bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Human Rights in Turkey
Authors: Schenkkan Nate
Published: May 2024

The monist conception of identity described in this chapter offers no opportunity to create a sustainable solution for these new members of Turkish society. In addition to practical needs like housing, education and work programmes to encourage assimilation of these refugees, there is a need for Turkey’s political elites to construct a multi-ethnic, civic identity within which many different sub-identities can exist on an equal footing. Without such a framework, Turkey’s human rights future will again look more like its past.
Secularism and Islam in Turkey: A Century of Contention
Authors: Kuru Ahmet T.
Published: May 2024

If this forthcoming secularist backlash establishes a true religion–state separation, it will be a major step forward for Turkey’s redemocratisation. Having experienced the extremes of secularism and Islamism, Turkey may finally find solutions to its problems by institutionalising religion–state separation and democratisation. The idea of the ‘Turkish model’ of democracy for the Muslim world was discussed throughout the twentieth century. If Turkey achieves the creation of a democratic system where the secular state and Muslim society have a harmonious relationship, then the ‘Turkish model’ can be discussed again in the twenty-first century.
A Pragmatic Approach to Turkish Foreign Policy (1923–48)
Authors: Göl Ayla
Published: May 2024

Turkey’s pragmatic foreign policy had two pillars. On one hand, Turkish modernisation and structural reforms in domestic politics shaped foreign relations to resolve national identity, sovereignty and security issues. On the other hand, Atatürk’s vision of regional peace positioned Turkey squarely in the Western liberal international order and succeeded in doing so for the rest of the twentieth century.
Constructing the Youth of the Republic: Youth and Population Challenges in Modern Turkey
Authors: Lüküslü Demet
Published: May 2024

This chapter argues that the construction of youth has been one of the main political projects of the Republic of Turkey. A strong political myth as well as post-war traumas and the demographic characteristics of the Republic nourished the political project, for which youth symbolised the young Republic and the future of the nation. The construction of the young generation’s bodies, minds and spirits became a national concern for a desirable future.
The solution announced by the AKP government(s) was to launch a new political project to construct pious generation(s), which marked a new era in the history of political projects directed at youth. Turkey seemed to have missed the window of demographic opportunity (a period during which the proportion of the working-age group was particularly prominent) since the share of youth in the total population began to decrease after 2010. Thus, Turkey in its second century will be facing the challenges not only of the young generation’s chronic problems but also of an ageing society. The chapter starts with a brief discussion of the history of youth and the population challenges of the Republic and then discusses the chronic problems of youth in contemporary Turkey.
From Silent to Emphasised Gender and Sexuality in Turkey
Authors: Mutluer Nil
Published: May 2024

The gender and sexuality policies of the Turkish state have been shaped by the dynamic interactions between the different governments of different periods on the one hand, and the women’s and LGBTIQ+ movements which have been active in civil society on the other. The future trajectory that Turkey will take in the issue areas of gender and sexuality will depend on the course that Turkey’s political regime follows in the coming years. If Turkey’s political regime continues on its current, authoritarian course, we can easily assume that the crackdown on women’s and LGBTIQ+ movements will gain further momentum, the number of the cases of violence against women, children and LGBTIQ+ people will continue to increase, and women and LGBTIQ+ people will experience further losses in the legal safeguards protecting their rights and freedoms. Yet if Turkey’s political regime reverses its current authoritarian course, women’s and LGBTIQ+ movements, with all their activism and pluralism, can make significant contributions to Turkey’s democratisation efforts. Such a turn towards democracy would not only ease off polarisation and open up the civil space, but it would also allow women’s and LGBTIQ+ movements to expand their organisations at the grassroots level.
Turkey as a Migrant-Sending State: Diaspora Formation, Mobilisation and Engagement Policies since 1923
Authors: Baser Bahar , Böcü Gözde
Published: May 2024

The case of Turkey as a migrant-sending state is worthy of academic scrutiny for a number of reasons. Firstly, Turkey is the home country of one of Europe’s largest emigrant populations which is growing day by day. This means that its diasporas will increase in size and the profile of the diaspora communities will transform with the new waves, making this transnational community even more heterogeneous and versatile. Secondly, Turkey’s engagement with its populations and their descendants abroad is not free from politics. Although Turkey has been following a global trend when it comes to formulating diaspora engagement policies, its bid to dominate the transnational space via various policies backfired on certain occasions and created strife between Turkey and various host countries with direct implications on the diaspora populations. Thirdly, the Turkish case illustrates that such policies can evolve through time through the impact of a variety of factors and that diaspora governance as a phenomenon is never static and has to be reassessed over time. This chapter provides a historical analysis of diaspora formation, mobilisation and engagement dynamics vis-à-vis Turkey and its diasporas by highlighting such trajectories of continuity and change over various historical periods until today.
Refugees
Authors: Mencütek Zeynep Şahin , Coşkun Bezen Balamir
Published: May 2024

We describe the refugee migration patterns in Turkey by differentiating four periods of responses: (1) the early period of modern Turkey; (2) mass flows in the 1990s; (3) the asylum–irregular migration nexus in the 2000s under the influence of Europeanisation; and (4) institutionalisation attempts and Syrian refugee arrivals in the 2010s. We start the historical review with a focus on the early 1900s, then move to discuss Turkey’s ad hoc but security-oriented responses to mass migration flows in the 1990s by underlining differential treatment on the basis of ethnic politics. Following this, we address the increasing EU influence in the 2000s and briefly mention the asylum–irregular migration nexus in this context. The next section gives a short review of Syrian migration to Turkey by linking it to the institutionalisation efforts. The chapter concludes with comparisons and future trajectories.
Conclusion—Medical Theater: The Birth of Anti-Lynching Plays and Reproductive Justice
Authors: Peebles Tavera Stephanie
Published: May 2024

The conclusion explores how the practice of (p)rescription experienced a narratological shift during the early twentieth century, moving from the genre of prose fiction to the genre of the anti-lynching drama in the wake of Anthony Comstock’s death, Margaret Sanger’s birth control campaign, and the end of censorship under federal Comstock law. Black women writers like Angelina Weld Grimké enter the conversation to expose how shame engineered under eugenic birth control politics – rather than censorship law – continue to create the conditions of mental illness among Black women through the trauma of reproductive loss. Scholars have long-identified Grimké as the mother of African American drama and founder of the genre of anti-lynching drama. They have also long considered how Grimké’s play, Rachel (1916), and short stories, “The Closing Door” (1919) and “Goldie” (1920), directly engage in birth control discourse with Sanger and her supporters. This conclusion further considers how Grimké engages the medical imagination in her anti-lynching dramas Rachel and Mara (c. 1920) as a way of expanding the concept of medical theater into the theater of lynching, as well as broadening conversations about Black women’s health into the sphere of reproductive justice rather than simply birth control.
Robert Louis Stevenson and Nineteenth-Century French Literature
Authors: Ashley Katherine
Published: May 2024

This book studies how Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about France, how he interpreted French literature, how he incorporated French into his writing, and how and why the earliest French critics translated, disseminated and interpreted his work. It does so in the context of debates surrounding the development of the novel at the end of the nineteenth century. The book aims to show that artistic debates taking place in France around Realism, Naturalism and Decadence influenced Stevenson’s theory and practice of the novel. It also shows that because of his generic and stylistic innovation, French authors and critics seeking to renew the novel held Stevenson’s writing up as a model of the literary future because it offered a way out of a perceived Naturalist impasse.
Introduction to Queer Gothic: ‘I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey’
Authors: Haefele-Thomas Ardel
Published: May 2024

This introduction begins by mapping out some of the current debates surrounding the term ‘queer’ and the limits of queer as both an inclusive identity umbrella as well as a theoretical approach. The chapter probes the ways that queer has become less politicised and watered down by analysing the tensions between the original radical nature of claiming queer as an identity as opposed to the homonormative and cisnormative ways the term has been co-opted. Theories explored range from Kadij Amin’s argument that queer is stuck in the past while José Esteban Muñoz posits that queer has not yet arrived – it offers hope in the future. The chapter then examines the history and definitions of Gothic as a mechanism more amorphous than queer. Queer and Gothic are then married together as a sub-genre - marginalised approaches - to art, film, literature, and media. Finally, before the synopses of each chapter, the introduction concludes by visualising the construction of the next iteration of Queer Gothic as a mode that, ala Muñoz, has not yet arrived.
Desiring Deformity in the Romantic Gothic
Authors: Chow Jeremy
Published: May 2024

While this chapter does look at more canonical eighteenth century Gothic authors like Horace Walpole and Matthew Lewis, the author opts for a unique course and utilises the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom (1785; 1901) (which was secreted away in a prison wall for decades) as a driving force that asks readers to re-think Queer Romantic Gothic in ways that are meant to be challenging and perhaps discomfiting. The essay examines sexualised accounts of older women with deformities and disabilities who act as procuresses for a narrator who glorifies in a myriad of taboo sexual encounters. In moving away from sanitised versions of queer sexuality, this chapter radicalises the tone of Queer Gothic. Not only does the piece embrace BDSM and power dynamics found throughout Queer Gothic sexual relationships and practices, but via Sade, the author sheds new light on Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) in more sexually transgressive ways.
Queer Vampires: What We Want is in the Shadows
Authors: Cameron S. Brooke
Published: May 2024

This chapter focuses on the cyclical evolution of queer vampires in the public imagination from the eighteenth century to the twenty first. Commencing with Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the author considers homoeroticism and friendship married together in the framework of the vampire tale. The author then traces the trajectory of queer vampire tales through the nineteenth century, where queer vampires of all genders were most often considered monstrous. As the chapter moves into the twentieth century, the author considers two classic depictions of vampiric lesbianism in film: Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and Rebecca (1940). These two films are rich with coded queer language in order to get by the Hollywood censors. From Hollywood, the chapter considers much more openly queer global vampire films like the British bodice ripper The Vampire Lovers (1970) and the Spanish and West German collaboration on the overtly BDSM themed Vampyros Lesbos (1971). In the final portion of the chapter, the author examines contemporary queer vampire pulp fiction produced by Bold Strokes Books, a queer and trans independent press in the U.S. alongside the TV series What We Do In The Shadows (2019-). The vampire has thus gone from friend to fiend to friend again.
Queering Gothic Slash Fandoms: Harry Potter, Ginger Snaps and Worldbuilding
Authors: Chwala Gregory Luke
Published: May 2024

This chapter begins with an exploration of the controversy surrounding J.K. Rowling’s inflammatory transphobic comments alongside the massive popularity of numerous iterations of the Harry Potter stories that have been turned into Queer Gothic slash fiction and visual art – manips and vids – some of which have specifically trans themes. While queer themes in the Potter world are more overt, the author also makes an argument for a Gothic reading of the series. Queer Gothic Harry Potter slash ranges from works that are suitable for tweens and teens to adult porn sites. From the predominantly queer masculine eroticism found in Harry Potter slash, the chapter then moves to the femslash found in Ginger Snaps, an incredibly popular series. The author argues that slash fiction can build inclusive worlds for queer and trans people in order to see themselves in a positive light.
Affect and Emotion
Authors: Dillane Fionnuala
Published: May 2024

This chapter considers journals produced by units or regiments during the First World War as affective objects, building on histories of human emotions and theories of the periodical as a distinct material form and publication format. It argues that the transdisciplinary lens provided by histories of emotion is particularly appropriate for the study of the multi-genre, polyvocal thing that is the periodical and for the war journal in particular. The war journal circulates as part of a record of both everyday and exceptional emotional experiences of combatants and support units. It most typically takes the form of a miscellany and, as a result of this design and genre-mix, is encoded with the potential to house and to produce a wide range of affective registers. Rather than arguing that the periodical contains, communicates and produces affect, the chapter seeks to parse the differentiated ways in which distinct periodicals present a form of structuring the chaotic and extreme intimacies of war, as well as registering the opacities of some of war journals’ affects.
Photographers
Authors: Baetens Jan
Published: May 2024

This chapter has a double focus. It opens with some historical remarks on the role and place of war photography in print media (newspapers, magazines, books) of the pre-World War One era. It continues with a close reading on the role and place of photography in the French illustrated weekly Le Miroir (“The Mirror”) which during the First World War rapidly limited its content to war photography. The pioneering role of this magazine was twofold: in a period that witnessed a tight control of what could be publicly shown, it did not refrain from introducing sometimes very gruesome images, it also opened its pages to unofficial, that is amateur and uncredited photographs. The chapter analyses the changes that occur in the periodicals under scrutiny as well as their specific properties, both in general and in the case of Le Miroir, and makes a comparison with other types of images and other illustrated publications of the same period. It examines both the pictures themselves and their relationships with the accompanying texts (captions, articles), combining thematic and formalist readings, with a special interest in photographic issues such as action vs pose, figure vs background, close-up vs panorama.
Avant-garde Journals
Authors: Thacker Andrew
Published: May 2024

This chapter discusses the fate of the “little magazines” or avant-garde journals during the war. Since many of the contributors to these magazines were young men who were called away to the front, the magazines were bound to come to an early demise. Yet history often turned out differently. In what ways did the little magazine reinvent itself during the war? How was the impact of the war on avant-garde aesthetics given shape in the pages of avant-garde journals and magazines?This chapter offers an overview of how the European press was affected by the war, before concentrating on two examples, magazines edited by Harold Monro and Wyndham Lewis.
A Typology of Conscientious Objection in Turkey
Authors: Çaltekın Demet Asli
Published: May 2024

Chapter 4 discusses the different forms of conscientious objection to military service. It investigates the socio-economic background of the interviewees, their political views, age and occupation, and their family’s response to their objection. Therefore, it sheds light on how conscientious objection is understood in this book.
Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018
Authors: Purnama Ari
Published: May 2024

Film Style in Indonesian Cinema, 1998-2018: Lighting, Production Design and Camera Movement investigates the role of film style during the rebirth of Indonesian cinema following the collapse of General Suharto's New Order regime. The book argues that the renewal of Indonesian cinema was influenced by filmmakers who revamped the cinematic images of Indonesian film by foregrounding visual stylisation using cinematography and production design techniques. They transformed the aesthetic of Indonesian film to become stylistically complex with a pronounced degree of visual sophistication, offering local audiences pictorially appealing and engaging cinematic experiences.
Production Design and Diegetic Detail
Authors: Purnama Ari
Published: May 2024

This chapter investigates the role of production design in revamping the visual style of Indonesian cinema. The chapter contends that in the post-Suharto era, Indonesian filmmakers have leveraged production design to refurbish the looks of Indonesian films by further exploring two techniques of production design for interior and exterior shots: location shooting and location designing. Location shooting is the practice of shooting the film at an existing location rather than in the studio on a soundstage or backlot. Location designing is the practice, whereby an existing location is modified to meet the demand of the story whether through analogue means such as set decoration and set dressing or through computer-generated imaging methods. Combining these two techniques, contemporary Indonesian filmmakers not only go to existing locations and make use of these real places, but they also design these locations by decorating and dressing them or even building entirely new sets on site. This dual pursuit of location shooting and location designing has impacted the level of visual details that post-1998 Indonesian films put on display.
Sportswear and hybridity: The middle-class housewife as hybridised consumer archetype
Authors: Barnett Lois J. E.
Published: May 2024

This chapter examines how the sporting world was depicted onscreen via its related fashion objects, which were presented as part of Japanese state narratives which blended personal physical development and Western-inspired eugenics with the consumer and leisure activities of the middle-class family unit.
The chapter expands on previous discussions of the modernising middle-class housewife from the angle of health and hygiene advocated by the state. It describes how the Modern Girl’s Western-style aesthetic was loaded with subversive connotations, while the middle-class housewife was encouraged to live a ‘cultured life’ (bunka seikatsu), enriched by Western-style knowledge and conveniences, symbolised by hygienic hairstyles, accessories such as handbags and items with healthy sporting connotations.
This chapter also discusses the role of state- and film studio- sponsored beauty contests in cultivating a socially acceptable view of Westernised femininity.
Conclusion
Authors: Barnett Lois J. E.
Published: May 2024

The conclusion summarises the book’s key findings - due to its transnational nature, the Japanese cinema of the 1920s and 1930s was a site of complex commercial imagery, with fashion images and the cinema inciting consumption via a variety of sensory-immersive processes. The chapter summarises these processes occurring amongst male and female audiences.
The concluding chapter also relates the same consumption processes to post-war Japan and twenty-first century global issues in the film and fashion industries, including debates on body image, plastic surgery and social media. The chapter overall concludes that the commercial relationship between the spectator-as-consumer and screen media, and its related social issues, are neither exclusive to the global ‘West’, nor to the twenty-first century.
Race and the Noir Western: Navigating The Walking Hills
Authors: Helford Elyce Rae
Published: May 2024

Elyce Rae Helford considers the racial politics of postwar America in John Sturges’s little-known western-noir hybrid The Walking Hills (1949). Here, a Mexican border town brings together a group of treasure hunters with hidden pasts, among them an oddly placed African American performer whose diegetic songs speak directly to the film’s engagement with concepts of identity.
My Mama Done Tol’ Me’: Jewish Émigré Noir, Hybridity, and Black-Jewish Relations in Blues in the Night
Authors: Brook Vincent
Published: May 2024

In this study of Anatole Litvak’s Blues in the Night (1941), Vincent Brook considers issues of hybridity in World War II-era Hollywood cinema, including the film’s combination of comedic, musical, and populist elements alongside noirish violence and expressionist mise-en-scène. Through this close reading, the liminal appears in questions of generic hybridity, race relations, and the role of the Jewish émigré filmmaker.
Vita Energetica : Love’s Labour’s Lost and Shakespeare’s Maculate Theatre
Authors: Munro Ian
Published: May 2024

This essay focuses on the curious Aristotelian virtue of eutrapelia, or conversational wit. Although eutrapelia can seem trivial when measured against courage, magnanimity, kindness, and the like, it nevertheless becomes a central virtue in Renaissance discourses of civility. This essay considers the centrality and significance of eutrapelia by examining Gabriel Harvey's approach to it in the marginalia of his jestbooks. In these spaces, Harvey creates a host of dramatis personae or alter egos—chief among them the consummate courtier Eutrapelus, whom Harvey presents as the quintessential realization of all the social virtues. For Harvey, the aims of wit, art, virtue, skillful action, and social performance all converge in the ideal of the vita energetica: the life of energeia, or being-in-action. After discussing Harvey's notion of the vita energetica and his (mostly failed) attempts to enact it, the essay brings these issues to bear on Love's Labour's Lost, a play notably concerned with eutrapelia and humanist pedagogy. Though Harvey imagines wit to be a metaphysical project based on perfected teloi, Shakespeare's theatre liberates wit from virtuous ends with a more rhizomatic understanding of witty virtualities.
Cymbeline and the Renewal of Constancy
Authors: Lander Jesse M.
Published: May 2024

This chapter argues that accounts of virtue in Shakespeare's drama are enriched by a consideration of the work done on virtue ethics by contemporary moral philosophers, such as Elizabeth Anscombe, Bernard Williams, and Martha Nussbaum. The chapter considers the example of constancy, informed by the early modern revival of stoicism, in Cymbeline and concludes that a virtue that at first appears antiquated and alien actually provides evidence of the continuing salience of virtue in contemporary ethical debates.
Everyday Dramaturgy: Virtue and the Craft of Living
Authors: Curran Kevin
Published: May 2024

This Afterword reflects on the idea of virtue as “everyday dramaturgy,” the applied craft of living among others. The starting point of the discussion is a reconsidering of a deceptively simple question: what is virtue? In the course of reflecting on this question, two assertions are made: first, that virtue is fundamentally theatrical; and second, that theatre – actual theatre – has an important role to play in the cultivation of virtue at a social scale. The Afterword shows how we partake of virtue in our family kitchens, in the city streets and places of public congregation, and in the classrooms where we teach and learn. And it shows how we experience virtue in particularly heightened form in the theatre, where people come together by choice, through no external compulsion, to feel, judge, witness, and thereby to create a world which they’ve decided matters.
The Art of War
Authors: Scanlan Margaret
Published: May 2024

Violence and aesthetics, argues Walter Benjamin, merge with fascism; ‘all efforts to render politics aesthetics culminate … in war’. From Great Jones Street to Point Omega, Don DeLillo explores that nexus. In White Noise, taking Benjamin’s point to its logical extreme, Jack Gladney teaches ‘Advanced Nazism … with special emphasis on parades, rallies, and uniforms’ (25). In The Names, James Axton asks, ‘If you think the name of the weapon is beautiful, are you implicated in the crime?’ (118). The question of whether humanitarian art extending and deepening life remains possible or useful during the global War on Terror recurs in DeLillo’s post 9/11 fictions, including ‘Baader-Meinhof’ and Point Omega. In the latter novel, Elster tells filmmaker Jim Finley that as a member of the Bush administration he a war in which we ‘see what’s there and … prepare to watch it disappear’ (29). Yet the disappearance of Elster’s daughter leaves him ‘past knowing,’ and Finley realising that ‘not a single frame’ of the film intended to reveal Elster’s soul will be made. This chapter explores the question of what the malign viewer who responds to art with violence tells us about both.
Video Art and the Elasticity of Duration
Authors: Morley Catherine
Published: May 2024

Video art in DeLillo’s fiction is complicit with the alteration of time. It can speed an event up, slow it down, pause, rewind, fast-forward, stop. Nowhere is this clearer than in the video art installation ‘24-Hour Psycho’ at the centre of DeLillo’s 2010 novel Point Omega. The retardation of time for the purposes of art is a theme which runs throughout the novel (it is no coincidence that Douglas Gordon’s work is housed alongside the Dadaists and Dali’s ‘The Persistence of Memory’ at MOMA), and indeed through DeLillo’s entire oeuvre; and while not limited to DeLillo’s use of video art, it is telling that a writer often described as a kind of postmodern prophet deploys this very modern tool in his contemplation of duration.
Building on the work of other critics, this chapter explores DeLillo’s use of video art in a range of his works, making the case that DeLillo uses the medium to consider the relationship between art and time, the ways in which and the reasons why an individual artist or writer manipulates temporal duration, and the ethics and the aesthetics of such artistic sleight of hand.
DeLillo and the Gallery
Authors: Coughlan David
Published: May 2024

Throughout his oeuvre, Don DeLillo captures the mundane details of the gallery experience: the crowded “museum lobby” (Mao II 20); the “rambling white space set on several levels under ducts and sprinklers and track lights”; “edging sideways” from wall to wall (133); “the display of explanatory material,” the “bench in the middle of the gallery,” the “tour guide” (“Baader-Meinhof” 108, 105, 109); the “museum guard” (Point Omega 4); “the taped border” around the art that one should not cross (Zero K 215); the bright or dimmed lights, the chill, the silence. And he captures the mundanity of the gallery experience itself; after all, people just “look at a painting, they just sit there or stand there” (Great Jones Street 100). They look and stand, or they “[s]ee it and leave” (Underworld 83). The gallery allows DeLillo not just to look at art but to look at the significance of looking at art. This essay therefore asks, “What does DeLillo see when he looks at the gallery?” It examines the role the gallery plays in DeLillo’s narrative and formal structures, and shows how the gallery relates to DeLillo’s insights into our mundane existence, “[b]eing human, being mortal” (Falling Man 111).
‘Bird Lives’: The High Art of Graffiti in Don DeLillo
Authors: Naas Michael
Published: May 2024

This chapter considers the role of graffiti in DeLillo’s works, ranging from Americana and Mao II to, especially, Underworld. Though graffiti would appear to be a minor “art form” in DeLillo, particularly when compared to his abundant use of other visual arts, the “contrabanded” nature of graffiti will tell us much about DeLillo’s relationship to the arts more generally. Beginning with Underworld’s Ismael Muñoz, aka Moonman 157, a Bronx graffiti artist who gets turned on to the creative possibilities of graffiti when he sees the cryptic message “Bird Lives!” in a subway tunnel, this chapter explores how, in the hands of DeLillo, graffiti art ends up scrambling all the hierarchies and subverting all our assumptions about art. Muñoz’s artistic practice confuses and juxtaposes high and low culture, social commentary in the public square and the defacement of public spaces, legitimate art works and vandalism, the painter’s signature and the gang member’s tag, the highest of the high (the bird) and the lowest of the low (the subway rat). “Bird Lives!” takes us from the tunnels of the New York subway to the Met and beyond—an apt example of what this chapter argues is DeLillo’s unique brand of “contraband.”
Editor's Choice: Measuring Candidate Quality using Local Newspaper Endorsements
Authors: DeLuca Kevin
Published: May 2024

I construct a measure of candidate quality differentials using local newspaper endorsements. I argue that political endorsements made by newspapers can be used as expert opinions that reflect both a newspaper's partisan bias as well as quality differences between the candidates in an election. Using a dataset of 21,094 local newspaper endorsements, I simultaneously estimate the quality differences between candidates in 6,432 elections, along with a dynamic measure of the partisan bias of 368 local newspapers. After validating the endorsement-based measures of quality and bias, I use the candidate quality differential measure to reexamine the relationship between candidate quality, incumbency, and election results. I conclude with a discussion of how the new endorsement-based measures have a strong potential to help advance our understanding of the importance of candidate quality in electoral politics and governance in the United States.
Omalizumab for the reduction of allergic reactions to foods: a narrative review
Authors: Ghouri Hafsa , Habib Ashna , Nazir Zainab , Lohana Nimerta , Akilimali Aymar
Published: May 2024

The frequency of food allergies varies between 2% and 10%, depending on characteristics including age, region, race, and method of diagnosis self-reported by patients or oral food challenges (OFCs). The most common allergies reported are tree nuts (1.2%), milk (1.9%), peanuts (2.2%), and shellfish (1.3%). Omalizumab injection has now been approved by the FDA for the treatment of immunoglobulin E-mediated food allergies in specific adults and children aged one year or older. This medication reduces the risk of allergic reactions (Type I), which can include anaphylaxis, when an individual accidentally encounters one or more food allergens. Omalizumab functions by binding to IgE and altering IgE-mediated pathways, which lessens IgE's capacity to cause allergic reactions. Promising outcomes from clinical trials and case studies include lowered anaphylactic risk and enhanced tolerance to allergens. Omalizumab, however, may have adverse effects; thus, close observation is required. Overall, this review sheds light on the efficacy, safety, and clinical implications of omalizumab, highlighting its potential as a useful intervention for IgE-mediated food allergies.
Computational modeling of aging-related gene networks: a review
Authors: Freitas José Américo Nabuco Leva Ferreira , Bischof Oliver
Published: May 2024

The aging process is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon affecting all living organisms. It involves a gradual deterioration of tissue and cellular function, leading to a higher risk of developing various age-related diseases (ARDs), including cancer, neurodegenerative, and cardiovascular diseases. The gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and their respective niches are crucial in determining the aging rate. Unveiling these GRNs holds promise for developing novel therapies and diagnostic tools to enhance healthspan and longevity. This review examines GRN modeling approaches in aging, encompassing differential equations, Boolean/fuzzy logic decision trees, Bayesian networks, mutual information, and regression clustering. These approaches provide nuanced insights into the intricate gene-protein interactions in aging, unveiling potential therapeutic targets and ARD biomarkers. Nevertheless, outstanding challenges persist, demanding more comprehensive datasets and advanced algorithms to comprehend and predict GRN behavior accurately. Despite these hurdles, identifying GRNs associated with aging bears immense potential and is poised to transform our comprehension of human health and aging. This review aspires to stimulate further research in aging, fostering the innovation of computational approaches for promoting healthspan and longevity.
Flame spray pyrolyzed carbon-encapsulated Au/Fe3O4 nanoaggregates enabled efficient photothermal therapy and magnetic hyperthermia of esophageal cancer cells
Authors: Wang Zida , Liu Gongzhe , Zhou Jiangping , Zhao Xiaogang , Cai Jie
Published: May 2024

Multifunctional magneto-plasmonic nanoparticles with magnetic hyperthermia and photothermal therapy could kill cancer cells efficiently. Herein, carbon-encapsulated Au/Fe3O4 (Au/Fe3O4@C) was fabricated using an enclosed flame spray pyrolysis. The nanostructures, including an Fe3O4 core (51.9–55.2 nm) with a decreasing carbon shell thickness and an Au core (4.68–8.75 nm) coated with 2–4 graphite layers, were tailored by tuning the C2H4 content in the reacting gas mixture. Saturation magnetization (33.7–48.2 emu/g) and optical absorption were determined. The carbon shell facilitated the dispersion of Au/Fe3O4 and restrained their laser-induced and magnetic field-induced coalescence and growth. Au/Fe3O4@C exhibited excellent magnetic resonance imaging capability (91.4 mM−1 s−1) and photothermal performance (65.4°C for 0.8 mg/mL Au/Fe3O4@C at a power density of 1.0 W/cm2 after 300 s near-IR laser irradiation (808 nm)). Moreover, the combined application of photothermal and magnetic-heating properties reduced the required intensity of both laser and magnetic field compared to the intensity of separate situations. Our work provides a unique, intriguing approach to preparing multicomponent core/shell nanoaggregates that are promising candidates for esophageal cancer cell therapy.
A comparative analysis of Silverkite and inter-dependent deep learning models for bitcoin price prediction
Authors: Tripathy Nrusingha , Nayak Subrat Kumar , Prusty Sashikanta
Published: May 2024

These days, there is a lot of demand for cryptocurrencies, and investors are essentially investing in them. The fact that there are already over 6,000 cryptocurrencies in use worldwide because of this, investors with regular incomes put money into promising cryptocurrencies that have low market values. Accurate pricing forecasting is necessary to build profitable trading strategies because of the unique characteristics and volatility of cryptocurrencies. For consistent forecasting accuracy in an unknown price range, a variation point detection technique is employed. Due to its bidirectional nature, a Bi-LSTM appropriate for recording long-term dependencies in data that is sequential. Accurate forecasting in the cryptocurrency space depends on identifying these connections, since values are subject to change over time due to a variety of causes. In this work, we employ four deep learning-based models that are LSTM, FB-Prophet, LSTM-GRU and Bidirectional-LSTM(Bi-LSTM) and these four models are compared with Silverkite. Silverkite is the main algorithm of the Python library Graykite by LinkedIn. Using historical bitcoin data from 2012 to 2021, we utilized to analyse the models’ mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE). The Bi-LSTM model performs better than others, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.633 and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.815. The conclusion has significant ramifications for bitcoin investors and industry experts.
Exploration of morpholine-thiophene hybrid thiosemicarbazones for the treatment of ureolytic bacterial infections via targeting urease enzyme: Synthesis, biochemical screening and computational analysis
Authors: Munir Rubina , Zaib Sumera , Zia-ur-Rehman Muhammad , Javed Hira , Roohi Ayesha , Zaheer Muhammad , Fatima Nabiha , Bhat Mashooq Ahmad , Khan Imtiaz
Published: May 2024

An important component of the pathogenicity of potentially pathogenic bacteria in humans is the urease enzyme. In order to avoid the detrimental impact of ureolytic bacterial infections, the inhibition of urease enzyme appears to be an appealing approach. Therefore, in the current study, morpholine-thiophene hybrid thiosemicarbazone derivatives (5a-i) were designed, synthesized and characterized through FTIR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. A range of substituents including electron-rich, electron-deficient and inductively electron-withdrawing groups on the thiophene ring was successfully tolerated. The synthesized derivatives were evaluated in vitro for their potential to inhibit urease enzyme using the indophenol method. The majority of compounds were noticeably more potent than the conventional inhibitor, thiourea. The lead inhibitor, 2-(1-(5-chlorothiophen-2-yl)ethylidene)-N-(2-morpholinoethyl)hydrazinecarbothioamide (5g) inhibited the urease in an uncompetitive manner with an IC50 value of 3.80 ± 1.9 µM. The findings of the docking studies demonstrated that compound 5g has a strong affinity for the urease active site. Significant docking scores and efficient binding free energies were displayed by the lead inhibitor. Finally, the ADME properties of lead inhibitor (5g) suggested the druglikeness behavior with zero violation.
Homemade pericardial bifurcated graft for Q fever-infected abdominal aortic aneurysm open repair: a case report
Authors: Mouche A. , Baron J. , Toquet C. , Le Corvec T. , Maurel B. , Benichou A. , Mougin J.
Published: May 2024

Q fever is a zoonotic infection caused by Coxiella burnetii. In rare cases, it can lead to vascular complications, including infected aneurysms. Successful treatment involves surgery and antibiotics, but there is no established consensus or clear recommendation for the choice of material graft. We report a case of abdominal aortic aneurysm infected by C. burnetii treated by open surgery with complete resection of the aneurysm and homemade bovine pericardial bifurcated graft reconstruction and long-term antibiotherapy using doxycycline. One year postoperatively, the patient had no sign of persistent infection or vascular complication. Moreover, C. burnetii immunoglobulins titers decreased 6 months postoperatively.
Acceptance of smart sensing, its determinants, and the efficacy of an acceptance-facilitating intervention in people with diabetes: results from a randomized controlled trial
Authors: Knauer Johannes , Baumeister Harald , Schmitt Andreas , Terhorst Yannik
Published: May 2024

Background

Mental health problems are prevalent among people with diabetes, yet often under-diagnosed. Smart sensing, utilizing passively collected digital markers through digital devices, is an innovative diagnostic approach that can support mental health screening and intervention. However, the acceptance of this technology remains unclear. Grounded on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study aimed to investigate (1) the acceptance of smart sensing in a diabetes sample, (2) the determinants of acceptance, and (3) the effectiveness of an acceptance facilitating intervention (AFI).

Methods

A total of N = 132 participants with diabetes were randomized to an intervention group (IG) or a control group (CG). The IG received a video-based AFI on smart sensing and the CG received an educational video on mindfulness. Acceptance and its potential determinants were assessed through an online questionnaire as a single post-measurement. The self-reported behavioral intention, interest in using a smart sensing application and installation of a smart sensing application were assessed as outcomes. The data were analyzed using latent structural equation modeling and t-tests.

Results

The acceptance of smart sensing at baseline was average (M = 12.64, SD = 4.24) with 27.8% showing low, 40.3% moderate, and 31.9% high acceptance. Performance expectancy (γ = 0.64, p < 0.001), social influence (γ = 0.23, p = .032) and trust (γ = 0.27, p = .040) were identified as potential determinants of acceptance, explaining 84% of the variance. SEM model fit was acceptable (RMSEA = 0.073, SRMR = 0.059). The intervention did not significantly impact acceptance (γ = 0.25, 95%-CI: −0.16–0.65, p = .233), interest (OR = 0.76, 95% CI: 0.38–1.52, p = .445) or app installation rates (OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.47–2.73, p = .777).

Discussion

The high variance in acceptance supports a need for acceptance facilitating procedures. The analyzed model supported performance expectancy, social influence, and trust as potential determinants of smart sensing acceptance; perceived benefit was the most influential factor towards acceptance. The AFI was not significant. Future research should further explore factors contributing to smart sensing acceptance and address implementation barriers.
Landslide hazard assessment of the fault zone considering the fault effect: a case study of the Lixian–Luojiabu fault zone in Gansu Province (China)
Authors: Feng Wei , Tang Yaming , Ma Hongli , Hong Bo
Published: May 2024

The earthquake landslide hazard assessment method is mainly based on the traditional Newmark model. However, when the landslide hazard assessment is carried out along the fault zone, the calculated results are often different from the actual situation because the influence of fault effect is not fully considered. Therefore, how to construct a landslide hazard assessment model suitable for the fault zone is a technical problem to be solved by researchers. Taking the Lixian–Luojiabu fault zone in Gansu Province in China as the study area, this paper put forward the concept of fault effect correction coefficient exploringly, systematically studied the relative distance relationship between the landslide and fault zone, and the relative position relationship between landslide and upper and lower sides of the fault zone. The value table of the fault effect correction coefficient along the Lixian–Luojiabu fault zone was established, and the corresponding distribution map of the fault effect correction coefficient was drawn. Based on this, an improved Newmark model for the landslide hazard assessment along the fault zone was constructed. On the basis of systematic analysis of the slope and engineering geological rock group in the study area, the traditional Newmark model and improved Newmark model considering fault effects were used, respectively, to carry out the earthquake landslide hazard assessment under the condition of 10% exceeding probability in 50 years, and the ROC curve and Kappa coefficient methods were used to compare and analyze the evaluation results. The results showed that the AUC value and Kappa coefficient of the danger area obtained by the improved model with the Newmark model were 0.841 and 0.822, respectively, which were significantly higher than the calculated values of the traditional Newmark model, indicating that the model had a good improvement effect. The Newmark improved model, considering the fault effect, fully considered the influence of distance from the fault zone and fault upper and lower side effects, and the research results can provide a new reference for the landslide hazard assessment along the fault zone.
Association of different domains of physical activity with diabetic kidney disease: a population-based study
Authors: He Pengfei , Deng Yuanyuan , Dong Shaoning , Li Hongdian , Liu Cong , Ma Yu , Tang Cheng , Zhang Mianzhi
Published: May 2024

Background

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to elucidate the associations between various domains of physical activity, such as occupation-related (OPA), transportation-related (TPA), leisure-time (LTPA) and overall physical activity (PA), and diabetic kidney disease.

Methods

Our study encompassed 2,633 participants, drawn from the cross-sectional surveys of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2007 and 2018, and employed survey-weighted logistic regression, generalized linear regression, and restricted cubic spline (RCS) analyses to ascertain the relationship between different domains of physical activity and diabetic kidney disease.

Results

After controlling for all confounders, multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed a lack of correlation between the various domains of physical activity and the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease. Multiple generalized linear regression analyses showed that durations of PA (β = 0.05, 95% CI, 0.01–0.09, P = 0.012) and TPA (β = 0.32, 95% CI, 0.10–0.55, P = 0.006) were positively associated with eGFR levels; and LTPA durations were inversely associated with UACR levels (β = -5.97, 95% CI, -10.50 - -1.44, P = 0.011). The RCS curves demonstrated a nonlinear relationship between PA, OPA, and eGFR, as well as a nonlinear correlation between PA and ACR. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses largely aligned with the outcomes of the multivariate generalized linear regression, underscoring the robustness of our findings.

Conclusion

Our population-based study explored the association between different domains of physical activity and diabetic kidney disease. Contrary to our expectations, we found no significant association between the duration of physical activity across all domains and the prevalence of diabetic nephropathy. Nonetheless, renal function markers, including eGFR and UACR, exhibited significant correlations with the duration of total physical activity (TPA) and leisure-time physical activity (LTPA), respectively, among diabetic patients. Interestingly, our findings suggest that diabetic patients engage in physical activity to preserve renal function, ensuring moderate exercise durations not exceeding 35 hours per week.