gender, poverty, and nutrition (GPN). Foresight studies agree that it will be challenging to transform the agri-food system into one that is sustainable, healthy, and just, although the degree to which foresight studies consider GPN is uneven. Foresight work with a GPN focus tends to assume that global coordination of policies and regulations is both necessary and possible in order to achieve improved GPN outcomes. However, history has shown that efforts to coordinate globally are mixed. At the same time, innovation-led studies pay less attention to barriers to equitable adoption and nutritional outcomes. Yet, the history of development has demonstrated the difficulties of equitable implementation of and access to new technological innovations, particularly for women and marginalized populations. I argue that mainstreaming GPN into foresight research can inform both policy-led and innovation-led pathways that support an improved agri-food system. The use of multisectoral and multilevel tools and analyses can support future foresight research and policymaking to systematically identify the net influences on and trade-offs among GPN and other factors.
Understanding Delinquency among the Spiritual but Not Religious
Authors: Seto Christopher H
Published: October 2020

This study investigates the association between “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) identity and delinquency using a representative sample aged 16–20 years (N = 2,530) in the United States. The analyses extend prior research by examining SBNR effects across a broad range of delinquent behaviors (theft, fighting, marijuana use, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes) and by testing several theoretically salient mechanisms (religious attendance, peers, parental expectations, images of God, morality, and strain), which may account for the association between SBNR identity and delinquency. I estimate SBNR effects on delinquency using logistic and binomial regression and test mechanisms using the Karlson–Holm–Breen method. SBNR identity is positively associated with delinquency, with the strongest effects on substance use but a nonsignificant effect on theft. The hypothesized mechanisms explain between 54% and 69% of the association between SBNR identity and overall delinquency, depending on the “degree” of SBNR identity reported.
2Ecocriticism
Authors: Ryan John Charles
Published: October 2020

This review of publications in the field of ecocriticism in 2019 comprises seven sections: 1. Introduction: Ecocriticism, Climate Change, and COVID-19; 2. Anthropocene Ecocriticism; 3. Affective Ecocriticism; 4. Postcolonial Ecocriticism; 5. Zoocriticism and Phytocriticism; 6. Ecocriticism and Ecomedia Studies; 7. Conclusion.

The review focuses on six monographs, one edited book, and two journal issues. Ecocriticism publications in 2019 reflect an imperative to devise new means of signification in response to planetary concerns. The biospheric urgencies of the Anthropocene and its catastrophic imprint of climate change continue to draw ecocritical attention to issues of time, scale, embodiment, and affect. Attuned to the Anthropocene context, 2019 publications demonstrate sustained attention to posthumanist thinking, including more-than-human ontologies. More specifically, the year brought valuable additions to postcolonial ecocriticism, affective ecocriticism, and zoocriticism as well as strides in the theorization of ecophobia. New directions in phytocriticism, hydrocriticism, and sumbiocriticism (an ecocritical mode attentive to the manner in which a text engages ideas of symbiosis) evince the field’s ongoing diversification within the environmental humanities ambit. 2019 saw significant developments in ecopoetic studies as well as highly generative confluences between ecocriticism and ecomedia studies, two complementary fields regarded historically as separate domains. The extension of ecocritical methods to the literatures of Turkey, Pakistan, Cuba, and other non-anglophone contexts signifies the continuous evolution of the field beyond its provenance in British and American studies of nature writing.
The Namaini, a new weevil tribe with six new genera from South Africa (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Entiminae)
Authors: Meregalli Massimo , Borovec Roman , Cervella Piero , Santovito Alfredo , Toševski Ivo , Ottati Sara , Nakládal Oto
Published: October 2020

Based on a phylogenetic analysis of a large number of mainly undescribed edaphic Entiminae from South Africa, a new tribe of entimine weevils is described, which includes six new genera. Taxa included in Namaini trib. nov. are clustered into seven clades that are used to delimit the following genera: Nama, type genus of the tribe, plus the new genera Cederbergia gen. nov., Cervellaea gen. nov., Namaquania gen. nov., Pentamerica gen. nov., Springbokia gen. nov. and Yamalaka gen. nov. A key to the genera is given and four new species are described.
The Quest for Ecological Validity in Hearing Science: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Advance It
Authors: Keidser Gitte , Naylor Graham , Brungart Douglas S. , Caduff Andreas , Campos Jennifer , Carlile Simon , Carpenter Mark G. , Grimm Giso , Hohmann Volker , Holube Inga , Launer Stefan , Lunner Thomas , Mehra Ravish , Rapport Frances , Slaney Malcolm , Smeds Karolina
Published: October 2020

Ecological validity is a relatively new concept in hearing science. It has been cited as relevant with increasing frequency in publications over the past 20 years, but without any formal conceptual basis or clear motive. The sixth Eriksholm Workshop was convened to develop a deeper understanding of the concept for the purpose of applying it in hearing research in a consistent and productive manner. Inspired by relevant debate within the field of psychology, and taking into account the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health framework, the attendees at the workshop reached a consensus on the following definition: “In hearing science, ecological validity refers to the degree to which research findings reflect real-life hearing-related function, activity, or participation.” Four broad purposes for striving for greater ecological validity in hearing research were determined: A (Understanding) better understanding the role of hearing in everyday life; B (Development) supporting the development of improved procedures and interventions; C (Assessment) facilitating improved methods for assessing and predicting ability to accomplish real-world tasks; and D (Integration and Individualization) enabling more integrated and individualized care. Discussions considered the effects of variables and phenomena commonly present in hearing-related research on the level of ecological validity of outcomes, supported by examples from a few selected outcome domains and for different types of studies. Illustrated with examples, potential strategies were offered for promoting a high level of ecological validity in a study and for how to evaluate the level of ecological validity of a study. Areas in particular that could benefit from more research to advance ecological validity in hearing science include: (1) understanding the processes of hearing and communication in everyday listening situations, and specifically the factors that make listening difficult in everyday situations; (2) developing new test paradigms that include more than one person (e.g., to encompass the interactive nature of everyday communication) and that are integrative of other factors that interact with hearing in real-life function; (3) integrating new and emerging technologies (e.g., virtual reality) with established test methods; and (4) identifying the key variables and phenomena affecting the level of ecological validity to develop verifiable ways to increase ecological validity and derive a set of benchmarks to strive for.
β-Arrestin as a Therapeutic Target in Heart Failure
Authors: Boussi Leora , Frishman William H.
Published: October 2020

Heart failure is a major source of morbidity and mortality, driven, in part, by maladaptive sympathetic hyperactivity in response to poor cardiac output. Current therapies target β-adrenergic and angiotensin II G protein-coupled receptors to reduce adverse cardiac remodeling and improve clinical outcomes; however, there is a pressing need for new therapeutic approaches to preserve cardiac function. β-arrestin is a multifunctional protein which has come under analysis in recent years as a key player in G protein-coupled receptor signal transduction and a potential therapeutic target in heart failure. β-arrestin attenuates β-adrenergic and angiotensin II receptor signaling to limit the deleterious response to excessive sympathetic stimulation while simultaneously transactivating cardioprotective signaling cascades that preserve cardiac structure and function in response to injury. β-arrestin signaling may provide unique advantages compared to classic heart failure treatment approaches, but a number of challenges currently limit clinical applications. In this review, we discuss the role and functions of β-arrestin and the current attempts to develop G protein-coupled receptor agonists biased towards β-arrestin activation. Furthermore, we examine the functional diversity of cardiac β-arrestin isotypes to explore key considerations in the promise of β-arrestin as a pharmacotherapeutic target in heart failure.
POSTERIOR SCLERAL CONTRACTION TO TREAT MYOPIC FOVEOSCHISIS IN HIGHLY MYOPIC EYES
Authors: Ye Jie , Pan An-Peng , Zhu Shuangqian , Zheng Linyan , Lu Fan , Xue An-Quan
Published: October 2020

Purpose:

To evaluate the efficacy of posterior scleral contraction to treat myopic foveoschisis (MF).

Methods:

The records of MF patients treated with posterior scleral contraction were reviewed. During posterior scleral contraction, a cross-linked fusiform strip from allogeneic sclera was used and designed axial length (AL) shortening amount was around 2.0∼3.0 mm based on preoperative AL. The middle part of the strip was placed at the posterior pole of the eye. After few aqueous humors were released, the strip was tightened to contract posterior sclera and shorten AL. Clinical data were collected at pre-operation (op) and post-op follow-ups for 12 months.

Results:

Twenty-four eyes were collected. The AL at pre-op, post-op 1-week, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month were 29.84 ± 1.24, 27.39 ± 1.32, 27.73 ± 1.23, 27.86 ± 1.26, and 27.91 ± 1.29 mm. There was no AL difference between post-op 6-month and 12-month (P = 0.242). The accumulated MF reattachment rate at post-op 1-week, 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month were 8.3%, 16.7%, 50.5%, and 95.8%. The best-corrected visual acuity at post-op 6-month and 12-month were 0.71 ± 0.39 (Snellen acuity 20/80) and 0.64 ± 0.37 (Snellen acuity 20/63), improving significantly compared with pre-op (P = 0.006 and <0.001).

Conclusion:

The posterior scleral contraction was effective to treat MF. The AL stabilized after post-op 6-month and MF reattached gradually with improved visual acuity up to post-op 12-month.
Severe Fever With Thrombocytopenia Syndrome With Q Fever Coinfection in an 8-Year-Old Girl
Authors: Kim Jin Hee , Choi Young-Jin , Lee Kyung Suk , Kim Ji Eun , Oh Jae-Won , Moon Jin-Hwa
Published: October 2020

We report a case of an 8-year-old Korean girl diagnosed with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome with Q fever coinfection after playing with a dog and being bitten by a tick in a suburb in South Korea. The clinical findings and treatment were summarized. To the best of our knowledge, this case is the youngest patient reported to have been diagnosed with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome and Q fever from South Korea.
Adaptive alterations in the mesoaccumbal network after peripheral nerve injury
Authors: Ren Wenjie , Centeno Maria Virginia , Wei Xuhong , Wickersham Ian , Martina Marco , Apkarian A. Vania , Surmeier D. James
Published: October 2020

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA) are critical hubs in the brain circuitry controlling chronic pain. Yet, how these 2 regions interact to shape the chronic pain state is poorly understood. Our studies show that in mice, spared nerve injury (SNI) induced alterations in the functional connectome of D2-receptor expressing spiny projection neurons in the core region of the NAc—enhancing connections with prelimbic cortex and weakening them with basolateral amygdala. These changes, which were attributable in part to SNI-induced suppression of VTA dopaminergic signaling, were adaptive because mimicking them chemogenetically alleviated the anxiety and social withdrawal accompanying injury. By contrast, chemogenetic enhancement of activity in VTA dopaminergic neurons projecting to the medial shell of the NAc selectively suppressed tactile allodynia in SNI mice. These results suggest that SNI induces regionally specific alterations in VTA dopaminergic signaling in the NAc to promote environmental reengagement after injury. However, countervailing, homeostatic mechanisms limit these adaptive changes, potentially leading to the chronic pain state.
Thalamic neuroinflammation as a reproducible and discriminating signature for chronic low back pain
Authors: Torrado-Carvajal Angel , Toschi Nicola , Albrecht Daniel S. , Chang Ken , Akeju Oluwaseun , Kim Minhae , Edwards Robert R. , Zhang Yi , Hooker Jacob M. , Duggento Andrea , Kalpathy-Cramer Jayashree , Napadow Vitaly , Loggia Marco L.
Published: October 2020

Using positron emission tomography, we recently demonstrated elevated brain levels of the 18 kDa translocator protein (TSPO), a glial activation marker, in chronic low back pain (cLBP) patients, compared to healthy controls (HCs). Here, we first sought to replicate the original findings in an independent cohort (15 cLBP, 37.8 ± 12.5 y/o; 18 HC, 48.2 ± 12.8 y/o). We then trained random forest machine learning algorithms based on TSPO imaging features combining discovery and replication cohorts (totaling 25 cLBP, 42.4 ± 13.2 y/o; 27 HC, 48.9 ± 12.6 y/o), to explore whether image features other than the mean contain meaningful information that might contribute to the discrimination of cLBP patients and HC. Feature importance was ranked using SHapley Additive exPlanations values, and the classification performance (in terms of area under the curve values) of classifiers containing only the mean, other features, or all features was compared using the DeLong test. Both region-of-interest and voxelwise analyses replicated the original observation of thalamic TSPO signal elevations in cLBP patients compared to HC (P < 0.05). The random forest-based analyses revealed that although the mean is a discriminating feature, other features demonstrate similar level of importance, including the maximum, kurtosis, and entropy. Our observations suggest that thalamic neuroinflammatory signal is a reproducible and discriminating feature for cLBP, further supporting a role for glial activation in human cLBP, and the exploration of neuroinflammation as a therapeutic target for chronic pain. This work further shows that TSPO signal contains a richness of information that the simple mean might fail to capture completely.
Optogenetic inhibition of the colon epithelium reduces hypersensitivity in a mouse model of inflammatory bowel disease
Authors: Najjar Sarah A. , Ejoh Lindsay L. , Loeza-Alcocer Emanuel , Edwards Brian S. , Smith-Edwards Kristen M. , Epouhe Ariel Y. , Gold Michael S. , Davis Brian M. , Albers Kathryn M.
Published: October 2020

Visceral pain is a prevalent symptom of inflammatory bowel disease that can be difficult to treat. Pain and hypersensitivity are mediated by extrinsic primary afferent neurons (ExPANs) that innervate the colon. Recent studies indicate that the colon epithelium contributes to initiating ExPAN firing and nociceptive responses. Based on these findings, we hypothesized that the epithelium contributes to inflammation-induced hypersensitivity. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that inhibition of the epithelium would attenuate nociceptive signaling and inflammatory hypersensitivity. To test this hypothesis, the inhibitory yellow light–activated protein archaerhodopsin was targeted to the intestinal epithelium (villin-Arch) or the ExPANs (TRPV1-Arch) that innervate the colon. Visceral sensitivity was assessed by measuring the visceromotor response (VMR) to colorectal distension (CRD), with and without yellow light illumination of the colon lumen. Inhibition of the colon epithelium in healthy villin-Arch mice significantly diminished the CRD-induced VMR. Direct inhibition of ExPANs during CRD using TRPV1-Arch mice showed that ExPAN and epithelial inhibition were similarly effective in reducing the VMR to CRD. We then investigated the effect of epithelial and ExPAN inhibition in the dextran sulfate sodium model of inflammatory bowel disease. Inhibition of the colon epithelium significantly decreased dextran sulfate sodium–induced hypersensitivity and was comparable with the inhibition of ExPANs. Together, these results reveal the potential of targeting the colon epithelium for the treatment of pain.
The current status and outlook of trachea transplantation
Authors: Vranckx Jan Jeroen , Delaere Pierre
Published: October 2020

Purpose of review

The trachea is an enigmatic organ due to its complex morphology. Although circumferential tracheal defects are extremely difficult to repair with autologous tissue or with an allotransplant, the trachea has been touted as the first organ that could be regenerated. This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the published evidence in tracheal tissue replacement surgery.

Recent findings

In recent years, reports of successful tracheal regeneration have attracted great interest. Despite descriptions of the trachea as a perhaps uniquely regeneratable tissue since 2008, critical reporting provided insights into the more complex realities of tracheal regeneration attempts and led to the retraction of some articles making tracheal regeneration claims. Allotransplantation of the trachea is hindered by numerous difficult obstacles. The most promising approach developed thus far for difficult-to-repair patch airway defects is tracheal allotransplantation, which allows for tapering and withdrawal of immunosuppressive therapy.

Restoration of a long-segment circumferential tracheal defect remains an unmet challenge. Future clinical studies require thoroughly documented visual evidence of outcomes to reduce confusion surrounding tracheal replacement and to prevent future scandals like those seen previously in the tracheal regeneration story.

Video abstract

http://links.lww.com/COOT/A6.
The Use of a Patient Discharge Lounge and the Impact on 30-Day Hospital Readmission
Authors: Emmerling Sheryl A. , Fisher Mary C. , McGarvey Jeremey
Published: October 2020

OBJECTIVE

To investigate if there is a relationship between the use of a patient discharge hospitality center (DHC) and hospital readmissions.

BACKGROUND

Hospital discharge lounges or DHCs have been developed to improve patient throughput. No studies have been conducted to determine if a discharge location influences hospital readmission.

METHODS

Data were extracted for adults discharged to home or self-care. Patients were stratified by discharge/last department and admitting/discharge service lines. Readmission rates between groups in the stratified data were compared. DHC and control patients were matched on gender, marital status, age at admission, type, discharging/last department before the DHC, discharging service line, and readmission risk category.

RESULTS

There was no significant difference in the readmission rate of the control group (9.74%) compared with the DHC group (9.93%), χ
2
1 (n = 3204) = 0.031, P = .86.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this analysis do not indicate that being discharged from a DHC has an impact on readmission rates.
A Novel tp0548 Gene Type of Treponema pallidum Identified in Nanjing, China: Case Report and Review of Literature
Authors: KOU Cai-Xia , Wang Qian-Qiu , Zhang Jin-Ping , Liu Jin-Quan , Zhang Hai-Ni , Zhang Rui-Li
Published: October 2020

Background

The tp0548 gene, hypothesized to encode for an outer-membrane protein, was originally used in the enhanced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typing for molecular typing of Treponema pallidum. It plays an important role in the molecular epidemiology of Treponema because it is not only an important locus of multiple typing approaches but also suitable for strain typing of multiple Treponema subspecies.

Methods

A 27-year-old Chinese man attended the Institute of Dermatology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic in Nanjing, China, because of a genital ulcer and inguinal lymphadenopathy for 1 week. Workup consisted of microbiological and hematological investigations, and sequences analysis. The aims of this study were to describe a novel tp0548 sequence type “Qn” of this syphilis strain and to review all previously reported novel tp0548 genotypes.

Results

We identified a novel tp0548 gene type in a genital ulcer in a patient with primary syphilis in Nanjing, China. Using sequence alignment, we further found that this novel sequence was closely similar to “Q.” Following the nomenclature used in the enhanced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typing methodology, the letters “Qn” was assigned to the new sequence type.

Conclusion

The novel tp0548 sequence type of T. pallidum not only expands the database up to 27 different sequence types but also indicates the substantial genetic diversity of the tp0548 gene sequence.