bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A software controllable modular RF signal generator with multichannel transmission capabilities
Authors: Shaw Z. , Feilner W. , Esser B. , Dickens J. C. , Neuber A. A.
Published: September 2017

A software controllable system which generates and transmits user defined RF signals is discussed. The system is implemented with multiple, modular transmitting channels that allow the user to easily replace parts such as amplifiers or antennas. Each channel is comprised of a data pattern generator (DPG), a digital to analog converter (DAC), a power amplifier, and a transmitting antenna. All channels are controlled through a host PC and synchronized through a master clock signal provided to each DAC by an external clock source. Signals to be transmitted are generated through the DPG control software on the PC or can be created by the user in a numerical computing environment. Three experiments are discussed using a two- and four-channel antenna array incorporating Chebyshev tapered TEM horn antennas. Transmitting distinct sets of nonperiodic bipolar impulses through each of the antennas in the array enabled synthesizing a sinusoidal signal of specific frequency in free space. Opposite to the standard phased array approach, each antenna radiates a distinctly different signal rather than the same signal simply phase shifted. The presented approach may be employed as a physical layer of encryption dependent on the position of the receiving antenna.
Sensitivity of core-level spectroscopy to electrostatic environments of nitrile groups: An ab initio study
Authors: Hussain Abid , Huse Nils , Vendrell Oriol
Published: September 2017

Ab initio quantum chemistry calculations have been performed to probe the influence of hydrogen bonding on the electronic structure of hydrogen cyanide (HCN). Our calculations determine the origin of nitrogen-specific Raman spectral features from resonant inelastic X-ray scattering occurring in the presence of a water molecule and an electric dipole field. The similarity of the two interactions in altering the electronic structure of the nitrogen atom differs only in the covalent contributions from the water molecule. The CN stretching mode as a structural probe was also investigated to study the electronic origin of the anomalous frequency shift of the nitrile group when subjected to hydrogen bonding and an electrostatic dipole field. The major changes in the electronic structure of HCN are electrostatic in nature and originate from dipole-dipole interactions. The relative shifts of the CN stretching frequency are in good agreement with those experimentally observed.
Thermal stability of high-reflectance La/B-based multilayers for 6.x nm wavelength
Authors: Kuznetsov D. S. , Yakshin A. E. , Sturm J. M. , Bijkerk F.
Published: September 2017

We have investigated the thermal stability of La/B-based (LaN/La/B) multilayer structures with partial-layer nitridation of La, a method shown earlier to result in enhanced reflectivity. The structures were annealed in the temperature range 100–500 °C for 70 h. They showed period drifts by 0.005 nm at 100 °C to 0.06 nm at 500 °C. A reflectivity loss of more than 2% was only observed after annealing above 300 °C. The study included separate investigation of B-on-LaN and LaN-on-La-on-B interfaces.
Development of a novel overmoded sub-terahertz inclined coaxial clinotron with asymmetric mode suppressed
Authors: Chen Zaigao , Wang Yue
Published: September 2017

Overmoded coaxial high frequency structures can improve the power capacity of vacuum electron devices (VEDs) and make the fabrication and assembly of the devices easy in the terahertz band, but they also lead to mode competition and deleterious effect on the beam-wave interaction. The numerical investigation on the cold cavity characteristics indicates that the dispersion curve of the quasi-TEM mode almost overlaps with the dispersion curve of the high-order quasi-TE11 mode, and the 3-D numerical simulation results also illustrate that due to the mode competition, the quasi-TEM cannot be excited steadily in the VEDs with traditional coaxial SWSs with the available current density. In order to effectively suppress the mode competition of overmoded coaxial SWSs, novel inclined coaxial slow wave structures (SWSs) are proposed in this paper. As the overmoded ratio of the SWSs reaches 9.7, the 3D particle-in-cell simulation results indicate that this novel device can successfully produce the terahertz wave with the output power of 571 W at the operating frequency of 0.338 THz, and the frequency spectrum of the generated signal is very pure. The field distributions in the inclined coaxial SWSs illustrate that there is no asymmetric mode excited in the proposed device.
Modification of membrane cholesterol and desmosterol in chicken spermatozoa improves post-thaw survival and prevents impairment of sperm function after cryopreservation
Authors: Ushiyama Ai , Tajima Atsushi , Ishikawa Naoto , Asano Atsushi
Published: September 2017

During cryopreservation, spermatozoa are subjected to cryodamage that leads to a decline in fertilisation ability. Due to the complex nature of this process, the initial trigger for cryodamage remains unknown. Recently, we demonstrated that cryopreservation induces early apoptotic changes characterised by phosphatidylserine (PS) translocation via sterol loss from the plasma membrane of chicken spermatozoa. This led us to hypothesise that sterol incorporation into membranes minimises cryodamage, thereby improving the quality of cryopreserved chicken spermatozoa. In the present study, treating spermatozoa with 1.5 mg mL−1 cholesterol- and 3 mg mL−1 desmosterol-loaded cyclodextrin (CLC and DLC respectively) increased post-thaw survival and motility. These effects appeared to be highly dependent the amount of sterol loaded into the spermatozoa. Localisation experiments confirmed the incorporation of exogenous cholesterol into the sperm head region. Detection of PS translocation showed that elevation of these sterols inhibited early apoptotic changes, thereby enhancing post-thaw survival. Furthermore, CLC and DLC treatment suppressed spontaneous acrosome reaction after cryopreservation, preserving the ability of spermatozoa to undergo acrosome reactions in response to physiological stimulation. These results demonstrate that loading sterols into chicken spermatozoa before cryopreservation enhances their quality by inhibiting early apoptotic changes and spontaneous acrosome reactions. The present study provides new mechanistic insight into cryodamage in chicken spermatozoa.
Effect of lipopolysaccharide on the expression of inflammatory mRNAs and microRNAs in the mouse oviduct
Authors: Cerny Katheryn L. , Ribeiro Rosanne A. C. , Li Qing , Matthews James C. , Bridges Phillip J.
Published: September 2017

Infection with Gram-negative bacteria is a major cause of aberrant inflammation in the oviduct; consequences can include tubal-based infertility and/or ectopic pregnancy. Understanding the inflammatory response is necessary for the development of novel treatment options that counter inflammation-induced infertility. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration of Escherichia coli-derived lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on the acute expression of inflammatory mRNAs and microRNAs (miRNAs) in the oviduct. On the day of oestrus, 6- to 8-week-old CD1 mice were injected i.p. with 0, 2 or 10 µg LPS in 100 μL phosphate-buffered saline. Mice were killed 24 h later and the oviducts collected for gene expression analyses. The effect of treatment on the expression of mRNAs and miRNAs was evaluated by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), with treatment means of differentially expressed (P < 0.05) transcripts separated using Scheffé’s test. LPS treatment affected 49 of 179 targeted inflammatory mRNAs and 51 of 578 miRNAs (P < 0.05). The identity of differentially expressed miRNAs predicted as regulators of chemokine and interleukin ligand mRNAs was then extracted using the microRNA.org database. The results of the present study indicate that systemic treatment with LPS induces a robust inflammatory response in the oviducts of mice, and identify key mRNAs and putative miRNAs modulating this effect.
Genetic Evidence of Isolation by Distance and Impact of Impoundments on Genetic Diversity of Riverine Channel Catfish
Authors: Sotola V. Alex , Schrey Aaron W. , Ragsdale Alexandria K. , Whitledge Gregory W. , Frankland Les , Bollinger Eric K. , Colombo Robert E.
Published: September 2017

This study used microsatellite loci to provide evidence of isolation by distance and an effect of artificial impoundments on the genetic diversity of Channel Catfish Ictalurus punctatus from the Wabash and Ohio rivers. The Wabash River is the longest free‐flowing river east of the Mississippi River in the USA, and the Ohio River is highly impounded, yet both rivers support large Channel Catfish fisheries. There was a significant positive relationship between genetic differentiation and geographic distance indicating isolation by distance. Clustering with the programs, STRUCTURE and GENELAND, and principal component analysis revealed multiple genetic clusters, and several sites had results consistent with adults existing as mixtures of genetic groups. These results suggest that the rate of straying among reproductive sites or dispersal is dependent on geographic distance. Channel Catfish from the unimpounded Wabash River had higher genetic diversity (Ho and He) than that from the impounded Ohio River. The impoundments had discordant effects on genetic structure; two site comparisons across a dam were differentiated more strongly than would be expected by geographic distance, whereas genetic differentiation was not detected in another comparison across a dam. Thus, the effect of artificial impoundments on Channel Catfish biology may be affected by river or site‐specific characteristics, and the presence of genetic differentiation may be minimized by large population sizes.
Screening of plant resources with anti-ice nucleation activity for frost damage prevention
Authors: Suzuki Shingo , Fukuda Satoshi , Fukushi Yukiharu , Arakawa Keita
Published: September 2017

Previous studies have shown that some polyphenols have anti-ice nucleation activity (anti-INA) against ice-nucleating bacteria that contribute to frost damage. In the present study, leaf disk freezing assay, a test of in vitro application to plant leaves, was performed for the screening of anti-INA, which inhibits the ice nucleation activity of an ice-nucleating bacterium Erwinia ananas in water droplets on the leaf surfaces. The application of polyphenols with anti-INA, kaempferol 7-O-β-glucoside and (–)-epigallocatechin gallate, to the leaf disk freezing assay by cooling at −4–−6 °C for 3 h, revealed that both the compounds showed anti-INAs against E. ananas in water droplets on the leaf surfaces. Further, this assay also revealed that the extracts of five plant leaves showed high anti-INA against E. ananas in water droplets on leaf surfaces, indicating that they are the candidate resources to protect crops from frost damage.
Deuterium incorporation experiments from (3R)- and (3S)-[3-2H]leucine into characteristic isoprenoidal lipid-core of halophilic archaea suggests the involvement of isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase
Authors: Yamauchi Noriaki , Tanoue Ryo
Published: September 2017

The stereochemical reaction course for the two C-3 hydrogens of leucine to produce a characteristic isoprenoidal lipid in halophilic archaea was observed using incubation experiments with whole cell Halobacterium salinarum. Deuterium-labeled (3R)- and (3S)-[3-2H]leucine were freshly prepared as substrates from 2,3-epoxy-4-methyl-1-pentanol. Incorporation of deuterium from (3S)-[3-2H]leucine and loss of deuterium from (3R)-[3-2H]leucine in the lipid-core of H. salinarum was observed. Taken together with the results of our previous report, involving the incubation of chiral-labeled [5-2H]leucine, these results strongly suggested an involvement of isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase in leucine conversion to isoprenoid lipid in halophilic archaea. The stereochemical course of the reaction (anti-elimination) might have been the same as that previously reported for mammalian enzyme reactions. Thus, these results suggested that branched amino acids were metabolized to mevalonate in archaea in a manner similar to other organisms.
Spatially restricted JAG1-Notch signaling in human thymus provides suitable DC developmental niches
Authors: Martín-Gayo Enrique , González-García Sara , García-León María J. , Murcia-Ceballos Alba , Alcain Juan , García-Peydró Marina , Allende Luis , de Andrés Belén , Gaspar María L. , Toribio María L.
Published: September 2017

A key unsolved question regarding the developmental origin of conventional and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (cDCs and pDCs, respectively) resident in the steady-state thymus is whether early thymic progenitors (ETPs) could escape T cell fate constraints imposed normally by a Notch-inductive microenvironment and undergo DC development. By modeling DC generation in bulk and clonal cultures, we show here that Jagged1 (JAG1)-mediated Notch signaling allows human ETPs to undertake a myeloid transcriptional program, resulting in GATA2-dependent generation of CD34+ CD123+ progenitors with restricted pDC, cDC, and monocyte potential, whereas Delta-like1 signaling down-regulates GATA2 and impairs myeloid development. Progressive commitment to the DC lineage also occurs intrathymically, as myeloid-primed CD123+ monocyte/DC and common DC progenitors, equivalent to those previously identified in the bone marrow, are resident in the normal human thymus. The identification of a discrete JAG1+ thymic medullary niche enriched for DC-lineage cells expressing Notch receptors further validates the human thymus as a DC-poietic organ, which provides selective microenvironments permissive for DC development.
Inhibition of 5-lipoxygenase alleviates graft-versus-host disease
Authors: Rezende Barbara Maximino , Athayde Rayssa Maciel , Gonçalves William Antônio , Resende Carolina Braga , Teles de Tolêdo Bernardes Priscila , Perez Denise Alves , Esper Lísia , Reis Alesandra Côrte , Rachid Milene Alvarenga , Castor Marina Gomes Miranda e , Cunha Thiago Mattar , Machado Fabiana Simão , Teixeira Mauro Martins , Pinho Vanessa
Published: September 2017

Leukotriene B4 (LTB4), a proinflammatory mediator produced by the enzyme 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO), is associated with the development of many inflammatory diseases. In this study, we evaluated the participation of the 5-LO/LTB4 axis in graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) pathogenesis by transplanting 5-LO–deficient leukocytes and investigated the effect of pharmacologic 5-LO inhibition by zileuton and LTB4 inhibition by CP-105,696. Mice that received allogeneic transplant showed an increase in nuclear 5-LO expression in splenocytes, indicating enzyme activation after GVHD. Mice receiving 5-LO–deficient cell transplant or zileuton treatment had prolonged survival, reduced GVHD clinical scores, reduced intestinal and liver injury, and decreased levels of serum and hepatic LTB4. These results were associated with inhibition of leukocyte recruitment and decreased production of cytokines and chemokines. Treatment with CP-105,696 achieved similar effects. The chimerism or the beneficial graft-versus-leukemia response remained unaffected. Our data provide evidence that the 5-LO/LTB4 axis orchestrates GVHD development and suggest it could be a target for the development of novel therapeutic strategies for GVHD treatment.
Searching for potentially habitable extra solar planets: a directed-study using real data from the NASA Kepler-Mission
Authors: LoPresto Michael C , Ochoa Hector
Published: September 2017

What follows is a description of the procedure for a directed-study in which a student, guided by a faculty member, attempted to identify potentially habitable exoplanets using actual data available online from NASA’s Kepler Mission.
Circulating Libraries in the Victorian Era
Authors: Bassett Troy J.
Published: September 2017

Beginning in the 18th century and continuing throughout the 19th century, circulating libraries became an integral part of the literary marketplace as the chief means of distributing books. Subscribers paid an annual or per-book fee to rent volumes: during the Victorian period, the typical subscription rate was one guinea (21s) per year to borrow one volume at a time. The relatively high price of books made circulating libraries an economical means for many middle-class families to access books: for less than the price of one three-volume novel (one-and-a-half guineas, or 31s 6d), a subscriber could borrow dozens if not more volumes. Hundreds of circulating libraries existed during the Victorian period, but the two largest were Mudie’s Select Library (1842–1937) and W. H. Smith and Son’s Subscription Library (1860–1961). Mudie’s, headquartered in London, had upwards of 50,000 subscribers, established branches in other major cities, and shipped books around the world. W. H. Smith added a library department to its pre-existing network of railway bookstalls with larger branches in major cities. Between them, Mudie’s and W. H. Smith became the largest purchasers of books and thereby had a direct and indirect effect on Victorian literature. In particular, the three-volume novel system—whereby the high price limited sales to the libraries who then had a monopoly on new fiction—encouraged British readers to become book borrowers instead of book buyers. The format of the three-volume novel led to certain generic conventions influencing areas such as characterization, plot, and style, which remained until the format was abolished in 1894. Since the libraries, especially Mudie’s and W. H. Smith, largely controlled the distribution of literature, they often exerted an informal censorship on literature which some authors, such as George Moore, advocated against.
Pakistani-English Writing
Authors: Shamsie Muneeza
Published: September 2017

Surveying Pakistani-English drama, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from the inception of Pakistan in 1947 to 2015 reveals how Pakistani-English writing developed and changed over the years, from a small marginalized genre in the early years of Pakistan to the dynamic, growing body of work in the 21st century. Bringing together writing by Pakistan-resident writers as well as those in the diaspora demonstrates both contrasts and links among them. Early writers such as Shahid Suhrawardy and Ahmed Ali and the role of Taufiq Rafat in the birth of a new contemporary poetry in Pakistan are included alongside a discussion of the extensive writings of Zulfikar Ghose, an early diaspora writer. This article covers the critical writings of Alamgir Hashmi, Tariq Rahman, and Muneeza Shamsie in defining and developing a new canon. The internationalism of Tariq Ali and the new multi-cultural British identity asserted by the writing of Hanif Kureishi—and indeed Kureishi’s links to his Pakistan-resident family—poet Maki Kureishi and the journalist Omar Kureishi are pointed out. The extensive English-language non-fiction written in Pakistan ranging from autobiographies, collected editorials, and newspaper columns to writings on art and literature are also given space, as are the creative memoirs of Sara Suleri and others, the plays of Ayub Khan Din and Ayad Akhtar, the poetry of Moniza Alvi and Imtiaz Dharker, and a wide range of fiction writers from Aamer Hussein and Daniyal Mueenuddin to Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, and Kamila Shamsie as well as newer voices such as Roopa Farooki, H. M. Naqvi, Fatima Bhutto, and Maha Khan Phillips.
Inoculation Theory Applied in Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Ivanov Bobi
Published: September 2017

Referred to as the “most consistent and reliable method for conferring resistance to persuasion” by Miller et al. in 2013, over the past 50 years inoculation has exerted significant influence in shaping theoretical and contextual resistance research and message design. Used as a message strategy, inoculation elicits threat, or realized attitudinal/behavioral vulnerability, which motivates individuals to shore up attitudinal/behavioral defenses by providing both material and guided practice aiding the process of effective counterarguing, which in turn increases individuals’ resistance to attitudinal/behavioral challenges. The motivation is responsible for sustaining the inoculation effect over an extended period of time. Inoculation messages, however, do much more than just inspire a robust defense. They motivate individuals to engage others regarding the attitudinal/behavioral topic in an attempt to reassure and advocate their positions, thus diffusing the inoculation message over social networks. The attitudinal/behavior protection elicited by inoculation messages is not limited to the message’s target attitude/behavior, but instead spreads over related attitudes/behaviors as well, thus increasing the pragmatic utility of this message strategy. Inoculation’s effectiveness extends beyond the realm of resistance, as inoculation messages are also effective in both shaping and changing attitudes/behaviors.

Because of its success, inoculation-based message strategies have been applied in numerous contexts researchers and clinicians beganand with numerous topics. Some of inoculation’s applied contexts include commercial, instruction/education, interpersonal, political, corporate, public relations, cross-cultural, health, and risk. More specifically, in the health and risk contexts, inoculation has been applied in promotion or prevention capacity on topics such as politically-motivated violent acts, smoking, drinking, unprotected sex, vaccination, and health-related policy, with current research exploring its efficacy in addiction interventions and indoor tanning-bed usage prevention. Inoculation may also be used as a strategy to reduce recidivism in criminal prison inmates and preventing verbal aggression in schools. Additional promising areas for application of inoculation-based strategies may include the promotion and protection of healthy eating habits as well as positive attitudes/behaviors toward mammograms, colonoscopies, breastfeeding, and regular exercise, just to name a few. As Ivanov suggested, the “application of the strategy [is] boundless.”
Positive Affect Related to Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Guan Mengfei , Monahan Jennifer L.
Published: September 2017

Positive emotional appeals can be an important, if often underutilized, component in health campaigns. Research reviewed from advertising, marketing, health communication, and social influence demonstrated how campaigns can promote risk-reduction behaviors by focusing on positive incentives, highlighting positive outcomes, and evoking positive feelings toward the health-related behavior. People who feel good during and after exposure to a health message tend to have favorable attitudes toward the message, which in turn establishes more open, rather than resistant, attitudes toward the issue or risk-reduction behavior promoted in the message. Along with influencing behavior via attitudes, positive affect can have a direct impact on behavior or intention. As suggested by broaden-and-build theory, positive affect broadens attention and thinking processes, increases openness to information, and helps form beliefs that the behavioral change promoted in the message is possible. Relatedly, positive affect tends to activate approach-oriented behaviors through the function of the behavioral activation system.

Two primary strategies have demonstrated efficacy at promoting positive feelings: the use of gain-framed appeals and evoking the core relational theme of happiness. Gain-framed appeals emphasize the rewards obtained by following message recommendations and can boost behavioral adoption, particularly of proscriptive behaviors, by highlighting positive outcomes and goal congruency. Happiness occurs when people believe they are making progress toward realizing their goals, and messages can be created to induce positive feelings like happiness by focusing on self-efficacy, response efficacy, and perceived benefits. Positive message appeals are especially useful for counteracting the potential drawbacks of traditional negative appeals in that they can reduce message fatigue, gain attention, and attenuate psychological reactance. Challenges for future research include increasing efforts to systematically understand how and when to best utilize the power of positive messages in campaigns. Another related challenge is to examine how positive affect is aroused at a particular stage of exposure to health risk messages, and how emotions (both negative and positive), flow, evolve, and transit from one to another (e.g., fear to relief, anxiety to happiness) during and after message exposure.
Presumed Media Influence in Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Ho Shirley S. , Yee Andrew Z. H.
Published: September 2017

Health communication research has often focused on how features of persuasive health messages can directly influence the intended target audience of the messages. However, scholars examining presumed media influence on human behavior have underscored the need to think about how various audience’s health behavior can be unexpectedly influenced by their exposure to media messages. Two central theoretical frameworks have been used to guide research examining the unintended effects: the third-person effect and the influence of presumed media influence (IPMI). The theoretical explanations for presumed media influence is built on attribution bias, self-enhancement, perceived exposure, perceived relevance, and self-categorization. Even though both the third-person effect and the IPMI share some theoretical foundations, and are historically related, the IPMI has been argued to be better suited to explaining a broader variety of behavioral consequences. One major way that presumed media influence can affect an individual’s health behavior is through the shifting of various types of normative beliefs: descriptive, subjective, injunctive, and personal norms. These beliefs can manifest through normative pressure that is theoretically linked to behavioral intentions. In other words, media have the capability to create the perception that certain behaviors are prevalent, inculcating a normative belief that can lead to the uptake of, or restrain, health behaviors. Scholars examining presumed media influence have since provided empirical support in a number of specific media and behavioral health contexts. Existing findings provide a useful base for health communication practitioners to think about how presumed media influence can be integrated into health campaigns and message design. Despite the proliferation of research in this area, there remains a need for future research to examine these effects in a new media environment, to extend research into a greater number of health outcomes, to incorporate actual behavioral measures, and to ascertain the hypothesized causal chain of events in the model.
Occupation and the Risk Message Recipient
Authors: Hocking Clare
Published: September 2017

Responding to health messages about environmental risks and risky behaviors requires adjustments to what individuals do: how they organize and perform occupations, and their understanding of what occupations mean—for themselves and others. Encouraging people to make a change means influencing what they want to do, the possibilities open to them, and societal support and demand for healthful ways of life. Bringing an occupational perspective to the design of risk messages will generate new insights into the complexities of everyday occupations, revealing the dynamic territory into which health messages are targeted. Occupation, or everyday doing, is described as the means by which people experience their very nature, become what they have the potential to be, and sustain a sense of belonging in family, community and society. To influence what people do, designers of health messages are encouraged to consider what engages people in occupations and keeps them engaged; the identity and cultural meanings expressed through occupation; the exhilaration of challenge and risk; the satisfactions of competence and flow experiences that keep people engaged in what they are doing; whether or not people are fit and prepared for the occupations they embark on and what happens when they are not; and the pull of habits and routines, which hold existing patterns of occupation in place. Equally, health message designers need to engage with the occupational science literature, which recognizes how people are shaped toward particular occupations and occupational identities by social policy, institutional practices, and media messages. That means questioning the rhetoric that occupations are freely chosen, rather than shaped and patterned by the historical, sociocultural, political, and geographic context. Simultaneously, health message designers need to recognize that individuals incorporate specific occupations and occupational patterns into their lifestyle and sense of self, believing they have a measure of control over what they do while rationalizing failure to make health-supporting changes.
Faith Communities and the Potential for Health Promotion
Authors: Kiger Alice M. , Fagan Donna M. , van Teijlingen Edwin R.
Published: September 2017

Faith communities play an important role in health promotion in some parts of the world, notably North America and sub-Saharan Africa. They appear to be less prominent in the United Kingdom, despite the fact that it is a high-income country with a well-developed national public health system. Faith communities can be instigators of health promotion (faith-based health promotion), or they can provide settings where other agencies can conduct health promotion (faith-placed health promotion). Key opportunities and barriers for faith-based and faith-placed health promotion can be found by drawing on examples from the United States and Africa.
Lay Risk Management
Authors: Löfmarck Erik
Published: September 2017

How do individuals relate to risk in everyday life? Poorly, judging by the very influential works within psychology that focus upon the heuristics and biases inherent to lay responses to risk and uncertainty. The point of departure for such research is that risks are calculable, and, as lay responses often under- or overestimate statistical probabilities, they are more or less irrational. This approach has been criticized for failing to appreciate that risks are managed in relation to a multitude of other values and needs, which are often difficult to calculate instrumentally. Thus, real-life risk management is far too complex to allow simple categorizations of rational or irrational.

A developing strand of research within sociology and other disciplines concerned with sociocultural aspects transcends the rational/irrational dichotomy when theorizing risk management in everyday life. The realization that factors such as emotion, trust, scientific knowledge, and intuition are functional and inseparable parts of lay risk management have been differently conceptualized: as, for example, bricolage, in-between strategies, and emotion-risk assemblage. The common task of this strand is trying to account for the complexity and social embeddedness of lay risk management, often by probing deep into the life-world using qualitative methods. Lay risk management is structured by the need to “get on” with life, while at the same time being surrounded by sometimes challenging risk messages.

This perspective on risk and everyday life thus holds potentially important lessons for risk communicators. For risk communication to be effective, it needs to understand the complexity of lay risk management and the interpretative resources that are available to people in their lifeworld. It needs to connect to and be made compatible with those resources, and it needs to leave room for agency so that people can get on with their lives while at the same time incorporating the risk message. It also becomes important to understand and acknowledge the meaning people attribute to various practices and how this is related to self-identity. When this is not the case, risk messages will likely be ignored or substantially modified. In essence, communicating risk requires groundwork to figure out how and why people relate to the risks in question in their specific context.
The Development of Climate Science of the Baltic Sea Region
Authors: Omstedt Anders
Published: September 2017

Dramatic climate changes have occurred in the Baltic Sea region caused by changes in orbital movement in the earth–sun system and the melting of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Added to these longer-term changes, changes have occurred at all timescales, caused mainly by variations in large-scale atmospheric pressure systems due to competition between the meandering midlatitude low-pressure systems and high-pressure systems. Here we follow the development of climate science of the Baltic Sea from when observations began in the 18th century to the early 21st century. The question of why the water level is sinking around the Baltic Sea coasts could not be answered until the ideas of postglacial uplift and the thermal history of the earth were better understood in the 19th century and periodic behavior in climate related time series attracted scientific interest. Herring and sardine fishing successes and failures have led to investigations of fishery and climate change and to the realization that fisheries themselves have strongly negative effects on the marine environment, calling for international assessment efforts. Scientists later introduced the concept of regime shifts when interpreting their data, attributing these to various causes. The increasing amount of anoxic deep water in the Baltic Sea and eutrophication have prompted debate about what is natural and what is anthropogenic, and the scientific outcome of these debates now forms the basis of international management efforts to reduce nutrient leakage from land. The observed increase in atmospheric CO2 and its effects on global warming have focused the climate debate on trends and generated a series of international and regional assessments and research programs that have greatly improved our understanding of climate and environmental changes, bolstering the efforts of earth system science, in which both climate and environmental factors are analyzed together.

Major achievements of past centuries have included developing and organizing regular observation and monitoring programs. The free availability of data sets has supported the development of more accurate forcing functions for Baltic Sea models and made it possible to better understand and model the Baltic Sea–North Sea system, including the development of coupled land–sea–atmosphere models. Most indirect and direct observations of the climate find great variability and stochastic behavior, so conclusions based on short time series are problematic, leading to qualifications about periodicity, trends, and regime shifts. Starting in the 1980s, systematic research into climate change has considerably improved our understanding of regional warming and multiple threats to the Baltic Sea. Several aspects of regional climate and environmental changes and how they interact are, however, unknown and merit future research.
Policy Success and Failure
Authors: McConnell Allan
Published: September 2017

How can we know if policies succeed or fail, and what are the causes of such outcomes? Understanding the nature of these phenomena is riddled with complex methodological challenges, including differing political perspectives, persistent mixed results, ambiguous outcomes, and the issue of success/failure “for whom”? Ironically, the key to understanding policy success and failure lies not in downplaying or ignoring such challenges, but in accepting politicization and complexity as reflective of the messy world of public policy. Gaining insight from such messiness allows a better understanding of phenomena like “good politics but bad policy,” the persistence of some failures over time, and widely differing perspectives on who or what should claim credit for policy success and who or what should be blamed for policy failure.
Political Party Organizations
Authors: Poguntke Thomas , Scarrow Susan E. , Webb Paul D.
Published: September 2017

How political parties organize directly affects who is represented and which policies are prioritized. Political parties structure political choice, which is one of the main functions generally ascribed to them. Their roles as gatekeepers for policies and political careers are closely linked to their nature as membership-based organizations, and to the extent to which they empower members to influence these crucial choices directly or indirectly. Parties also play a crucial role as campaign organizations, whose organizational strength influences their electoral success. The literature often summarizes differences in how parties organize and campaign by identifying major party types, which can be regarded as “classic models” of party organization. Yet, actual parties must adapt to changing environments or risk being supplanted by newer parties or by other political actors. For instance, in recent years one popular adaptation has involved parties opening their decision-making processes by introducing party-wide ballots to settle important questions. Changes like these alter how parties act as intermediaries in representation and political participation. Thanks to the increasing availability of comparable data on party organizations in established and new democracies, and in parliamentary and presidential systems, today’s scholars are better equipped to study the origins and impacts of parties’ organizational differences.
The Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities as a Global Tipping Point for the Participation of Persons With Disabilities
Authors: Harpur Paul , Stein Michael Ashley
Published: September 2017

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a historical tipping point, globally precipitating and enabling persons with disabilities to exercise their rights. Prior to the CRPD, laws and practices restricted the capacity of persons with disabilities to be present, let alone empowered, within society. By contrast, leveraging the call of “nothing about us without us,” the disability rights movement precipitated a participatory dynamic throughout the CRPD’s drafting sessions. Disabled peoples’ organizations (DPOs), as nongovernmental organizations, selected their own spokespeople, attended all public meetings, made statements, received copies of official documents, and distributed their own position papers. This involvement has had profound and continuing lasting effects, with participation enshrined in the CRPD’s text and precipitating a new global norm. The CRPD requires full and effective participation and inclusion in society and equality of opportunity. It further requires states to closely consult with and involve persons with disabilities, through DPOs, in decisions, policies, and laws affecting them and to promote DPO development. DPOs are also authorized to implement and monitor the CRPD, thereby facilitating the work of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which to date has been dominated by independent experts with disabilities. Collectively, these requirements are intended to ensure that persons with disabilities can fully participate in the CRPD’s visionary agenda.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and Set Theory
Authors: Wagemann Claudius
Published: September 2017

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method, developed by the American social scientist Charles C. Ragin since the 1980s, which has had since then great and ever-increasing success in research applications in various political science subdisciplines and teaching programs. It counts as a broadly recognized addition to the methodological spectrum of political science. QCA is based on set theory. Set theory models “if … then” hypotheses in a way that they can be interpreted as sufficient or necessary conditions. QCA differentiates between crisp sets in which cases can only be full members or not, while fuzzy sets allow for degrees of membership. With fuzzy sets it is, for example, possible to distinguish highly developed democracies from less developed democracies that, nevertheless, are rather democracies than not. This means that fuzzy sets account for differences in degree without giving up the differences in kind. In the end, QCA produces configurational statements that acknowledge that conditions usually appear in conjunction and that there can be more than one conjunction that implies an outcome (equifinality). There is a strong emphasis on a case-oriented perspective. QCA is usually (but not exclusively) applied in y-centered research designs. A standardized algorithm has been developed and implemented in various software packages that takes into account the complexity of the social world surrounding us, also acknowledging the fact that not every theoretically possible variation of explanatory factors also exists empirically. Parameters of fit, such as consistency and coverage, help to evaluate how well the chosen explanatory factors account for the outcome to be explained. There is also a range of graphical tools that help to illustrate the results of a QCA. Set theory goes well beyond an application in QCA, but QCA is certainly its most prominent variant.

There is a very lively QCA community that currently deals with the following aspects: the establishment of a code of standards for QCA applications; QCA as part of mixed-methods designs, such as combinations of QCA and statistical analyses, or a sequence of QCA and (comparative) case studies (via, e.g., process tracing); the inclusion of time aspects into QCA; Coincidence Analysis (CNA, where an a priori decision on which is the explanatory factor and which the condition is not taken) as an alternative to the use of the Quine-McCluskey algorithm; the stability of results; the software development; and the more general question whether QCA development activities should rather target research design or technical issues. From this, a methodological agenda can be derived that asks for the relationship between QCA and quantitative techniques, case study methods, and interpretive methods, but also for increased efforts in reaching a shared understanding of the mission of QCA.
The Council of Ministers of the European Union
Authors: Lewis Jeffrey
Published: September 2017

The Council of Ministers, officially known as the Council of the European Union (EU), is a single legal composition of national ministers who meet in policy-specific formations to negotiate and adopt EU policies and laws. The Council is more than just the ministers; they depend on an infrastructure of preparatory bodies and specialist working groups, as well as rotating and permanent leadership positions and an internal bureaucracy, the General Secretariat of the Council (GSC). Over time, the Council has undergone formal restructuring, such as sharing colegislative authority with the European Parliament (EP), now called the “ordinary legislative procedure” (OLP), and redesigning how majority voting works. The Council has also witnessed informal organizational change, especially in internal pecking-order dynamics and techniques to reach consensus-based outcomes.

EU Council research has documented formal and informal decision-making dynamics, especially related to voting and consensus practices, although there is no real agreement on how formal and informal rules interact to influence the context of negotiations. There is still a divergence of interpretation in how the Council actually works, such as whether consensus is a “culture” of mutual accommodation subject to group standards or is instead a façade of relative power. As an institution, the Council deliberately promotes clublike networks of like-minded national policy specialists and experts who meet in repeat, face-to-face interactions and make collective decisions in mostly nontransparent (in camera) settings of insulation from domestic audiences. However, in the post-Maastricht era of EU politics since the early 1990s, the way the Council works is also increasingly debated in terms of transparency, accountability, and legitimacy.
Theory of Regional War and Peace
Authors: Miller Benjamin
Published: September 2017

The explanation of the variations in war and peace patterns across different regions, and transitions between war and peace in the same region, is based on the introduction of the state-to-nation imbalance in a certain region—this imbalance is a key substantive underlying cause of regional war propensity. Variations in this cause account for some of the major differences in the level of war and peace among different regions. Different strategies of addressing this problem (based on global or regional/domestic factors) then produce different types and levels of regional peace. The relative influence of global versus regional/domestic factors on regional war and peace is notably addressed. The study distinguishes between “hot” and “cold” (i.e., more or less intense) types of regional war and peace, and argues that global factors (i.e., the involvement of external powers) may at most bring about the less intense cold phenomena (“cold” war and “cold” peace), whereas the more demanding hot outcomes that constitute the two extremes of the regional war-peace continuum (“hot” war and “warm” peace) depend on domestic/regional causes. The key domestic/regional factors are the level of state capacity and of national congruence (both internal and external) in the region. Each of the regional outcomes is related to the combination of independent variables affecting it. This should make it possible to examine the proposed integrated effects of the state-to-nation balance and the international system on regional war and peace.
Theoretical Underpinnings of a Global Social Contract
Authors: Inoguchi Takashi
Published: September 2017

In modeling a global social contract, theoretical underpinnings are provided, drawing from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract and John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. The thoughts of these two great philosophers regarding democracy have been insufficiently examined, reflecting the constraints of life in 17th- and 18th-century Geneva and England, respectively. It is on this basis that their ideas may be adapted to what may be called global democracy in the dawn of the new millennium. The key drivers of their concepts of democracy were empathy and compassion (for Rousseau) and human reason and pragmatism (for Locke). Given the technological, economic, political, social, and cultural environments at the dawn of the new millennium, captured by accelerated globalization and digitalization, transnational direct democratic and transnational representative democratic models of a global social contract are feasible and justified (see Inoguchi & Lien, 2016). To illustrate this dramatic change, a contrast is made between the years 1912 and 2016–1912 when Normal Angel forecast the advent of peaceful years ahead and 2016, at the time of this writing.
Systemic Causes of Civil Wars
Authors: Hironaka Ann
Published: September 2017

Civil wars in the contemporary world are deeply interpenetrated by international influences. There are six different conceptions of the international system and their effects on civil conflicts: (1) the realist conception and the superpower interventions of the Cold War period, (2) the liberal institutional conception and the diplomatic mediation of the United Nations, (3) global cultural influences such as world religions, democratization and education, (4) the global economy and structural poverty, (5) transnational bilateral relations with neighboring states, and (6) the planetary ecosystem and the effects of climate change. Taken together, these international influences have a weighty effect on the conduct and duration of contemporary civil wars.