bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
ESCR Review
Authors: Yates Simeon J. , Jones Gerwyn , Dutton William H. , Carmi Elinor
Published: August 2020

This chapter describes the analyses and results for the ESRC Domain of Governance and Security, guided by two questions: What are the challenges of ethics, trust, and consent in the digital age? How do we define responsibility and accountability in the digital age? It first provides an overview of the major insights from the literature review and analysis, the Delphi surveys, and workshop discussions about pertinent concepts of governance and security in a digital age. The most frequent concepts emerging from topic modelling included social movements and protest communication, Internet governance, measurement, automation, EU commission and privacy, urban migration mobile, social media, law enforcement, and Marxist analysis. Comparing these results with the most common words in the literature review, five major topics emerged: state use of digital media, especially surveillance of social movements and protest; Internet regulation and governance, both national and international; children’s use of digital media, both protection and regulation; regulation and governance of automated systems; and deception in digital media. Gradually, emphases shifted from regulation of general technology use to concerns with privacy, data protection, and children’s use of digital technologies. The analyses also identified the kinds of theory, methods, and approaches in the literature. The review provides examples of literature in the project’s time period that illustrate these topics. It ends with a discussion of future research directions (e.g., accountability for digital systems and their impacts, algorithms and the law, human factors in cyber security, and ethics) and research challenges (e.g., cybersecurity, governance, and transnational governance).
ESRC Review
Authors: Yates Simeon J. , Ling Rich , Robinson Laura , Brooks Catherine , Joinson Adam , Whitty Monica , Carmi Elinor
Published: August 2020

This chapter explores the outcomes of the literature review and expert Delphi review process for the communication and relationships domain. The initial scoping question—How are our relationships being shaped and sustained in and between various domains, including family and work?—was considered too broad. So we instead focus on five categories and associated questions articulated by the Delphi process, concerning digital literacies, norms and values, platform affordances, quality of relationships and communication, and relationship management. The most frequent topics emerging from the literature analysis included friends, media, pair, group, adolescent, phone, communication, relationship, time, and medium. Over time the most frequent topic pairs shifted from focusing on relationships, pair/tie/link, communication, medium, and work, to more specific media such as Facebook and related terms such as user, network, and friend. Three main themes emerged from the literature analysis: social media platforms, young people and adolescents, and social network analysis; each is illustrated through brief examples from the literature. This literature emphasized inductive approaches, with two-thirds being discursive reviews, largely from psychology, sociology, and communication and media disciplines, with research methods spread across these reviews, surveys, and interviews. Of the five Delphi categories, digital literacies, and quality of relationships and communication, were rated as the most important.
A Didactic Illustration of Longitudinal Analysis for Language and Literacy Research Among Individuals Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
Authors: Branum-Martin Lee
Published: August 2020

Longitudinal methods are gaining wider use in educational research, but they have yet to see much application in research among students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The present chapter has three aims. First, an overview is given of some of the benefits and important concepts in longitudinal methods that may be informative for teachers and researchers. Second, a two-cohort data set of reading comprehension scores at up to four time points is analyzed in a didactic manner, in order to illustrate concepts and models for literacy growth. Sample computer code (SAS and R) is provided. Third, recommendations for teachers and researchers are provided.
Vocabulary Learning in Children with Cochlear Implants in Signed and Spoken Modalities
Authors: Hermans Daan , van Berkel-van Hoof Lian , Knoors Harry
Published: August 2020

The lexical quality hypothesis emphasizes the importance of the quantity and the quality of lexical knowledge for reading comprehension: children need to quickly and accurately access the meanings of the written words they encounter. This chapter discusses research on the quality and quantity of lexical representations in spoken language and in signed language in children with cochlear implants (CIs). It also describes the impact of three multimodal approaches that have been used to enhance the quantity and quality of lexical representations in deaf and hard-of-hearing children, including those with CIs: Cued Speech, orthographic information, and augmentative signs. The chapter argues that these three multimodal approaches are promising tools for enhancing the quality of lexical representations in spoken language in children with CIs.
Studying the Effects of Meditation
Authors: Oman Doug
Published: August 2020

This chapter traces the history of modern meditation research. Meditation is conceptualized primarily as a seated practice for systematically training attention. Historically present in every major religion, meditation was traditionally used for spiritual purposes and usually accompanied by ancillary practices, such as spiritual fellowship. This chapter traces the dynamics and evolving interplay between dominant conceptions and forms of meditative practices under scientific study, as well as critiques of those conceptions, research questions, study designs, measurement instruments, and public reception and application. It describes how developments in each of these spheres have at different times opened up new lines of research, sometimes transforming other dimensions of ongoing research and practice. For the past fifty years, modern meditation research has progressed through partly overlapping periods that emphasized physiological measurement and secular adaptations; links to numerous health and well-being outcomes; emphasis on a sui generis psychosocial goal (mindfulness); advances in physiological and questionnaire-based empirical measurement; expansion of public, corporate, and governmental interest; increased concerns about abandonment of ethical bases and cultural context; and initial moves toward greater inclusiveness and integration of diverse methods and traditional perspectives.
Public Opinion and Executive Approval
Authors: Magalhães Pedro C.
Published: August 2020

What executives are and what they do in democratic regimes should obviously be affected by public opinion. This occurs not only through the electoral process, but also through the influence that, in the interim, public attitudes exert on (re)election-minded politicians. But what drives public support for executives? This chapter focuses on four types of determinants: outcomes, processes, events, and time. After describing the findings of the early social-scientific studies on executive support of the 1970s and 1980s, we address the multiple caveats and contingencies that resulted from expanding these approaches to contexts different from those in which they originated. The result has been an increasing attention to heterogeneity: of effects, information levels, political and institutional contexts, and publics. Understanding this heterogeneity will be vital as we move more decisively in the future to the empirical study of the relationship between public opinion and the formation, survival, and (re)composition of executives.
Personalities and Beliefs of Political Executives
Authors: Schafer Mark , Smith Gary
Published: August 2020

This chapter focuses on the beliefs and personality characteristics of political executives. There is a rich and important history in these areas, and yet there is much room for future research as well. We discuss many of the important research questions being asked in the study of beliefs and personalities, and along the way we review the development of the field. In our review of the existing literature, we focus on both classics and more recent contributions, noting the evolution of the field from qualitative, thick descriptions to more scientific, quantitative approaches. We also note that contributions have been made with beliefs and personalities on either the independent or dependent side of the equation. We finish with a look to the future in these areas, calling primarily for more data and empirical work, but also additional development of theories and new methods.
Political Executives in Party-Based Dictatorships
Authors: Baturo Alexander
Published: August 2020

The longevity of party-based dictatorships can be attributed to the durable institutional framework primarily provided by the ruling political parties. In contrast to an earlier research programme that investigated politics within the political executive, more recent comparative literature on authoritarian politics has largely ignored the role of the political executive in particular. The distinction between a party-based dictatorial regime and the political executive within such a regime allows us to address important questions related to the logic of collective leadership, executive selection and deselection, intra-elite bargaining, and the relationship between party and state executive bodies. Due to the existing methodological difficulties of examining opaque politics within authoritarian regimes, future scholarship may address important questions related to the political executive, drawing from advances in text analytics and expert surveys.
Constructivist Approaches to the Study of Political Executives
Authors: Grube Dennis C.
Published: August 2020

Constructivism is a theoretical perspective that embraces the inherent uncertainties of human experience. In the study of political executives, this has manifested itself as seeking to understand and analyse how the ideas of actors are expressed through discourse, and how discourse in turn interacts with culture, context, data and perceived interests to shape projections of political reality. Constructivists examine both how political actors seek to frame the world that they see and how the wider citizenry frame their own perceptions in return in a constant iterative and recursive process of communication. This chapter outlines how constructivist approaches have been applied to the study of political executives to date, and suggests some potentially fruitful areas of future research for the decade ahead.
The Use of Visual Statistical Features in Empirical Aesthetics
Authors: Graham Daniel
Published: August 2020

Evolution generally demands that the brain take advantage of the probable statistical structure in the natural environment. Much research in recent decades has confirmed that regular statistical features in natural scenes—especially low-level spatial regularities—can help explain processing strategies in the human visual system. Basic statistical features in various classes of human-created images broadly match those found in natural scenes. Such regularities can be seen as evolved constraints on the visual structure of aesthetic images and therefore human visual aesthetics. Some researchers have also attempted to find statistical features whose variation from natural images is associated with variations in preference and other aesthetic variables. There is evidence that variations in statistical features of luminance and color could be exploited by the visual system in certain situations. However, there is much ambiguity and variability in most reported relationships between variations in image statistical features and variations in measures of human aesthetics. In contrast, basic statistical constraints that align with efficient visual system processing are almost never violated in aesthetic images. Put simply, statistical features may constrain but may not explain variability in visual aesthetics. The chapter concludes with an outlook on future directions for research.
The Model of Party Government
Authors: Katz Richard S.
Published: August 2020

Party government is not the only way in which governments can be structured, but it has been the predominant vision for parliamentary democracies. The idea of party government also is central to the most prominent principal–agent models of representation. There can be many specific definitions of party government, but they all share the assumption that parties as corporate actors are central. Both the degree to which actual systems approximate the party government ideal type, and the way in which parties compete and interact with one another to form governments vary widely among systems. While parties continue to dominate democratic politics, the conditions that support party government have generally been weakening, suggesting that the long-term security of party democracy cannot be taken for granted.
Opinion–Policy congruence
Authors: Lefkofridi Zoe
Published: August 2020

This chapter connects the two end-poles of the chain of political representation: citizens’ policy preferences and public policy outputs. As a step in between, it discusses work on different kinds of congruence between the political preferences of citizens and those of their representatives at different levels of aggregation. The chapter begins with the discussion of various conceptualizations and operationalizations of citizens-elites congruence (dyadic and collective; one-to-one, many-to-one, many-to-many), as well as of different types of congruence (broad ideological agreement; agreement on multiple issue dimensions; accordance in terms of policy issue priorities, or styles and foci of representation). It then reviews different approaches to the measurement of this relationship, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different data sources (mass, elite, and expert surveys; party manifestos; roll calls). The chapter then moves on to discussing what we know about the determinants of citizens-elites congruence (political institutions, characteristics of parties, party systems and voters, macro-economic factors). Last but not least, the chapter addresses how different types of citizens-elites congruence impact turnout and satisfaction with democracy.
The Cultural Pre-Requisites of Democracy
Authors: Welzel Christian
Published: August 2020

This chapter discusses the mentality structures that must be encultured in a population to allow it to sustain stable democracy. Contrary to the mainstream in the literature, I argue that mass support for democracy, as expressed in surveys, is a rather deceptive indicator of a population’s cultural affinity to democracy. The reason is that support for democracy obscures firmly encultured differences in how people understand democracy. These differences in understanding render numerically similar support ratings incomparable across different populations. By contrast, emancipative values—which emphasize freedom of choice and equality of opportunities—base people’s notion of democracy on a similarly liberal understanding of the term. Hence, overt support for democracy is conducive to actual democracy only in conjunction with emancipative values, but not in dissociation from them. In conclusion, emancipative values represent the most important mentality element of a democratic culture.
Governments in Action
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer , Skjæveland Asbjørn
Published: August 2020

How can Danish governments that are almost exclusively minority governments work and even work well? We present an analysis of legislative voting since 1973, and while it does support an impression of consensual politics, we argue that it is the option of bloc politics that can make minority governments strong and effective. When the ‘real’ opposition, i.e. the parties that would rather see a different government, know that the government can use its bloc majority to pass legislation anyway, it becomes more cooperative. This gives the government more than one possible way of passing legislation. We further argue that legislative agreements (forlig) are an important tool that helps minority governments govern. The long-term commitment that they entail makes it more attractive for opposition parties to strike deals with the government. Legislative agreements can work almost as issue-specific majority governments.
Local Elections
Authors: Kjær Ulrik
Published: August 2020

Local elections are held every fourth year in the ninety-eight municipalities and the five regions of Denmark. Five features following from the local electoral law are used as points of departure to analyse the local elections: extended suffrage, non-concurrency with national elections, low formal but high natural thresholds, influential preference votes, and indirectly elected mayors. Thinking of local elections not as second-order but second-tier elections, it is concluded that the local vote is very local, with more than seven in ten voters basing their vote on local issues, the local campaign, and local candidates. This is despite the fact that the local party system is heavily nationalized and has come to resemble the national party system more and more. Most of the parties represented in national parliament run in almost all municipalities and regions and gain representation in many of these, while local non-partisan lists only play a minor role and conquer less than one seat in twenty. The two largest parties, the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, share among them almost two-thirds of the seats and a clear majority of the mayoralties.
The Social Democratic Party
Authors: Mariager Rasmus , Wium Olesen Niels
Published: August 2020

The Social Democratic Party is the biggest and historically most influential Danish political party. From the 1920s to the 1980s, the party led more than twenty Danish governments. During this period, the party took on the main responsibility of protecting the Danish democracy when other European countries came under pressure from undemocratic political forces. From the 1930s onwards, the party was thus the main actor behind the formation and consolidation of the Danish welfare state, and during the Cold War period, the Social Democratic Party was a firm and solid supporter of the Atlantic Alliance, even though the party opposed central elements in NATO’s policies towards the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s. Since the the turn of the century, the party has undergone significant changes, and the present-day Social Democratic Party could be characterized as ‘conservative’ as well as ‘pragmatic’. It is conservative because the party argues that it won the twentieth-century Danish political struggle, the results of which the party now needs to preserve, and pragmatic as the party has shown a remarkable willingness to adjust its policies to the challenges of the new century.
The Liberal Party
Authors: Juul Christiansen Flemming
Published: August 2020

The Liberals might have been the most important party in Danish politics in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. They have held the position of PM most of the time and passed a number of policy reforms. A precondition to this success was an expansion of its electorate and a major transformation of the party from a class-based agrarian party towards a catch-all party with appeal to centre-right voters in all social groups. Farmers comprised a dwindling group, unlike during the nineteenth century when the Liberals fought for universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy. The Liberals first stressed their liberal ideology and were able to win over many voters from the Conservatives, hit by internal problems, during the 1990s. Later, they de-emphasized ideology and moved towards the centre in economic matters. These manoeuvres proved electorally successful. In office, the party passed a major reform of local government, among other initiatives. Yet the Liberals’ relatively strong organization—a feature they have had in common with other Nordic parties with agrarian origins—weakened in the process, and during the 2010s, the party again lost votes.
Coordination for the European Union
Authors: Dagnis Jensen Mads , Nedergaard Peter
Published: August 2020

The Danish EU coordination system is set up to secure a consensus-oriented and consistent positioning of Denmark in the EU decision-making process. It was established in connection with Danish membership in 1973, but it has roots that go further back. Over time, the Danish coordination system has undergone changes with increased decentralization to the sectoral ministries, through parliamentarization, and via increased transnationalization with linkages to the administrations in the EU and other EU member states. The system secures that the negotiators have a high degree of credibility in the eyes of other delegations, and it ensures a high score when it comes to implementation of EU legislation in Denmark. However, it also has some disadvantages. The key coordination lens in the form of the European Affairs Committee of the Danish Parliament is overloaded, and it is often involved too late in the Brussels negotiations. All in all, the Danish EU coordination system corresponds to the way the Danish political system works in other venues.
The Danish Labour Market Model
Authors: Høgedahl Laust
Published: August 2020

The Danish labour market model is renowned for combining a high degree of flexibility for employers and security for workers. In addition, the labour market parties (trade unions and employer organizations) have a long tradition of conducting collective bargaining to regulate key elements such as wages and working conditions. Since collective agreements cover important components of labour market regulation, Danish labour market policy has been focused on correcting imperfections in the labour market through an active labour market policy. However, since the new millennium, a number of policy changes have created a significant impact on the Danish labour market model, especially in terms of eroding the security elements of the model. Additional fundamental changes might also be linked to structural effects such as a decreasing trade union density and declining collective bargaining coverage in some parts of the private sector.
Polity, Politics, and Policies
Authors: Munk Christiansen Peter , Elklit Jørgen , Nedergaard Peter
Published: August 2020

This final chapter wraps up some of the conclusions and provides some afterthoughts. The Constitution and the Community of the Realm (Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands) have demonstrated stability over the years and yet allowed for flexible adaptation. The political institutions, such as the Parliament and the administration, are well-functioning although increasing distrust has been a problem, even though trust is now on the rise again. The party system has shown continuity over time in spite of disruptions. The old parties still dominate Parliament as well as minority governments. However, a declining membership base means that parties increasingly lack bottom-up legitimacy. A specific characteristic of Danish politics is the local and regional governmental sectors, which is one of the biggest in the world. The policy section put a critical spotlight on Denmark’s position vis-à-vis the outside world. Since Denmark became a small state in 1864, it has been a story of continuous adaptation to the strongest power of relevance. The welfare state policies include relatively market-accommodating economic, business, and labour market policies, which are necessary in order to fund the welfare state as well as very costly environmental and climate policies.
Danish Public Opinion
Authors: Dinesen Peter Thisted , Slothuus Rune , Stubager Rune
Published: August 2020

Citizens’ political opinions provide an essential input to the democratic process that governments must respond to or at least engage with. This chapter provides an overview of public opinion toward four major political issues in Denmark: economic distribution, immigration, the environment, and the European Union. First, aggregate public opinion on the four issues over four decades is illuminated. There is remarkable stability in aggregate public opinion over time. Second, we explore the extent to which this stability in aggregate opinion conceals changing degrees of social polarization in opinions across four socio-demographic groups (gender, age, education, and occupation). Third, we analyse the development of political polarization in Danish public opinion by comparing opinions across voters of political parties over time. Despite aggregate stability, there are remarkable changes in polarization across partisan groups, particularly on attitudes toward immigration, and to a lesser extent, the European Union. Lastly, public opinion in Denmark is compared to other European countries (Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, Poland, and Spain).
Electoral Turnout
Authors: Hansen Kasper M.
Published: August 2020

Turnout in Denmark is high and stable in local as well as in national elections. A strong sense of voting as a duty nursed in primary schools and by civil society, early mobilization of the popular right, effective automatic voter registration, and many social traditions supporting whom to vote with contribute to explaining the high and stable turnout pattern. Nevertheless, there are substantial inequalities in turnout in Denmark. In particular, immigrants from non-Western countries and the unemployed have low turnout. The many recent Get-Out-The-Vote experiments in Denmark have increased turnout not only through their direct effect but also through a general increase in public awareness of participating in an election. The experiments had the largest impact on the low-propensity voters and thus contribute to decreased inequalities in turnout. Despite mobilization of especially young voters, large inequalities remain in turnout across specific groups in Denmark in national as well as local elections.
The Parliament (FOLKETINGET)
Authors: Helboe Pedersen Helene
Published: August 2020

This chapter asks how powerful, professional, and trusted the Danish Parliament, Folketinget, is. Based on a rational institutional approach, the chapter analyses existing and newly collected data on parliamentary institutions, parliamentary activity, members of Parliament, and voters’ perception of Parliament. The analyses show that the Folketing is especially strong and active when it comes to controlling the government, whereas its elective power is limited. The professionalization is increasing in terms of resources and well-educated members, but the degree of sectorization in committee membership is decreasing, possibly lowering specialization within Parliament and parliamentary party groups. Generally, Danish citizens still trust the Folketing, but trust is decreasing to an extent where it is no longer evident that most citizens see the Folketing as a democratic legitimizing institution. The chapter concludes that the Folketing is relatively powerful, professional, and trusted compared to other parliaments, but it also highlights where the Folketing as well as Danish legislative studies face challenges.
The Economics of Agglomeration
Authors: Monga Célestin
Published: August 2020

Throughout history, industrial hubs have been major engines of successful economic development. These hubs (and clusters) bring together firms that compete and collaborate at the same time, therefore generating the so-called Marshallian or agglomeration externalities: knowledge spillovers, labour pooling, and close proximity of specialized suppliers. As a result, the spatial concentration of entrepreneurship and innovation in specific locations within cities or within urban areas has now become a popular topic of research on the dynamics of economic development. This chapter revisits theories of agglomeration in light of the successful creation ex nihilo of industrial hubs and new clusters in countries like China, often as the result of strong and deliberate government action that defied conventional wisdom. It discusses rationales for the agglomeration of economic activities in countries with suboptimal or even poor business environments, where reforms are likely to take time. It identifies and discusses institutions and policies that, to stimulate economic agglomeration, encourage local entrepreneurship and innovation in industrial hubs and clusters.
Heterodox Approaches to Industrial Policy and the Implications for Industrial Hubs
Authors: Cramer Christopher , Tregenna Fiona
Published: August 2020

Industrial policy may be back in vogue, but with fundamental fissures remaining between different conceptions of industrial policy, there is no consensus. We emphasize this by focusing particularly on structuralist rationalizations for industrial policy. These give a special sector- or product-specific role to manufacturing as an engine of growth. While premature deindustrialization is widespread, it is not unavoidable. One factor widening the scope of industrial policy is the increasing breadth of productive activities that are industrial in nature. We draw out the implications, particularly of structuralist development economics, but also of the blurring of boundaries between sectors, for the gains from industrial hubs. Hubs can potentially deepen the growth-pulling role of manufacturing and cognate activities, thus contributing to industrialization and growth. This, however, requires policy that supports hubs to catalyse dynamic processes of structural change, rather than creating enclaves or merely leading to static gains.
Hubs Development and Industrial Upgrading in Mauritius
Authors: Ramtohul Ramola
Published: August 2020

Mauritius has been a model for sub-Saharan Africa in terms of its rapid growth and development. Much of the progress achieved can be linked to industrialization and industrial upgrading, from sugar to manufacturing and tourism to services and more recently, real estate. This chapter will focus on the development of the industrial hub of Mauritius, looking specifically at the industrial trajectory of the country and the path adopted towards industrial upgrading in key sectors. The chapter discusses the development of the textile industry within the Mauritius Export Processing Zone as well as the challenges in this sector and the gender dimensions of EPZ employment. The chapter also examines the upgrading strategies adopted, including some of the main hub developments such as the Ebène Cybercity and the JinFei special economic zone. It contends that while upgrading has been crucial for industrial survival, growth, and development in Mauritius, it has not been without cost.
Cluster-based Policies
Authors: Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs José
Published: August 2020

Cluster-based policies have boomed in both developed and developing countries, along with the literature around them. However, there is substantial ambiguity about the concept, about how clusters work, and about the impacts and results of cluster initiatives. This chapter reviews the basic economics of clusters with a view to introducing clarity in definitions, and makes important distinctions between clusters, cluster initiatives, and cluster organizations. More fundamentally, it puts the cluster approach in a new light by linking it with the new literature on experimentalist governance as a model of public policy. It uses two experiences to illustrate the importance of governance mechanisms in clusters and of their alignment with the principles of experimentalist governance: cluster policies in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, and the case of the agricultural machinery cluster in Argentina.
The Impact of Decentralization on Industrial Hubs
Authors: DiCaprio Alisa , Sokolova Maria V. , Yang Jacqueline
Published: August 2020

Digital technologies have features that may attenuate the core benefits of industrial hubs. The assumption that geography via co-location facilitates technology spillover provides the basis for the policy design of industrial hubs. Yet, this goes against digital trends in global value chains which enable longer and more dispersed value chains by reducing the need for high levels of trust between entities. We explore the impact of one specific type of digital technology—blockchain—that fundamentally shifts the importance of geography for trade. We illustrate some of the problems with hubs using an extended discussion of multilateral trading rules. Finally, we close with a look at the sustainability angle and whether using a distributed architecture can promote the sustainability production with which hubs struggle.
Materialism and the Early Modern “Natural History of Man”
Authors: Thomson Ann
Published: August 2020

This chapter looks at the use of Epicureanism in early modern attempts to explain the human being in purely naturalistic and material terms, mainly in Britain and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, excluding the moral and political implications of these attempts. After discussing the principal vectors of Epicurean materialism and the difficulties of providing a convincing naturalistic explanation of human beings on Epicurean principles, it looks at how thinkers in the early modern period attempted to solve these problems. The main question concerned the activity of matter, which was linked to discussions of the soul and animal generation. Hence the chapter looks at debates firstly on the properties of atoms, then on human and animal souls, before discussing in more detail the eighteenth-century writers who attempted to provide a purely material explanation of human beings and their use of Lucretius’s poem De rerum natura in particular. We see that Epicurean philosophy was a permanent presence in naturalistic theories, but was normally part of a more eclectic framework. Thinkers took those aspects which corresponded to their aim and combined them with different scientific theories, without necessarily subscribing to the central tenets of Epicureanism. Reference to Epicureanism increasingly functioned as a symbol of the rejection of central Christian doctrines and as a way of proclaiming one’s materialism.
Voluntary Action and Responsibility
Authors: Englert Walter
Published: August 2020

The chapter discusses Epicurus’s notions of voluntary action, moral responsibility, and the swerve of atoms. I examine the ancient evidence first, including Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus, Letter to Menoeceus, and On Nature Book 25, and Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.216–93. I argue that the evidence, especially the Lucretius passage, favors the interpretation that Epicurus believed the swerve of atoms plays a role in every voluntary action of living creatures. But I also take seriously the views of scholars who disagree with this position. Indeed, viewed from one perspective, the lack of scholarly consensus on the role of the swerve in Epicurus’s analysis of voluntary action and moral responsibility provides strong justification for thinking that the precise role that the swerve played is irrecoverable from the ancient evidence available to us. Viewed from another perspective, however, the lack of scholarly consensus, combined with the plausibility of a number of different views about the role the swerve may have played in Epicurus’s system, points to a solution of a different kind. Rather than maintaining that the swerve played a single role in Epicurean psychology, it may be more productive to suppose that it could have played a number of roles. Once Epicurus posited the swerve, he seems to have used it in a number of aspects of his psychology and account of voluntary action and moral responsibility.
Instantons and Bows for the Classical Groups
Authors: Cherkis Sergey A , Hurtubise Jacques
Published: August 2020

The construction of Atiyah, Drinfeld, Hitchin and Manin provided complete description of all instantons on Euclidean four-space. It was extended by Kronheimer and Nakajima to instantons on ALE spaces, resolutions of orbifolds $\mathbb{R}^4/\Gamma$ by a finite subgroup Γ⊂SU(2). We consider a similar classification, in the holomorphic context, of instantons on some of the next spaces in the hierarchy, the ALF multi-Taub-NUT manifolds, showing how they tie in to the bow solutions to Nahm’s equations via the Nahm correspondence. Recently Nakajima and Takayama constructed the Coulomb branch of the moduli space of vacua of a quiver gauge theory, tying them to the same space of bow solutions. One can view our construction as describing the same manifold as the Higgs branch of the mirror gauge theory as described by Cherkis, O’Hara and Saemann. Our construction also yields the monad construction of holomorphic instanton bundles on the multi-Taub-NUT space for any classical compact Lie structure group.
Modulation of Frontal Oscillatory Power during Blink Suppression in Children: Effects of Premonitory Urge and Reward
Authors: Miyakoshi Makoto , Jurgiel Joseph , Dillon Andrea , Chang Susanna , Piacentini John , Makeig Scott , Loo Sandra K
Published: August 2020

There is a dearth of studies examining the underlying mechanisms of blink suppression and the effects of urge and reward, particularly those measuring subsecond electroencephalogram (EEG) brain dynamics. To address these issues, we designed an EEG study to ask 3 questions: 1) How does urge develop? 2) What are EEG-correlates of blink suppression? 3) How does reward change brain dynamics related to urge suppression? This study examined healthy children (N = 26, age 8–12 years) during blink suppression under 3 conditions: blink freely (i.e., no suppression), blink suppressed, and blink suppressed for reward. During suppression conditions, children used a joystick to indicate their subjective urge to blink. Results showed that 1) half of the trials were associated with clearly defined urge time course of ~7 s, which was accompanied by EEG delta (1–4 Hz) power reduction localized at anterior cingulate cortex (ACC); 2) the EEG correlates of blink suppression were found in left prefrontal theta (4–8 Hz) power elevation; and 3) reward improved blink suppression performance while reducing the EEG delta power observed in ACC. We concluded that the empirically supported urge time course and underlying EEG modulations provide a subsecond chronospatial model of the brain dynamics during urge- and reward-mediated blink suppression.
Differentiating kinds of systemic chronic stressors with relation to psychotic-like experiences in late childhood and early adolescence: the stimulation, discrepancy, and deprivation model of psychosis
Authors: Vargas Teresa , Damme Katherine S.F. , Osborne K. Juston , Mittal Vijay A.
Published: August 2020

INTRODUCTION

Chronic stress exposure occurs at the systems level, and is a key etiological factor in the development of psychotic disorders. However, conceptualizations distinguishing the impact of distinct dimensions of stress exposure are lacking; further, the magnitude of effect for differing exposures has yet to be explored.

METHODS

Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to distinguish domains of environmental exposures in a nationally representative sample of 7,446 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Environmental exposures were associated to psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). The magnitude of associations was compared among different environmental exposures. As an exploratory aim, objective versus subjective measures of environmental risk exposure were compared.

RESULTS

Six factors were defined, four of which fit theoretically with the Stimulation Discrepancy, and Deprivation (SDD) theory of developmental stress exposure and psychosis. The three domains of stimulation (high attentional demands and lack of safety), discrepancy (low social capital, social exclusion and lack of belonging), and deprivation (lack of developmentally appropriate environmental enrichment) were associated with PLEs, as predicted. Compared to exposures in other domains, exposures in the deprivation domain exhibited a significantly stronger association with PLEs. Objective and subjective measures converged in direction of association, though self-report stimulation exhibited a significantly stronger association with PLEs compared to objective stimulation domain measures.

DISCUSSION

Current results suggest considering distinct environmental exposures as they relate to psychosis liability could inform putative mechanisms and degrees of vulnerability. The approach offers a valuable perspective to health policy efforts aimed at psychopathology prevention and intervention efforts.
Analysis of SIR-Network Model on COVID-19 with respect to its impact on West Bengal in India
Authors: Khatua Debnarayan , Guha Debashree , Kar Samarjit , De Anupam , Samanta Eshan
Published: August 2020

The recent global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) disease has prompted many researchers to formulate lock-down and quarantine scenarios while the main concern of the researchers is to model the spread and the possible duration of the COVID-19 infections and also research on how long this is going to last. It seems that most of the researchers have recognized lock-down as one of the major impact factors in their models. As a result of this in the absence of lock-down the models formulated would not contribute much significant results. Hence, in this work we decide to formulate a mathematical model which would be able to predict the spread and also the possible duration of the pandemic, by considering both partial lock-down and the corresponding unlocking situations. Employing SIR-network models and taking the various districts of highly populated areas of West Bengal, India as the nodes or vertices we attempt to model the spread and duration of the pandemic during both partial lock-down and unlock phases but separately. We consider the populations where the locally present people and the people who have undergone migration of some shorts are well mixed together. In the network that we have provided the pointed edges refer to the migrating workers that is those that move away from their regular habitats in want of work. We use this research to study not only the trends that are associated with COVID-19 outbreaks, but also to study the impacts of the Government policies and the improvisation of medical facilities on this outbreak in West Bengal. At the end, we attempt to throw light upon the crisis that the economy of the state may have to go through separately on partial lock-down and unlocking scenarios.
Probiotic consumption relieved human stress and anxiety symptoms via modulating the gut microbiota and neuroactive potential
Authors: Ma Teng , Jin Hao , Kwok Lai-Yu , Sun Zhihong , Liong Min-Tze , Zhang Heping
Published: August 2020

Stress has been shown to disturb the balance of human intestinal microbiota and subsequently cause mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression. The gut microbial communities are able to synthesize and/or consume various neuroactive metabolites, and preliminary human studies have also demonstrated the ability of probiotics to modulate the levels of neurotransmitter. However, the study and interpretation of the biological significance of microbial neuroactive compounds have been hindered by the lack of dedicated reference databases and corresponding human intestinal microbiota reference genomes. Our previous study showed that ingesting the probiotic strain, Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum P-8, for 12 weeks could alleviate stress and anxiety of stressed adults. The current study was a follow-up work aiming to further elucidate mechanisms behind the observed beneficial effects by performing deep analysis of the fecal metagenomes of the probiotic (n = 43) and placebo (n = 36) groups. Comparing with the probiotic group, the gut microbiomes of the placebo group showed significantly higher Bray-Curtis dissimilarity between weeks 0 and 12 (p < 0.05). Comparing with week 0, the Shannon diversity index of the placebo group decreased significantly at week 12 (t-test; p < 0.05), but such decrease was non-significant for the probiotic group. Additionally, the fecal metagenomes of the probiotic group showed significant increases in the species-level genome bins (SGBs) of Bifidobacterium adolescent, Bifidobacterium longum, and Fecalibacterium prausnitzii increased, while decreases in the SGBs of Roseburia faeci and Fusicatenibacter saccharivorans. Furthermore, the 12-week probiotic supplementation enhanced the diversity of neurotransmitter-synthesizing and/or -consuming SGBs, and the levels of some predicted microbial neuroactive metabolites (short chain fatty acids, gamma-aminobutyric acid, arachidonic acid, and sphingomyelin et.al). In conclusion, this study revealed the potential mechanism of probiotics in alleviating stress and anxiety via the gut-brain axis. The modulation of the intestinal microbiota by probiotics is an attractive strategy for managing stress and anxiety.
Controllable Fusion of Human Brain Organoids Using Acoustofluidics
Authors: Ao Zheng , Cai Hongwei , Wu Zhuhao , Ott Jonathan , Wang Huiliang , Mackie Ken , Guo Feng
Published: August 2020

The fusion of human organoids holds promising potential in modeling physiological and pathological processes of tissue genesis and organogenesis. However, current fused organoid models face challenges of high heterogeneity and variable reproducibility, which may stem from the random fusion of heterogeneous organoids. Thus, we developed a simple and versatile acoustofluidic method to improve the standardization of fused organoid models via a controllable spatial arrangement of organoids. By regulating dynamic acoustic fields within a hexagonal acoustofluidic device, we can rotate, transport, and fuse one organoid with another in a contact-free, label-free, and minimal-impact manner. As a proof-of-concept to model ventral tegmentum (VTA)-prefrontal cortex (PFC) projection, we acoustically fused human forebrain organoids (hFOs) and human midbrain organoids (hMOs) with the controllable alignment of neuroepithelial buds. We characterized the successful development of fused assembloids via robust tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) neuron projection, accompanied by an increase of firing rates and synchrony of excitatory neurons. Moreover, we found that our controllable fusion can promote neuron projection (e.g., range, length, and density), projection maturation (e.g., higher firing rate and synchrony), and neural progenitor cell (NPC) division in the assembloids. Thus, our acoustofluidic method would facilitate the standardization and robustness of organoid-based disease models and tissue engineering.
Stimulating satisfaction and loyalty: transformative behaviour and Muslim consumers
Authors: Mohamed Naushad , Taheri Babak , Farmaki Anna , Olya Hossein , Gannon Martin Joseph
Published: August 2020

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the combinations of religiosity, cosmopolitanism and perceived destination image leading to satisfaction and loyalty amongst Muslim consumers within the Maldivian tourism and hospitality context.

Design/methodology/approach

Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), this study reveals that diverse combinations of religiosity, cosmopolitanism and destination image dimensions stimulate satisfaction and loyalty in Muslim consumers.

Findings

Multiple recipes can be used to design compelling destinations that balance the desire for religiosity and cosmopolitanism characteristic of contemporary Muslim consumers. The results confirm the applicability of complexity theory in explaining Muslim consumer behaviour within the Islamic destination context.

Practical implications

Several implications for the hospitality and tourism industry are drawn from the results, with suggestions for future research provided. Each fsQCA recipe identifies distinct suggestions to shape the design of destination attributes and hospitality offerings to stimulate consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

Originality/value

Complexity theory was applied to assess the complex causal relationships among Muslim consumers’ religiosity, perceived destination image, cosmopolitanism, satisfaction and loyalty.