bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conceptions and Perceptions
Authors: Bradley Richard
Published: November 2020

The first academic conference I attended was held in 1970. Its proceedings were published two years later with the title Man, Settlement and Urbanism. The book was notable for including contributions from both archaeologists and anthropologists. The meeting itself had an unusual format—part of the audience was hidden from view. Instead of participating in the discussion, we gathered in another room and watched the proceedings on closed circuit television. Only at the final reception was the barrier removed so that we were able to see the protagonists in the flesh. As this chapter will suggest, obstacles to communication still remain. At the time, one paper had a special impact—Kent Flannery’s discussion of ‘The origins of the village as a settlement type in Mesoamerica and the Near East’ (Flannery 1972). Four decades after it appeared in print it is still being quoted. Other contributors to the meeting covered some of the same themes, but, true to the spirit of the conference, the distinguished social anthropologist Mary Douglas considered the perils of archaeological interpretation. Her paper ‘Symbolic orders in the use of domestic space’ presented a series of cautionary tales which compared the approaches of prehistorians with those of contemporary ethnographers (Douglas 1972). If Flannery’s paper had an immediate impact, Douglas’s was rarely cited, perhaps because it dismayed so many of those at the conference. There could have been other reasons why it was overlooked. The article was short and lacked much direct reference to archaeological research. That is ironic, for a decade later her work was to exert a major influence on theorists in archaeology. Indeed, it played a growing role in their thinking through to her death in 2007 (Gosden 2004). Although she appreciated the attention, it was a role that she was reluctant to assume. The differences between Flannery’s paper and Douglas’s are not those between the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology. Flannery was well aware of ethnographic accounts of settlements in traditional societies. Rather, their articles reflect two different strands in twentieth-century thought. Flannery’s approach was influenced by functionalist anthropology and Douglas’s by structuralism. That is why her work provided a source of inspiration for those who became disenchanted with processual archaeology.
Purification by exploitation of activity
Authors: Angal S. , Roe Simon D.
Published: November 2020

Proteins carry out their biological functions through one or more binding activities and, consequently, contain binding sites for interaction with other biomolecules, called ligands. Ligands may be small molecules such as substrates for enzymes or larger molecules such as peptide hormones. The interaction of a binding site with a ligand is determined by the overall size and shape of the ligand as well as the number and distribution of complementary surfaces. These complementary surfaces may involve a combination of charged and hydrophobic moieties and exhibit other short-range molecular interactions such as hydrogen bonds. This binding activity of a protein, which is stereoselective and often of a high affinity, can be exploited for the purification of the protein in a technique commonly known as affinity chromatography. The operation of affinity chromatography involves the following steps: (a) Choice of an appropriate ligand. (b) Immobilization of the ligand onto a support matrix. (c) Contacting the protein mixture of interest with the matrix. (d) Removal of non-specifically bound proteins. (e) Elution of the protein of interest in a purified form. At best, affinity chromatography is the most powerful technique for protein purification since its high selectivity can, in principle, allow purification of a single protein of low abundance from a crude mixture of proteins at higher concentrations. Secondly, if the affinity of the ligand for the protein is sufficiently high, the technique offers simultaneous concentration from a large volume. In practice, such single-step purifications are not common and successful affinity chromatography requires careful consideration of a number of parameters involved. The remainder of this chapter attempts to guide the experimenter in the selection and use of affinity adsorbents for protein purification. For more extensive information on this technique the reader is advised to consult the many excellent texts on this subject as well as proceedings of symposia. The construction of an affinity adsorbent for the purification of a particular protein involves three major factors: (a) Choice of a suitable ligand. (b) Selection of a support matrix and spacer. (c) Attachment of the ligand to a support matrix. The criteria for making these decisions are discussed in the following sections.
Molecular Biology for Structural Biology
Authors: Berne P. F. , Doublié S.
Published: November 2020

The number of published 3D structures has increased exponentially in the last decade and the resulting mass of structural data has contributed significantly to the understanding of mechanisms underlying the biology of living cells. However, these mechanisms are so complex that structural biologists face still greater challenges, such as the study of higher-order functional complexes. As an example, we can mention the protein complexes that assemble around activated growth factor receptors to allow the transduction of extracellular signals through the membrane and inside the cell (1). Because of their diverse intrinsic properties, proteins exhibit variable difficulty for structural biology studies. Before the rise of recombinant expression methods, only a minority of protein structures were determined, representing mainly favourable cases: proteins of high abundance in their natural source which could be purified and crystallized, in contrast to rare proteins that were often refractory to crystallization. The advent of methods for recombinant protein overexpression was a breakthrough in this area. It was followed by an increasing number of publications describing the crystallization of proteins, not under their native form, but in modified versions after sequence engineering. First we will consider the classical use of molecular biology applied to optimize the expression system for a recombinant protein for structural biology, without modification of its sequence. In the second part, we will deal with molecular biology procedures aimed at engineering the properties of a protein through sequence modifications in order to make its crystallization possible. In the last part we will give an example where molecular biology can help solve a crystallographic problem, namely that of phase determination by introducing anomalous scatterers (e.g. selenium atoms) into the protein of interest. Whenever extraction of a protein from its natural source appears unsuitable for structural studies, molecular biology resources can be brought in, initially aiming at choosing and setting up an appropriate expression system. This initial approach could involve comparing various expression hosts and vectors and deciding if the protein is to be produced as a fusion to facilitate its purification.
Chemoselective and orthogonal ligation techniques
Authors: Tam James P , Lu Y -A
Published: November 2020

Peptide synthesis through segment ligation of unprotected peptides (total synthesis) and peptides to proteins (semi-synthesis) in aqueous solution is appealingly simple and efficient because protection and activation steps are not required. In addition, this method offers the potential to access a diverse group of macromolecules such as circular proteins, branched peptides, and protein conjugates which are difficult to obtain through conventional approaches using protecting group strategies. Furthermore, the use of unprotected peptide segments overcomes the problem of solubility encountered in the conventional approach to the synthesis of large peptides or proteins in solution. Conceptually, ligation can be approached two ways. In the first approach, a non-amide bond is formed between two peptide segments through a pair of mutually reactive functional groups. Typical methods of non-amide ligation include oxime, hydrazone, and thiazolidine as the coupling linkages. This type of reaction is traditionally referred to as chemoselective ligation. Non-amide ligation is characteristically flexible in joining two segments that result in amino-to-amino end, carboxyl-to-amine or end-to- side chain structures. This flexibility permits synthesis of protein mimetics and branched peptide dendrimers. In the second approach, an amide bond is formed through a two-step reaction sequence involving four functional moieties, two nucleophiles and two electrophiles in the reaction centre. This reaction is usually used for end-to-end coupling between the Cα-moiety of one peptide segment and the Nα-terminus of another peptide segment resulting in a peptide-backbone product. Similar to the non-amide chemoselective ligation, the first step in orthogonal ligation is a capture reaction by a pair of mutually reactive groups. In general, two nucleophiles, a weak-base nucleophile on the side chain and an α-amino, are located at the N-terminus as an N-terminal nucleophile 5 (NTN). The two electrophiles, usually an O-glycol-aldehyde or an S-ester 4, are located at the C-terminus of the another peptide segment. The initial non-amide capture of two segments through the side chain NTN with the O- or S-ester to form a covalent intermediate 6 enables the spontaneous proximity-driven intramolecular acyl transfer to occur. This intramolecular acyl migration achieves orthogonality in amide bond formation 7 between a specific α-amine in the presence of other free α- and ɛ-amines.
Purification of large peptides using chemoselective tags
Authors: Mascagni Paolo
Published: November 2020

In solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS), deletion sequences are generated at each addition of amino acid due to non-quantitative coupling reactions. Their concentration increases exponentially with the length of the peptide chain, and after many cycles not only do they represent a large proportion of the crude preparation, but they can also exhibit physicochemical characteristics similar to the target sequence. Thus, these deletion-sequence contaminants present major problems for removal, or even detection. In general, purification of synthetic peptides by conventional chromatography is based on hydrophobicity differences (using RP-HPLC) and charge differences (using ion-exchange chromatography). For short sequences, the use of one or both techniques is in general sufficient to obtain a product with high purity. However, on increasing the number of amino acid residues, the peptide secondary and progressively tertiary and quaternary structures begin to play an important role and the conformation of the largest peptides can decisively affect their retention behaviour. Furthermore, very closely related impurities such as deletion sequences lacking one or few residues can be chromatographically indistinguishable from the target sequence. Therefore, purification of large synthetic peptides is a complex and time-consuming task that requires the use of several separation techniques with the inevitable dramatic reduction in yields of the final material. Permanent termination (capping) of unreacted chains using a large excess of an acylating agent after each coupling step prevents the formation of deletion sequences and generates N-truncated peptides. However, even under these more favourable conditions, separation of the target sequence from chromatographically similar N-capped polypeptides requires extensive purification. If the target sequence could be specifically and transiently labelled so that the resulting product were selectively recognized by a specific stationary phase, then separation from impurities should be facilitated. This chapter deals with such an approach and in particular with the purification of large polypeptides, assembled by solid phase strategy, using lipophilic and biotin-based 9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl (Fmoc) chromatographic probes. Assuming that the formation of deletion sequences is prevented by capping unreacted chains, a reciprocal strategy can be applied that involves functional protection of all polymer-supported peptide chains that are still growing, with a specially chosen affinity reagent or chromatographic probe.
Mental Health Nursing and Decision Making
Authors: Warne Tony , Holland Gareth
Published: November 2020

The chapter first explores the issues involved in how and why mental health nurses come to learn about the decisions that they need to take in clinical practice, and why these are crucial to the establishment and maintenance of therapeutic relationships. It must be noted that various terms will be used throughout this chapter that refer to individuals requiring care and support from nurses—that is, ‘patients’, ‘service users’, and ‘clients’. We will also explore some of the challenges and tensions that can arise when there is a difference between what the professional and the service user might feel is the right decision. Reference is made to the prevailing mental health legislation in the United Kingdom and, in particular, the legislation around care being provided possibly against an individual’s wishes and while he or she is living in the community. If you are not living or studying in the UK, you should seek out the relevant legislation that applies to your country. You might want to see where the similarities and differences are between that and the UK legislation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the mental health nurse can ensure that inclusive and informed decision making leads to safe, secure, and effective mental health care. By means of the case studies and the discussion, it will enable you, as the student nurse, to learn how different kinds of decision making can influence outcomes of care, and it will also help you to work towards achieving the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) competencies as they relate to decision making in nursing practice. Note that while the case studies are based on real-life examples of decision-making situations, all names in the case studies have been changed, in keeping with The Code: Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics for Nurses and Midwives (NMC 2008). Mental health nurse education, practice, and research have long championed innovative approaches to improving our understanding of the impact, on individuals, the communities in which they live, and wider society, of the decisions and actions taken in the name of therapeutic endeavour.
Predict
Authors: Shroff Gautam
Published: November 2020

‘Predicting the future’—the stuff of dreams one might imagine; the province of astrologers and soothsayers, surely. Perhaps not, the scientific mind might retort: after all, is it not the job of science to discover laws of nature, and thereby make precise, verifiable predictions about the future? But what if we were to claim that prediction is neither fanciful nor difficult, and not even rare. Rather, it is commonplace; something that we all accomplish each and every moment of our lives. Some readers may recall the popular video game, pong, where the goal is to ‘keep the puck in play’ using an electronic paddle. Figure 2 shows images of two different pong games in progress. In addition to the paddle and puck, the players’ eye gaze is also being tracked. The image on the left shows the player’s eyes tracking the puck itself. On the other hand, in the right-hand image, the player is already looking at a point where she expects the puck to travel to. The player on the left is reactive; she simply tracks the puck, and as the game gets faster, she eventually misses. The right player, in contrast, is able to predict where the puck will be, and most of the time she gets it right. Further, we often see her eyes dart faster than the puck to multiple regions of the field as she appears to recalculate her prediction continuously. What kind of player do you think you are? As it happens, almost all of us are predictive players. Even if we have never played pong before, we rapidly begin predicting the puck’s trajectory after even a few minutes of playing. The ‘reactive player’ in this experiment was in fact autistic, which apparently affected the person’s ability to make predictions about the puck’s trajectory. (The neurological causes of autism are still not well known or agreed upon; the recent research from which the images in Figure 2 are taken represent new results that might shed some more lightonthisdebilitatingcondition.) So it appears that prediction, as exhibited by most pong players, is far from being a rare and unusual ability. It is in fact a part and parcel of our everyday lives, and is present, to varying degrees, in all conscious life.
Mapping the Geology of Everest and Makalu
Authors: Searle Mike
Published: November 2020

There are few places in the world where a geologist can actually take a look at the rocks and structures 5 or 6 kilometres down beneath the Earth’s surface. The opposing forces of nature—the uplift of rocks towards the Earth’s surface and their erosion and removal—usually balance each other out, at least roughly. It is only where the rate of uplift of rocks greatly exceeds erosion that high mountains are built. This is precisely why the Himalaya are so unique to geologists studying mountain-building processes. The Himalaya is an active mountain range: the plate convergence rates are high, uplift rates are extremely high, and glacial and fluvial erosion has carved deep channels in between the mountains. By walking and climbing all around Everest we can actually map and study the rocks in three dimensions, which elsewhere, beneath the Tibetan Plateau for example, remain buried below the Earth’s surface. After the Survey of India discovered that Mount Everest was the highest mountain in the world, a pioneering expedition set out to fly across the summit and take photographs. On 3 April 1933 a Houston-Weston biplane piloted by Lord Clydesdale flew across the summit and took the first photos of the mountain. Clydesdale wrote: ‘We were in a serious position. The great bulk of Everest was towering above us to the left, Makalu down-wind to the right and the connecting range dead ahead, with a hurricane wind doing its best to carry us over and dash us on the knife-edge side of Makalu.’ The earliest geologists to study the structure of Mount Everest, A. M. Heron and Noel Odell, both noted the apparent conformity of strata with sedimentary rocks on top of the mountain lying above the more metamorphosed rocks around the base In his 1965 paper on the structure of Everest, Lawrence Wager wrote: ‘It never ceases to surprise the writer that the highest point of the Earth’s surface is composed of sedimentary rocks which are relatively flat-lying and but little metamorphosed.’
Around the Bend: Nanga Parbat, Namche Barwa
Authors: Searle Mike
Published: November 2020

From the geological mapping, structural, and metamorphic investigations along the main Himalayan Range from Zanskar in the west through the Himachal Pradesh and Kumaon regions of India and along the whole of Nepal to Sikkim, a similar story was emerging. The overall structure and distribution of metamorphic rocks and granites was remarkably similar from one geological profile to the next. The Lesser Himalaya, above the Main Boundary Thrust was composed of generally older sedimentary and igneous rocks, unaffected by the young Tertiary metamorphism. Travelling north towards the high peaks, the inverted metamorphism along the Main Central Thrust marked the lower boundary of the Tertiary metamorphic rocks formed as a result of the India–Asia collision. The large Himalayan granites, many forming the highest peaks, lay towards the upper boundary of the ‘Greater Himalayan sequence’. North of this, the sedimentary rocks of the Tethyan Himalaya crop out above the low-angle normal fault, the South Tibetan Detachment. The northern ranges of the Himalaya comprise the sedimentary rocks of the northern margin of India. The two corner regions of the Himalaya, however, appeared to be somewhat different. The Indian plate has two major syntaxes, where the structural grain of the mountains swings around through ninety degrees: the western syntaxis, centred on the mountain of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, and the eastern syntaxis, centred on the mountain of Namche Barwa in south-east Tibet. Nanga Parbat (8,125 m) is a huge mountain massif at the north-western end of the great Himalayan chain. It is most prominent seen from the Indus Valley and the hills of Kohistan to the west, where it seems to stand in glorious isolation, ringed by the deep gorges carved by the Indus and Astor Rivers, before the great wall of snowy peaks forming the Karakoram to the north.
Roof of the World: Tibet, Pamirs
Authors: Searle Mike
Published: November 2020

The Tibetan Plateau is by far the largest region of high elevation, averaging just above 5,000 metres above sea level, and the thickest crust, between 70 and 90 kilometres thick, anywhere in the world. This huge plateau region is very flat—lying in the internally drained parts of the Chang Tang in north and central Tibet, but in parts of the externally drained eastern Tibet, three or four mountain ranges larger and higher than the Alps rise above the frozen plateau. Some of the world’s largest and longest mountain ranges border the plateau, the ‘flaming mountains’ of the Tien Shan along the north-west, the Kun Lun along the north, the Longmen Shan in the east, and of course the mighty Himalaya forming the southern border of the plateau. The great trans-Himalayan mountain ranges of the Pamir and Karakoram are geologically part of the Asian plate and western Tibet but, as we have noted before, unlike Tibet, these ranges have incredibly high relief with 7- and 8-kilometre-high mountains and deeply eroded rivers and glacial valleys. The western part of the Tibetan Plateau is the highest, driest, and wildest area of Tibet. Here there is almost no rainfall and rivers that carry run-off from the bordering mountain ranges simply evaporate into saltpans or disappear underground. Rivers draining the Kun Lun flow north into the Takla Makan Desert, forming seasonal marshlands in the wet season and a dusty desert when the rivers run dry. The discovery of fossil tropical leaves, palm tree trunks, and even bones from miniature Miocene horses suggest that the climate may have been wetter in the past, but this is also dependent on the rise of the plateau. Exactly when Tibet rose to its present elevation is a matter of great debate. Nowadays the Indian Ocean monsoon winds sweep moisture-laden air over the Indian sub-continent during the summer months (late June–September). All the moisture is dumped as the summer monsoon, the torrential rains that sweep across India from south-east to north-west.
The Making of the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Tibetan Plateau
Authors: Searle Mike
Published: November 2020

My quest to figure out how the great mountain ranges of Asia, the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Tibetan Plateau were formed has thus far lasted over thirty years from my first glimpse of those wonderful snowy mountains of the Kulu Himalaya in India, peering out of that swaying Indian bus on the road to Manali. It has taken me on a journey from the Hindu Kush and Pamir Ranges along the North-West Frontier of Pakistan with Afghanistan through the Karakoram and along the Himalaya across India, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan and, of course, the great high plateau of Tibet. During the latter decade I have extended these studies eastwards throughout South East Asia and followed the Indian plate boundary all the way east to the Andaman Islands, Sumatra, and Java in Indonesia. There were, of course, numerous geologists who had ventured into the great ranges over the previous hundred years or more and whose findings are scattered throughout the archives of the Survey of India. These were largely descriptive and provided invaluable ground-truth for the surge in models that were proposed to explain the Himalaya and Tibet. When I first started working in the Himalaya there were very few field constraints and only a handful of pioneering geologists had actually made any geological maps. The notable few included Rashid Khan Tahirkheli in Kohistan, D. N. Wadia in parts of the Indian Himalaya, Ardito Desio in the Karakoram, Augusto Gansser in India and Bhutan, Pierre Bordet in Makalu, Michel Colchen, Patrick LeFort, and Arnaud Pêcher in central Nepal. Maps are the starting point for any geological interpretation and mapping should always remain the most important building block for geology. I was extremely lucky that about the time I started working in the Himalaya enormous advances in almost all aspects of geology were happening at a rapid pace. It was the perfect time to start a large project trying to work out all the various geological processes that were in play in forming the great mountain ranges of Asia. Satellite technology suddenly opened up a whole new picture of the Earth from the early Landsat images to the new Google Earth images.
The Research in Retrospect
Authors: Bradley Richard , Haselgrove Colin , Vander Linden Marc , Webley Leo
Published: November 2020

In some respects this project was the successor to the research published in 2007 as The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland, but there are significant contrasts between the books. The results of development-led archaeology have played a central role in both, but they have influenced their contents in different ways. When the earlier book was published it was among the first to draw extensively on fieldwork undertaken as part of the planning process. To some extent the course of that research was unpredictable, for it was not clear how far the results of the new excavations and surveys would diverge from what was already known. All that was certain from the outset was that a large amount of new information had been collected and that very little of it had entered the public domain. There was a disparity between the conventional archaeological literature—journal articles, monographs, and regional syntheses—and the great majority of reports, which were prepared for planning authorities and commercial clients. Those documents were difficult to trace and sometimes difficult to access. What the project showed was that such sources were vital to any understanding of the past. It also demonstrated that at least some of the orthodoxies on which public policy depended were inconsistent with the results of work that had already taken place. The same problem affected teaching and research, for they rarely took account of the new sources of information. In retrospect, the earlier project may have influenced later research in a way that had not been foreseen. It did not, and could not, offer a completely new version of British and Irish prehistory, as it was written at a time when many excavations were still in progress—the fieldwork associated with road-building in Ireland is a good example. In any case the dissemination of information in the archaeology of these islands was so inefficient that particularly in England it was difficult to find out what had been done. Tracing the results was an even harder task, and it was not completely successful.
Climate-Challenged Society
Authors: Dryzek John S. , Norgaard Richard B. , Schlosberg David
Published: November 2020

This book is an original, accessible, and thought-provoking introduction to the severe and broad-ranging challenges that climate change presents and how societies can respond. It synthesizes and deploys cutting-edge scholarship on the range of social, economic, political, and philosophical issues surrounding climate change. The treatment is introductory, but the book is written "with attitude", for nobody has yet charted in coherent, integrative, and effective fashion a way to move societies beyond their current paralysis as they face the challenges of climate change. The coverage begins with an examination of science, public opinion, and policy making, with special attention to organized climate change denial. The book then moves to economic analysis and its limits; different kinds of policies; climate justice; governance at all levels from the local to the global; and the challenge of an emerging "Anthropocene" in which the mostly unintended consequences of human action drive the earth system into a more chaotic and unstable era. The conclusion considers the prospects for fundamental transition in ideas, movements, economics, and governance.
Climate’s Challenges
Authors: Dryzek John S. , Norgaard Richard B. , Schlosberg David
Published: November 2020

Climate change presents a particularly tough challenge. There are of course plenty of other tough problems around: inequality, poverty, terrorism, the instabilities of financial systems, the risks of nuclear technologies, persistent and potentially violent antagonisms in international politics. Yet we have at least a sense of the nature of these sorts of problems, and governments know more or less how to respond to them, although they do not always do so—or do so successfully. The challenges of climate change, by contrast, almost seem to defy comprehension, let alone appropriate response. The science is complex and long contested by a well-financed movement that accuses climate scientists of falsifying conclusions in support of a left-wing political agenda. There is a collision between what the science implies and seemingly common-sense understandings based on casual observation of the weather. The size of the threat calls into question received ideas about the inevitability of human progress: if progress requires continued economic growth based on ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, then that kind of progress is clearly no longer sustainable. The economic stakes could not be higher, calling into question the future of industries such as coal and cars, and leading to deep political conflicts as those whose industries, profits, employment, and lifestyles feel threatened resist the necessary changes. Even among those who accept the science and recognize the size of the challenge, key questions are hotly debated. So there is dispute about how to think of the risks that climate change brings: for example, should we spend money on preparing for low-probability but potentially catastrophic impacts (such as rapid sea-level rise)? To what extent should we care about the risks our current emissions are imposing on future generations, who will suffer the impacts? If it is accepted that emissions need to be reduced, how rapidly should that reduction occur in light of the economic costs that it will necessarily impose? And how should the burden of reductions be allocated between rich and poor countries, between rich and poor people within countries, between different industries and economic sectors?
The Costs of Inaction and the Limits of Economics
Authors: Dryzek John S. , Norgaard Richard B. , Schlosberg David
Published: November 2020

The costs of climate change, like the proverbial “death and taxes,” are inevitable, though not entirely fixed or predictable in terms of when they arrive. Humanity has some control over the specifics. As with taxes, different people will be suffering different levels—though when it comes to climate change, the damage can fall most heavily on those least able to bear it. In addition, the costs of inaction will mostly be borne by today’s young people and their children and grandchildren. Thus moral issues arise concerning how the burdens of action should be shared. Many climate scientists see the costs of inaction as very likely immense, making inaction a foolhardy gamble that must be avoided. Many economists, by contrast, are still arguing over how to compute the net benefits of doing anything versus doing nothing. We surveyed the dimensions of the likely damage due to climate change as identified by scientists in Chapter 2. In this chapter our concern is not with the actual content of the damage, but rather with how to put a value on it, and what this implies for the character and magnitude of actions that should be taken. When the costs of inaction are clearly greater than the costs of action, basic economic logic would seem to dictate that action should be taken. Humanity will inevitably bear some mix of the costs of mitigating climate change (especially by reducing emissions), adapting to change, and living with consequences that are not avoided. Doing nothing to mitigate, as has largely been the case so far, results in the costs of inaction we will emphasize in this chapter. If inaction continues, the science tells us that the risks are huge—eventually the future of humanity and all of life as we know it are at stake. No economists advocate driving humanity to ruin, but many seem willing to gamble with that possibility in exchange for the benefits of faster economic development through continuing exploitation of fossil fuels in both the short and long term.
Introduction : Zero-sum games, grandiosity, and illusion tricks
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: November 2020

Modern society is characterized by grandiose self-personifications and claims on a large scale. There is a strong desire to be labelled in the most attractive and pretentious terms. This applies to individuals, occupations, organizations, and political elites. One problem is that the struggle for the most coveted sugar plums—high professional status, conspicuous consumption, ‘world-class education’, ‘excellence’, and so on—involves a zero-sum contest. This means that a benefit for one specific individual or group is gained at the expense of another. Not everybody can be excellent or afford high-status goods or get a degree from a high-status university. Grandiose projects occupy an ever-increasing proportion of the time, commitments, and resources of various elite groups, such as politicians, media people, corporate executives, union leaders, and other representatives of organizations and professional groups. But also the lives of common people increasingly circle around grandiosity. There is a strong emphasis on illusion tricks to back this up: CV improvement, title and grade inflation, organizations exhibiting impressive window-dressing through policy formulation and executive development programmes, and occupations re-launched as professions. This book focuses on the hollowness of such grandiosity and illusory projects, and emphasizes the zero-sum games involved, and also the destructive social and psychological consequences of such phenomena. Based on these concepts, I will develop a framework for understanding the contemporary age and its institutions. I will examine critically some predominant ideas about management, organizational structure, working life, consumption, and education, which are often taken for granted : • Economic growth and higher consumption are key sources of increased satisfaction. • Education is something positive that leads to higher qualifications, and is needed to a greater and greater extent by both individuals and society. • Current and future working life is permeated by views of a knowledge economy and a knowledge-intensive society, a greater degree of professionalization, and an emphasis on leadership in the creation of effective organizations. I will show that many conditions and developments in these three areas, which may appear to be positive and socially functional, can be better understood in terms of grandiosity, illusion tricks, and zero-sum games.
Organizational structures on the beauty parade—imitations and shop-window dressing
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: November 2020

As we have seen, an excessive interest in change—or at least the initiation of more or less well-considered projects—is closely linked to a high degree of sensitivity for what people think others are doing. As there are frequent mass media reports about the strong need for change and organizations are often engaged in various change activities, it is vital to keep up—both with the general norm and with the signalled moves of others. The risk of deviating and, in particular, falling behind is a major motive force. A key factor here is the surface—what seems to be visible from a distance and without much deeper knowledge—in an organizational and management context. This chapter focuses on the links between these aspects, in which imitations and fashions have a particularly high impact at the shop-window level (i.e., the illusion level), and where an increasing emphasis on the shop-window factor encourages imitations and fashion-following behaviour. This chapter then takes the phenomenon of imitation seriously. But even if the desire to keep up with norms and fashions and the fear of lagging behind other organizations—in general or in one’s sector—play a role, how significant is it? It may only have a moderate impact, compared with efficiency concerns, for example. And surely responsible executives, politicians, and other policymakers are strong, independent, reasonably thoughtful, and rational actors, who generally have good reasons for their decisions and the organizational structures they are responsible for? Or is the almost caricature-like view of organizations as almost slavishly following fashions ‘true’? No precise answers are possible, but research and insightful observations by respected commentators may give important material for informed reasoning. In this chapter, I start with the phenomenon of imitation and convergence between organizations by exploring the impact of adapting new formal structures in organizations within a certain sector. There are reasons to believe that imitation of ‘leaders’ and following fashion are far from insignificant. Then this is related to the issue of the ‘depth’ of such imitation tendencies, where the window-dressing aspects are emphasized.
The triumph of imagology—a paradise for tricksters?
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: November 2020

Having addressed the three broad subject matters in Chapters 2–9—consumption, higher education, and working life/organizations—it is now time to connect these themes, to formulate additional ideas, insights, and results based on synthesis as well as summaries and conclusions. This will be done here and in the final chapter. Below I address further the significance of expectations and desire. The title of Kovel’s (1981) by now somewhat dated book, The Age of Desire, is probably much more appropriate today than 30 years ago. Recession and financial crises in some countries can temporarily attenuate the rampage of desire for some groups—with reduction in the material standard of living, concerns other than desire may require attention—but this does not disturb the overall picture of the dominant inclinations in post-affluent society. I start the chapter by addressing post-affluence and, in particular, how expectations of the good consumption and working life are gradually raised so that reality, when salient, may be a source of frustration and disappointment more often than delivering what it should. People in ads are always happier and more beautiful than the consumers trying to imitate them. The institution recruiting students seldom undersells the quality of its teaching, or the employment that may follow for graduates. The job title increasingly promises something better than the actual job tasks. Having pointed at the misfortunes of reality—or ‘shit happens’—I then make some specific links between education, work, and consumption, before moving quickly over to how statistics often support competitions in showing the right numbers to make things appear to be good, sometimes at the expense of the quality of the phenomena the numbers are supposed to say something about. I also address how the understanding of grandiosity and illusion tricks can be further developed through the use of Kundera’s concept imagology. Here, in particular, I draw upon Kundera’s claim that people occupied by imagology constitute a broad, diverse, but rapidly expanding set of occupations leading the road to grandiosity.
Diamonds are Forever and Zirconium is for Submarines
Authors: Öhrström Lars
Published: November 2020

The appearance of a diamond engagement ring in the long and convoluted love story between Botswana’s First Lady Detective, Mma Ramotswe, and the owner and brilliant mechanic of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, seems to signal an end to this particular sub-plot, stretching over several volumes of Alexander McCall Smith’s bestselling and original series of crime novels (that we met in Chapter 1). However, a slight problem involving cubic zirconia is discovered, and the story lingers on until the next book in the series. Similar names for elements and their compounds are a nuisance in chemistry, but oft en arise historically, and zirconium is just one such example. Apart from the pure metal we have zircon and zirconia, all three of which have important applications. Zircon is zirconium silicate, with the formula ZrSiO4, and cubic zirconia is a special form of zirconium dioxide, ZrO2. The latter, as you may have guessed, is an excellent diamond substitute in, among other applications, engagement rings. We are not going to dwell on the details of the element zirconium, but you should know that within the Periodic Table it is located in the large middle chunk called the transition metals. You have probably heard of its cousin titanium, immediately above it, and a sibling, hafnium, straight down the ladder. Why do I call them siblings? Because in the Periodic Table elements in the same column tend to have similar chemical properties. In particular, in the family of transition metals in the central section containing 27 elements—each with a number of properties in common—the two lower elements in each column tend to be the most similar. The similar chemical properties of zirconium and titanium means that we can usually find zirconium where we mine the much more plentiful titanium, and also that once we have separated the titanium from zirconium there will be a small quantity of hafnium trailing along—an impurity that is much harder to get rid of. The sleek jeweller in Gaborone will not care if his fake diamonds contain trace levels of HfO2 mixed with the ZrO2.
Soil and the Grower
Authors: Bardgett Richard
Published: November 2020

Throughout history few things have mattered more to humans than their relationship with soil. This is a bold statement, but since the dawn of civilization, the use of soil to grow crops has been of central importance to mankind. Not only have past civilizations relied on fertile soils to fuel their prosperity and growth, but also neglect of soil, leading to its degradation, has in many cases led to their collapse. Unfortunately, soil neglect isn’t just a thing of the past. Today, at a time when the need to produce food for a growing world population couldn’t be more acute, vast tracts of once productive land lie degraded and struggling to grow crops or support livestock. The causes of soil degradation are complex, with population growth, poverty, poor delivery of information to farmers, conflict, shortage of land, and climate change all playing a role. Whatever the cause, the consequences are the same: soil degradation causes food shortages, poverty, and hunger. But I don’t just want to discuss the neglect of soil and its dire consequences for mankind. I also want to consider what makes a soil fertile and able to support healthy crops year after year, and how soil can leave its fingerprint on the quality and taste of what we grow. I also want to consider some of the ingenious ways that humans have devised to maintain soil fertility and boost crop yields, and how this knowledge can be harnessed to restore degraded soils. Before I do, however, an important point to make is that the concept of soil fertility is largely agronomic: it relates to the ability of soil to sustain the growth of agricultural crops through the continued provision of nutrients, water, and anchorage. Soils that support some of the most valued natural habitats on Earth, such as pristine tropical forests or expansive arctic tundra, are very infertile from an agricultural point of view; tropical forest soils are highly weathered and nutrient-poor, whereas tundra soils are wet, acidic, and low in plant-available nutrients.
Development of the perinatal mental health service in Kyushu Japan: Research and clinical perspective
Authors: Yoshida Keiko , Yamashita Hiroshi
Published: November 2020

Postnatal depression (PND) in Japan, despite a traditional support system for perinatal women and cultural differences, is no less common than in western countries. Our previous two studies, which began in the 1990s, found that PND was experienced by about 15% of Japanese women. First, 98 Japanese women living in England (Yoshida et al. 1997) and then 88 Japanese women living in Japan (Yamashita et al. 2000) were recruited into two prospective studies of PND from late pregnancy to 3 postnatal months. Using the same research protocol and diagnostic method, (Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia, Research Diagnostic Criteria), the incidence of PND was 12% and 17% respectively. We have a traditional support system for perinatal women called Satogaeri Bunben. Satogaeri means returning to their home towns where their families of origin live and Bunben means delivery. Pregnant women return to their home towns several weeks prior to their delivery and remain there, with their babies, after delivery for a couple of months. It seems to be a very supportive system. However, Satogaeri Bunben itself did not lower the incidence of PND in either of the groups mentioned above. A disadvantage of Satogaeri Bunben is that a woman cannot be monitored by the same midwife or obstetrician and her husband has to work and live separately until their reunion in their marital home (Yoshida et al. 2001). Most mothers with PND are unlikely to access psychiatric care, even though their depressive symptoms are serious (Mclntosh 1993). Therefore neonatal home visits by health visitors were seen as a potentially useful opportunity for detecting mothers with PND. Luckily, a home visit system by community health visitors has been well organized throughout Japan since the late 1940’s. In the past, the focus was on reducing infant death and promoting infant growth and development. In our city, the neonatal home visit service is provided for mother–baby dyads where (a) a baby’s birth weight is less than 2500 g, (b) first-born babies with a birth weight of less than 2800 g, (c) babies with perinatal or pediatric physical health problems.