bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Construction of Stereochemical Arrays
Authors: Lambert Tristan H.
Published: November 2020

The unprecedented enantioselective 1,8-addition of azlactone 1 to acylpyrrole 2 catalyzed by triaminophosphorane 3 was reported (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 19370) by Takashi Ooi at Nagoya University. Tomislav Rovis at Colorado State University developed (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 12330) the asymmetric oxidative hetero-Diels-Alder reaction of propionaldehyde (5) and ketone 6 to produce lactone 8, catalyzed by NHC catalyst 7 in the presence of phenazine. A related NHC catalyst 11 was utilized (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 8276) by Xue-Wei Liu at Nanyang Technological University for the homoenolate addition of enal 9 to nitrodiene 10 to furnish 12 with high ee. The vinylogous conjugate addition of butenolide 13 to 15 to produce 16 with exquisite stereoselectivity was accomplished (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 10069) by Kuo-Wei Huang at KAUST, Choon-Hong Tan at Henan University and Nanyang Technological University, and Zhiyong Jiang at Henan University. The enantioselective production of lactone 18 was achieved (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2012, 134, 20197) by Jeffrey S. Johnson at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by dynamic kinetic resolution (DKR) of α-keto ester 17. A related DKR strategy was employed (Org. Lett. 2012, 14, 6334) by Brinton Seashore-Ludlow at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Peter Somfai at Lund University in Sweden and the University of Tartu in Estonia for hydrogenation of α-amino-β-ketoester 19 to furnish aminoalcohol 21 with high Shigeki Matsunaga and Motomu Kanai at the University of Tokyo developed (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 10275) a unique strategy for the selective production of the cross-aldol adduct 24 by in situ generation of an aldehyde enolate from allyloxyborane 23 under rhodium catalysis. The highly diastereoselective construction of adduct 26 bearing two adjacent quaternary stereocenters by ketone allylation with allyl sulfide 25 was reported (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 7263) by Takeshi Takeda at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. Wen-Hao Hu at East China Normal University reported (Nature Chem. 2012, 4, 733) the enantioselective three-component coupling of diazoester 27, N-benzylindole (28), and imine 29 to furnish 31 under the action of Rh2(OAc)4 and phosphoric acid 30.
Metal-Mediated Carbocyclic Construction: The Chen Synthesis of Ageliferin
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Djamaladdin G. Musaev and Huw M.L. Davies of Emory University designed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 19198) a Rh catalyst that added 2 to 1 to give 3 with high dr and ee. Shunichi Hashimoto of Hokkaido University reported (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 6803) a Rh catalyst that would add the α-diazo ester 5 to a terminal alkyne 4 to give the cyclopropene 6 in high ee. Gaëlle Blond and Jean Suffert of the Université de Strasbourg cyclized (Adv. Synth. Catal. 2011, 353, 3151) the alkyne 7, then coupled the Pd intermediate with a terminal alkyne 8 to give the cyclobutane 9. Nuno Maulide of the Max-Planck-Institute Mülheim ionized (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 12631) the lactone 10 to a prochiral intermediate, which could then be coupled with 11 to give either diastereomer of 12 in high ee. Martin Hiersemann of the Technische Universität Dortmund devised (Org. Lett. 2011, 13, 4438) a Pd catalyst for the selective cyclization of 13 to 14. Naoya Kumagai and Masakatsu Shibasaki of the Institute of Microbial Chemistry, Tokyo effected (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 7616) the enantioselective Conia ene cyclization of 15 to 16. Barry M. Trost of Stanford University developed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 19483) an enantioselective variant of the trimethylenemethane cycloaddition of 18 to 17 to give 19. In the course of a synthesis of (–)-oseltamivir phosphate, Masahiko Hayashi of Kobe University found (J. Org. Chem. 2011, 76, 5477) conditions for the enantioselective oxidation of 20 to 21. Quanrui Wang of Fudan University and Andreas Goeke of Givaudan Fragrances (Shanghai) cyclized (J. Org. Chem. 2011, 76, 5825) the propargylic acetate 22 to the cyclohexenone 23. Chuang-chuang Li, Tuoping Luo, and Zhen Yang of Peking University cyclized (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 14944) the diyne 24 to the lactone 25. Hiromitsu Takayama of Chiba University used (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2011, 50, 8025) the silyl tether of 26 to constrain the diastereomeric outcome of the cyclization to 27.
The Garg Synthesis of (–)-N-Methylwelwitindolinone C
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

Of the several welwitindolinones, (–)-N-methylwelwitindolinone C 3 uniquely reverses P-glycoprotein-mediated multiple drug resistance. The preparation of 3 reported (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 15797) by Neil K. Garg of UCLA illustrates the power in complex target-directed synthesis of late stage C–H functionalization. The starting material 7 for this enantiospecific synthesis was prepared following the Natsume strategy (Chem. Pharm. Bull. 1994, 42, 1393) in the enantiomeric series. Commercial carvone 4 was reduced and protected, then oxidized and equilibrated to the dienone 6. The pivalate efficiently directed the Cu-catalyzed conjugate addition of vinyl magnesium bromide, delivering 7. Hydrolysis of 7 gave 8, to which the bromoindole 9 was added in a conjugate sense to give the adduct as a mixture of diastereomers, of which 1 was the more stable. Exposure of 1 to NaNH2 in t-BuOH presumably generated the benzyne [indolyne] 10, which cyclized to the ketone 2. The silyl ether 2 was deprotected and the alcohol was oxidized to give the diketone, which was selectively carried on to the enol triflate and thus to the stannane 11. The alkenyl chloride of the natural product was installed by the oxidation of 11 with CuCl2. Further oxidation with N-bromosuccinimide then delivered the oxindole 12. In the last stage of the synthesis, it was necessary to selectively aminate one of the bridgehead C–H’s of 12. To this end, the ketone was reduced and carried on to the carbamate 13. Attempts to oxidatively cyclize 13 with Rh catalysts failed, but Ag was successful, delivering 14. The final conversion of 15 to (–)-N-methylwelwitindolinone C 3 was achieved by exposure to the Kim reagent 16.
The Carreira Synthesis of (–)-Dendrobine
Authors: Taber Douglass F.
Published: November 2020

The tetracyclic alkaloid (–)-dendrobine 3 has at its core a cyclohexane that is substituted at each of its six positions, including one quaternary center. Erick M. Carreira of ETH Zürich chose (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 3436) to assemble this ring by the Ireland-Claisen rearrangement of the lactone 1. The absolute configuration of the final product stemmed from the commercial enantiomerically pure acetonide 4, which was selectively converted to the Z-ester 5. Following the precedent of Costa, TBAF-mediated conjugate addition of 2-nitropropane to 5 proceeded with high diastereocontrol, to give, after free radical reduction, the ester 6, which was carried on the aldehyde 7. Exposure of the alkyne 9 to an in situ-generated Schwartz reagent followed by iodination gave 10 with 10:1 regioselectivity. It was possible to separate 10 from its regioisomer by careful silica gel chromatography. Metalation followed by the addition to 7 gave an intermediate that was conveniently debenzoylated with excess ethyl magnesium bromide to deliver the diol 11. Selective oxidation led to the lactone 1. Exposure of 1 to LDA and TMS-Cl induced rearrangement to the cyclohexene acid, which was esterified to give 2. Deprotection and oxidation then gave the enone 12. Cyclohexene construction by tethered Claisen rearrangement is a powerful transformation that has been little used in target-directed synthesis. Selective addition of pyrrolidine to the aldehyde of 12 generated an enamine, leading to an intramolecular Michael addition to the enone. This selectively gave the cis ring fusion, as expected, but the product was a mixture of epimers at the other newly formed stereogenic center. This difficulty was overcome by forming the enamine from N-methylbenzylamine. After cyclization, hydrogenation set the additional center with the expected clean stereocontrol, and also effected debenzylation to give 14. To close the last ring, the ketone 14 was brominated with the reagent 15, which was developed (Can. J. Chem. 1969, 47, 706) for the kinetic bromination of ketones. Exposure of the crude α-bromo ketone to 4-dimethylaminopyridine then effected cyclization to 16. Following the literature precedent, reduction of the ketone of 16 with NaBH4 followed by gentle warming led to (–)-dendrobine 3.
Hell and Black Smokers
Authors: Rickard David
Published: November 2020

Most of the important metal ores in medieval and ancient times were pyrite-rich sulfides. These pyrite-rich ores were a major source of a suite of valuable commodities such as sulfur, arsenic, copper, lead, zinc, and nickel, as well as some gold and silver. This is why in 1725 Henckel could devote a 1,000-page volume to pyrites, sensu lato. Because of its relative abundance, its potential economic importance, and its exotic composition compared with the rock-forming minerals, pyrite has played a key role through the ages in developing ideas of how minerals and ore deposits form. During the last century, pyrite became an even more important mineral in discussions of ore genesis because it is also a key component of sediments. This led to conflicting theories of ore genesis, in which the ore minerals were formed in the sediments or introduced later, often by processes related to volcanism. The conflict between adherents of these theories continues to this day. Pyrite constituted a key, but sometimes uncomfortable, mineral in ancient theories of mineral formation. It was relatively common and often economically important. However, it contained sulfur as a key constituent and this contrasted it to many other common minerals and rocks in that this meant that pyrite could be changed by heating. Heating released sulfur from pyrite, leaving a residue of stony slag. The ancients also recognized sulfur as a special material since it occurred in solid, liquid, and gaseous form, rather like water. Any theory of mineral formation needed to explain how this protean element got into pyrite. This problem was compounded by the fact, discussed in Chapter 3, that for some unknown reason the ancients did not know that pyrite contained iron. Ancient theories of mineral formation divide into three categories: (a) the Genesis theory: that all minerals were formed by God during the creation of the Earth; (b) the Aristotelian theory: that all minerals were formed at depth in the Earth through the interactions of the four basic elements; and (c) the Alchemical theory: that minerals were formed from combinations of mercury and sulfur.
EDF, Barely an Organization, Getting Its Act Together
Authors: Wurster Charles F.
Published: November 2020

The late 1960s and early 1970s was a world of increasing political unrest on many fronts. In January 1969, Richard Nixon replaced Lyndon Johnson as president. Public support for the war in Vietnam was diminishing and there were widespread antiwar demonstrations. Environmental awareness and concerns were rapidly increasing. Air and water pollution were increasingly severe. A huge oil spill dumped 100,000 barrels of crude oil onto the beaches of Santa Barbara, California. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire. Students buried automobiles on college campuses. Lake Erie could no longer support fish. The great whales were being killed in record numbers. People were apprehensive about pesticides. The Bald Eagle, national symbol, was disappearing. The first Earth Day was launched in 1970. Responding to this public outcry, the National Environmental Policy Act passed Congress almost unanimously and became law on January 1, 1970; the Clean Air Act became law in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, and the Endangered Species Act in 1973; and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act was rewritten in 1972. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had appeared in 1962 and generated a sizable public reaction, but pesticide policies had changed very little by 1970. This was the milieu in which EDF sought to pursue its goals of a national ban on DDT and the development of environmental law. Reaching those goals would require a much more substantial organization than EDF was in 1969; at that time it was little more than a board of trustees with plenty of ideas but no staff, no office, and almost no money. Most of those trustees were going about their normal lives with EDF concerns more like a hobby than a profession. Their dedication was strong and very real, but a strategic game plan was barely in sight. There were additional impediments when compared with today’s world. Forty-five years ago communications barely resembled what we have now. Most television sets were black-and-white with small screens and large bulky bodies, although color TV was arriving slowly. There were no computers or cell phones.
Ozone in the Atmosphere
Authors: Calvert Jack G. , Orlando John J. , Stockwell William R. , Wallington Timothy J.
Published: November 2020

The importance of ozone to life on Earth and to atmospheric chemistry cannot be overstated. Nucleic acids and other macromolecules essential to life absorb strongly in the ultraviolet (UV) and are damaged by UV radiation with wavelengths of less than approximately 300 nm. For proper functioning, such biological macromolecules need to be shielded from the full intensity of solar radiation. Molecular oxygen (O2) absorbs strongly and blocks solar radiation with wavelengths below 230–240 nm from reaching the Earth’s surface. However, oxygen is transparent at wavelengths above approximately 245 nm. Fortunately, absorption of UV radiation of wavelengths of less than 242 nm by molecular oxygen (O2) yields oxygen atoms that add to O2 to form ozone which has a very strong absorption band at 200–300 nm. Even though it is present in only trace amounts in the atmosphere, absorption by ozone effectively blocks harsh solar UV radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface. There is no other molecule in the atmosphere that provides protection from solar UV radiation in the 250–300 nm region. The development of the ozone layer is intimately connected to the development of life on Earth. Oxygen levels in the prebiotic atmosphere were less than 5 ×10−9 of the current level. Photosynthesis after the appearance of life on the planet more than 3.5 billion years ago led to increased oxygen levels in the atmosphere. By approximately 600 million years ago, the O2 concentration had exceeded 10% of the current level, and the corresponding layer of ozone was sufficient to offer an effective UV shield for the migration of life onto land (Wayne, 1991). Life on Earth as we know it would not have developed without the protection offered by the ozone layer, and, equally, the ozone layer would not have developed without life on Earth. In addition to its obviously important physical role in shielding biota from the damaging effects of harsh UV radiation, ozone plays an essential chemical role as a photolytic source for HO radicals.
A Warming World
Authors: Revesz Richard , Lienke Jack
Published: November 2020

In the preceding chapters, we’ve focused largely on what is often called “traditional pollution”: soot and smog and their precursors, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. But power plants are also the nation’s largest source of a very different sort of pollutant: carbon dioxide. Unlike traditional pollution, atmospheric CO2 does not pose a threat to public health through inhalation. As every schoolchild learns, humans exhale CO2 during normal respiration, and plants absorb it as part of the photosynthesis that fuels their growth. Carbon dioxide does, however, act as a “greenhouse gas.” Like the glass of a greenhouse, molecules of CO2 let sunlight pass through to warm the earth but then trap some of the heat that radiates back from the planet’s surface. Up to a point, this heat-trapping effect is beneficial; without it, the earth would be too cold to support life. But when humans burn fossil fuels, carbon that has been sequestered underground for millions of years is rapidly released in the form of CO2, and the natural carbon cycle is altered. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the greenhouse effect becomes stronger, and the earth’s surface temperature rises. Over time, warming driven by ever-increasing industrial emissions of CO2 is expected to have serious, possibly devastating consequences for all corners of human society. (There are other greenhouse gases, like methane, but CO2 is by far the most common, accounting for more than 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and almost 85 percent of U.S. emissions.) And yet, when President Obama took office in 2009, almost forty years after the U.S. Congress passed a piece of legislation designed to eliminate all air pollution that posed a threat to public health and welfare, emissions of carbon dioxide were still entirely unregulated at the federal level. As the President observed in his first Earth Day address on April 22, 2009: “[W] e place limits on pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide and other harmful emissions. But we haven’t placed any limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It’s what’s called the carbon loophole.”
Technologies for Functionally Relevant Neuropsychological Assessment
Authors: Schultheis Maria T. , Doiron Matthew
Published: November 2020

Over the course of its history, the field of neuropsychology has shifted its focus to meet the demands of the medical landscape. Before the advent of neuroimaging, neuropsychologists were relied on to determine brain lesion location and to diagnose brain-behavior pathologies. As time progressed, neuroimaging was able to provide faster and more consistent lesion identification and neuropsychology began to adapt its skills and services for other related fields, such as education, law, and rehabilitation. As a result, some neuropsychological methods were adapted to assess broader cognitive functions in a variety of populations and the general public; however, these assessments have been heavily rooted in the field’s diagnostically focused past, which creates limitations in the ecological validity of this approach. Ecological validity can be generally defined as a measure’s ability to predict functional performance or mimic activities of everyday living (i.e., performance at work, driving). For example, batteries of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires have been used to infer level of function and general performance at work or school. These batteries were developed due their statistical associations with different populations, concordance with neurological theories and constructs, and general face validity. However, very few assessments resembled any activity a person would perform in daily life. For many measures, ecological validity was defined by correlating performance with everyday functioning (verdicality; Franzen & Wilhelm, 1996). In contrast, another approach to ecological validity involved designing measures to resemble or mimic an everyday function (verisimilitude; Franzen & Wilhelm, 1996). The major difference between the two approaches determines the primary goal of designing the measure at the onset. It must be decided if the measure will prioritize construct validity at the onset and subsequently infer a link to everyday function, or vice versa. Many researchers interested in predicting functional outcome have relied on verisimilitude, as it more closely resembles “real-world” performance; however, it often comes at a cost of interpretability within the context of current neuropsychological frame­works and models.
Fighting the Big Sewage Machine
Authors: Levy Sharon
Published: November 2020

Salmon were George Allen’s passion. He spent his professional life seeking to combine salmon restoration with sewage recycling, a mission as daunting as the upstream struggle of a weary chinook blocked by a dam. Salmon begin their lives as eggs buried in a gravel nest on a stream bottom, from which tiny fish emerge, swim to the surface, and start to feed. The young grow, lose their infant stripes, and swim to sea, steered by instinct and a physical drive to reach salt water. They range through the ocean for two years or more, growing into magnificent creatures. When the time is right, they return to their home streams to spawn. Crowds of wild, abundant salmon once fought their way up the rivers of the Pacific coast from central California to Alaska. The cycle was eternal, with no distinct beginning or end, until white civilization blocked the rivers with dams and smothered the spawning grounds in silt. By the time Allen came to teach fisheries at Humboldt State, in 1957, salmon runs all along the west coast were depleted. Most of the ancient stocks that had once populated the streams feeding Humboldt Bay were extinct. In an obscure corner of Arcata’s treatment plant, Allen and his students raised young coho and chinook in treated sewage flowing out of the city’s oxidation ponds. Soon after he arrived in Humboldt, Allen had begun planning to resurrect the bay’s lost salmon stocks, and Arcata’s sewage oxidation ponds proved the only likely spot to launch his quest. The oxidation ponds were a constant source of fresh water, with access to a stream, Jolly Giant Creek, which formed a small estuary where he could release fish to the bay. He took fingerlings from any hatchery that had extras and raised them to the moment of smoltification, when they lost their baby stripes, turned shiny silver, and transformed from freshwater to saltwater creatures. His intense hope was that they’d go to sea and return as adults, making the city’s wastewater plant the center of a salmon revival in Humboldt Bay.
Introduction: Near Abroads
Authors: Toal Gerard
Published: November 2020

On my third evening in Russia, the world changed. I was in Stavropol, a city founded by Prince Gregory Potemkin at the time of the American Revolution as one of ten fortresses to defend the borders of the expanding Russian Empire. To the south were the Caucasus, formidable mountains and myriad peoples. Stavropol grew as an administrative center of tsarist and later Soviet power. It briefly fell to the Wehrmacht in 1942 as the invading army drove unsuccessfully toward the oilfields of Baku. Later, a popular young party secretary from the area got noticed in Moscow, joined the Politburo, and in 1985 became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms would inadvertently lead to a geopolitical earthquake, the end of the Cold War in Europe, and the unthinkable—the collapse of the Communist empire built by Lenin and Stalin. That evening the provost of Stavropol State University toasted the health of the international academics attending the conference starting the next morning. Many other benevolent toasts were exchanged, and a singularly somber one. A researcher with the Memorial Human Rights Center reminded us that a war raged nearby in Chechnya, an “inner abroad” of Russia. Here Russia’s new president had approved the indiscriminate shelling of a Russian city and a dirty war against citizens redefined as “terrorists.” Returning to our hotel that evening in a bus under armed guard, a Croatian friend and I were chatting when told to turn on the television. Russian television was broadcasting footage of airplanes crashing into skyscrapers in lower Manhattan on what seemed like a continuous loop. The full magnitude of what had happened was only apparent the next day. Like many, the Twin Towers were entwined with personal memories—first seeing them in rural Ireland on a pennant my uncle brought back from his vacation to New York, and later visiting the observation deck with my parents and friends. Furthermore, the attack on the Pentagon was only two miles from my home, a few more from where I worked, and all too close to some former students who worked in the building.
Autism’s Effect on the Whole Family
Authors: Ellis Michael
Published: November 2020

The impairments associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) not only affect the individual with ASD, but also dramatically impact the parents, caregivers, family, teachers, school system, peers, and the community in general. The overall responsibility is great and felt by everyone who comes into contact with the individual with ASD. In this chapter, we will focus on ASD’s effect on the family. First, we will discuss what is known about how ASD typically impacts the whole family. Second, we will discuss how this family impact causes a reciprocal negative effect on the child with ASD, which may then diminish positive outcomes of interventions. Lastly, we will discuss the extent to which parental involvement is needed during treatments or interventions. I will show how certain interventions may reduce stress and the negative effects on the family and the child with ASD. It is my intention and hope that a discussion of what is “normal” in families affected by ASD will provide you with a greater understanding of ASD and the recognition that you are not alone in dealing with these challenges. This should lessen your sense of isolation and allow you to feel that your family dynamic is less “odd” and unique than you likely currently feel. As knowledge is power, some of the latest evidence and research will be shared. Being armed with this information will provide you with the confidence to tackle the typical difficulties associated with autism. You will learn how to be more resilient and avoid the most common pitfalls. The symptoms of ASD present a unique set of challenges for parents and the family as a whole. Thus, it is not surprising that research in this area indicates that caregivers of those with ASD have decreased parenting efficacy, or a reduced belief in their own parenting skills. These caregivers also have more parenting stress and increased mental and physical health problems. This is true even in comparison to the caregivers of children with other developmental disorders.
Psychopharmacology: Should I Use Medications for my Child?
Authors: Ellis Michael
Published: November 2020

There are numerous ways that a child might first present to a child psychiatrist. Most patients who present to my office are referred by pediatricians or therapists because the parent or the professional suspects that the child has autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Sometimes, parents bypass the primary care physician and present directly to whomever it is that they perceive to be the expert on ASD: this could be a developmental pediatrician, child psychiatrist, child psychologist, or child neurologist. Other times, they present their child to me as a “last resort” because they do not know what else to do and are reluctantly considering medications. These parents may have been in denial, avoiding diagnosis altogether, or their child may have already been diagnosed with ASD and they have been avoiding a discussion of medications. The first question I expect that most parents would ask is, “Can medications cure autism?” However, most parents seem to already understand that the answer to this is, “No.” Although medications cannot cure ASD or even technically treat the “core symptoms” of autism, they often do treat some of the most problematic and impairing symptoms associated with ASD. For example, to the parent who is desperate for relief from severe tantrums (“meltdowns”), aggression, irritability, and/or self-harm behavior, an atypical (second-generation) antipsychotic medication can seem like a miracle despite the fact that it is not curing the underlying autism. Although we will discuss atypical antipsychotics in detail further in this chapter, briefly they are a class of medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that help to treat tantrums, aggression, and other symptoms associated with ASD. A multitude of impairing symptoms and comorbid disorders are associated with ASD, and many of these symptoms can be treated with medications. I will mention studies throughout this chapter so that it is clear that I am not speaking only from my personal and professional experience but also from real data.
The Educational System and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Authors: Ellis Michael
Published: November 2020

Navigating the educational system is likely the most treacherous and frustrating part of raising a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Often parents feel that they have to be lawyers to understand the rights of their child and to advocate for appropriate resources at school. I know firsthand how difficult this can be. I can honestly state that next to a child’s severe tantrums, this is the most frustrating and pervasive problem parents may encounter. Typically, year after year and IEP (individualized education program) meeting after IEP meeting, the battle for even substandard education and services continues. Parents naturally assume that the school system would have to maintain certain standards and provide appropriate education and therapies for their child. One might even believe that the special education teacher, and the school district itself, would be more expert than the parent. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Training, especially specific to ASD, is usually quite poor. Aside from some very caring teachers, the system is often set up to fail the child. The school district likely saves money by refusing to provide additional services, modifications, or accommodations for your child. Typically, neither the school district nor the teacher will offer new services or resources to be expended on your child unless it is in their best interest. In most cases, you will have to fight for every resource you can get for your child. Do NOT be passive. Educate yourself about your rights and the possible resources available to your child. Talk to other parents in the autism community about the resources their children are receiving. Like many parents, I too at first felt that being profes­sional and “nice” was the best way to get my child “good” services. I thought, “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Unfortunately, this naiveté did not pay off: things only worsened with this approach. It was not until we learned more about our rights as parents and challenged the school system that things improved at all.
Stages of Grief, Spirituality, and Religion
Authors: Ellis Michael
Published: November 2020

Dealing with any great stressor challenges our core beliefs about ourselves and about life in general. Most of us have certain reasonable expectations of how things will go in our lives. We will graduate from high school, maybe go to college, probably get married, likely have children, and so on. Small wobbles from our intended path in life are understandable to us. Although we all have different tolerances for frustration in dealing with obstacles in our way, we usually handle these troubles well. None of us expects that tragedy will strike. We never think during pregnancy that our child may have a disability or even that our child could die. We have typical expectations for our child’s life similar to those of our own lives. Thus, when we finally are told that our child has autism, our world comes crashing down. Our worldview is shattered. The plans we had made for our child’s life and our futures are forever changed in an instant. The way we cope with this immense challenge changes everything, for us and our child. At some point during any discussion of autism, we must bring spirituality and religion into the conversation. It is impossible not to do so. Any parent whose child has received the autism diagnosis knows this to be true. This is because in order to cope and find acceptance, we must find meaning. How can we accept this news without adjusting our worldview or understanding of life? We must come to terms with the questions that inevitably arise, such as “Why me?”, “How could this happen?”, “Whose fault is this?”, “What did I do wrong?” Other questions that come to mind for those who already believe in a higher power are “Why would God let this happen?”, “Why did God do this to me?”, “Am I being punished?”, “Why would God allow such suffering, especially for a child?” Sometimes it is only through great trials that we realize the need to find deeper meaning.
Who Are the Educators and How Can We Help Them?
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

From this point of the book forward, I ask you to think about the challenges described in chapter 1 from a civic educator’s perspec­tive. That is, consider the perspective of a person who wants to increase other people’s knowledge about politics or their competence at a politically relevant task. With that perspective in mind, I first convey a few important facts about civic educators and their aspirations. Next, I present a plan for helping many of them achieve these aspirations more effectively. The plan covers the book’s main themes and offers a chapter-by-chapter description of what’s ahead. Let’s start with a brief discussion of “ignorance”—a topic that motivates many people to become civic educators. According to numerous surveys and news reports, the mass public appears to know very little about politics, government, and policy. When pollsters ask even simple questions on any of these topics, many people fail to give correct answers. For example, while nearly every adult American can name the president of the United States, many cannot recall the names of their US senators. Millions cannot easily remember which political party holds a majority of seats in the US House of Representatives or the US Senate. Many Americans give incorrect answers when asked to identify the chief justice of the United States by name. They do the same when asked about basic aspects of the US Constitution. Many provide incorrect answers to questions about who leads our nation’s closest international allies, such as the United Kingdom and Israel. Most seem not to know basic facts about our major trading partners, such as Canada and China. People provide incorrect answers or no answers at all to survey questions about all kinds of policies and politics. In “The Star Spangled Banner,” America is “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but when asked to answer fact-based questions about policy and politics, Americans appear to be, as filmmaker Michael Moore (2010) put it, “a society of ignorant and illiterate people.”
Three Definitions
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

This chapter defines three terms: information, knowledge, competence, and their relationships to one another. Here is a list of the chapter’s main lessons: . . . Information, knowledge, and competence are not one and the same. Understanding their differences is a key to increasing knowledge and competence. Information is what educators can convey to others directly. The same is not true for knowledge or competence. Knowledge is memories of how concepts and objects are related to one another. Knowledge requires information. Conveying information is the means by which educators can increase others’ knowledge. Competence is the ability to perform a task in a particular way. Competence requires knowledge. An educator’s information can increase an audience’s competence only if the audience thinks about the information in ways that transform it into applicable types of knowledge. Educators can achieve their objectives more effectively and efficiently by understanding what kinds of information are most relevant to increasing specific competences. . . . Below, I begin with a brief discussion of the three terms: knowledge, information, and competence in that order. The reason for this ordering comes from my experience with educators and hearing their descriptions of what they are trying to accomplish. Of all the educators that I have met, many more describe themselves as seeking to increase others’ knowledge, rather than increasing their information or competence. So, to convey the information in a manner that is most directly related to how many educators see their own challenges, I start where they start. But there’s a catch. By the end of this chapter, I hope to convince you that two things are true for most educators. First, offering information is their sole means for increasing knowledge. Second, increasing others’ knowledge has limited value unless that knowledge can increase a valuable competence. In other words, for many educators, increasing others’ knowledge is a means for achieving competence goals, rather than being the main goal itself. Hence, one of the most important things that educators can know about information and knowledge is how they relate to competence.
Attracting Attention
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

Educators seek to convey information that increases knowledge and competence. A necessary condition for accomplishing these goals is to attract attention to their information. Attracting attention can be difficult. Other people, nature, and many variations of consumer society and pop culture compete for a prospective learner’s attention. People can also pay attention to things that are not “in the room” when an educator is presenting potentially important information. Prospective learners can think about events that happened in the past or events that could happen in the future. At any moment, there are many things to which people can pay attention. In this chapter, we will review basic facts about how people direct their attention. To this end, I establish simple principles that educators can use to make their presentations more memorable to more people. Individually and collectively, these principles are not an automatic recipe for success, but they can help educators avoid common mistakes in how they convey information to others. . . . The chapter’s main lessons are as follows: Learning requires attention. Human attentive capacity is extraordinarily limited. For an educator to get a prospective learner’s attention, the prospective learner must perceive the information as something they can use to achieve highly valued aspirations. These aspirations can include making bad things go away. A phenomenon called motivated reasoning sometimes leads people to pay attention to information because of how it makes them feel, rather than basing their attention on the information’s true relationship to their aspirations. Educators can benefit from considering the concept of motivated reasoning when choosing how to convey information. Many educators overestimate the amount of information to which prospective learners are willing or able to pay. Correcting these estimates can help educators increase knowledge and competence more effectively. . . The chapter reaches these conclusions in the following way. Section 7A offers basic definitions that clarify attention’s role in learning. Section 7B shows how challenging earning attention can be. Section 7C explains how to make information more memorable for more people. Section 7D concludes.
Reading the Questions, Understanding the Answers
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: November 2020

Many people comment on the public’s political ignorance. Some blame it for the defeat of a favored candidate. Some cite it as the reason for changing civics curricula. Some use evidence of ignorance to exhort others to change their ways. What is the quality of the evidence underlying these criticisms and exhortations? Surveys provide the evidence cited in many political ignorance claims. Of particular interest are surveys that ask respondents to recall specific facts about certain people, institutions, and events. These recall questions produce responses that are graded as correct or incorrect. An example of such a question is “What is the job or political office held by Barack Obama?” Scholars use the term “political knowledge” to describe these questions and the data they generate. The best-known academic book on political knowledge by political scientists Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter defines it as “the range of factual information about politics that is stored in long-term memory” (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1989: 10). Henceforth, I label this concept PK. Delli Carpini and Keeter (1989: 306) recommend using five questions to measure PK: . . . Do you happen to know what job or office is now held by [insert current vice president]? Whose responsibility is it to determine if a law is constitutional or not … is it the president, the Congress, or the Supreme Court? How much of a majority is required for the US Senate and House to override a presidential veto? Do you happen to know which party had the most members in the House of Representatives in Washington before the election this/ last month? Would you say that one of the parties is more conservative than the other at the national level? Which party is more conservative? While others use different lists of questions, many scholars and writers use responses to short lists of recall questions to make general claims about political knowledge. A common claim is that the public is generally ignorant and incompetent. Writers who make such claims assume that survey respondents’ inabilities to answer a small number of recall questions accurately represent greater cognitive inadequacies.
A Familiar Refrain
Authors: McFarland Ben
Published: November 2020

When I was a child, I lived near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. To me, science was all about rocket science: big rockets that flew where no one has gone before, powered by fiery oxidative chemistry and guided by precise measurements. I could watch the space shuttle go up, and trust it would come down, connecting Earth’s orbit to the ground at my feet. That we could send hollow metal capsules on such immense journeys was a wonder I never quite got over, not even when two of the shuttles failed to return home. I had a different view of evolution. It seemed messy, haphazard, cruel, and wasteful, nothing like the sleek engineered rockets at the Space Center. Most of all, I think it just seemed boring. Why study the unpredictable? To be sure about something, you need to see it work multiple times, right? I missed the chance to see evolution work multiple times, right in my home county. In the next lagoon over from where I once dredged up sulfurous muck for my science projects, on six small islands, the tape of life was being replayed six separate times. All six times, it gained the same result. Evolution might be messy, haphazard, cruel, and wasteful, but it is also predictable. In 1995, scientists brought Cuban brown anole lizards to six small islands in Mosquito Lagoon, which only had green anole lizards at the time. Each time, scientists watched what happened and compared the results to five nearby islands that remained green-lizard-only zones. After three years of competition, the green lizards changed their behavior and perched twice as high in the trees. In 2010, the scientists returned and examined the lizards’ feet. On the invaded islands, the green lizards had larger toepads with more wrinkly lamellae than on the non-invaded islands. This difference in feet was mirrored by differences in the lizards’ genes. In a 15-year span, the lizards evolved. (During the same time span, my opinion of evolution also evolved, as I learned about a chemical order behind the biological messiness.)
Architects as Professionals and Ideologues
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

The globalizing professionals and technical personnel that make up the professional fraction of the transnational capitalist class (TCC) in architecture are a very mixed group, ranging from those who work with (or for) those who own and control the major architectural firms to those engaged in facilitating construction (Kennedy 2005; Ren 2011), the education of architects, designers in general, professional architectural entrepreneurs, historians, and critics. In chapter 2 the role of architects and their firms in the social production of iconicity was discussed (summarized in table 2.2). In this respect the professional fraction and the corporate fraction of the TCC clearly overlap. However, there are many other professionals in and around architecture and urban design whose relationship to the professional fraction of the TCC is more problematic, and they are the prime focus of this chapter. Of all the four fractions of the TCC, the professional fraction is the one in which we find most opposition to the globalizing agenda of contemporary capitalism and, in some cases, outright condemnation of consumerism and its effects on architecture and the city. There are frequent debates between globalizing professionals who enthusiastically support and practice the agenda of capitalist globalization and others who pursue their own, sometimes alternative agendas. These include engineers and consultants working with inexpensive and sustainable local materials and building methods, and teachers, historians, and critics who give them theoretical and practical support. There is no shortage of critical commentary on capitalism and consumer society from those on the politically progressive wings of contemporary developments in architecture and urban design, more or less leftist scholars. Proponents of Critical Regionalism in its several incarnations (Frampton 1985; Canizaro 2007; Lefaivre and Tzonis 2012) and those under the umbrella of vernacular architecture (Harris and Berke 1997) also provide some in­sights about what alternative globalizations in architecture and urban design could look like. Even some notable architects, considered members of the cultural establishment, have expressed radical ideas when in reflective mood (e.g., Rogers 1991).
Architecture and the Culture-Ideology of Consumerism
Authors: Sklair Leslie
Published: November 2020

This chapter sets out to explore the theoretical and substantive connections between iconicity and consumerism in the field of contemporary architecture and urban design. The culture-ideology of consumerism refers to a set of beliefs and values, integral to the system of global capitalism, intended to make people believe that human worth is best created and hap­piness best achieved in terms of consumption and possessions. Although she uses different terms, Juliet Schor (1993) expresses very well the view of consumerism on which my argument rests. While I share her emphasis on producerism, I would explain it as a direct consequence of how the major transnational corporations operate. My argument in what follows assumes that capitalist globalization and consumerism are unsustainable in the long run, due to the crises of class polarization and ecological stress they engender (Sklair 2002: 48–57). Not all culture is ideological, even in capitalist societies. Consumerism in the capitalist global system can only be fully understood as culture-ideology, where cultural practices (embedded in socio-economic institutions) reinforce the ideology of capitalist consumerism and the ideology (embedded in common sense beliefs) reinforces the cultural practices. The brand-stretching campaign of the locally iconic Boston Public Library in 2004 (figure 7.1) embellished by the slogan ‘Books Are Just the Beginning’ is a telling example of the links between architecture and consumerism in practice. Libraries are not exempt. This is a first indication of how the Icon Project in architecture operates at the local level. More or less all space is potentially consumerist space, but there is certainly a continuum from maximally consumerist space, in which users are provided with many opportunities to spend money and few opportunities not to (e.g., shopping malls) to minimally consumerist space, in which there are very few if any opportunities to spend money (e.g., cemeteries; the families have already spent the money and for others this may only be a matter of time).