bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Research on degradation mechanism of trichlorobenzene and Hg0 by nonthermal plasma catalysis
Authors: BIAN Wenjing , ZHU Tao , ZHU Fan , CUI Yan , WANG Jianhua , SHI Guang , LI Jiawang , HAO Jingzhang
Published: May 2023

Aiming at mercury and dioxin in fire coal gas as research objects, nonthermal plasma (NTP) catalytic technology was used to investigate the degradation effect of operating condition parameters on mixed pollutants in mixed flue gas condition, and to explore the synergistic degradation of Hg0 and TCB (1, 2, 3-trichlorobenzene, TCB) under mixed flue gas conditions. The research results showed that the conversion efficiency of mercury and TCB increased with the additional output of voltage, and decreased with the increase of the gas flow rate. Under optimal reaction conditions: voltage = 17 kV, frequency = 300 Hz, gas flow rate = 2 l min−1, the conversion efficiency of Hg0 and TCB reached the highest 91.4% and 84.98%, respectively. In the NTP catalytic system, active free radicals played an important role in the synergistic conversion of mercury and TCB, which have a competitive effect, to make the conversion efficiency of mixed pollutants lower than a single substance. In the mixed flue gas condition, the mixed gas has an inhibitory effect on the synergistic conversion of mercury and TCB. Kinetic modeling of NTP catalytic synergistic reaction was established. Under three conditions of TCB, mercury and TCB, mixed simulated flue gas, the NTP catalytic technology showed a quasi-first-order kinetic reaction for the degradation of TCB. According to the synergistic effect of NTP and composites, the transformation and degradation of TCB mainly included two processes: TCB and ring opening, and Hg0 was finally oxidized to Hg2+.
Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior
Authors: Newman Alexander , Mo Shenjiang , Lupoli Matthew
Published: May 2023

Unethical behavior in organizations persists in many forms across industries and nations. What often unites these behaviors is an underlying motivation to benefit oneself, typically for financial reasons, and frequently at the expense of others. However, unethical behaviors are not only committed with selfish intentions. Sometimes, employees commit unethical behaviors with the motivation to aid the organization or its members. These actions are known in the literature as unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Despite their benevolent intentions, UPB has the potential to yield detrimental outcomes for individuals and organizations—including those it is intended to help. As such, a growing body of research has been devoted to better understanding the antecedents and consequences of these actions.
Entrepreneurial Teams
Authors: Breugst Nicola
Published: May 2023

Entrepreneurial teams develop and exploit ideas in order to turn them into entrepreneurial ventures that they jointly own and manage. While these teams are crucial drivers for the success of their ventures, their work can be challenging because they operate under conditions of high autonomy, uncertainty, and interdependence. Thus, it is important to understand how entrepreneurial teams work together and jointly advance their ventures. Research has followed three overarching approaches to explore how entrepreneurial teams can succeed in their endeavors. First, one stream of research has aimed at connecting team inputs, such as team members’ experiences, to firm-level outcomes. In a second stream of research, scholars have focused on what happens within entrepreneurial teams in terms of team processes and emergent states. This approach has identified various mechanisms that translate inputs into outcomes. Third, an increasing number of studies have started to unravel the complexities that entrepreneurial teams experience in their work. Specifically, this research has considered the mutual influence of team members and has explored how teams work on their tasks and are shaped by this work. Despite these advancements, entrepreneurial team research faces numerous challenges arising from the complex interplay of team members and their ventures as well as from access to high-quality data. Because of these and other challenges, many research questions around entrepreneurial teams still need to be addressed to better understand their work. These emerging research efforts are likely to be facilitated by additional data sources, such as educational programs devoted to advancing entrepreneurial teams and modern technologies promising better access to rich data. Overall, entrepreneurial team research not only contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the entrepreneurial process but also provides support for these teams as they create and nurture their ventures.
The Harms and Crimes Against Terrestrial Wildlife (Nonhuman Animals)
Authors: Wong Rebecca W.Y.
Published: May 2023

Nonhuman animals are widely exploited and abused by human beings. While some of these exploitative actions (or inactions) are punishable by law, many actions are not legally defined, and these actions continue to be carried out despite the harm they cause to nonhuman beings. It is incorrect to assume that actions that are lawful cannot harm nonhuman beings or the environment, and the sociolegal approach asks, “What is the harm involved?” rather than “Is this lawful?” This approach departs from a human-centered focus on environmental crime, which results in more victims (nonhuman beings or the natural environment) being identified.

Ultimately, changes in attitudes and behavior are crucial for environmental conservation. Environmental campaigns should be more culturally sensitive and free from racial stereotypes to be effective in driving changes.
A journey towards the pot of gold
Authors: Godefroy Valérie , Bouzigues Arabella
Published: May 2023

Godefroy and Bouzigues discuss the role of scientific researchers within society. They argue that researchers are society’s problem solvers, but that their path to societal impact is lined with obstacles, not least a growing disconnect between research and society. They end by offering suggestions on how to overcome these barriers in the future.
Investigation and optimization of solar collector and geothermal pump hybrid system for cogeneration of heat and power with exergy-economic approach
Authors: Smaisim Ghassan F , Abed Azher M , Shamel Ali
Published: May 2023

To use energy systems based on renewable sources, it is very important to consider backup and hybrid sources because renewable energies are not available all the time; therefore, in this system, a geothermal pump is used to preheat the fluid, then the heated fluid is sent to the vacuum tube collector to reach a higher temperature by absorbing solar-thermal energy, and after absorbing solar energy, it goes to the evaporator to produce superheated steam and finally the superheated fluid moves to the steam turbine to produce energy. After the simulation, thermodynamic analysis along with economic analysis has been done. In the base state, the energy efficiency and exergy of cogeneration were 0.566 and 0.156, respectively; the energy efficiency and electrical exergy were better than 0.057 and 0.065; and the overall output and immutable work values were 50 and 671.1 kW, respectively.
Associations between mother’s depressive symptoms during pregnancy and newborn’s brain functional connectivity
Authors: Na Xiaoxu , Glasier Charles M , Andres Aline , Bellando Jayne , Chen Haitao , Gao Wei , Livingston Luke W , Badger Thomas M , Ou Xiawei
Published: May 2023

Depression during pregnancy is common and the prevalence further increased during the COVID pandemic. Recent findings have shown potential impact of antenatal depression on children’s neurodevelopment and behavior, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Nor is it clear whether mild depressive symptoms among pregnant women would impact the developing brain. In this study, 40 healthy pregnant women had their depressive symptoms evaluated by the Beck Depression Inventory-II at ~12, ~24, and ~36 weeks of pregnancy, and their healthy full-term newborns underwent a brain MRI without sedation including resting-state fMRI for evaluation of functional connectivity development. The relationships between functional connectivities and maternal Beck Depression Inventory-II scores were evaluated by Spearman’s rank partial correlation tests using appropriate multiple comparison correction with newborn’s gender and gestational age at birth controlled. Significant negative correlations were identified between neonatal brain functional connectivity and mother’s Beck Depression Inventory-II scores in the third trimester, but not in the first or second trimester. Higher depressive symptoms during the third trimester of pregnancy were associated with lower neonatal brain functional connectivity in the frontal lobe and between frontal/temporal lobe and occipital lobe, indicating a potential impact of maternal depressive symptoms on offspring brain development, even in the absence of clinical depression.
The impact of population screening for cardiovascular disease on quality of life
Authors: Søgaard Rikke , Diederichsen Axel , Lindholt Jes
Published: May 2023

Aims

To examine the impact of population screening–generated events on quality of life: invitation, positive test result, initiation of preventive medication, enrolment in follow-up at the surgical department, and preventive surgical repair.

Methods and results

A difference-in-difference design based on data collected alongside two randomized controlled trials where general population men were randomized to screening for cardiovascular disease or to no screening. Repeated measurements of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) were conducted up to 3 years after inclusion using all relevant scales of the EuroQol instrument: the anxiety/depression dimension, the EuroQol 5-dimension profile index (using Danish preference weights), and the visual analogue scale for global health. We compare the mean change scores from before to after events for groups experiencing vs. not experiencing the events. Propensity score matching is additionally used to provide both unmatched and matched results. Invitees reported to be marginally better off than non-invitees on all scales of the EuroQol. For events of receiving the test result, initiating preventive medication, being enrolled in surveillance, and undergoing surgical repair, we observed no impact on overall HRQoL but a minor impact of being enrolled in surveillance on emotional distress, which did not persist after matching.

Conclusion

The often-claimed detrimental consequences of screening to HRQoL could not be generally confirmed. Amongst the screening events assessed, only two possible consequences were revealed: a reassurance effect after a negative screening test and a minor negative impact to emotional distress of being enrolled in surveillance that did not spill over to overall HRQoL.
Medium-short-term prediction of polar motion combining the differencing between series with the differencing within series
Authors: Wang Leyang , Miao Wei , Wu Fei , Pang Ming
Published: May 2023

The accuracy of polar motion forecasting has been the focus of attention in the fields of satellite navigation and deep space exploration. However, the traditional or differential methods for forecasting X or Y series based on LS and AR models are straightforward and monolithic, and cannot reduce the range of forecast errors. Therefore, this study proposes a new method (called the between-within, B–W method) that combines the X, Y and Y–X series forecasts of the traditional and differential methods in pairs according to the mathematical relationship of Y–X. This approach is one way to obtain the minimum range of forecast errors by making full use of the advantages of each method in the combination. A total of 262-hindcast experiments were conducted during 2010–2020 with strictly simulated time delays. For forecasts of 1–180 d at the x-pole, the average improvement is 10.7 per cent over Bulletin-A. For the y-pole at 1–90 d an average improvement of 11.7 per cent over Bulletin-A is achieved. In addition, further incorporation of the last 1 d IGS (International Global Navigation Satellite System Service) Ultra-rapid (IGU) data can effectively improve the MAE at 1–10 d. The 2016–2018 performance of the B–W method at the x-pole may be related to the amplitude and phase of the Chandler wobble, and the 2013–2016 performance at the y-pole may be related to El Niño climate change events. In terms of overall stability, the B–W method is superior to the IERS Bulletin-A in the medium-short-term and has potential practical application.
ALS-linked CCNF variant disrupts motor neuron ubiquitin homeostasis
Authors: Farrawell Natalie E , Bax Monique , McAlary Luke , McKenna Jessie , Maksour Simon , Do-Ha Dzung , Rayner Stephanie L , Blair Ian P , Chung Roger S , Yerbury Justin J , Ooi Lezanne , Saunders Darren N
Published: May 2023

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are fatal neurodegenerative disorders that share pathological features, including the aberrant accumulation of ubiquitinated protein inclusions within motor neurons. Previously, we have shown that the sequestration of ubiquitin (Ub) into inclusions disrupts Ub homeostasis in cells expressing ALS-associated variants superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), fused in sarcoma (FUS) and TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43). Here, we investigated whether an ALS/FTD-linked pathogenic variant in the CCNF gene, encoding the E3 Ub ligase Cyclin F (CCNF), also perturbs Ub homeostasis. The presence of a pathogenic CCNF variant was shown to cause ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) dysfunction in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived motor neurons harboring the CCNF  S621G mutation. The expression of the CCNFS621G variant was associated with an increased abundance of ubiquitinated proteins and significant changes in the ubiquitination of key UPS components. To further investigate the mechanisms responsible for this UPS dysfunction, we overexpressed CCNF in NSC-34 cells and found that the overexpression of both wild-type (WT) and the pathogenic variant of CCNF (CCNFS621G) altered free Ub levels. Furthermore, double mutants designed to decrease the ability of CCNF to form an active E3 Ub ligase complex significantly improved UPS function in cells expressing both CCNFWT and the CCNFS621G variant and were associated with increased levels of free monomeric Ub. Collectively, these results suggest that alterations to the ligase activity of the CCNF complex and the subsequent disruption to Ub homeostasis play an important role in the pathogenesis of CCNF-associated ALS/FTD.
Global constitutionalism and the People’s Republic of China: Dignity as the “fundamental basis” of the legal system?
Authors: Stone Sweet Alec , Wan Trevor T W
Published: May 2023

The People’s Republic of China has declared dignity to be a foundational norm of its legal system, as institutionalized through a suite of constitutional and legislative reforms. Indeed, the 2017–21 period saw the adoption of some of the most far-reaching statutes in the history of the PRC, the centerpiece of which is the new Civil Code (2021). In both structure and content, provisions of the Civil Code comprise a quasi-constitutional charter of rights. Indeed, many Chinese scholars do treat the Civil Code as such, developing sophisticated constitutional theory along the way. At the core of these claims is dignity, which occupies a prominent position within the Civil Code, and from which a host of additional rights, including unenumerated rights, can be derived. After situating these developments in light of global constitutional practice, we examine the emergence of dignity as an officially sanctioned commitment device, and analyze the pertinent scholarly discourse, structure, and content of the new Civil Code, and the various roles that the Communist Party of China, the National People’s Congress, and the Supreme People’s Court are expected to perform in supervising the work of the judiciary in operationalizing the Civil Code. We conclude that while the PRC has not fully embraced the dignity norm in the way other constitutional systems have, it has nonetheless permitted significant discursive debates that deserve to be analyzed comparatively.
Erythrocyte Membrane Fatty Acid Composition as a Potential Biomarker for Depression
Authors: Liu Ting , Wang Lu , Guo Jimin , Zhao Tingyu , Tang Hui , Dong Fang , Wang Chuanyue , Chen Jindong , Tang Mimi
Published: May 2023

Background

Major depressive disorders is a chronic and severe psychiatric disorder with poor prognosis and quality of life. Abnormal erythrocyte fatty acid (FA) composition in depressed patients were found in our previous study, but the relationship between erythrocyte membrane FA levels and different severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms remains to be explored.

Methods

This cross-sectional study included 139 patients with first-diagnosed, drug-naïve depression and 55 healthy controls whose erythrocyte FA composition was analyzed. Patients with depression were divided into severe depression and mild to moderate depression or depression with severe anxiety and mild to moderate anxiety. Then the differences of FA levels among different groups were analyzed. Finally, the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was applied to identify potential biomarkers in distinguishing the severity of depressive symptoms.

Results

Levels of erythrocyte membrane FAs were elevated among patients with severe depression compared with healthy controls or patients with mild to moderate depression of almost all kinds. While C18:1n9t (elaidic acid), C20:3n6 (eicosatrienoic acid), C20:4n6 (arachidonic acid), C22:5n3 (docosapentaenoic acid), total fatty acids (FAs), and total monounsaturated FAs were elevated in patients with severe anxiety compared with patients with mild to moderate anxiety. Furthermore, the level of arachidonic acid, C22:4n6 (docosatetraenoic acid), elaidic acid, and the combination of all 3 were associated with the severity of depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

The results suggested that erythrocyte membrane FA levels have the potential to be the biological indicator of clinical characteristics for depression, such as depressive symptoms and anxiety. In the future, more research is needed to explore the causal association between FA metabolism and depression.
Political Trust as an Evaluation against Normative Benchmarks? A Two-wave Survey Experiment on the Role of Normative Benchmarks in the Evaluative Model of Political Trust
Authors: Ouattara Ebe , Steenvoorden Eefje , van der Meer Tom
Published: May 2023

The dominant model that guides scholarly research on political trust rests on the assumption that this attitude is evaluative. It states that citizens evaluate political actors’ trustworthiness traits against a set of normative benchmarks. Remarkably, despite its dominance in political trust research and its serious implications for theories on democratic accountability, this assumption has not been tested systematically. This paper tests the micro-level foundations of the trust-as-evaluation model via an extensive two-wave survey experiment among 15,997 respondents. We assess to what extent normative benchmarks of trustworthiness condition citizens’ trust in politicians with 11 randomized traits. Our findings challenge the commonly held view of the role of normative benchmarks in the trust-as-evaluation model. While respondents clearly differentiate trustworthy politicians from untrustworthy ones and withdraw trust from politicians with negative traits, their normative benchmarks do not systematically influence this judgment. We discuss the implications of these findings for the trust-as-evaluation model.
Pathogenicity of multiple Providencia species (Enterobacteriales: Morganellaceae) to the mass-reared Mexican fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae)
Authors: Salas Bacilio , Conway Hugh E , Vacek Don C , Vitek Cristopher , Schuenzel Erin L
Published: May 2023

Mexican fruit fly (Anastrepha ludens (Loew)) (Diptera: Tephritidae) represents a major threat to fruit production in the Western Hemisphere. Sterile insect technique is used to suppress and eradicate wild populations. Success of this control method necessitates weekly production of hundreds of millions of flies, their sterilization by irradiation, and their aerial release. Diet needed to produce large fly numbers are conducive to the spread of bacteria. Pathogenic bacteria were isolated from 3 rearing facilities and from multiple sources: eggs, larvae, pupae and spent diet, and were found to include some isolates identified to the genus Providencia (Enterobacteriales: Morganellaceae). We identified 41 Providencia isolates and tested their pathogenicity to A. ludens. Based on 16s rRNA sequences, 3 groups were clustered into several species of Providencia with varying capacities to affect the Mexican fruit fly production. Isolates putatively identified as P. alcalifaciens/P. rustigianii were all pathogenic causing larval and pupal yield reduction of 46–64% and 37–57%, respectively. Among them, Providencia isolate 3006 was the most pathogenic reducing larval and pupae yield by 73 and 81%, respectively. Isolates identified as P. sneebia were not pathogenic. The final cluster, P. rettgeri/P. vermicola, were variable in pathogenicity with 3 isolates yielding like the control and the rest causing larval and pupal yield reduction of 26–53% and 23–51%, respectively. Isolates putatively identified as P. alcalifaciens/P. rustigianii were more virulent than P. rettgeri/P. vermicola. Accurate identification of species is needed to diagnose and monitor pathogenic versus nonpathogenic Providencia strains.
Test for Trading Costs Effect in a Portfolio Selection Problem with Recursive Utility
Authors: Carrasco Marine , Koné N’Golo
Published: May 2023

This article addresses a portfolio selection problem with trading costs on stock market. More precisely, we develop a simple generalized method of moments (GMM)-based test procedure to test the significance of trading costs effect in the economy with a flexible form of transaction costs. We also propose a two-step procedure to test overidentifying restrictions in our GMM estimation. In an empirical analysis, we apply our test procedures to the class of anomalies used in Novy-Marx and Velikov (2016). We show that transaction costs have a significant effect on investors’ behavior for many anomalies. In that case, investors significantly improve the out-of-sample performance of their portfolios by accounting for trading costs.
A Phantom Verb: Yuttan in Biblical Hebrew
Authors: Eichler Raanan
Published: May 2023

The verb נתן ‘to give’ is pointed as hophal eight times in the Bible. The scholarly consensus is that these occurrences were originally intended as qal-passive, and that there was no hophal נתן in original Biblical Hebrew. It is argued here that there was neither hophal nor qal-passive נתן in original Biblical Hebrew: these occurrences were originally intended as qal, their subjects were indefinite, and they were intuitively revocalized as hophal when the third-person singular indefinite subject fell out of use in Hebrew.
Seven plant capacities to adapt to abiotic stress
Authors: Munns Rana , Millar A Harvey
Published: May 2023

Abiotic stresses such as drought and heat continue to impact crop production in a warming world. This review distinguishes seven inherent capacities that enable plants to respond to abiotic stresses and continue growing, although at a reduced rate, to achieve a productive yield. These are the capacities to selectively take up essential resources, store them and supply them to different plant parts, generate the energy required for cellular functions, conduct repairs to maintain plant tissues, communicate between plant parts, manage existing structural assets in the face of changed circumstances, and shape-shift through development to be efficient in different environments. By illustration, we show how all seven plant capacities are important for reproductive success of major crop species during drought, salinity, temperature extremes, flooding, and nutrient stress. Confusion about the term ‘oxidative stress’ is explained. This allows us to focus on the strategies that enhance plant adaptation by identifying key responses that can be targets for plant breeding.
Protein O-glycosylation regulates diverse developmental and defense processes in plants
Authors: Xu Jin , Du Hongyu , Shi Huanran , Song Jianing , Yu Jingquan , Zhou Yanhong
Published: May 2023

Post-translational modifications affect protein functions and play key roles in controlling biological processes. Plants have unique types of O-glycosylation that are different from those of animals and prokaryotes, and they play roles in modulating the functions of secretory proteins and nucleocytoplasmic proteins by regulating transcription and mediating localization and degradation. O-glycosylation is complex because of the dozens of different O-glycan types, the widespread existence of hydroxyproline (Hyp), serine (Ser), and threonine (Thr) residues in proteins attached by O-glycans, and the variable modes of linkages connecting the sugars. O-glycosylation specifically affects development and environmental acclimatization by affecting diverse physiological processes. This review describes recent studies on the detection and functioning of protein O-glycosylation in plants, and provides a framework for the O-glycosylation network that underlies plant development and resistance.
Selumetinib in Japanese pediatric patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 and symptomatic, inoperable plexiform neurofibromas: An open-label, phase I study
Authors: Suenobu Souichi , Terashima Keita , Akiyama Masaharu , Oguri Tomoyo , Watanabe Asako , Sugeno Masatoshi , Higashimori Mitsuo , So Karen , Nishida Yoshihiro
Published: May 2023

Background

Plexiform neurofibromas (PN) are a manifestation of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) that may cause morbidity and impact health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Selumetinib (ARRY-142886, AZD6244) is an orally available, selective, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 1/2 inhibitor approved for children with NF1 and symptomatic, inoperable PN in regions including the USA (aged ≥2 years), EU (≥3 years), and Japan (≥3 years). This open-label, single-arm, phase I study evaluated selumetinib in Japanese children with NF1 and symptomatic, inoperable PN.

Methods

Eligible patients (aged 3–18 years) received oral selumetinib (25 mg/m2 twice daily) continuously in 28-day cycles in a fasted state. Primary objectives were safety and tolerability. Secondary objectives included pharmacokinetics, efficacy, PN-related morbidities, and HRQoL.

Results

Twelve patients (median age 13.3 years) were enrolled, received ≥1 selumetinib dose (data cutoff: cycle 13 day 1) with median follow-up of 11.5 months. All patients had baseline PN-related morbidities, most commonly disfigurement (91.7%) and pain (58.3%). Most frequently reported any-grade adverse events were dermatologic and gastrointestinal. Objective response rate was 33.3%; median duration of response was not reached. Most patients (83.3%) had target PN volume reduction versus baseline. No patients reported worsening of PN-related morbidities. Selumetinib was rapidly absorbed with moderate-to-high inter-patient variability in maximum plasma concentration and area under the concentration–time curve from time 0–6 hours.

Conclusions

Consistent with results of the phase II SPRINT trial, 25 mg/m2 selumetinib twice daily was well tolerated with a manageable safety profile in Japanese children with NF1 and symptomatic, inoperable PN.
Decoloniality and Buddhism
Authors: Mason GJ
Published: May 2023

Decoloniality is a relatively recent area of research in Buddhist studies. While there are a few studies dating from the early 2000s, since 2019 there has a marked increase of research in the field. Despite the recent increase in publications, however, the field is still very new. As such, this article’s focus is on very recent research. The research from earlier centuries is virtually nonexistent. However, this article will be updated as the field grows year-on-year. Decoloniality in Buddhist studies is still “finding its feet,” as it were, as evidenced by certain recurring issues that will be corrected over time. For example, many publications conflate the terms decolonial and postcolonial. Only a handful of publications apply decolonial theory, while the majority revert to postcolonial theorists. Nevertheless, the focus on decoloniality in Buddhist studies is to be welcomed. Emerging from the colonial research area of Oriental studies in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buddhist studies has largely still retained the categories set by Oriental studies, preferring to view Asia religions as unified by core sets of beliefs and texts. Decolonial research in Buddhist studies focuses more on practices and indigeneity, thereby releasing or “delinking” Buddhist research from the emphasis on central beliefs and texts set by early colonial research. Decolonial theory makes the point that religion through the lens of belief was a particularly “Northern” or colonial approach to studying religions that caused the “Other” as religious subject to be defined and categorized by colonial authorities. Decoloniality aims to “rescript” epistemology according to a “Southern” perspective.
Dharmakīrti
Authors: Kellner Birgit
Published: May 2023

The Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti (between mid-sixth and mid-seventh centuries CE) is one of the most significant and challenging thinkers in India’s history. Next to his predecessor Dignāga (b. c. 480–d. 540), from whom he was separated by one scholarly generation, he counts as one of the two main founding figures of an intellectual tradition within Buddhism that focused on the analysis of knowledge and reasoning; in South Asia this tradition was active for approximately 700 years. It is also called the logico-epistemological or pramāṇa school of Buddhist philosophy, pramāṇa being the Sanskrit term for a “means of valid cognition”—a source of knowledge—the central concept of Classical Indian epistemology at large. Dharmakīrti is the product of, and, in turn, helped shape, a diverse religio-philosophical landscape populated by Buddhist, brahminical, Jaina, and other traditions that interacted with one another through constructive, but also critical engagement in an atmosphere fueled by socio-religious competitiveness. Within Buddhism, Dharmakīrti’s ideas significantly relate to views regarded as characteristic for the Sautrāntika school of thought. He also facilitated reformulations of Yogācāra and Madhyamaka doctrines, in part through the formulation of influential proofs in the philosophy of mind. Beyond Buddhist circles, they were subjected to fierce criticism, but they were also selectively adopted by Jainas and within Śaivism. Dharmakīrti adopted Dignāga’s system prescribing two, and only two means of valid cognition, perception, and inference, that respectively, apprehend different types of objects, the unique particular and the universal. But he also addressed historically new problems, ventured into new areas, and induced shifts in perspective. Among others, he formulated an ontology of particulars grounded in their causal efficacy and purely momentary existence, developed Dignāga’s nominalist theory of universals and concepts as being constructed through a process of exclusion (apoha), outlined a distinctive method for determining causation, and devised methods for ascertaining nonexistence. In the realm of logic, Dharmakīrti’s distinctive and rigorous theory of inference ultimately grounds the soundness of reasoning in ontological relations and restricts the realm of acceptable reasons to three types. Unlike Dignāga, Dharmakīrti also articulated a distinct Mahāyānist philosophy of religion striving to offer a rational account of the Buddhist path, its foundations, and its goals, which recent scholarship has argued to be closely related to key elements of his epistemology and logic. Beyond South Asia and Sanskritic philosophy, Dharmakīrti’s thought and its later Indian developments exerted a powerful influence on Tibetan intellectual history, where theories and methods that ultimately go back to his works remain a part of monastic curricula even today, especially in the Sakyapa [Sa skya pa] and Gelukpa [Dge lugs pa] schools.
Ideal Point Estimation
Authors: Carroll Royce
Published: May 2023

Political scientists have used ideal point estimation primarily to operationalize spatial models of politics, which requires measuring the preferences of actors within a conceptual latent space. Ideal point estimation integrates theoretical ideas from spatial models in economics and political science with measurement theory from psychometrics. Theoretically, the core concept is that a low-dimensional latent preference structure explains behavioral choices or judgments of stimuli. Empirically, the aim is to estimate models of the latent spatial properties of data that can predict an observed set of choice and response data. A central concern of ideal point estimation work in political science has been the generation of meaningful measures of the intervals between the coordinates of actors and the stimuli to which they respond. Accordingly, the primary focus of modern ideal point estimation work has thus been to create empirical spatial models with a theoretical foundation for the estimated locations of actors for use in studies requiring continuous measures of latent preferences. The early development of this work began as part of the study of legislative voting, chiefly among members of the US Congress. This work then extended to other legislative and judicial voting contexts, and eventually to a wide array of different political choice behavior that can be understood through the lens of the spatial models, from speech to social media activity. Related approaches have long been applied to survey data with sophisticated methods to generate measures of actors’ latent preferences, including from multiple data sources. Numerous applications have emerged in the last several decades and continue to grow in number, producing an array of measurement techniques related to ideal point estimation applied to numerous topics in political science, especially political ideology. This bibliography is limited mainly to work focused on or contributing to the literature on the measurement of ideal points, but several applications of ideal point estimation are included due to their influence on this methodological literature.
Conventions and Categories in Markets
Authors: Lee Kangsan
Published: May 2023

Sociological interest in the topic of market conventions and categories has a long history, extending back to the works of Weber. With the rise of organization theory and new economic sociology in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars expanded the concept of conventions and categories in markets into important research topics, particularly in the context of market change and boundary expansion. Scholars in these fields have suggested that conventions and categories function both as a cognitive frame and as a formal structure, although the research foci have developed differently over time.
Feminization of Labor in Academia
Authors: Vatansever Aslı
Published: May 2023

A comprehensive review of the feminization discourse within labor studies reveals a great diversity of conceptions. The term “feminization” is connected to multiple intersectional issues in labor, including gender inequality, labor devaluation, gendered notions and divisions of work, shifts in the composition of the workforce, and persisting power structures despite changing demographics. Initially, feminization was used in the quantitative sense to refer to an increase in women’s formal employment. Qualitative and critical framings of the term, on the other hand, pertain to the type of employment contract and/or the labor process. They highlight forced flexibility, low pay, and precariousness, all of which have historically been associated with women’s work. As such, qualitative usages of feminization in the labor context often connote the disadvantages that women have been facing in the labor market. Interventions to broaden the analytical scope of the term and emphasize its positive connotations have mostly come from feminist scholarship. Affirmative framings of feminization highlight the dialectical aspect, arguing that feminized work incites feminized resistance practices characterized by horizontal structures and a therapeutic-reparative mode of action. These conceptualizations rearticulate the relational and affective traits that are traditionally associated with female subjectivities and are now argued to inspire a distinct mode of collective action, especially in sectors dominated by precarious employment and lack of organized labor. In the extant literature on academic work, qualitative connotations of feminization pertaining to the casualization of contracts, devaluation of academic work, and intensification of the academic labor process mostly prevail. Academic work has evidently become feminized both in the sense of increased female participation and labor devaluation in recent decades. However, empirical research also demonstrates contradictions, ranging from a persisting lack of female faculty in the upper echelons to an unequal gendered distribution of precarity among different segments of the academic workforce. Female researchers are argued to continue being disadvantaged via multiple mechanisms. Recent feminist scholarship draws particular attention to the masculinized ideals of hyper-competitive performance that demand the researchers to be free of domestic care duties. The feminization of academic work, in turn, is argued to call upon a “feminized” mode of labor activism in academia, which suggests nonhierarchical and counter-hegemonic solidary collectivities and less outcome-obsessed modes of action—i.e., an activism that derives from the repertoire of affective qualities attributed to the historical construct of the “feminine.”
Child Witches in Colonial America
Authors: West Kristina
Published: May 2023

It is perhaps unsurprising that the figure of the child in colonial witchcraft cases has been accorded relatively little critical attention; the persecution by and of children in European cases—such as Mora, Sweden; Augsburg and Wurzburg in Germany; and Pendle in Lancashire—all predated and outnumbered even those in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. Yet given the predominance of child accusers in Salem and in other New England witch accusations, the number of accused children in Salem, and the citing of children as victims of witchcraft across colonial America, it seems there is still room for further investigation of their role. Yet discussing children is always difficult in these cases, as the definition of what a child is varies significantly across time and geographical location, and even frequently within those boundaries. What is more certain is that, as in earlier European accusations, children and young people were often the instigators of witch accusations, either directly (in that they accused specific people of witchcraft) or indirectly (in that adults assumed witchcraft to be the cause of their ailments or in adult accusations against midwives whose roles were, by definition, bound up with children). The illnesses and accusations of children were at the heart of many Connecticut cases between 1647 and 1697; children played a major role as accusers in the 1688 Boston case against Ann Glover; and they were central to the proceedings in Salem as both accusers (at least 27 accusers were under the age of 18) and accused (24 under-18s were accused of witchcraft and six were tried in a full court; at least three of those were tortured; and one was found guilty and sentenced to death although the execution never took place). Even some of the very few cases that came to court in Virginia mentioned children in relation to midwives and/or as victims. By far the majority of historical works on colonial witchcraft focus on the role of children as accusers; very few consider children as witches. And while many view Salem as the end of colonial witch trials, 1692 only marks the end of witchcraft-related executions; accusations continued up to and beyond the end of the colonial era in 1763, as did the role of children.
War in Mughal India
Authors: Streusand Douglas E.
Published: May 2023

This bibliography extends beyond the conventional limits of Mughal history, geographical and historical, in order to encompass events of great global significance and military interest. It covers all South Asian military history, from 1500 to 1750, not the Mughals exclusively. It thus includes the Portuguese maritime empire as well as the Mughal land empire, and events in the Deccan before the Mughals penetrated there. It begins the history of the Mughal dynasty, the Timurids in South Asia, with Babur’s conquest of Kabul in 1507, and includes his activities and those of his successors beyond the Hindu Kush after that date. Mughal, the Persian word for Mongol, is the inaccurate but standard term for the empire established in South Asia by descendants of Timur (Tamerlane) in the sixteenth century, which survived into the eighteenth century in fact and into the nineteenth century in name. In 1500, no single state dominated South Asia. Ruled by the Lodi Afghan dynasty, the Delhi Sultanate, which had controlled most of the subcontinent 150 years earlier, still held the north central Indo-Gangetic plain. Other Muslim rulers governed major regional principalities in Bengal, Gujarat, and Malwa. Several Hindu Rajput principalities existed in modern Rajasthan. The Bahmani sultanate, which had controlled the Deccan, had fragmented into five principalities by the early sixteenth century. Vijaynagara, ruled by a Hindu dynasty but heavily influenced by Perso-Islamic culture, dominated the south. Babur, a Timurid prince driven from Central Asia by the Shaybani Uzbeks, took Kabul, and made it his base for the conquest of Hindustan (the land of Hindus). He subdued the Delhi Sultanate, but none of the other regional kingdoms, before his death in 1530. His son, Humayun, lost it all in ten years and had only begun to regain it when he died in 1556. Humayun’s son Akbar (r. 1556–1605) became the true founder of the Mughal Empire, extending control over the entire Indo-Gangetic plain and beginning expansion into the Deccan. During his reign, a coalition of the Deccan states defeated Vijaynagara at Talikota in 1565. During the rest of Mughal history, through the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707), the Mughals expanded south into the Deccan and east in Bengal, and struggled to hold Qandahar and extend power into Central Asia. Even before the Mughal enterprise began, the first of the European powers, Portugal, had established the first European trading station in South Asia. The European powers played an increasingly significant political and economic role from that point onward.
Queering International Law
Authors: Otto Dianne , Jones Emily
Published: May 2023

Queer scholarship in international law can broadly be understood as questioning or destabilizing the normative—that which has been “taken for granted” or “naturalized.” However, defining queer theory is made harder by the fact that much of queer theory seeks to avoid definition. Queering is a continuous process, a conversation on many levels as opposed to a blueprint that can be clearly defined. Queer theory in international law can therefore perhaps be best defined by looking at what it has sought to resist. Key focal points have included thinking about sex and gender [identity] in alternative and non-hegemonic ways, challenging fixed categories of identity and binary thinking, calling for alternative forms of kinship to be fostered outside and beyond the formal ties deemed recognizable by the state (such as hetero-marriage), and, reaching well beyond what one might think of as its “proper objects,” revealing the exclusionary and hierarchical conceptual architectures of international law emanating from its heteronormative underpinnings. We include a wide array of queer scholarship, including works that focus more on challenging global power relations as well as those that focus on queer lives. The latter were selected, however, due to their counter-normative/counter-binary focus. Therefore, this entry does not cover the wide spectrum of LGBTI+ rights scholarship, but rather seeks to identify what we consider to be some of the queerer pieces from that field. Queer analyses often draw upon and complement feminist theories of intersectionality and postcolonial/TWAIL theories of imperial power and narratives of so-called progress. Like other strands of critical international legal research and activism, queer interventions seek to understand and challenge the multiple ways in which unequal power and oppression are naturalized and normalized through law. What queer scholarship brings to this field is a broader array of key analytical vectors of oppression, centering tropes of gender [identity] and sexuality in new ways, a keener awareness of the exclusionary effects of binary and hierarchized ways of thinking, a commitment to radically rethinking what has been assumed to be “normal,” and an activism that takes all life seriously, including nonhuman life. We have sought to introduce some queer terminologies into this entry by the headings we use, which pair conventional international law nomenclature with queer alternatives. In this way we hope to convey, in a small way, the questioning of the normative that queer theory encourages. Where we use the acronym LGBTI+ and its other variations in our abstracts, we have followed the choice of the author.
Eugene Lee-Hamilton
Authors: Rigg Patricia
Published: May 2023

Born in London, England, Eugene Jacob Lee-Hamilton (1845–1907) carved out a life for himself as a poet after a severe, stress-induced paralysis signaled the end of his career as a diplomat in 1873 at the age of twenty-eight. He was educated in early life in France and Germany, subsequently attending but failing to graduate from Oxford and then working for the Foreign Office. Correspondence between Lee-Hamilton and his mother, beginning when he entered Oxford in 1864 and continuing when his diplomatic career began in 1869, forecasts his neurological collapse, which was later diagnosed as a self-induced reaction to stress. His recovery twenty years later was due in large part to his recognition that he might “will” himself to recover. During his extended state of paralysis, Lee-Hamilton lived in Florence with his mother and his half-sister, Violet Paget, the writer known as Vernon Lee. Lee-Hamilton was so ill that his mother and sister had to transcribe the poetry he dictated. Although he published seven books of poetry, which included lyric and dramatic poems, during his illness, he became known mainly for his Petrarchan sonnets. The New Medusa and Apollo and Marsyas, published in 1882 and 1884, respectively, successfully draw on his extensive knowledge of history and art, but he is best known for his seventh book of poetry, the autobiographical Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, the collection that depicts his illness and his recovery. By the time the volume was published in 1894, he had emerged from his neurasthenic paralysis after treatment by an eminent German neurologist, and he went on to travel in the United States and Canada. In 1898 he married the novelist and editor Annie Holdsworth and fathered a daughter who lived only two years and whose death inspired the sonnet sequence Mimma Bella. Although Lee-Hamilton and his wife published poetry and fiction together and he began a translation of Dante’s Inferno, his work was not received as well as it had been before his recovery from neurasthenia, and those who knew him accepted that once the link between his illness and his poetic talents no longer existed, the talents themselves seem to have waned. After a series of health catastrophes brought on in part by his daughter’s death, he died in Italy in 1907. His widow published Mimma Bella in 1908.