bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Worm Boris , Tittensor Derek P.
Published: January 2019

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. The book aims to construct an integrated understanding of large-scale patterns of marine and terrestrial biodiversity at regional to global scales. It asks the following: How is the global richness of species organized, and how does it vary across taxa and through space and time? What are the environmental factors that may drive this variation and to what extent are these factors influenced by human perturbations? Can we explain this bewildering variety from simple ecological theory and provide a more mechanistic understanding of the fundamental distributional patterns of life? A key premise of the book is that a more comprehensive understanding of global biodiversity can be gained only by overcoming a disciplinary divide that has long separated the study of biodiversity on land and in the sea. The chapter also provides a brief history of biodiversity research.
Observed Patterns of Global Biodiversity
Authors: Worm Boris , Tittensor Derek P.
Published: January 2019

This chapter summarizes and synthesizes known biodiversity patterns, and analyzes them for congruency over space and time. The discussion is limited to macroecological patterns at continental to global scales (thousands of km). The chapter also focuses on the simplest measure of biodiversity—namely, species richness. The discussions cover marine coastal biodiversity, marine pelagic biodiversity, deep-sea biodiversity, terrestrial biodiversity, changes in biodiversity patterns through time, and robustness of documented biodiversity patterns. Among the findings is that averaging across all known species groups on land and in the sea, tropical peaks in species richness were as common as subtropical peaks, whereas species groups cresting in temperate or polar latitudes were more exceptional. Thus, the oft-cited unimodal pattern of biodiversity appears frequently, particularly on land, but there is also evidence that supports a newly emerging paradigm of asymmetric unimodal or bimodal peaks often in the subtropics, and particularly in the marine realm.
Drivers and Predictors of Global Biodiversity
Authors: Worm Boris , Tittensor Derek P.
Published: January 2019

This chapter considers the driving factors that may cause global patterns of biodiversity to exist. The goal is to confront published hypotheses about putative drivers of diversity with comprehensive empirical information on the environmental predictors of diversity on land and in the oceans. It argues that the diversity of life on land is primarily related to the availability of ambient energy, measured as temperature or potential evapotranspiration (PET), in combination with sufficient moisture, habitat area, and complexity. Thus, there is a fundamental similarity between primary correlates of diversity on land and in the sea, considering similar primacy of ambient energy and habitat as leading predictors of species richness.
Predicting Global Biodiversity Patterns from Theory
Authors: Worm Boris , Tittensor Derek P.
Published: January 2019

The previous chapter developed a global theory of biodiversity incorporating gradients in ambient temperature and habitat area or productivity. It showed that a metacommunity model implementation of the theory can reproduce first-order patterns of declining species richness from the tropics to the poles in an idealized cylindrical ocean. This chapter tests the theory in a more realistic setting by fitting the neutral-metabolic metacommunity model to a global equal-area grid with a more realistic spatial structure. The rationale here is to explore whether the communities that evolve in a simple theoretical model can reproduce observed patterns of species richness in the real world, and reconcile the contrasting patterns seen in coastal, pelagic, deep-sea, and terrestrial habitats.
The Constitution of the Territory and Politics of a Large State
Authors: Li Su
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the constitution of the territory and politics of a large state. It first discusses the problem posed by a large state before explaining how historical China became a geographically large state. It then describes the feudal system of the Zhou dynasty as an early attempt to build the constitution of a large state. It also explores how the commandery system integrated different localities of the country into an overarching entity, along with the role it played for the political constitution of ancient China. The chapter goes on to analyze the geopolitics underlying China's administrative divisions, focusing on the administration of the frontiers and integration of minority nationality areas. It concludes with an overview of the idea of “bringing peace to the world under heaven” and suggests that the center-periphery relations in historical China were successful from a constitutional point of view.
Ancient China’s Cultural Constitution
Authors: Li Su
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the role and significance of a unified script and Mandarin Chinese for the political and cultural formation of ancient China. From the Qin dynasty on, the bureaucracy was staffed by intellectual elites selected from their localities but sharing a unified script system and approximately similar pronunciation. The forms of writing and pronunciation, therefore, became a crucial part of China's “cultural constitution.” The chapter shows how the script and its two aspects, reading and speaking, were unified. It considers the Qin dynasty's unification of the script system, based on the judgment that the standardization of Chinese characters became the basis of China's bureaucratic governance. It also discusses the constitutional significance of a unified speech, how Mandarin Chinese was maintained and spread, and how a unified script integrated the scholar-officials in different geographical locations in a transgenerational cultural community.
Scholar-Officials
Authors: Li Su
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the evolution and development of the selection system for scholar-officials in ancient China. It also considers how the institution of selection has adjusted in response to the politico-social-cultural conditions of different periods and how it embodies political rationalization. The chapter first explains why ancient China's politico-cultural elites differed in practice from the elite politicians of ancient city-states in the West or modern Western nation-states before discussing how the social consensus for historical China's meritocracy formed. It then explores the problem of creating ancient China's meritocracy, focusing specifically on how, in a large state, an elite can be selected in an institutional way that is fair, accurate, and effective. The chapter goes on to describe the recommendation and examination systems for scholar-officials and concludes with an analysis of the politics of meritocracy as well as the politics beyond meritocracy.
Response to My Critics
Authors: Li Su
Published: January 2019

In this chapter, the author responds to four commentators who raised a variety of questions regarding his account of the constitution of ancient China. First, he insists that his research is not intended to be historical but as a theoretical undertaking guided by theories of social science. According to the author, his research belongs to the tradition of empirical social science, although it may lack systematic data or statistical analysis; his primary theoretical interest lies in the historical particularity, rather than universality, of China's ancient constitution. He goes on to discuss the Confucian ideas of civilization, the integrating function of Confucianism, the Neo-Confucian attempt to restore the status of Confucianism as a privileged official doctrine, the formation of historical China's institutions, the concept of constitutionalism, and effective constitution.
Brownian Motion
Authors: Zocchi Giovanni
Published: January 2019

This chapter provides an introduction to the main ideas of Brownian motion. Brownian motion connects equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. It connects diffusion—a nonequilibrium phenomenon—with thermal fluctuations—an equilibrium concept. More precisely, diffusion with a net flow of particles, driven by a concentration gradient, pertains to a nonequilibrium system, since there is a net current. Without a concentration gradient, the system is macroscopically in equilibrium, but each individual particle undergoes self-diffusion just the same. In this sense, Brownian motion is at the border of equilibrium and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics.
Statics of DNA Deformations
Authors: Zocchi Giovanni
Published: January 2019

DNA is a deformable molecule. The term “deformable” implies phenomena rooted in the collective behavior of many atoms, and a description based on concepts of continuum and statistical mechanics. Long DNA molecules are an excellent experimental system to study the equilibrium conformations and dynamics of long, flexible molecules. This chapter discusses the following: DNA melting, the zipper model, experimental melting curves, base pairing and base stacking as separate, Hamiltonian formulation of the zipper model, 2 × 2 model, nearest neighbor model, connection to nonlinear dynamics, linear and nonlinear elasticity of DNA, bending modulus and persistence length, measurements of DNA elasticity (short and long molecules), the Euler instability, and the DNA yield transition.
Kinematics of Enzyme Action
Authors: Zocchi Giovanni
Published: January 2019

Enzymes are catalysts as well as the molecular machines that generate and maintain the nonequilibrium state of the cell. There are roughly two main mechanisms by which enzymes provide the control function for the network of chemical reactions in the cell. One is the presence or absence of the enzyme, controlled by gene expression. The other is allosteric control: the modulation of the activity of an individual enzyme caused by binding of a specific ligand, often a small metabolite, or else caused by so-called post-translational modifications. This chapter addresses what could be variously called the quasi-equilibrium aspects, or steady state, or kinematics, of enzyme operation, and what one learns from time-independent perturbations of this steady state. Topics discussed include Michaelis–Menten kinetics, the method of the DNA springs, force and elastic energy in the enzyme–DNA chimeras, injection of elastic energy vs. activity modulation, and connection to nonlinear dynamics.
Dynamics of Enzyme Action
Authors: Zocchi Giovanni
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the deformability of enzymes. This property allows enzymes to couple a chemical process to a cycle of deformations of the molecule, which can perform a task in the cell. This is the celebrated “molecular machine” aspect of enzymes. The dynamics of enzyme deformability presents universal features when ensemble-averaged trajectories are examined. The mechanical response is viscoelastic. The remainder of the chapter covers the nonlinearity of the enzyme's mechanics, timescales, enzymatic cycle and viscoelasticity, internal dissipation, origin of the restoring force g, models based on chemical kinetics, different levels of microscopic description, connection to information flow, normal mode analysis, many states of the folded protein, and interesting topics in nonequilibrium thermodynamics relating to enzyme dynamics.
Does Judaism Condone Violence?
Authors: Mittleman Alan L.
Published: January 2019

We live in an age beset by religiously inspired violence. Terms such as “holy war” are the stock-in-trade of the evening news. But what is the relationship between holiness and violence? Can acts such as murder ever truly be described as holy? This book offers a searching philosophical investigation of holiness and ethics in the Jewish tradition, and more specifically whether Judaism condones violence. Jewish texts feature episodes of divinely inspired violence, and the position of the Jews as God's chosen people has been invoked to justify violent acts today. Are these justifications valid? Or does our understanding of the holy entail an ethic that argues against violence? Reconstructing the concept of the holy through a philosophical examination of biblical texts, the book finds that holiness and goodness are inextricably linked, and that our experience of holiness is authenticated through its moral consequences. Our understanding of the holy develops through reflection on God's creation of the natural world, and our values emerge through our relations with that world. Ultimately, the book concludes, religious justifications for violence cannot be sustained. This book is a powerful counterargument to those who claim that the holy is irrational and amoral. With philosophical implications that extend far beyond the Jewish tradition, this book should be read by anyone concerned about the troubling connection between holiness and violence.
Introduction
Authors: Mittleman Alan L.
Published: January 2019

This book is a philosophical inquiry into the relationships among holiness, ethics, and violence. Drawing on the resources of Jewish philosophy, it examines what holiness is, how it is connected to morality, and how it is implicated in that breakdown of morality otherwise known as violence. The discussion aims to facilitate an analysis of religious violence in Judaism and present a concept of holiness in Judaism that is true to its biblical roots—that is not simply reducible to moral categories but that is nonetheless linked to morality. Working in the idioms of philosophical theology and ethics, this book also considers God's character and conduct. The question about holiness and violence, it asserts, is a question about how we ought to conceive of God. Finally, the book looks at the entanglement of holiness with goodness and advances an original theory of holiness, what it calls a “natural history of holiness”.
Holiness and Judaism
Authors: Mittleman Alan L.
Published: January 2019

This chapter reconstructs the meanings of holiness from representative texts of the Jewish tradition. The discussion is anchored on two claims. First, biblical thought does not divide the world into a neat dualism of sacred and profane. Second, the Bible and subsequent Judaism conceive of holiness in three different ways: holiness sometimes refers to a property, holiness indicates a status, and holiness is a value or project. These three characteristics of holiness are examined in detail using the Bible. The chapter is primarily concerned with the ideas of the holiness of the people of Israel and the holiness of the Land of Israel. It considers the sacred/profane dichotomy by focusing on the views of twentieth-century scholars such as Emile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade. It also explores holiness and purity as they relate to God before concluding with an analysis of holiness in ancient and medieval rabbinic Judaism.
Introduction
Authors: Smolkin Victoria
Published: January 2019

This book discusses the history of Soviet atheism from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 until the return of religion to public life in the final years of the Soviet Union. When the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, they were armed with a vision: to make Communism a world without religion. More specifically, they sought to remove religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life. They rejected all previous sources of authority, replacing the autocratic state with Soviet power, religious morality with class morality, and backward superstition with an enlightened, rational, and modern way of life. Despite all these earnest efforts, however, Soviet Communism never managed to overcome religion or produce an atheist society. This book examines why Soviet Communism abandoned its commitment to atheism, and whether there was a relationship between the divorce of Communism and atheism, and the divorce of the state from the Soviet Communist Party.
The Specter Haunting Soviet Communism
Authors: Smolkin Victoria
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the wave of antireligious and atheist campaigns launched during the Khrushchev era, beginning with the Hundred Days campaign of 1954 and again in 1958 until Nikita Khrushchev's forced retirement in 1964. It explains why the Soviet state disrupted the postwar stability of church–state relations and again viewed religion as a problem, and why Khrushchev brought atheism back after it was cast aside by Joseph Stalin. The chapter discusses the Hundred Days campaign and its impact on Soviet religious life, Khrushchev's antireligious propaganda of 1958–1964, and the factors that led to the Soviet Communist Party's renewed offensive against religion, including anxiety about religious revival. It shows that Khrushchev's antireligious campaigns are part of his efforts to redefine the course of Soviet Communism after Stalin's death. For Khrushchev, political de-Stalinization, economic modernization, and ideological mobilization were all necessary to infuse revolutionary vitality back to the ideology of Marxism–Leninism.
Determinism and Stability in Physics
Authors: Ben-Menahem Yemima
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the role of stability and determinism in physical theories such as statistical mechanics. In the physical sciences, the notions of stability and instability, no longer camouflaged in the language of necessity and contingency, are often used in a variety of contexts, from chaos theory to quantum mechanics. Physicists consider questions about the stability of states, orbits, and structures to be as fundamental as questions about determinism. Before expounding on the conceptual relations between stability and determinism in physics, the chapter discusses three interconnected problems that statistical mechanics has had to tackle: the meaning of probability in statistical mechanics, the link between probability and a system's dynamics, and the origin of directionality. It shows that the notions of determinism and stability are often conflated, giving rise to teleological thinking.
Determinism and Locality
Authors: Ben-Menahem Yemima
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the conceptual relationship between determinism and locality, particularly in the context of quantum mechanics (QM). It first examines the connection between determinism and locality in abstract terms, and then in the context of QM. It then considers four possible combinations of locality and determinism: locality and determinism, nonlocality and determinism, locality and indeterminism, and nonlocality and indeterminism. It also explains how determinism and locality are linked to a central tenet of QM—the Heisenberg uncertainty relations. Three approaches that link uncertainty and nonlocality are explored: the first two, attributed to Erwin Schrödinger and I. Pitowsky, argue from the uncertainty relations to entanglement; the second, following S. Popescu and D. Rohrlich, from entanglement to the uncertainty relations. The chapter argues that determinism and locality are independent concepts but can offset each other under certain conditions, so that violation of the one permits satisfaction of the other.
The Principle of Least Action
Authors: Ben-Menahem Yemima
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the place of the “least action” principle in the causal family and its role in in modern science's transition from teleology to causality. It first provides an overview of the principle of sufficient reason, which illustrates the intricate relations between reasons and causes in the seventeenth theory, along with various conceptions of God proposed by thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes. The chapter then considers the work of Leonhard Euler and Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis on the least action principle. Finally, it analyzes the least action principle's reappearance in the probabilistic context of quantum mechanics, taking into account Richard Feynman's ingenious solution to the long-standing philosophical problem of teleology in physics.
Causation and Reduction
Authors: Ben-Menahem Yemima
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the relations between different levels of causation, the scope and limits of reduction, the concept of emergence and its connection to causal reductionism, and the intriguing possibility of lawless events in a deterministic world. It first reviews some notable developments in twentieth-century philosophy of mind, with a particular focus on Donald Davidson's anomalous monism, before discussing two approaches to reduction—one in terms of the logical relations between theories, the other in terms of causation. It then considers a variant of causal eliminativism, dubbed “higher-level eliminativism,” or “causal fundamentalism,” and the concerns that motivate it. It also explores how emergence figures in debates over reductionism, arguments that purport to demonstrate the inconsistency of higher-level causation, and the limits of reduction in physics. Finally, it shows how the possibility of lawlessness gives rise to conceptual categories that completely resist subjection to projectable scientific laws.
Christian Martyrs under Islam
Authors: Sahner Christian C.
Published: January 2019

How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? This book explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, the book introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity; high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet; and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. The book argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. The book examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim–Christian relations in the centuries to come.
Trying and Killing Christian Martyrs
Authors: Sahner Christian C.
Published: January 2019

The previous chapters examined behaviors that precipitated violence against Christians in the early Islamic period. This chapter turns to the nature of the violence itself: How did Muslim officials execute Christian martyrs, what were the social functions of capital punishment, and did the violence amount to a broad-based persecution of Christians by the Muslim state? The chapter is divided into three sections, each of which describes a different stage of the martyr's journey through the judicial system. The first explores how martyrs came into the custody of the state and, once incarcerated, how they were tried and sentenced. The second examines the implementation of Qurʾanic punishments against martyrs, showing that specifically Islamic forms of punishment were being used against apostates and blasphemers at a very early date. The third section highlights one of the most common forms of punishment against neomartyrs: punitive burning.
Creating Saints and Communities
Authors: Sahner Christian C.
Published: January 2019

This chapter considers what hagiography meant as a genre of literature in the postconquest period. It investigates the rhetorical goals of these texts, arguing that many were written by monks and priests to discourage conversion to Islam and to condemn Christians who were drawn too closely to Arab culture. It then suggests that the martyrologies enshrined the views of one side of an intra-Christian debate about the threats of Islamization and Arabization. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first examines the social and religious backdrop of martyrology-writing, namely, the perceived threat of Islamization and Arabization. The second section discusses the authors of the texts and their motives. The third section explores how these attitudes mapped onto Christian sectarianism in the early medieval Middle East.
Creating the American Bible Reader, 1777–1816
Authors: Perry Seth
Published: January 2019

This chapter traces the evolution of early American bibles and bible readers during the period 1777–1816. More specifically, it explains how the imagined American bible reader, both subject to the bearers of religious authority and potentially empowered by those authorities' address, was created out of British print-bible culture. The chapter first considers the use of the English bibles in the fifteenth century in preaching before discussing how a distinctively new imagined English bible reader emerged in the eighteenth century. It then describes the development of American print-bible culture beginning in the 1780s, set by the pedagogical interests of English bibles, and analyzes family bibles in the context of “family prayer” as their imagined site of reading and use. It also looks at the production of American bibles beginning in the 1790s and their nation-building aspirations, as can be seen in the work of the American Bible Society.
Taking a Text
Authors: Perry Seth
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines bible reading and referencing in the early nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on reference as an essential aspect of Protestant religious authority. It first provides an overview of literacy, biblical literacy, and bible reading in early America before discussing the increased availability of reference materials as well as indexes and concordances as part of early national bible culture. It then considers how indexical materials became the primary means of locating scripture texts among all classes of American bible readers and how the resources of biblical citation were utilized by preachers during the period. It concludes with a discussion of the trajectory of Ellen Harmon White's career, and more specifically how she harnessed the print-bible culture of the period to parlay her visionary authority into a fully articulated bible-based authority.
Joshua, When the Walls Fell
Authors: Perry Seth
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines forms of bible usage that were performative, popular, and implicit. Focusing on the notion of performed biblicism, it considers the Bible's role in constructing relationships of religious subjectivity as a dynamic aspect of lived circumstance. It also considers the importance of performance of biblical roles and the historicized sense of the Bible that went with these performances, citing as an example Fanny Newell's repeated written performances of Paul's words; how performed biblicism differs from biblical typology; and how would-be authorities interacted with the Bible as the defining part of the period's discursive field. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the consequences and stakes of performed biblicism in the early national period by looking at the bible-based performances of Peggy and Lorenzo Dow, two of the era's most eccentric biblical performers.
Thales, Father of Philosophy?
Authors: Sassi Maria Michela
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines whether Thales is indeed the “father of philosophy” as declared by Aristotle. It first considers the theories of two interpreters, Francis MacDonald Cornford and Walter Burkert, regarding the origin of Greek philosophy before discussing the concept of muthos. In particular, it explores the problem of the cognitive status of myth in Greek thought and Aristotle's position regarding myth as articulated in the first book of Metaphysics. In reflecting upon the origin of the philosophical enterprise, Aristotle ascribes to “those who first philosophized” an interest in the “principle” (archē) of things. The chapter explains how the search for the archē started by Thales contributed to an understanding of the nature of things. Finally, it analyzes the pluralism of knowledge and styles of reasoning that characterize the intellectual enterprise of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE.
Philosophy in the Cosmogonies
Authors: Sassi Maria Michela
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the origins of Greek philosophy in the context of the cosmogonies. It begins with an analysis of Hesiod's poem Theogony, which describes the genealogies of the Greek gods and delineates a picture of the origin of the cosmos. It then considers the cosmogony of Anaximander of Miletus, with a particular focus on his theory of celestial bodies which ascribes the origin of the cosmos to an entity called apeiron. It also discusses a historical framework in which philosophy starts as cosmogony and is a daughter of the polis, along with Aristotle's view regarding the theologians' cosmogonies. The chapter goes on to explore Pherecydes of Syros's “mixed theology,” which combines traditional elements with his personal reflections on the problem of the origin of the cosmos, before concluding with a commentary on whether Thetis is a divine figure endowed with conscious control of the “ways” of the cosmos.
Writing Experiments
Authors: Sassi Maria Michela
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the role that writing in the modalities of philosophical formulation in ancient Greece. It first considers how the rise of the polis intertwined with the beginnings of Greek philosophy, taking into account the theses of Jean-Pierre Vernant and Geoffrey Lloyd, before discussing the range of interactive elements that may have contributed to the development of that particular critical life that characterizes the first expressions of philosophical rationality. One such element is the particular character of Greek religion. The chapter goes on to analyze the combination of egotism and innovation as an integral component of Greek cultural style, and the role of writing technologies in this regard, as well as how literacy and writing contributed to the development of critical thinking in the Greek world. Finally, it explores three different approaches to philosophical writing attributed to Anaximander, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus.
Enigma
Authors: Lamb Jonathan
Published: January 2019

The history of scurvy is heavily marked by the conflict of interests between those who dwell inside the drama and those who don't. The biochemical breakthrough that isolated ascorbic acid and explained its physiological and neurological importance to the human organism was never aligned with the history of empirical knowledge of the disease. That is to say, biochemistry and naval medicine never shared an inevitable and common destination, although there were many occasions when a coalition of the two was accidentally and briefly achieved. This chapter shows that it is difficult for anyone outside the disorganized and passionate situation of scurvy itself not to consider its history as anything but periodic fits of willful ignorance that blinded the world to a necessary truth and an obvious cure: a dismal record then of lost opportunities and culpable amnesias.
Heidelberg
Authors: Lerner Robert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter details events following Ernst Kantorowicz's arrival in Heidelberg in late September 1919. On October 3, he had matriculated at the university. As a teenager he had visited the picturesque university town on the Neckar where his sister Soscha was one of a group of committed young intellectuals: Friedrich Gundolf, Arthur Salz, Fine Sobotka, and Erich Kahler. Kantorowicz's main field of studies remained economics. Evidently he was still preparing for a career in the family business, or at least holding that out as an option. However, more indicative of his real interests were his “special subjects”: history of economics, geography, and Arabic philology.
Oxford
Authors: Lerner Robert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter details events following Ernst Kantorowicz's arrival in Oxford. As a result of the events in Frankfurt, Kantorowicz accepted the fellowship that was offered him at Oxford. Upon arriving in January 1934 he entered an entirely different cultural universe from the one in which he had lived. Crossing the Channel made him an Anglophile. This change in attitude affected aspects of his scholarly subject matter in both the short and long term—ultimately being most evident in The King's Two Bodies. In addition, the six months in England offered him the opportunity to engage in new research endeavors that issued into his second book, Laudes Regiae. Another advantage was that he had to speak English.
“EKa Is Sick of EKa”
Authors: Lerner Robert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter details Ernst Kantorowicz's obsession about youth and the effects of aging. In 1926 he wrote to Wilhelm Stein that he knew well of the “crisis of the thirty-year-old.” In 1939, he regretted that he was putting on weight as a result of his age (he was forty-four). His continual joking about dying at the age of fifty-six contained an element of memento mori, and when he outlived that year and turned sixty in 1955, his concern with age became a fixation. Just two weeks after his sixtieth birthday he referred to his “senility,” a term he then changed to “senile delinquency.” But this does not mean that he did not have his enjoyments and active engagements. In his later Princeton years until his death at age sixty-eight Kantorowicz led a very comfortable life.
Inappropriate Research Setting
Authors: Karlan Dean , Appel Jacob
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses inappropriate research setting. In practice, choosing a setting is often a complex process. It takes time and effort, judgment, and a theory that describes how the underlying context will interact with the treatment to be tested. Problems often arise when researchers try to shoehorn a fit. A few common pitfalls worth mentioning include poorly timed studies; technically infeasible interventions; immature products; and researchers not knowing when to walk away. Ultimately, this is about risk management. As such, researchers must look at physical, social, and political features of the setting. First, these should fit the intervention and the theory that underlies it. Second, context must permit delivery of the intervention. Finally, data collection needs to be possible, whether through survey or administrative data.
Credit and Financial Literacy Training
Authors: Karlan Dean , Appel Jacob
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines a study conducted with the Peruvian microfinance institution Arariwa, which explores a number of questions regarding technology's potential and proper role as a development tool by implementing and testing a multimedia financial education program for clients. In this case, there are two major areas of failures: research setting and partner organization challenges. There were a few distinct instances of the former. First, the field sites presented challenges to the use of technology. Second, the intervention itself was deceptively complex. Finally, there was an element of bad timing in the flooding that caused repayment problems for some clients, thus adding stress to loan officers' already full plates. Indeed, competing priorities were a key partner organization challenge in this case. Loan officers were expected to deliver trainings without any lapses in, or relief from, their basic duties.
Interest Rate Sensitivity
Authors: Karlan Dean , Appel Jacob
Published: January 2019

This chapter details a study conducted with Opportunity International Savings and Loans, Ltd. (OISL)—one of Ghana's largest microfinance institutions—which analyzes the implications of interest rate for both revenue and outreach. The basic concept was simple: market loans to different people using a range of interest rates and observe how many and what kinds of people respond to the offer. The single biggest hang-up was the guarantor requirement. Most applicants had a hard time finding family or friends who could commit to cover a loan; it was also a hassle to do the paperwork. On the surface, this is a simple case of low participation. Far fewer clients took loans than was projected in the pilot, slashing the study's power. That so many clients dropped out because of the sheer duration of the application process suggests a second kind of failure: the study placed too high a burden on OISL's staff.
Mind–World Relations
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses how people often appeal to what they would ordinarily say, and even to what they would ordinarily think, in the exercise of generally shared concepts. When one wonders about personal identity, freedom and responsibility, the mind and its states and contents, justice, rightness of action, happiness, and so on, the main focus is not just the words or the concepts. There are things beyond words and concepts whose nature people wish to understand. The metaphysics of persons goes beyond the semantics of the word “person” and its cognates, and even beyond the correlated conceptual analysis. Philosophical progress might then take a form similar to the kind of scientific progress that involves conceptual innovation.
Virtue Theory against Situationism
Authors: Sosa Ernest
Published: January 2019

This chapter looks at the shocking but robust results obtained by social epistemologists in experiments that prompt a situationist attack on virtue theory. Based on a body of troubling results in social psychology, an intriguing critique has been pressed in recent years against virtue ethics, raising doubts both about its moral psychology and about its normative content. Similar discoveries have been made by social psychologists about belief management so that a similar critique can be pressed against virtue epistemology. The chapter shows how the logical structure of scholars' response to the critique of virtue ethics is closely replicated by a response available to the virtue epistemologist.
Accounting for Differences
Authors: Lamont Michèle , Silva Graziella Moraes , Welburn Jessica S. , Guetzkow Joshua , Mizrachi Nissim , Herzog Hanna , Reis Elisa
Published: January 2019

This chapter describes the multidimensional framework used to explain the quotidian experiences and responses of ordinary people to ethnoracial exclusion. The framework analytically distinguishes between three dimensions to make sense of how they influence the ways in which each ethnoracial group (from Brazil, Israel, and the United States) experiences ethnoracial exclusion. These dimensions pertain to history and the socioeconomic and institutional context; the strength and mode of groupness; and available cultural repertoires. The chapter considers how various explanatory dimensions are articulated differently in each case, arguing that a combination of elements interact with cultural repertoires and groupness to enable various types of excluding experiences and responses to those experiences across contexts. It also relates these themes to several approaches in the literature, including social psychology and the comparative literature on race and ethnicity.
Israel
Authors: Lamont Michèle , Silva Graziella Moraes , Welburn Jessica S. , Guetzkow Joshua , Mizrachi Nissim , Herzog Hanna , Reis Elisa
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the experiences and responses of Arab Palestinians, Ethiopian Jews, and Mizrahi Jews in Israel to stigmatization and discrimination. It first explains the historical and socioeconomic context for the three groups, taking into account the legacy of Zionism that shapes their experiences, the status of Arab Palestinians in the Jewish polity, and questions of ethno-national identity, exclusion, and inclusion affecting Mizrahim and Ethiopians in Israel. It then provides an overview of the Tel Aviv–Jaffa metropolitan area, the research site, before discussing the role of national belonging, race, and ethnicity in the formation of groupness among the respondents, with emphasis on self-identification and group boundaries. It also analyzes the groups' experiences of stigmatization and discrimination, and especially assault on worth, before concluding with an assessment of their reactions to such incidents as well as their views about the best ways to deal with social exclusion.
Design of Over/Under Voltage Protection Relay using Arduino Uno for FREEDM System
Authors: Kotb Mohamed Fawzi , El-Saadawi Magdi M , El-Desouky Eman H
Published: January 2019

This paper presents a new design for over/under voltage (OV/UV) protection scheme using Arduino microcontroller. The protection scheme is designed to protect the solid-state transformer (SST) branch of a Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) system. It is used as backup protection for the instantaneous, momentary and temporary voltage fluctuation of distribution medium voltage loop. Very simple, user-friendly software and hardware simulators are created to represent a branch of the FRREDM network with the designed OV/UV relay. A software program is formulated using c-code through Proteus software package and easily integrated to the hardware circuit. The designed microcontroller monitors the network voltage and the OV/UV relay energies in case that its value exceeds a preset limit according to IEEE 1159.  To validate and prove the effectiveness of the proposed system, different tests are performed for both software and hardware simulators at instantaneous, momentary and temporary OV/UV operation conditions. The results are compared with IEEE 1159 standard values and shows fine and high accuracy.
A Critical Review of Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting in Nigeria
Authors: Bakare Bodunrin Isa , Ekeocha Akujobi
Published: January 2019

The digitization of analog broadcasting signal has brought a significant change in the broadcasting environment today. This means introducing a new way to transmit content, a new and improved mechanism that will provide better reception and increase user satisfaction. This work has taken into account the technical aspect of concerned with digital terrestrial broadcasting, it's evolution, prospects and challenges in Nigeria. Findings show that the future is bright if the challenges such as power, government policies are addressed. Government participation and proper policy management are also key to sustaining the digitization process.
Design and Performance Evaluation of a Dual-Axis Solar Tracking System for Rural Applications
Authors: Amadi Hachimenum Nyebuchi , Gutierrez Sebastian
Published: January 2019

Most rural dwellers in developing countries do not have access to adequate and regular supply of energy and most of these estimated two billion people are poor with no sustainable means of livelihood and therefore rely on wood fuel for their cooking and heating needs. And due to lack of energy, including electricity, socio-economic development is either absent or at abysmally low level. To foster rural development and improved living conditions among this populace, there is need for a reliable, low cost and environmentally risk-free source of energy. This work designed, implemented and evaluated the performance of a dual axis solar tracking system (DATS) using light dependent resistor (LDR) sensors, direct current (DC) motors and microcontroller to make it capable of uninterruptible electricity supply for rural applications. Results of the experiment show that the proposed system is more cost-effective and produces 31.4 % more energy than the single axis tracking system (SATS) and 67.9 % more than the fixed PV panel system (FPPS). Owing to the unique design of the proposed tracking system, solar energy can be tracked and stored continuously so that there is adequate electricity for the consuming population at all times. Though tested on a rural community in Abia State, Nigeria, the proposed system can be adapted to rural communities anywhere in the world.
Kritik Hukum Islam Atas Sanksi Pidana Pelaku Prostitusi dalam Peraturan Daerah
Authors: Rosadi Aden , Nashrulloh Nashrulloh
Published: January 2019

This article examines the Regional regulations relating to prohibition of prostitution in Indonesia from the perspectives of Indonesian Law and Islamic Criminal Law. As this study reveals, a number of contradiction occurs between Regional Regulations with Criminal Code. Such contradictions can be found in a number of regional regulations prohibiting prostitution, such as : No. 5/2002 of Cirebon Regency; Regulation No. 6/2003 of Medan City; Regulation No. 2 /2004 of Palembang City, Regulation No. 13/2002 of South Sumatra Province, etc. The contradictions include the determination of the authorized officers to handle the matter, the rules in case of erroneous arrest, and the determination of sanctions. The Criminal Code sets aside sanctions for Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs) and users of CSWs. It only prohibits of facilitating the immoral acts by other parties.. In Islamic criminal Law, prostitution is considered as a crime whose perpetrators are equated with adulterers sanctioned with stoning or whip.
Menggagas Fikih Responsif: Upaya Progresif Modernisasi Fikih
Authors: Maulidi Maulidi
Published: January 2019

This article discusses the modernization of fiqh in an effort to respond changes and developments in society. The aim is to find a solution to the legal problem (Islam), which so far seems stagnant.. This study found 3 causative factors, namely: first, the law is understood as a single entity that is not linked to other entities. In fact, the reality is that the law is closely related to other disciplines. Second, the law is understood as being untouchable, even though the law goes hand in hand with the development of reality. Third, the law is always based on normative textualism, even though there is much local wisdom that also carries philosophical values that are relevant to the legal purpose. This false assumption must begin to be deconstructed, otherwise, there will be empty space in the law (Islam). As a solution, the integrative system approach must be promoted through the transformation of taqlid qauli towards taqlid manhaji, from the linearist paradigm to the teleological paradigm.