bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sublimity byfiat
Authors: Lazarus Micha
Published: June 2021

Longinus’ On the Sublime is thought to have been ushered onto the English literary scene by Boileau’s Traité du Sublime (1674). The search for antecedents to Boileau has yielded scattered references in Rainolds, Chapman, Junius, Milton, and a few rhetorical textbooks, but not enough to indicate a school of thought or even particular enthusiasm. The reception of Langbaine’s Latin translation of 1636 hardly predicts the vast literary influence the treatise would wield by the end of the century. A more promising readership may, however, be suggested by a string of citations in seventeenth-century sermons. In Longinus’ quotation from Genesis and praise of Moses’s oratory, clergymen found literary and rhetorical roots for their explorations of divine sublimity. Developing alongside Longinus’ reception in Christian rhetorics, these citations offer an alternative route for the early association of On the Sublime with Milton’s Christian epic, and its eventual entry into the literary mainstream.
On The Origins of The Airframe Revolution
Authors: Carignani Giuseppe
Published: June 2021

The airframe revolution was the greatest development in aviation history after the Wright brothers, marking the advent of the modern dominant design in aerostructures, namely, the all-metal monoplane, which is still largely in existence. Therefore, the importance of the airframe revolution can hardly be overestimated. Nonetheless, its origin remains poorly understood. The common opinion is that the development of new materials and scientific advancements were the drivers of the transition. However, the historical record tells a different story. This chapter demonstrates that an event of ‘modular exaptation’, namely, the design of the Fokker D.VIII fighter, initiated the revolution in 1918, several years before its recognized inception. This evolutionary interpretation reconciles the gradualist Darwinian vision with the discontinuous character of radical innovation. The Fokker D.VIII case study suggests that detecting technological exaptations ex ante is possible and can provide firms with sustained competitive advantage.
The Search Function and Evolutionary Novelty
Authors: Felin Teppo , Kauffman Stuart
Published: June 2021

Search is a pervasive phenomenon of biological and economic life. But search is hard, especially in uncertain and dynamic environments. In this chapter we directly address the hard problem of search. We develop a generalized form of question-answer probing as a way of simplifying search, with implications for understanding biological and economic novelty. Question-answer probes are organism-specific search images and ‘search-for-functions’ that direct awareness. This form of search simultaneously constrains and enables search spaces in counterintuitive ways. Question-answer probing not only illustrates relatively mundane search activity (such as foraging for food or looking for a lost item), but also provides the foundation for explaining the emergence of both evolutionary novelty and economic value. An organism’s (or organization’s) directed search (especially the search for function) supplies a key mechanism for realizing adjacent possibilities and niches. Our approach contrasts with extant evolutionary, computational (such as serial processing or Bayesian priors and updating), and physics-oriented approaches to search, which lack organism-specific mechanisms. Our approach also contrasts with popular, physics-oriented conceptions of mind, organism, and consciousness. Throughout the chapter, we offer biological and economic examples to illustrate our points. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our arguments for economics and innovation.
Villainy in France (1463-1610)
Authors: Patterson Jonathan
Published: June 2021

This is a book about the outward manifestation of inner malice—that is to say, villainy—in French culture (1463–1610). In pre-modern France, villainous offences were countered, if never fully contained, by intersecting legal and literary responses. Combining insights from legal anthropology with literary and historical analysis, this study examines villainy across juridical documents, criminal records, and literary texts (broadly conceived). While few people obtained justice through the law, many pursued out-of-court settlements of one kind or another. Literary texts commemorated villainies both fictitious and historical; literature sometimes instantiated the process of redress, and enabled the transmission of conflicts from one context to another. Villainy in France follows this overflowing current of pre-modern French culture, examining its impact within France and across the English Channel. Scholars and cultural critics of the Anglophone world have long been fascinated by villainy and villains. This book reveals the subject’s significant ‘Frenchness’ and establishes a transcultural approach to it in law and literature. Villainy’s particular significance emerges through its representation in authors remembered for their less-than respectable, even criminal, activities: François Villon, Clément Marot, François Rabelais, Pierre de L’Estoile, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman. Villainy in France affords comparison of these authors alongside many of their lesser-known contemporaries; in so doing, it reinterprets French conflicts within a wider European context, from the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century.
Defence, Attack, Arbitration
Authors: Patterson Jonathan
Published: June 2021

The poet Clément Marot (1496–1544) testifies, like Villon, to an insecure existence. This chapter explores how the vilification of Marot gained an especial impetus from the late 1520s. Marot used his poems to defend himself against allegations of heresy; he also used poetry to hit back at adversaries. We see it most strikingly in a furious quarrel with an enemy poet, François Sagon. As both poets marshalled a team of supporters, vilification became a self-sustaining enterprise with legal overtones. Neither Marot nor Sagon sought litigation; they sought arbitration by poetic means. Their quarrel overflowed its initial manifestation in the 1530s, with reputational damage to Marot (especially among conservative Catholics and to a lesser extent, among English Francophiles) extending into the seventeenth century.
Disavowing Villainy
Authors: Patterson Jonathan
Published: June 2021

The most voluminous records of villainy in France during the reigns of Henri III and Henri IV are the journals of a Parisian chancery official, Pierre de L’Estoile (1542–1611). This is the first of four chapters on L’Estoile’s obsession with disavowing the ‘desbordement’ (‘overflowing disorder’) of his age, an obsession that so keenly attests to villainy’s flow between law and literature. Chapter 15 focuses on L’Estoile’s disavowals of the obscene and libellous literature that he documented throughout the reign of Henri III. L’Estoile cultivated a villainous style of manifesting both his disgust at ‘vilain’ poetry and the act of reinscribing it, assuming that legal redress was unlikely to follow. This awkward dual dynamic had parallels not only within French-speaking Europe, but also, indirectly, among English malcontents such as John Marston.
Enduring the Catholic League
Authors: Patterson Jonathan
Published: June 2021

Vulnerability and vigilance are key motifs inhabiting L’Estoile’s later writings on villainy. During the Catholic League’s brief supremacy in Paris (c.1588–94), L’Estoile led a double existence: effectively collaborating with the Leaguer administration through his work in the chancery, he used his journals to report noteworthy ‘vilenies’ that he thought characterized the Leaguer regime. L’Estoile exposed himself to danger by his vigilant observation of the emotive pulpit oratory issuing from Leaguer clerics against the ‘heretic’ Henri de Navarre (Henri IV) who had succeeded Henri III in 1589. L’Estoile’s journals of the 1590s function almost as a formal deposition; a readily available source of written testimony against Leaguer preachers that never quite entered the prosecution process.
Transcultural Debasement
Authors: Patterson Jonathan
Published: June 2021

L’Estoile’s journals are a major confluence of legal and tragic discourses on villainy, including high-brow tragedy. Chapter 18 focuses on a tragic problem coursing throughout this book: why the nobility, especially prominent military leaders, found it so difficult to shake off villainy even at the point of death. This chapter covers two notorious examples: Louis Bussy d’Amboise and Charles de Gontaut, Duc de Biron. L’Estoile was among the first of many observers to reflect on the high drama of their deaths. Between law and literature, L’Estoile records the lineaments of an ambivalent discourse on valour and villainy that would develop more fully as the ‘discursive space’ expanded into England. The debasement of Bussy and Biron was revisited in stage tragedies by George Chapman, whose work afforded a transcultural meditation on two haughty malcontents who thought they were above common and criminal law.
Properties: Spectroscopy
Authors: Kresin Vladimir Z. , Ovchinnikov Sergei G. , Wolf Stuart A.
Published: June 2021

This chapter focuses on the spectroscopy of the superconducting state. Various manifestations of macroscopic quantisation are described, including flux quantisation, the Josephson effect, vortices, and the Little–Parks effect. The Ginzburg–Landau theory and its microscopic derivation are presented. An interesting new direction, the search for the lossless ground current state, undergoes an intensive development. If the electronic density of states contains several peaks, it manifests as a multigap structure. Impurity scattering and, especially, the pair-breaking effect can drastically affect the spectrum and lead to gapless superconductivity. Pairing can be induced by the proximity effect (S–N contact). The isotope effect is the signature of the pairing mechanism, but it can be affected by Coulomb terms, magnetic impurities, and polaron formation. The study of fluctuations forms a large area of research. Fluctuations affect the behaviour of heat capacity and nuclear magnetic resonance relaxation, lead to peculiar paraconductivity, and so on.
Materials (II)
Authors: Kresin Vladimir Z. , Ovchinnikov Sergei G. , Wolf Stuart A.
Published: June 2021

This chapter describes the properties of a number of interesting superconducting materials. The study of phonon-mediated superconductors, such as A-15 materials and MgB2, flourished after the discovery of the high-Tc hydrides. At present, this family displays, under high pressure, record values of Tc close to room temperature. Other interesting systems, such as pnictides, heavy fermions, and ruthenates, with their peculiar interplay of superconductivity and magnetism, are also described. Fe-based superconductors, which were recently discovered, have relatively high Tc at ambient pressure. They display a two-gap energy spectrum. Pairing in intercalated nitrides is mainly provided by acoustic plasmons. Tungsten oxides represent a new family of oxides containing elements other than copper; they form filamentary structures. A special class is formed by topological superconductors; usually their properties are caused by odd-parity pairing. The presence of the states inside of the energy gap make these superconductors similar to topological insulators.
Desire and Motivation
Authors: Gregory Alex
Published: June 2021

This chapter introduces the theory ODM (‘Only Desires Motivate’), according to which we can be motivated only by desire. ODM is attractive because it fits with ordinary ways of explaining actions, and because it explains so much—all human behaviour—in a simple and systematic manner. But ODM needs to be distinguished from a nearby more extreme view: although we are only motivated by desire, we are not always motivated by our desires in exact proportion to their strengths. The chapter then shows how ODM can overcome some common-sense objections, can avoid Thomas Nagel’s influential worries, and can make sense of motivation by intention and emotion.
Desire and Rationality
Authors: Gregory Alex
Published: June 2021

The chapter starts by defending the claim that desires make a difference to what it is rational for us to do. It then defends Warren Quinn’s classic argument that many dispositional theories of desire fail to explain this rationalizing force: they cannot explain why desires, unlike other dispositional states, are rationally significant. The chapter goes on to explain how desire-as-belief can explain the rational significance of desire, by appeal to widely accepted claims about the rational significance of our normative beliefs. The chapter then shows how this reasoning also counts in favour of treating desires as beliefs rather than perception-like states, as some nearby rival views do.
The Guise of the Normative
Authors: Gregory Alex
Published: June 2021

The chapter starts by contrasting desire-as-belief with the idea that there are ‘besires’. On a natural understanding of that view, desire-as-belief is the superior theory, being more parsimonious and more in keeping with common sense. The chapter then addresses the guise of the good: the view that we only desire things if we believe them to be good. The guise of the good faces various counterexamples, cannot permit that different people can correctly desire different things, and makes poor sense of the contrast between wanting, wishing, and hoping. But these problems can be avoided if we treat desires as beliefs about reasons.
Desire and Feeling
Authors: Gregory Alex
Published: June 2021

This chapter explores the relationship between desires and feelings such as pleasure and emotion. It explains how emotions bear on our desires in a manner that is consistent with desire-as-belief – our emotions affect our desires largely by directing our attention onto the reasons we have. It then discusses the influence of appetites and pleasure on desire – these things affect our desires because they affect the reasons we have. Moreover, the chapter argues that by understanding appetites and likings as distinct states from desires, desire-as-belief can make good sense of apparently non-rational variation in desire between people, and over time. The chapter goes on to explain how desire-as-belief can make good sense of ascetics who believe that they have no reasons to pursue pleasure. Finally, the chapter addresses the role that desires play in producing pleasure.
Uncertainty and Reasoning
Authors: Gregory Alex
Published: June 2021

In the first half, the chapter explains how desires can come in degrees. The most complex question here is how degrees of uncertainty in our reasons beliefs get expressed with respect to desires. The answer is that they get expressed as uncertainty about what we want. In the second half, the chapter turns to our capacity to reason with our desires. It focuses on instrumentalism, the view that only instrumental desires can be changed by reasoning. This might seem problematic for desire-as-belief. But the chapter shows that instrumentalism is false, in light of the fact that some desires are neither instrumental nor ultimate.
Pushing for Policy Innovation
Authors: Ulriksen Marianne S.
Published: June 2021

In the early 2000s, there was low elite commitment to social protection in Tanzania. Yet, in 2012, the government officially launched a countrywide social safety net programme and a year later announced the introduction of an old-age pension. This chapter explores what explains the change in elite commitment to social protection between the early 2000s and 2015. The analysis takes an ideational approach, and it is shown how the promotion of social protection has been driven by international and domestic institutions with the resources, expertise, and authority to present policy solutions fitting the elite’s general ideas about Tanzania’s development challenges and possible responses thereto. Thus, ideas play an important role in policy development but they may also be vulnerable to political interests that can challenge the long-term sustainability of promoted policies.
Arbitrary States
Authors: Tapscott Rebecca
Published: June 2021

In recent years, scholars of authoritarianism have noted a trend in which institutions designed to check arbitrary power have been hollowed out to facilitate its exercise. As they grapple with how to understand the disjunct between state institutions and enforcement power, scholars of sub-Saharan African states have been doing so for decades. Based on in-depth field research on local security in Museveni’s Uganda, Tapscott offers an innovative and provocative contribution to studies of authoritarianism and state consolidation: rulers maintain control by creating unpredictability in the everyday lives of local authorities and ordinary citizens. In this type of modern authoritarian regime, rulers institutionalize arbitrariness to limit the space for political action, while they keep citizens marginally engaged in the democratic process. By showing not just that unpredictability matters for governance, but also how it is manufactured and sustained, this book challenges and extends cutting-edge scholarship on authoritarianism, the state, and governance.
Varieties of Arbitrary Governance
Authors: Tapscott Rebecca
Published: June 2021

This chapter uses sub-national variation to probe alternative explanations for arbitrary governance. Evidence from three additional research sites in Uganda—Mbarara, Moroto, and Soroti—shows that violent conflict and political leanings shape how institutionalized arbitrariness manifests, exaggerating certain components and attenuating others. Such differences result in ‘varieties’ of institutionalized arbitrariness that, taken together, bolster and nuance the argument that arbitrary governance is a distinct type of authoritarian rule. The results are presented in a typology of four varieties of institutionalized arbitrariness, each corresponding to a different study location. The typology illustrates some of the different outcomes produced by changing combinations of state violence, fluid state jurisdiction, unpredictable state presence, and institutional fragmentation. The chapter then uses these variations to examine some limitations of the theory, including questions about the regime’s intent and citizens’ agency.
Structural Injustice and Fair Opportunity
Authors: Brink David O.
Published: June 2021

Structural injustice creates a marginalized class with reduced social and economic opportunities. Does structural injustice compromise the state’s authority to punish wrongdoing by the marginalized, and are the marginalized less deserving of punishment if their crimes reflect their reduced opportunities? Complicity arguments are found to be problematic, but non-violent crime by the marginalized that is a direct response to their reduced opportunities can provide a partial excuse or mitigation at sentencing.
Situationism and Fair Opportunity
Authors: Brink David O.
Published: June 2021

Situationism implies that subtle situational factors can influence behavior and interfere with the expression of morally desirable character traits. Some have claimed that situationism undermines individual responsibility not just in extreme situations, such as wartime, but also in more everyday circumstances. However, this argument confuses competence and performance. Typically, situationism affects performance, not competence, and so does not excuse. Normative competence may be impaired in extreme wartime situations, but we should be careful not to extend an excuse beyond inadvertent misconduct in hot combat.
Incompetence, Psychopathy, and Fair Opportunity
Authors: Brink David O.
Published: June 2021

Fair opportunity supports a modified version of the Model Penal Code insanity test, against the narrower M’Naghten test. The Andrea Yates case is introduced as a paradigmatic insanity defense. Recent arguments that psychopaths should be excused because their psychological deficits prevent them from developing cognitive competence about moral norms are considered and rejected. Moral blindspots involving selective discrimination raise questions about selective incompetence. In general, the selective nature of these blindspots implies that agents with blindspots have the capacity to correct their moral ignorance and so should not be excused.
Mobile Communications: The Beginning
Authors: Solymar Laszlo
Published: June 2021

weThe problem to solve was the frequency allocation and power requirements. A working frequency for a given cluster had to be chosen high enough so that there are enough channels. The power radiated out by the mobile phone had to be large enough to reach the base station and low enough not to cause disturbance in the neighbouring cluster. Also the size of the clusters depended on population density, larger in urban environment, smaller in rural environment. The sudden growth of the number of mobile phones in the period 1994 to 1997 is noted and plotted.
The Fax Machine
Authors: Solymar Laszlo
Published: June 2021

A patent for a fax machine taken out by Alexander Bain in 1843. The principles of operation, how images are transmitted, are described. Fax lines entered into service in 1865 between Paris and Lyon. The portable fax was invented by Belin in time for sending images from the battlefields in the First World War. A fax sent from Berlin by Arthur Korn’s machine was displayed in Paris by l’Illustration, a popular French journal. The heyday of fax was the decade between 1986 and 1996. International comparisons are shown. Japan, due to her alphabet, relies very much on the fax machine.
Satellites Again
Authors: Solymar Laszlo
Published: June 2021

The total number of satellites ever launched is about 2000. The operation of satellite networks, Iridium in particular, is described. Iridium has 66 satellites in orbit, enabling it to send messages from any point on Earth to any other point. Satellites past their useful life are disposed of in graveyard orbits. Geostationary satellites do not move relative to the Earth but being far away have the disadvantage of delaying the signal they process. Low Earth orbits have no noticeable delay but each one is available for relaying information for no more than 15 minutes. There was a disaster when launching one of the satellites when all three astronauts died instantly. Another notable accident was a collision between two satellites. No human life was lost but it resulted in debris that has since posed further threats to orbiting satellites.
The Mature Internet
Authors: Solymar Laszlo
Published: June 2021

The uses and abuses of the Internet are discussed in some detail. Hilary Clinton is quoted saying that the US is committed to help promote Internet freedom. The top ten uses of the Internet (a subjective list) is enumerated. The list of abuses includes the Democratic Convention hacking in 2016, that of a French broadcasting corporation, and threatening emails in the UK to political opponents. Fraud and blackmail are widespread. Cybercrime is mentioned in a more general context and the statistic showing that in the year 2018 about 91,000 cybercrimes were committed in the UK is given. Techniques of encryption are described. Censorship of the Internet in Russia is reviewed.
Shaping a New Profession
Authors: Cobbing Andrew
Published: June 2021

Not until the nineteenth century were the Japanese forced to confront and engage with the European conception of international law. In East Asia a Sinocentric regional order had governed their worldview for over a thousand years, and during the early modern period the Tokugawa dynasty then modified this outlook to place Japan in the centre of its own framework of international relations. Under the Tokugawa judicial system, moreover, the concept of a lawyer, international or otherwise, was practically unknown. It was the reluctant opening of treaty ports in 1859 that paved the way for Japan’s reception of international law. This chapter charts the shift from the early Japanese exploration of the outside world after centuries of self-imposed isolation, to the training of Japan’s first generation of international lawyers as the Meiji state embarked on reclaiming sovereign rights lost through the imposition of the treaty port regime.
Fluid Boundaries in the Divisible College
Authors: Rietzler Katharina
Published: June 2021

In the 1950s, professional bodies such as the International Law Association (ILA) sought to formulate universal legal rules amidst the complexities of decolonization, technological utopias, and the global Cold War. This chapter analyses the ILA’s involvement in a water rights dispute between India and Pakistan. Discussions within the ‘divisible college’ of the ILA shaped the way in which these post-colonial nations used both domestic and imported legal expertise to define sovereignty autonomously and, by extension, to destabilize the consensus within the international legal community on the extent to which international law could be regarded as settled. Four jurists of the ILA Rivers Committee feature in this investigation: S. M. Sikri, a future Chief Justice of India; Manzur Qadir, Senior Advocate and future Foreign minister of Pakistan; and two Western advisers to the governments of India and Pakistan respectively, the German scholar Friedrich Berber and the US government official John Laylin.
Exclusionary Abuses
Authors: Nazzini Renato
Published: June 2021

Chapter 4 deals with exclusionary abuses under the Competition Act 1998, covering both public and private enforcement cases. The analysis concerns the approach to dominance as well as tests for abuse, focusing on retroactive rebates and bundled discounts, exclusion in multi-market settings, exclusivity, most favoured nation and equivalent clauses, discrimination, and exclusionary abuses in the pharmaceutical sector. This chapter argues that, in its second decade, modern UK competition law continued a trend that was already clear in the first decade: the prohibition of abuse of dominance is applied in a more economically robust and commercially reasonable way than it is by the EU institutions - the Commission and the EU courts - and in certain other Member States. The chapter notes that the third decade of the Competition Act 1998 will see the UK develop its competition policy free from the constraints of EU law and may allow for some divergence in the approach to exclusionary abuses in the future.
Exploitative Abuses
Authors: O’Donoghue Robert
Published: June 2021

Chapter 5 provides a detailed and comprehensive description and analysis of the major exploitative abuses cases considered by the English courts and competition and regulatory authorities since the inception of the Competition Act 1998, including the High Court, the Competition Appeal Tribunal, and the Court of Appeal. This decisional practice and case law have been widely cited and adopted by the EU Courts in Advocate General opinions and in the judgments and opinions of overseas authorities and courts. The chapter also contains a critique of the case law and decisional practice and highlights important practical points and points of principle that have received insufficient (or no) attention, as well as issues on which the case law and decisional practice are arguably wrong. This analysis is timely, since it is clear that the topic of exploitative abuse remains an important one for the UK competition authorities, regulators, and courts, perhaps even more so than authorities and courts in EU Member States.
Consolidating the lessons learnt
Authors: Keller Eileen
Published: June 2021

This chapter deals with policy adoption and implementation, the final stage of the causal mechanism underlying social learning. In order to be successful, its insights need to be consolidated through political reforms. This increases trust in the newly found consensus because it adds a formalized component to it. At this stage, the insights of social learning interact more directly with the formal institutions in place, shaping the concrete policy output. Depending on how successful this final step is, the insights of social learning can be more or less consequential in shaping future financial developments. While the success of the French initiatives ended with the limits of state influence and the voluntary self-interested cooperation by market actors, the coalition in Germany profited from the institutional dispositions in place and even found EU-wide support as the measures fell under European legal competence.
The Meaning of Terrorism
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: June 2021

This book aims to clarify competing and confusing definitions of terrorism, and of terrorist acts, that proliferate in specialist publications as well as in popular discourse, and then to construct a concept of a terrorist act that both reflects a central core of the usages examined and provides for a more coherent and fruitful discussion of terrorism and its moral and political significance. The book’s project thus treats the idea of meaning as involving a concern not only for semantic clarity, but also for probing various dimensions of what our understanding of terrorism can mean morally for complex social and political circumstances. The first two chapters sketch the types of definition abroad and propose what is called a tactical definition, with a focus on terrorist acts as violent attacks upon non-combatants or innocents (in a special sense). They discuss the benefits of such an approach and defend it against numerous objections that can be and have been made to it. Chapter 3 discusses critically theorists who argue that, independent of its definition, terrorist acts have a special, and profoundly disturbing, moral significance. Chapter 4 explores the scope and meaning of non-combatant status and its relation to recent controversies in the philosophy of war. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss important attempted philosophical defenses of terrorism for certain contexts. Chapter 7 discusses the moral challenges facing attempts at counter-terrorism, and Chapter 8 examines the commonly held view that religion is particularly prone to cause terrorism or some of its most extreme manifestations.
Justifying Terrorism: Four Attempts
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: June 2021

Chapter 5 examines four categories of attempted philosophical justification for terrorist acts in certain circumstances. Each one, in different ways, reflects less formal and less carefully articulated views that are proclaimed not only by those who resort to terrorist acts but also by many members of the general public throughout the world, especially when the acts purporting to be justified are committed by their own people or others with whose cause they sympathize. The justifications considered are: utilitarian/consequentialist arguments that may reject the principle of discrimination outright; the argument from self-defense; the tit-for-tat argument; and the argument from the need for a fighting chance. These four attempted justifications raise a more general and very challenging issue about the difficulties of moral philosophizing in the face of absolute moral prohibitions.
Justifying Terrorism: Three More Attempts
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: June 2021

In Chapter 6, three more categories are scrutinized, each of which again reflects a less sophisticated but appealing form of argument that is often enough deployed in the public sphere to justify terrorist acts either by terrorists themselves or by those who identify with the proclaimed justice of cause for which the terrorist acts are committed. The arguments considered in this chapter are: the argument from collective responsibility; the argument from redistributive justice; and the argument from supreme emergency. As with the attempted justifications in Chapter 5, all three of these attempted justifications raise a more general and very challenging issue about the difficulties of moral philosophizing in the face of absolute moral prohibitions.
The Transformative Self
Authors: Bauer Jack
Published: June 2021

Everyone wants a good life. Some try to create a good life by cultivating personal growth. They have a transformative self. This book explains how people form a transformative self, primarily in their evolving life stories, to help cultivate growth toward a life of happiness, love, and wisdom for the self and others. It introduces an innovative framework of values and personhood to strengthen and integrate three main areas of study: narrative identity, the good life, and personal growth. The result is a unique model of humane growth and human flourishing. Each chapter builds on that framework to explore topics central to the transformative self, such as how cultural beliefs of a good life shape our narrative identity; how narrative thinking shapes cultural and personal beliefs of a good life; how cultural master narratives shape our ideals for personal growth; how growth differs from gain, recovery, and other positive changes in the life story; how happiness, love, wisdom, and growth serve as superordinate goods in life; how the hard and soft margins of society thwart and facilitate personal growth; the dark side of growth; and the lengthy development of authenticity and self-actualizing. This book synthesizes scholarship from scientific research across several subfields of psychology to philosophy, literature, history, and cultural studies. It offers a creative and scientifically grounded framework for exploring three of life’s perennial questions: How do we make sense of our lives? What is a good life? and How do we create one?
Growth and the Good Life
Authors: Bauer Jack
Published: June 2021

This chapter presents a new framework to integrate two dominant models of the good life: hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia emphasizes the primacy of pleasure (e.g., satisfaction and happiness), whereas eudaimonia emphasizes the primacy of meaning (e.g., well-being, meaningfulness, moral virtue, wisdom, growth, and self-actualizing). The two function on different levels of context. Three facets of value facilitate their integration. Value orientation refers to one’s values, motives, and needs. Value fulfillment is the successful enactment of value orientation, typically experienced as hedonic satisfaction or eudaimonic meaningfulness. Value perspectivity (a newly theorized feature of value and a key quality of wisdom) is the degree of complexity and coherence by which value orientations and fulfillments are interpreted. The transformative self emphasizes eudaimonic growth, which emphasizes humane and organismic value orientations. The three facets of value reconfigure into four superordinate categories of goods in life: happiness, love, wisdom, and growth.
Growth Themes in Personal Narratives
Authors: Bauer Jack
Published: June 2021

Theme in a personal narrative conveys the narrator’s value orientations (what the person values, is motivated by, needs, or believes is important in an event) but not whether the event turns out well (tone does that). Three great themes in both literature and life stories are agency, communion, and growth. Themes of eudaimonic growth are central to the transformative self. Growth themes come in various, overlapping forms, notably agentic, communal, reflective, and experiential forms. Growth themes and growthy tones work together to convey not only the value orientation of growth but also the value fulfillment or attainment of eudaimonic growth, experienced as a sense of meaningfulness. Growth themes link actions to motives and to mechanisms of development, which may be why growth themes are powerful predictors of separate measures of happiness, love, wisdom, and growth, regardless of the type of event.
Discovery and Functional Characterization of a Diverse Diterpene Synthase Family in the Medicinal HerbIsodon lophanthoidesVar.gerardiana
Authors: Yang Ruikang , Du Zuying , Qiu Ting , Sun Jie , Shen Yanting , Huang Lili
Published: June 2021

Isodon lophanthoides var. gerardiana (Lamiaceae), also named xihuangcao, is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb that exhibits a broad range of pharmacological activities. Abietane-type diterpenoids are the characteristic constituents of I. lophanthoides, yet their biosynthesis has not been elucidated. Although the aerial parts are the most commonly used organs of I. lophanthoides, metabolite profiling by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry showed the underground parts also contain large amounts of labdane diterpenoids including abietatriene, miltiradiene and ferruginol, which are distinct from the 13-hydroxy-8(14)-abietene detected in the aerial parts. Comparative transcriptome analysis of root and leaf samples identified a diverse diterpene synthase family including 6 copalyl diphosphate synthase (IlCPS1-6) and 5 kaurene synthase-like (IlKSL1-5). Here we report the functional characterization of six of these enzymes using yeast heterologous expression system. Both IlCPS1 and IlCPS3 synthesized (+)-copalyl diphosphate (CPP), in combination with IlKSL1 resulted in miltiradiene, precursor of abietane-type diterpenoids, while coupling with IlKSL5 led to the formation of hydroxylated diterpene scaffold nezukol. Expression profiling and phylogenetic analysis further support the distinct evolutionary relationship and spatial distribution of IlCPS1 and IlCPS3. IlCPS2 converted GGPP into labda-7,13E-dien-15-ol diphosphate. IlCPS6 was identified as ent-CPS, indicating a role in gibberellin metabolism. We further identified a single residue that determined the water addition of nezukol synthase IlKSL5. Substitution of alanine 513 with isoleucine completely altered the product outcome from hydroxylated nezukol to isopimara-7,15-diene. Together, these findings elucidated the early steps of bioactive abietane-type diterpenoid biosynthesis in I. lophanthoides and the catalytic mechanism of nezukol synthase.
Persistence Without Personhood: A New Model
Authors: Gottlieb Joseph
Published: June 2021

I am a person. But am I fundamentally and essentially a person? The animalist says no. So must the phenomenal continuity theorist, or so I’ll argue. Even if, contra animalism, we cannot survive zombification, being a subject of experience is not sufficient for being a person, and phenomenal continuity is not sufficient for our survival as the same person. These observations point the way to a positive account of personhood, and provide further insight into the conditions under which literal survival preserves what matters.
Performance of finger systolic blood pressure measurement to detect digital occlusive arterial disease in systemic sclerosis
Authors: Omarjee Loukman , Metairie Antoine , Tueguem Moyo Therese , Pabic Estelle Le , Jego Patrick , Lescoat Alain , Mahe Guillaume
Published: June 2021

Objective

Digital ulcers related to digital occlusive arterial disease (DOAD) are frequent in patients with SSc. Finger systolic blood pressure (FSBP) and digital-brachial pressure index (DBI) using laser Doppler flowmetry constitute a non-invasive means of detecting DOAD in SSc, although thresholds have yet to be established for defining DOAD. The purpose of this study was to ascertain FSBP and DBI thresholds to detect DOAD in SSc patients. The intra/interday reproducibility of curve reading by four vascular physicians in relation to finger pressure measurement was also investigated.

Methods

SSc patients were followed in this single-centre study (Rennes University Hospital, France) between November 2017 and October 2019.These patients underwent tests before and after heating at two visits spaced 10 days apart. DOAD was diagnosed on the basis of post-warming skin blood flow of ≤206 arbitrary units measured by laser Doppler flowmetry, contingent on previous results validated by arteriography as a gold standard. An interday kappa coefficient with a 95% confidence interval was used to assess reproducibility.

Results

Sixteen [10 females; mean age: 63 (9) years] SSc patients were included. Mean time interval between visits was 9 (5) days. The best FSBP threshold for DOAD diagnosis was 76 mmHg and DBI was 0.74 after warming. FSBP and DBI sensitivity/specificity were 59.1% (95% CI: 49.6, 68.5%)/92.5% (95% CI: 85.3, 99.6%) and 73.3% (95% CI: 64.9, 81.8%)/83.0% (95% CI: 72.9, 93.1%), respectively. Intra/interday reproducibility ranged from fair to good.

Conclusion

The conclusions drawn from this study suggest that FSBP ≤ 76 mmHg and DBI ≤ 0.74 thresholds are potentially reliable indicators of DOAD and demonstrate fair to good intra- and interday reproducibility.

Trial registration

ClinicalTrials.gov, www.clinicaltrials.gov, NCT03264820.
Opening Pathways to Restorative Justice: Analysis of Parliamentary Debates on Sex Crime Law Reform in Victoria, Australia
Authors: Gang Daye , Loff Bebe , Naylor Bronwyn , Kirkman Maggie
Published: June 2021

This article reveals the trajectory of parliamentary debate on sex crimes over forty years in Victoria, Australia. We aimed to identify what might have led Parliament to support the introduction of restorative justice as an option for some sex crimes. We searched parliamentary records from 1976 to 2016 for debates on law reform for sex crimes that involved adult victims without intellectual disability. It was evident that politicians’ debates shifted in their constructs of offenses and victims in ways that appear to have created space to explore restorative justice.
Image-Based Automated Species Identification: Can Virtual Data Augmentation Overcome Problems of Insufficient Sampling?
Authors: Klasen Morris , Ahrens Dirk , Eberle Jonas , Steinhage Volker
Published: June 2021

Automated species identification and delimitation is challenging, particularly in rare and thus often scarcely sampled species, which do not allow sufficient discrimination of infraspecific versus interspecific variation. Typical problems arising from either low or exaggerated interspecific morphological differentiation are best met by automated methods of machine learning that learn efficient and effective species identification from training samples. However, limited infraspecific sampling remains a key challenge also in machine learning. In this study, we assessed whether a data augmentation approach may help to overcome the problem of scarce training data in automated visual species identification. The stepwise augmentation of data comprised image rotation as well as visual and virtual augmentation. The visual data augmentation applies classic approaches of data augmentation and generation of artificial images using a generative adversarial networks approach. Descriptive feature vectors are derived from bottleneck features of a VGG-16 convolutional neural network that are then stepwise reduced in dimensionality using Global Average Pooling and principal component analysis to prevent overfitting. Finally, data augmentation employs synthetic additional sampling in feature space by an oversampling algorithm in vector space. Applied on four different image data sets, which include scarab beetle genitalia (Pleophylla, Schizonycha) as well as wing patterns of bees (Osmia) and cattleheart butterflies (Parides), our augmentation approach outperformed a deep learning baseline approach by means of resulting identification accuracy with nonaugmented data as well as a traditional 2D morphometric approach (Procrustes analysis of scarab beetle genitalia). [Deep learning; image-based species identification; generative adversarial networks; limited infraspecific sampling; synthetic oversampling.]
NMR studies of the N‐terminal domains of E2 component of human pyruvate dehydrogenase complex.
Authors: Kumaran Sowmini , Birkaya Barbara , Patel Mulchand , Jordan Frank
Published: June 2021

Dihydrolipoamide acetyltransferase (E2) is the second component of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDHc). PDHc catalyzes oxidative decarboxylation of pyruvate, linking glycolysis to the tricarboxylic acid cycle and has an important role in glucose homeostasis. It is composed of multiple copies of three enzymes E1, E2 and E3. PDHc is regulated by four pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDK) and two phosphatases (PDP). The E2 component has gained particular attention because it provides structural and organizational framework to the entire complex in addition to its role in catalysis. It is comprised of three domains, two consecutive lipoyl domains (L1, L2) at the amino terminus, an interim E1/E3 binding domain (S) and carboxy terminal core domain (C) that are linked by alanine, proline rich flexible linkers. We used solution Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) methods for sequence‐specific backbone assignment of the E2 fragments (L2S and L1L2S domains). In order to understand the role of these proteins in substrate specificity, catalytic function, as well as their interactions with PDKs and other components in the entire PDHc multienzyme complex, we applied NMR and isothermal titration calorimetric (ITC) methods. One of the goals of the project is to develop new interventions to type 2 diabetes, by designing effective inhibitors for this most important glucose‐metabolizing pathway. Supported by NIHGM‐050380.
Mutations Found in Patients Leber's Congenital Amaurosis Disrupt Retinal Guanylate Cyclase Interaction with Rhodopsin In Vitro; Involvement In Phototransduction
Authors: Bondarenko Vladimir A , Jones Kristi
Published: June 2021

We use bovine rod outer membranes membrane and recombinant intradiscal domain of retinal guanylate cyclase (retGC) expressed in HEK293 in pull down assay to demonstrate interaction between rhodopsin (Rho) and retGC.

It has been previously shown that retGC activity in light‐exposed rod outer segment membranes was much higher than activity of the same membranes isolated under dark conditions suggesting that communication of retGC with activated Rho is required for its full activation by GCAP. To study the effect of the mutations found in Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA) in intradiscal domain of retGC on its interaction with Rho we used pull down assay and colocalization experiments. Fluorescent protein‐tagged intradiscal domain of bovine retGC was expressed in HEK293 cells and soluble fraction containing recombinant wild type or mutant proteins were prepared. We used photobleached and hypotonically washed rod outer segment (ROS) membrane as a source of photoactivated Rho. Soluble fractions containing recombinant proteins were incubated with ROS membranes. After washing several times with isotonic buffer presence of recombinant proteins in membranes and soluble fraction were analyzed by western blot using retGC‐specific antibodies. Only wild type intradiscal domain of retGC was detected in ROS membrane fraction suggesting that mutation causing LCA disrupt the interaction between retGC and Rho.
Generation of an inducible arginase‐1 deficient mouse model
Authors: Mukherjee Kamalika , Ballantyne Laurel L , Sin Angie , St. Amand Tim , Funk Colin D
Published: June 2021

Arginase‐1 (Arg1) catalyzes the final step in the urea cycle to convert arginine to ornithine + urea. In the rarest of the urea cycle disorders, genetic deficiency of Arg1 results in hyperargininemia with occasional bouts of hyperammonemia, eventually leading to neurological problems and failure to thrive. Arg1 deficient mice die at two weeks of age. In order to circumvent the early mortality we generated an inducible knockout model by crossing “floxed” Arg1 deficient mice (JAX strain C57BL/6‐Arg1tm1Pmu/J) with Cre‐ER‐T2 mice (JAX strain B6.129‐Gt(ROSA)26Sortm1(cre/ERT2)Tyj/J). Arg1‐Cre mice were indistinguishable from control mice. However, when treated with 4‐OH‐tamoxifen for 2 days at birth by intragastric administration, or for 5 consecutive days with i.p. tamoxifen at 4, 8, or 12 weeks (n=4–8) all mice died within 12–14 days or reached humane endpoints. DNA analysis confirmed the deletion of exons 7 and 8 and Western blot analysis showed loss of Arg1 expression in mouse embryo fibroblasts and liver hepatocytes derived from tamoxifen‐treated Arg1‐Cre mice. Hyperammonemia was evident in the crisis period 7–12 days after tamoxifen administration prior to gait and imbalance problems that presented clinically at the end stage. These mice should be a useful model to study the mechanisms of neurological deficits resulting from Arg1 deficiency in aged mice provided that the hyperammonemia can be controlled.