bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Exploration of medicinal plants as potential therapeutics against COVID-19: molecular insights and drug development prospects with other significant medicinal information a retrospective exposition
Authors: Dilip Bhandare Saurabh
Published: August 2024

Objectives

The study aims to explore the potential of medicinal plants and their phytoconstituents as effective inhibitors of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The focus is on investigating specific medicinal plants known for their pharmacological properties, such as: antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory effects, to determine their viability in developing COVID-19 treatments.

Materials and methods

This study involves a comprehensive study of medicinal plants, including: Withania somnifera (Ashwagandha) and Ocimum sanctum (Holy Basil), known for their beneficial health effects. Molecular docking studies were conducted to assess the interactions between phytoconstituents from these plants and SARS-CoV-2 proteins. The compounds’ drug-like characteristics and safety profiles were also evaluated to determine their potential as therapeutic agents.

Results

The molecular docking studies revealed that the phytoconstituents from the studied medicinal plants exhibit favourable interactions with SARS-CoV-2 proteins, suggesting their potential as therapeutic targets. These compounds demonstrated promising drug-like characteristics and safety profiles, indicating their suitability for further development as COVID-19-fighting medications.

Discussion

The results indicate that medicinal plants and their bioactive substances hold significant potential for developing therapies against COVID-19. The ability of these organic substances to interact with key viral proteins and provide various therapeutic benefits highlights their potential as multi-functional treatment options. However, further research is necessary to confirm these findings and to understand the full scope of their therapeutic efficacy and safety in clinical settings.

Conclusions

Medicinal plants and their phyto-constituents represent a promising avenue for developing effective treatments for COVID-19. The favourable interactions with SARS-CoV-2 proteins and the promising drug-like characteristics observed in this study suggest that these natural compounds could be integral in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Further research and clinical trials are essential to fully validating their potential and translating these findings into practical medical applications.
A national survey of medical staffs’ required capability and workload for accelerator-based boron neutron capture therapy
Authors: Nakamura Satoshi , Tanaka Hiroki , Kato Takahiro , Akita Kazuhiko , Takemori Mihiro , Kasai Yusaku , Kashihara Tairo , Takai Yoshihiro , Nihei Keiji , Onishi Hiroshi , Igaki Hiroshi
Published: August 2024

This study aimed to identify the required capabilities and workload of medical staff in accelerator-based boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT). From August to September 2022, a questionnaire related to the capabilities and workload in the accelerator-based BNCT was administered to 12 physicians, 7 medical physicists and 7 radiological technologists engaged in BNCT and 6 other medical physicists who were not engaged in BNCT to compare the results acquired by those engaged in BNCT. Only 6–21% of patients referred for BNCT received it. Furthermore, 30–75% of patients who received BNCT were treated at facilities located within their local district. The median required workload per treatment was 55 h. Considering additional workloads for ineligible patients, the required workload reached ~1.2 times longer than those for only eligible patients’ treatment. With respect to capabilities, discrepancies were observed in treatment planning, quality assurance and quality control, and commissioning between medical physicists and radiological technologists. Furthermore, the specialized skills required by medical physicists are impossible to acquire from the experience of conventional radiotherapies as physicians engaged in BNCT were specialized not only in radiation oncology, but also in other fields. This study indicated the required workload and staff capabilities for conducting accelerator-based BNCT considering actual clinical conditions. The workload required for BNCT depends on the occupation. It is necessary to establish an educational program and certification system for the skills required to safely and effectively provide BNCT to patients.
‘NO MORE WALLS IN THE SEAS’: Migration graffscapes and migrants’ messages while en route to and in Europe
Authors: Uzureau Océane , Rota Marina , Verhaeghe Floor , Lietaert Ine , Elhaj Rihab , Derluyn Ilse
Published: August 2024

This article explores forced migrants’ use of graffiti writing along their precarious and fragmented migration journeys. Previous research has recognized the use of graffiti by activist groups, yet existing empirical evidence of the materiality of life in transit and of forced migrants’ reactions to it remains scarce. Our analysis reveals how graffiti documents migrants’ agentic reactions to the uncertainty and adverse experiences they faced along their irregular journey. It shows how people on the move, who are stuck in transit situations, voice complex feelings, reclaim their identities and narratives, and denounce political struggles and restrictive migration policies. We argue that they use graffiti to cope with the uncertainty of their journey by nurturing solidarity and hope, and by producing a guidebook of supportive and protective advice addressed to the community of unauthorized travellers.
A nonparametric framework for treatment effect modifier discovery in high dimensions
Authors: Boileau Philippe , Leng Ning , Hejazi Nima S , van der Laan Mark , Dudoit Sandrine
Published: August 2024

Heterogeneous treatment effects are driven by treatment effect modifiers (TEMs), pretreatment covariates that modify the effect of a treatment on an outcome. Current approaches for uncovering these variables are limited to low-dimensional data, data with weakly correlated covariates, or data generated according to parametric processes. We resolve these issues by proposing a framework for defining model-agnostic TEM variable importance parameters (TEM-VIPs), deriving one-step, estimating equation, and targeted maximum likelihood estimators of these parameters, and establishing these estimators’ asymptotic properties. This framework is showcased by defining TEM-VIPs for data-generating processes with continuous, binary, and time-to-event outcomes with binary treatments, and deriving accompanying asymptotically linear estimators. Simulation experiments demonstrate that these estimators’ asymptotic guarantees are approximately achieved in realistic sample sizes in randomized and observational studies alike. This methodology is also applied to gene expression data collected in a clinical trial assessing the effect of a novel therapy on disease-free survival in breast cancer patients. Predicted TEMs have previously been linked to treatment resistance.
The Legal Concept of Money
Authors: Gleeson Simon
Published: August 2024

This is the first book of recent times to focus on the question of how money should be defined from both a legal and an economic perspective. As new electronic payment mechanisms proliferate, this question of definition is likely to become an important issue in global legal, commercial, economic, macroprudential and fiscal policymaking. The book re-examines ‘money’ in this context by identifying the role it plays in various transactions and to what extent, for example, cryptocurrencies and ‘quasi-money’ are interchangeable with, analogous to, or different from traditional monetary systems. Beginning with a summary of the legal nature of money, the book explains the distinction between money and payment obligations, as well as providing an overview of the fundamental characteristics of money. It analyses how the law identifies money by pinpointing characteristics of particular transactions such as sale of goods transactions, including the position where the exchange of goods is for ‘e-currency’. Other situations or transactions examined would include the recovery of stolen money, claims for non-delivery of money, and how obligations to pay operate. The book also considers the role of money in the banking system, exploring how various currencies can be used as claims on financial institutions, examining whether the systemic stability of the industry is threatened by non-traditional currency forms. Finally, the book addresses, and seeks to develop a conceptual framework for how alternative currencies might work in place of money as a medium for saving.
Fit and Proper Assessments within the Single Supervisory Mechanism
Authors: Busch Danny , Teubner Annick
Published: August 2024

A fit and proper management body and fit and proper key function holders are key drivers of good governance. The banks are primarily responsible for ensuring this, while the assessment by the European Central Bank and national competent authorities have the aim to ensure that banks comply with the requirements regarding robust governance arrangements and the suitability requirements. Over the past years convergence of fit and proper assessments within the SSM has been achieved on the one hand through harmonization of the rules laid down in Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV) and the European Banking Authority (EBA) guidelines on suitability, and on the other hand through consistent application of these rules. Nevertheless, there is still a wide variety of national practices regarding fit and proper assessments, due to the fact that there are limits to convergence in this area. With every step towards more harmonization and consistency, the existing national variations will become more obvious and underline the need for more harmonization.
Berlin in Cincinnati — Scenes from the End of the ‘Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums’
Authors: Steilen Felix
Published: August 2024

A vital centre of Jewish higher learning, the Berlin ‘Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums’ (1872–1942) is part of a larger story about the persecution and subsequent flight of the intelligentsia in Europe. This article will look at the final phase of this institution of Reform Judaism through the lens of Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College, based on hitherto unpublished sources from the American Jewish Archives. The end of the Hochschule, comprising its last years and immediate afterlife, will be rendered through notable encounters involving former professors and students. Rather than providing a concluded account of this wide and fractured subject, the aim here will be a perspectivation of individual historical experience through a series of notable scenes. These range from (I) a period of precarious blossoming to (II) mounting constraints in the 1930s, (III) dreams of escape and stability, and (IV) the question of mere survival. A short reflection on this exceptional and strangely forgotten institution stands in lieu of a conclusion.
Felix Rosenberg—Student, Writer, Traveller
Authors: Falksohn Howard , Norpoth Anna
Published: August 2024

The letters written by Felix Rosenberg (1865–1923) to his family, which were donated to the Wiener Holocaust Library in 2011, describe an assimilated German-Jewish student’s youth and young adulthood in the German Empire. Three of these letters are presented here for the first time in translation, along with contextualizing information about Rosenberg, his letters, and the circumstances in which they were written. Although by no means a well-known historical figure, Rosenberg’s exceptional powers of observation and narration allow us to witness his life and times with extraordinary clarity. Through their important insights into nineteenth-century political circumstances, society, and German-Jewish life, the letters in this collection represent a significant contribution to social history and add a remarkable young person’s perspective to established accounts of the time. Archivist Howard Falksohn provides an introduction detailing the historical circumstances of Jewish life in the German Empire, as well as information on the Rosenberg family and the Rosenberg collection’s history. Anna Norpoth, the transcriber and translator of the letters, shows through a close reading of various letters how Rosenberg introduces us to late nineteenth-century cultural experiences, travel adventures, and university life, whilst also taking his first steps into adulthood. Three of Felix Rosenberg’s letters from 1883 and 1888, translated and annotated by Anna Norpoth, form the final section of this piece.
The Dark Energy Survey Supernova Program: slow supernovae show cosmological time dilation out to z ~ 1.
Authors: White R M T , Davis T M , Lewis G F , Brout D , Galbany L , Glazebrook K , Hinton S R , Lee J , Lidman C , Möller A , Sako M , Scolnic D , Smith M , Sullivan M , Sánchez B O , Shah P , Vincenzi M , Wiseman P , Abbott T M C , Aguena M , Allam S , Andrade-Oliveira F , Asorey J , Bacon D , Bocquet S , Brooks D , Buckley-Geer E , Burke D L , Rosell A Carnero , Carollo D , Carretero J , da Costa L N , Pereira M E S , De Vicente J , Desai S , Diehl H T , Everett S , Ferrero I , Flaugher B , Frieman J , García-Bellido J , Gaztanaga E , Giannini G , Gruendl R A , Hollowood D L , Honscheid K , James D J , Kessler R , Kuehn K , Lahav O , Lee S , Lima M , Marshall J L , Mena-Fernández J , Miquel R , Myles J , Nichol R C , Ogando R L C , Palmese A , Pieres A , Malagón A A Plazas , Romer A K , Sanchez E , Cid D Sanchez , Schubnell M , Suchyta E , Tarle G , Tucker B E , Walker A R , Weaverdyck N ,   (DES Collaboration)
Published: August 2024

We present a precise measurement of cosmological time dilation using the light curves of 1504 Type Ia supernovae from the Dark Energy Survey spanning a redshift range $0.1\lesssim z\lesssim 1.2$. We find that the width of supernova light curves is proportional to $(1+z)$, as expected for time dilation due to the expansion of the Universe. Assuming Type Ia supernovae light curves are emitted with a consistent duration $\Delta t_{\rm em}$, and parametrizing the observed duration as $\Delta t_{\rm obs}=\Delta t_{\rm em}(1+z)^b$, we fit for the form of time dilation using two methods. First, we find that a power of $b \approx 1$ minimizes the flux scatter in stacked subsamples of light curves across different redshifts. Secondly, we fit each target supernova to a stacked light curve (stacking all supernovae with observed bandpasses matching that of the target light curve) and find $b=1.003\pm 0.005$ (stat) $\pm \, 0.010$ (sys). Thanks to the large number of supernovae and large redshift-range of the sample, this analysis gives the most precise measurement of cosmological time dilation to date, ruling out any non-time-dilating cosmological models at very high significance.
Structural basis for difunctional mechanism of m-AMSA against African swine fever virus pP1192R
Authors: Liu Ruili , Sun Junqing , Li Lian-Feng , Cheng Yingxian , Li Meilin , Fu Lifeng , Li Su , Peng Guorui , Wang Yanjin , Liu Sheng , Qu Xiao , Ran Jiaqi , Li Xiaomei , Pang Erqi , Qiu Hua-Ji , Wang Yanli , Qi Jianxun , Wang Han , Gao George Fu
Published: August 2024

The African swine fever virus (ASFV) type II topoisomerase (Topo II), pP1192R, is the only known Topo II expressed by mammalian viruses and is essential for ASFV replication in the host cytoplasm. Herein, we report the structures of pP1192R in various enzymatic stages using both X-ray crystallography and single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. Our data structurally define the pP1192R-modulated DNA topology changes. By presenting the A2+-like metal ion at the pre-cleavage site, the pP1192R–DNA–m-AMSA complex structure provides support for the classical two-metal mechanism in Topo II-mediated DNA cleavage and a better explanation for nucleophile formation. The unique inhibitor selectivity of pP1192R and the difunctional mechanism of pP1192R inhibition by m-AMSA highlight the specificity of viral Topo II in the poison binding site. Altogether, this study provides the information applicable to the development of a pP1192R-targeting anti-ASFV strategy.
Non-linear relationships in clinical research
Authors: Chesnaye Nicholas C , van Diepen Merel , Dekker Friedo , Zoccali Carmine , Jager Kitty J , Stel Vianda S
Published: August 2024

True linear relationships are rare in clinical data. Despite this, linearity is often assumed during analyses, leading to potentially biased estimates and inaccurate conclusions. In this introductory paper, we aim to first describe—in a non-mathematical manner—how to identify non-linear relationships. Various methods are then discussed that can be applied to deal with non-linearity, including transformations, polynomials, splines and generalized additive models, along with their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we illustrate the use of these methods with a practical example from nephrology, providing guidance on how to report the results from non-linear relationships.
Institutional ‘gaming’ involving staff turnover during recent research evaluation exercises by UK Russell Group universities
Authors: Harris Richard , Mate-Sanchez-Val Mariluz , Marín Manuel Ruiz
Published: August 2024

There is limited evidence on the extent to which UK universities institutionally ‘game’ the system with respect to periodic research assessment exercises (i.e. RAE/REF), that is, the hiring (and leaving) of staff before the cut-off census date to enhance institutional returns. Population panel data from the Higher Educational Statistical Agency (HESA) for 2004/05–2019/20 are used to consider the extent to which the numbers of ‘starters’, ‘movers’, and ‘exits’ specifically responded to the RAE/REF cycle. Confining the analysis to full professors, a random effects (RE) multinomial logit model was estimated that shows, after taking account of the importance of other covariates, strong evidence of a 2008 and (in particular) 2014 cycle, but no evidence of any upturn in overall hires (or declines in exiting) in the period preceding the 2021 REF census date. Institutional ‘gaming’ therefore seems to have been absent during the most recent REF.
Reevaluating the role of platinum-based chemotherapy in the evolving treatment landscape for patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma
Authors: Zhang Tian , Tan Alan , Shah Amishi Y , Iyer Gopa , Morris Valerie , Michaud Sébastien , Sridhar Srikala S
Published: August 2024

Platinum-based chemotherapy has been the standard first-line (1L) treatment for advanced urothelial carcinoma (UC) for decades, based on the proven efficacy and established safety profiles of cisplatin- and carboplatin-based regimens. With the emergence of novel regimens, it is important to reevaluate and contextualize the role of 1L platinum-based chemotherapy. Platinum-based chemotherapy followed by avelumab 1L maintenance in patients without disease progression following platinum-based chemotherapy was established as a standard 1L regimen based on the JAVELIN Bladder 100 phase III trial. More recently, the EV-302 phase III trial showed the superiority of 1L enfortumab vedotin (EV) + pembrolizumab versus platinum-based chemotherapy, and the Checkmate 901 phase III trial showed the superiority of 1L nivolumab + cisplatin/gemcitabine versus cisplatin/gemcitabine alone. These 2 regimens have now been included as standard 1L options in treatment guidelines for advanced UC. EV + pembrolizumab is now the preferred 1L treatment, and in locations where EV + pembrolizumab is not available or individual patients are not considered suitable, recommended options are platinum-based chemotherapy followed by avelumab maintenance or nivolumab + cisplatin-based chemotherapy. In this review, we discuss current treatment options for advanced UC recommended in guidelines, practical considerations with platinum-based chemotherapy, the role of avelumab 1L maintenance, recent phase III trials of EV + pembrolizumab and nivolumab + cisplatin/gemcitabine, safety profiles of recommended 1L treatments, and second-line treatment options.
Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen
Authors: Hardwick Lorna , Harrison Stephen , Vandiver Elizabeth
Published: August 2024

This book examines how, when, and why four First World War poets engaged with Greek and Roman antiquity. Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Charles Sorley all died in the war. They came from diverse social, educational, and cultural backgrounds but for each of the writers engagement with classical material was decisive in shaping their war poetry. The world views and cultural hinterlands of Brooke and Sorley were framed by the Greek and Latin texts they had studied at school, whereas for Owen, who struggled with Latin, classical texts were a part of his aspirational literary imagination. Rosenberg’s education was limited but he encountered some Greek and Roman literature through translations, and through mediations in English literature. The various ways in which the poets engaged with classical literature are analysed in the commentaries, which are designed to be accessible to classicists and to users from other subject areas. The extensive range of connections made by the poets and by subsequent readers is explained in the Introduction to the volume. The commentaries illuminate relationships between the poems and attitudes to the war at the time, in the immediate post-war years, and subsequently. They also probe how individual poems reveal various facets of the poetry of unease, the poetry of survival, and the poetics of war and ecology. Links to the online Oxford Classical Receptions Commentaries will enable readers to follow up their special interests. This volume differs from the shorter volume Greek and Roman Antiquity in First World War Poetry; Making Connections in that it covers the whole output of the four poets, and not just their war poems.
Rupert Brooke
Authors: Harrison Stephen
Published: August 2024

This chapter examines the poetry of Rupert Brooke (1887–1915), one of the best-known English poets of the First World War, from the perspective of classical reception. It shows that his celebrated 1914 sonnet ‘The Soldier’ draws on imagery and topics from Homer, Greek tragedy, and Greek epigram. These are all texts he would have known from his elite classical education at Rugby School and the University of Cambridge. It also looks at the Homeric connection of his last fragments written on the voyage to Gallipoli in early 1915, which he, like others of his education, imagined as a reprise of the Homeric Trojan War. It further analyses classical elements in Brooke’s most famous pre-war poem, ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, as a comparison and contrast, as well as in his other earlier poems, including an unrecognized partial version of a Horace ode.
Isaac Rosenberg
Authors: Hardwick Lorna
Published: August 2024

Rosenberg was killed in France in 1918. The poems he wrote during the war were his major achievement. The context and commentaries discuss the interaction in their subject matter, diction, and forms between his life experiences and his embedded sensitivity to the poetry of the Hebrew Bible and to scenes and motifs in classical texts, mainly Homer and Aeschylus, which he encountered in translations. The son of poor Jewish immigrants, his cultural heritage was supplemented by a limited school education and by his study of art (at the Slade) and English literature (at Birbeck College). The extant paramaterial he sent back from France includes drawings and letters that record physical and mental suffering and anti-Semitism. Rosenberg thought that poets should be ‘perverse’ and the subject matter and aesthetic of his work frequently subvert cultural and ethical expectations. The poems themselves are not poems of overt protest against the war. They focus on images and episodes that resonate with those in ancient texts but which are also transformed materially and imaginatively by the effects of war on the contemporary environment. Unease, premonitions of disaster, and relief at temporary survival are threaded through Rosenberg’s poems, which deploy techniques of affinity, ghosting, and improvisation rather than depending on intertextuality with the classical material. They create ‘thick’ classical receptions, a deep and sometimes subterranean engagement with war poetry focusing on images and reflections. The commentaries explain the stretched taxonomy this entails, discussing a variety of critical approaches, including associations with ecocriticism and catastrophe literature.
The Introduction of Symmetry in an Introduction
Authors: Sengupta Anwesha
Published: August 2024

In this chapter, I closely examine the stutikhaṇḍ or the prologue section of Padmāvat, a popular sixteenth-century Avadhī Sufi narrative composed by the Sufi poet Malik Muḥammad Jāysī. Prologues of Avadhī Sufi premākhyans are rich in references to the immediate literary and historical context of the composer. However, it is often overlooked as formulaic and considered non-essential to the rest of the narrative. The equivocal manner in which new information is weaved into this section using prevailing literary tropes warrants a closer look at the arrangement of stanzas and the tropes within it. I argue that structurally and thematically the verses in the prologue of Padmāvat are arranged in such a way that a clear pattern of symmetry can be discerned. By plotting the repetition of tropes within the verses, I trace the intricate manner in which this pattern appears in the prologue and discusses its possible significance.
Introduction
Authors: Spicer Jason S.
Published: August 2024

This chapter introduces the book’s central puzzle: Why are co-operative businesses rarer at scale in the United States than in most other rich democracies? After an overview of co-operatives today, the book’s answer to this question is introduced: co-operatives’ initial U.S. development was stymied by two field competitors, the race-based system of ownership of people, and economic liberalism’s system of “wage slavery,” which manifested through investor-owned firms. Only in the United States did co-operative ownership, at a critical early stage in its development, face two such strong and well-entrenched economic competitors. Proponents of these competitors—from Northern business owners to Southern slave owners, and the politicians who supported the interests of both—acted to deprive the co-operative movement of the adherents and resources needed to realize lasting scale. American co-operative advocates have never fully recovered from these challenges. The chapter also summarizes the plan and outline of the book.
The Normativity of the Extraordinary
Authors: Donovan Ryan , Wolf Stacy
Published: August 2024

Musicals communicate in multiple semiotic languages at once—music and lyrics; speech; blocking and dance; and set, costume, lighting, and sound design. Characters exist on the page and on the stage, portrayed by actors whose bodies and voices carry their own meanings. It is in performance that musicals reveal culturally determined, paradoxical notions of ability, reducing disabled characters to simplistic stereotypes while valorizing the exceptionally able performer, both the abnormality of its most celebrated stars and the hyperability of the triple-threat performers in the ensemble. Disability studies scholar Samuel Yates notes this duality, writing, “An able body is at the center of musical theatre performance yet disabled characters are everywhere in the musical theatre genre.” This essay takes up both parts of Yates’s claims as it examines the ideological work of disability in musicals as well as the requisite freakish, exceptionally able and “talented” body and voice of the performer.
The Enfreakment of the Premature Infant
Authors: Kattwinkel Susan
Published: August 2024

Appearing just as the showing and naming of extraordinary bodies was being openly challenged by respectability culture, incubator baby shows met the expectations of wonder and enlightenment that had made the traditional freak show so popular while also working to satisfy modernity’s focus on industrialization and conformity-based progress. Although the exhibition of human oddities was waning by 1900 and was frequently decried by social reformers, scientific curiosity in extraordinary bodies cloaked their exploitation in a progressive, educational context that supported the continuation of such exhibits and facilitated the addition of incubator babies to the roster of disabled humans that people of all social classes would pay to see. This chapter examines the ways that incubator shows used and reshaped freak show practices and how their massive popularity helped to repopularize—within Progressive Era boundaries—the exhibition of extraordinary bodies.
The Mortification of Harvey Leach
Authors: Chemers Michael M.
Published: August 2024

This chapter looks at the presence of horror and humor as two aesthetic states that are often seen together in many genres and should not only be considered to be diametrically opposed, but, in actuality, deeply imbricated. To do so, the chapter examines this imbrication closely in a particular event that occurred during a nineteenth-century exhibition, the exposure and humiliation of an actor by the name of Harvey Leach. Through a careful analysis of this specific case study, the chapter demonstrates that the experience of horror and humor are processes (or, more often, the same process) that operate within dynamic systems of representation that shape them in strange ways.
Sex Mad
Authors: Watson Keri
Published: August 2024

This chapter examines representations of freakshows, such as the photographs taken at the 1939 Mississippi State Fair by Eudora Welty (1909–2001) and the photographs and paintings made of Coney Island by Reginald Marsh (1898–1954), to explore the ways in which they both embody the anxiety that surrounded disability during the Great Depression and expose the ways in which gendered and abled identities are ultimately performative. Whereas Marsh used his representations of the sideshow to ameliorate his fantasies, reassure his position of privilege, and reinforce notions of whiteness, able-bodiedness, and heteronormativity, Welty found in its spectacle the opportunity to destabilize identity positions and expose the freakishness of everyone.
Embodied Expression in Popular Music
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: August 2024

This study of embodiment and meaning in popular music explores a wide-ranging repertoire, offering a performance-based analytical methodology that progresses from basic idiomatic gestures, to gestural combinations and interactions with large-scale design, to broader interpretive strategies that engage with theories of embodiment, the musical topic, and narrative. The book examines artistic practices in popular song that draw from a vast range of stylistic sources, including rock, blues, folk, soul, funk, fusion, and hip hop, as well as European classical and African American gospel musical traditions. Exploring the interrelationships in how we create, hear, and understand music through the body, the study demonstrates how a focus on body-instrument interaction can illuminate musical structures while leveling implied hierarchies of cultural value. Through detailed analysis of artists’ creative strategies in singing and playing their instruments, the book probes how musicians represent subjectivities of gender, race, and social class in shaping songs and whole albums. Tracing connections from foundational musicians including Jimi Hendrix and Aretha Franklin to recent artists, the book clarifies how inferences of musical topic and narrative are part of a larger creative process in strategically positioning musical gestures. This study of popular song explores how the situated and engaged body provides an integral dimension in listening, performing, and creating musical cultures, as it comprises a means by which we understand our own bodies in relation to the world.
Introduction
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: August 2024

This Introduction explains the analytical approach in the book and defines key terms, including embodied knowledge, musical gesture, topic, persona, and personic environment. After briefly summarizing current perspectives and research on musical gesture, embodiment, and song analysis, it outlines the organization of the book. Part I focuses on guitar-based expression. Part II examines gesture, counterpoint, and agency in soul and funk music. Part III explores gestural strategies in songs with acoustic instruments, focusing on songs by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Part IV broadly examines topic, narrative, and the strategic positioning of musical gestures in songs. It includes a chapter on keyboard topics in the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, a study of irony in the songs of Steely Dan, and a chapter on voice in hip hop music, with examples ranging from foundational hip hop artists in the 1990s to the 2018 Room 25 album by Noname.
Guitar Voicing I
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: August 2024

Chapter 1 focuses on guitar-based expression, showing how we can understand basic moves in guitar playing not only as building blocks in creating songs, but also as musical gestures carrying aural traces of human movement that can project attributes of a fictionalized virtual musical agent. The chapter begins with barre chords that can be grasped on the guitar fretboard at any location within boundaries up and down the guitar neck. Concepts are illustrated with examples selected from a broad range of artists, including the Kinks, Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Tower of Power, and Lenny Kravitz. The study progresses from basics in how barre chords map to fretboard space, to more complex barre chord figurations and guitar riffs, to extended jazz chords based on familiar barre chord shapes found in songs by Lianne La Havas.
Soul and Funk at the Keyboard
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: August 2024

This chapter explores embodied gesture and agency in soul and funk music, focusing on keyboard-based songs by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder. The study traces elements of African American gospel style that shape approaches in singing and keyboard playing while also providing a rhetorical approach that contributes to the staging of virtual agency, showing how keyboard-based soul and funk emerged as an artistic platform capable of staging virtual locations of autonomy and creativity. Ray Charles’s R&B breakthrough hit from 1959, “What’d I Say” provides an exemplar as a precursor to keyboard-based funk. The study then examines Aretha Franklin’s creative strategies as singer, songwriter, and pianist, particularly in her Atlantic recordings with Muscle Shoals musicians. Turning to the music of Stevie Wonder, the study focuses on his songs with clavinet, a keyboard instrument that Wonder utilized in developing a unique performance approach and definitive signature sound.
Counterpoint and Embodied Expression in the Music of Joni Mitchell
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: August 2024

This chapter on the music of Joni Mitchell examines her unique approach in fusing vocal melody with instrumental playing, revealing a continuity in her strategic approach to counterpoint and musical texture that is evident whether she is playing piano, guitar, or dulcimer as she sings. The study establishes how Mitchell’s artistic approach to layered musical textures in her guitar and piano work may have first developed as a strategy of adaptation after contracting polio as a child. It further explores how her artistic confidence in freely juxtaposing musical materials provides an expressive framework in her songs with orchestra and her collaborations with jazz artists in her late albums.
Colons
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

Colons set off information in a sentence. While James Joyce once crammed fifteen colons into a single sentence, the Supreme Court justices do not use quite so many. But they eschew the traditional grammarian rule that colons should follow only independent clauses, as opposed to shorter phrases. All nine justices use colons at a sentence’s midpoint to set off a quotation, a rule, a list, or other information. Their only rule is that what follows, whether a phrase or independent clause, is closely related. The traditional rule can require writers to add the wordy as follows or the following before a colon. A few justices follow this old practice at times, but all skip that outdated requirement when it better serves their writing.
En-dash
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

The en-dash is a mid-sized dash left over from typesetting days, when it made reading a range of numbers easier. Today, few writers take the time (or even know how) to create this dash that’s technically the size of an N—as opposed to the em-dash, which is the size of a capital M. Or as opposed to the hyphen—the simple, small dash on every keyboard. Even so, when the Chicago Manual of Style considered getting rid of the en-dash for a recent edition, internet discussion groups erupted in protest, enough to make the Manual’s editors retreat. The justices are old-fashioned here and use all three dashes in their published opinions. The en-dash is used to indicate a range, typically of dates or numbers, and is most common in citations.
Hyphens
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

Hyphens separate words acting as compound adjectives, and they separate prefixes from their stem words. Justice Scalia said he learned how to use hyphens with the example of the “purple people eater,” explaining that a purple people-eater is “a purple eater of people” while a purple-people eater is “an eater of purple people.” The justices embrace hyphens when they help comprehension in this way, but skip them when they do not. Justice Kagan penned a six-word compound adjective in 2018: “not-well-specified-yet-sufficiently-large degree of risk.” The phrase shows how an effective hyphen adds clarity to a series of words that might otherwise be misread. The justices follow grammatical tradition when using hyphens, using one with a compound adjective only when it (1) cannot be combined into one word, (2) comes before the noun it modifies, and (3) could be misread without a hyphen.
Question Marks
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

The question mark defines the gray, the undetermined. Typically, judges pose questions and lawyers answer them. So while question marks are a natural part of the justices’ opinions, they’re scarcer in lawyers’ motions and briefs. In five recent terms, the justices employed about 1,800 question marks, stating the issues as questions, posing a rhetorical query or hypothetical, or disputing their colleagues’ analyses: What are the limits to voting restrictions? Should college athletes be paid? Is off-campus student speech protected? Can juvenile offenders be sentenced to die in prison? Questions like these keep the legal world churning. Using question marks becomes tricky only when a quotation is involved. If a question mark is part of the quoted text, it belongs inside the quotation marks.
Quotation Marks
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

The justices use quotation marks only when necessary. That includes just three kinds of quotes: (1) constitutional and statutory provisions at issue; (2) key parts of caselaw; and (3) the occasional, artful, on-point phrase (note all the qualifiers here). The justices avoid dumping quotations or adding anything beyond what is essential, using four or five quotations per page, on average. Beyond that, the rules for quotations revolve around placing commas and other punctuation marks correctly. Key legal terms and short phrases also merit quotation marks. Longer quotes of fifty words or more should be set off in a block quotation. And in the exceptionally rare case when the writer quotes one source that’s quoting another that’s quoting yet another, three sets of quotation marks are used: a double quotation mark, then a single, then another double.
Conjunctions
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

Short conjunctions are much more common than long ones in US Supreme Court opinions. As Justice Thomas advised, “the genius is having a ten-dollar idea in a five-cent sentence, not having a five-cent idea in a ten-dollar sentence. That doesn’t mean that there’s no law in it. But there are simple ways to put important things in language that’s accessible.” One way the justices create these five-cent sentences is by starting them with short, punchy conjunctions. All nine sprinkle their opinions with sentences opening with and, but, or, so, and yet. And they opt for these short sentence starters significantly more than longer conjunctions, such as however and nevertheless.
Short Words—and Sentences
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

Short words and short sentences shape every U.S. Supreme Court opinion. The justices take pains not just to prune longer words and sentences from their opinions but also to add variety. Chief Justice Roberts shows just that with this gem: “Bust followed boom.” While the justices drop some Faulkner-esque sentences in their opinions, most are short—averaging around 18 words. What’s more, the vast majority of their words are short, not unlike Shakespeare’s, averaging six letters or fewer. This chapter begins with an example from Justice Kagan, which typifies that casual tone. Her sentences average just 15 words. Her words average a mere five letters. With each line, Kagan speeds the reader along, showing that good legal writing is simple but not simplistic.
Split Infinitives
Authors: Barton Jill
Published: August 2024

Split infinitives break up a verb phrase with a modifying word or phrase. Grammarians debate and often discourage these splits, as shown with the iconic Star Trek line, “to boldly go where no one has gone before” (which breaks up the verb phrase “to go” with “boldly”). All nine justices are bold here too, shirking grammarians’ timeworn advice. The old rule stems from the fact that the infinitive is just one word in Latin, so it cannot be split. But in English, the infinitive is two words, as in to hold or to offer. The justices recognize that a truth about Latin cannot extend to our legal writing today. All break up infinitives with adverbs. Many times, splitting the infinitive just sounds better. This chapter illustrates how and why the justices break up verb phrases.
A quasi-cartographic approach to Spanish auxiliaries
Authors: Bosque Ignacio
Published: August 2024

Conceptually grounded hierarchies of functional heads should not be rejected, but they cannot (and must not) be too specific. Those composed by sequences of auxiliary verbs are not able to account for the various alignments of the same functional heads in certain areas of the spine. Multiple orders among aspectual and root modal projections give rise to meaning differences based on scope. These sequences are filtered by a series of (morphological and semantic) local output conditions. Some of them are accounted for by extending Chomsky’s (1986) distinction between C-selection and S-selection to auxiliary verbs. Passive auxiliaries may raise across root-modals and some aspectual verbs. Perfect auxiliaries are also able to raise across epistemic modals, which are not anchored to tense. Aux-raising and Aux-doubling are parallel processes (subject to dialectal and typological differences, but with no meaning consequences) in the syntax of both auxiliaries and prepositions.
Wh-distributives in Basque
Authors: Etxepare Ricardo
Published: August 2024

Bare wh-phrases in Basque contribute the key to a universal distributive quantification when they do not occupy the preverbal focus position. This chapter argues that the universal import of the wh-words in those contexts is derived from the presence of a functional head in the clausal periphery, to which the wh-phrase is merged. The analysis follows a proposal originally made by Beghelli (1995) and Beghelli and Stowell (1997) and developed by Szabolcsi (1997, 2010) and Haddican & Tsoulas (2012), among others, for the presence of a distributive head in the clausal spine. This functional head is interpreted as a Generalized Distributivity operator in the sense of Lasersohn’s (1998) original work. This distributive head selects for a focus projection, to which we must obligatorily move. One of the unexpected properties of the Basque distributive configuration is that the Share must be either a specific or a definite DP. Given that specific or definite DPs do not covary, the Share must include a pronominal variable inside. The Share is thus always complex, minimally a possessive structure, and the distribution ranges over functions, not individuals. The Basque wh-distributive construction raises a number of questions that I try to answer here, notably how wh-phrases end up having a universal interpretation, why the shares must be DPs, and perhaps more importantly, why the two features of the construction, wh-based distributivity and the functional status of the distribution, must occur together.
On the status of criterial markers in the left periphery of the clause
Authors: Rizzi Luigi
Published: August 2024

In this chapter I would like to illustrate the criterial approach to left-peripheral constructions expressing scope–discourse interpretive properties (Rizzi 1997 and much subsequent work), and discuss specific issues that have been raised by cartographic research on such constructions in the last 20 years. In particular, I will address the question of the morphosyntactic status of markers of focus, topicality, and question in languages in which they are overt. Different kinds of evidence will be presented suggesting that, in various clear cases, these markers are better analyzed as elements of the clausal spine (rather than as XP-internal elements), which attract the relevant XPs to be interpreted as topics, foci, etc. to their specifier position, and guide the interpretation of the XPs at the interfaces with sound and meaning.
Conclusion
Authors: Dermine Élise , Dumont Daniel
Published: August 2024

This concluding chapter to the edited volume Labour Law Utopias: Post-Growth and Post-Productive Work Approaches outlines several trends and discussions in the book that can take labour law forward in a more embedded manner within the socio-economic-ecological context. Building on the overall post-growth and post-productive narratives in the chapters of the book, the chapter proposes its own post-productive work narrative by showing how to promote ecosocially useful work. It explores practical paths of transition, departing from positive labour law towards a more ecological social law. In doing so, it illustrates how the labour law utopias methodology in this book sets paths for transition and how it can be used for further research.
What’s the Problem?
Authors: Kenworthy Lane
Published: August 2024

Economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity are integral to a good society. We aren’t doing as well as we should. In fact, since the 1970s we’ve been going in the wrong direction.
The Famous ‘Altar of Victory Controversy’ in Rome
Authors: Testa Rita Lizzi
Published: August 2024

The belief that a part of Roman aristocracy did not remain inactive in the face of the anti-pagan measures at the end of the fourth century dominated modern historiography. It is rooted particularly in the twentieth-century studies because of the conviction—typical in a climate of cold war—that great ideologies can divide the world into power blocs by polarizing the collective imagination. Relying largely on the accounts of Christian sources and particularly of Rufinus of Aquileia, scholars saw conflict between pagans and Christians everywhere: in the spread of contorniates, in the restoration of public buildings and temples, in the taurobolia celebrated in the inscriptions of the Vatican Phrygianum, and in the celebration of the Classical and pagan past in the Saturnalia. To the aristocratic reaction were attributed not only forms of propaganda and ideology but also pronounced political opposition, such as the encounter that took place at the River Frigidus between the forces of Theodosius and the “last pagan army of the ancient world.”