bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
RichMol: A general variational approach for rovibrational molecular dynamics in external electric fields
Authors: Owens Alec , Yachmenev Andrey
Published: March 2018

In this paper, a general variational approach for computing the rovibrational dynamics of polyatomic molecules in the presence of external electric fields is presented. Highly accurate, full-dimensional variational calculations provide a basis of field-free rovibrational states for evaluating the rovibrational matrix elements of high-rank Cartesian tensor operators and for solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation. The effect of the external electric field is treated as a multipole moment expansion truncated at the second hyperpolarizability interaction term. Our fully numerical and computationally efficient method has been implemented in a new program, RichMol, which can simulate the effects of multiple external fields of arbitrary strength, polarization, pulse shape, and duration. Illustrative calculations of two-color orientation and rotational excitation with an optical centrifuge of NH3 are discussed.
A simplified vocal tract model explores the production of sibilant fricatives
Authors: Wolverton Mark
Published: March 2018

New 3-D rectangular model proves effective in investigating vocal acoustics and production mechanisms.
Understanding and enhancing comprehensibility in texts for patients in an institutional health care context in Spain
Authors: García-Izquierdo Isabel , Montalt Vicent
Published: March 2018

This paper aims to analyse text comprehensibility in a corpus of Fact Sheets for Patients (FSPs) in Spanish as used in a real clinical and institutional setting in Spain; and to provide data and criteria that can help writers and translators to enhance text comprehensibility when dealing with FSPs. Regarding the methodology, we analysed a corpus of FSPs in Spanish in three subsequent stages: (1) readability formulae, (2) expert analysis, and (3) questionnaires and focus-groups addressing the real target readership of patients. Experts produced improved versions of two of the texts that were then compared and judged by the patients. According to the Inflesz/Word correlation we used in our analysis most texts of the corpus fall within normal difficulty values. However, the communication experts made critical comments about some of them regarding both readability and legibility and patients expressed the need for improvement of some aspects of the texts. This fact leads us to conclude that there is considerable room for improvement in FSPs in Spanish. Highly-sensitive patients and situations require the participation of real patients as readers in order to achieve the optimum degree of quality of originals and translations. Therefore, patients’ perceptions can be crucial to medical writers and translators when writing FSPs in a more comprehensible and empathetic way.
The expression of emotion in institutionalized legal opinion
Authors: Orts Llopis María Ángeles
Published: March 2018

The present work carries out a contrastive study of interpersonal devices between two corpora of legal opinion in English and Spanish, with a view to assessing the different use that is made in these languages of the indicators of emotion, evaluation and appreciation as to the ideational context of these texts. The antecedents of the present study are found in the Appraisal theory, which constitutes the interpretation ofHalliday’s (1994/2004)Systemic-Functional Linguistics by the Sydney School. Through the analysis of an ad-hoccorpus of forty opinion columns from two prestigious and influential newspapers,El Paísand The New York Times, aims to understand how the use of the different evaluation resources advocated by Appraisal theory (Affect, Judgment and Appreciation) varies depending on the way legal opinion articles as genres are conceived in the languages and cultures under scrutiny. In other words, it tries to deepen into the different application of the prototypical rhetorical strategies used to express emotion and evaluation, through which the different ideological positions of the institutionalized press are naturalized.
Caregiving and Generativity
Authors: Black Helen K. , Groce John T. , Harmon Charles E.
Published: March 2018

African-American men revealed a unique type of generativity. It was rooted in their experiences as African-American men, including the foundation they received from family and their experiences of marginalization and racism in the wider world. They believed they had received a legacy from ancestors that was “a responsibility, a warning, and a promise to the five generations that follow them” (Black, Groce, & Harmon, 2011, p. 167). In this chapter we explore the contextual generativity that men disclose. That is, generativity that sprang from the unique circumstances of their lives as African Americans; their ability to be generative “despite the small container the larger world allowed them” (Harmon as cited in Black et al., 2011, p. 3).
Debussyism, Anti-debussyism, Neoclassicism
Authors: Wheeldon Marianne
Published: March 2018

Chapter 3 considers the effects of the contingencies of music and cultural history on reputation. The arrival of new artists or aesthetic tendencies on the Parisian scene forced writers to reconsider the recent musical past and to reshape it in accordance with present-day concerns. Cocteau, Les Six, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg all had significant implications for Debussy’s posthumous reception as historical frameworks were revised to integrate or denigrate Debussy’s position vis-à-vis recent musical developments. Chapter 3 examines three musical currents of the 1920s—debussyism, anti-debussyism, and neoclassicism—all of which had a notable impact on the early formation of Debussy’s legacy. Whereas the postwar turn to anti-debussyism was undoubtedly harmful for the composer’s legacy, Chapter 3 considers how the development of neoclassicism over the course of the 1920s was ultimately beneficial for the first stages of its recovery.
A Dictionary of Finance and Banking
Authors: Law Jonathan
Published: March 2018

Over 5,500 entries

The sixth edition of this bestselling dictionary has been fully revised and updated to take into account the ever-developing financial landscape of the last five years. This comprehensive A–Z defines terms from all aspects of personal and international finance, including money markets, private investments and borrowing, central banking, foreign exchanges, monetary policy, and public and government finance. Now with expanded international coverage to reflect the ongoing globalization of financial markets and rapidly developing areas in finance and banking, with new entries such as village banking, Islamic Development Bank, and revolving loan fund.

With clear and accessible definitions, this jargon-free dictionary is a companion volume to the other financial titles in this bestselling series—A Dictionary of Business and Management, A Dictionary of Accounting, and A Dictionary of Economics—and provides accurate and valuable information for students, practitioners, private investors, and readers of the financial pages alike.
5. The evolution of development aid
Authors: Goldin Ian
Published: March 2018

Foreign aid is any kind of official development assistance, concessionary loan, or financial grant given to developing countries mainly for the purpose of economic development or welfare provision. ‘The evolution of development aid’ describes the improved aspects of aid since the end of the Cold War with greater aid effectiveness achieved by targeting poverty reduction efforts more directly. It also outlines the eight Millennium Development Goals and the subsequent seventeen Sustainable Development Goals proposed in 2015; describes the range of development finance institutions and their response to the debt crisis; and explains the higher levels of investment in global public goods that are required to prevent global catastrophes.
1. What is genomics?
Authors: Archibald John
Published: March 2018

The term ‘genome’ is used to refer to the sum total of DNA inside the single or multiple cells that make up an organism. Complex organisms often have more than one genome. ‘What is genomics?’ looks at the biology of the two main types of cells—prokaryotes and eukaryotes—and explains the double-helix structure of DNA. There are four bases in DNA—adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T)—and their specific chemical characteristics govern how the two strands of the double helix interact. To completely sequence an organism’s genome is to determine the precise order of all of the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts in its DNA.
8. Prometheus
Authors: Ellis Erle C.
Published: March 2018

The Anthropocene continues to be controversial across the many scholarly communities that study social and environmental change, including not only archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and environmental historians, but also ecologists and Earth scientists. Will creating a new unit of geologic time help to advance scientific efforts to understand Earth’s human transformation? ‘Prometheus’ considers the new challenges faced by Earth System science: the anthroposphere, geoengineering, and the need to guide efforts to adapt to an increasingly dynamic human planet. Given the overwhelming scale, rate, and diversity of harmful global environmental changes produced by human societies, it is hard not to view the Anthropocene as an unmitigated disaster, but could a better Anthropocene be a possibility?
Viruses are everywhere
Authors: Crawford Dorothy H.
Published: March 2018

‘Viruses are everywhere’ describes the ‘virosphere’—the huge virus biomass of enormous variety and complexity in the environment. Viruses are the most numerous microbes on Earth with an estimated 100 million different types. They are also the most abundant life forms in the oceans. Marine viruses kill an estimated 20–40 per cent of marine bacteria every day, and as the major killer of marine microbes, they profoundly affect the carbon cycle by the so-called ‘viral shunt’. Viruses are also important to land-based ecosystems. Despite their tiny size, viruses are proving to be of prime importance in the stability of ecosystems worldwide. The possibility that viruses exist in outer space is also considered.
Kill or be killed
Authors: Crawford Dorothy H.
Published: March 2018

‘Kill or be killed’ shows how viruses survive—they must reproduce before the host either dies or its immune system recognizes and eliminates them. The transmission routes of viruses such as flu, measles, common cold, herpes simplex virus, HIV, Epstein–Barr, and hepatitis B are discussed. How do we fight viruses? All living organisms have defences against invading viruses. Vertebrates, and possibly some invertebrates, are immune to re-infection by the same virus. Another protective mechanism, used by plants, but also by insects and other animal species, is gene silencing by RNA interference. The human immune response is explained, discussing the role of lymphocytes and immunopathology, where the immune response may actually harm the body.
Viruses past, present, and future
Authors: Crawford Dorothy H.
Published: March 2018

‘Viruses past, present, and future’ looks at the changing pattern of virus infections through the ages and speculates about how humans and viruses might interact in the future. Viruses, such as smallpox and yellow fever, have debilitated populations across the globe throughout history. New research technologies will allow a greater number of ‘new’ viruses to be identified, leading to preventive vaccines and novel treatments. However, we may also face potential man-made virus threats from biological weapons of mass destruction to the unwitting promotion of pathogenic viruses, possibly through xenotransplantation, immune-suppressed chemotherapy patients, or viruses escaping from laboratories due to poor safety measures.
Impact of Question Type and Question Order on Tobacco Prevalence Estimates in US Young Adults: A Randomized Experiment
Authors: Johnson Amanda L , Villanti Andrea C , Glasser Allison M , Pearson Jennifer L , Delnevo Cristine D
Published: March 2018

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of question type, order, and inclusion of product images on tobacco use estimates in a national sample of young adults. Participants aged 18–34 years (N = 4,100) in the Truth Initiative Young Adult Cohort Study (2016) were randomized to one of five question types assessing ever and past 30-day use of tobacco products: (1) “select all that apply” list (checklist, CL); (2) breakout items for each product (B); (3) breakout + images (B + I); (4) CL and B; and (5) CL and B + I. The order of question type was randomly assigned in groups 4 and 5. Bivariate analyses estimated product-specific prevalence by question type/order. Ever cigarette and cigar use prevalence was higher and ever e-cigarette use was lower in B and B + I than in CL. Ever hookah use was higher in B + I than in CL. Past 30-day e-cigarette use was 8.3% higher and past 30-day smokeless use was 13.0% higher in B + I than in CL. In groups 4 and 5, higher prevalence of ever cigarette, cigar, hookah, and past 30-day smokeless use was observed when B was presented first. Question type, order, and inclusion of images affect prevalence estimates of tobacco use.

Implications

This study identifies the effects of question type, order, and inclusion of product images on tobacco use estimates in a national sample of young adults. Ever use and past 30-day use prevalence estimates of specific products were affected by respondents answering breakout items or breakout items with images compared with respondents answering a checklist of items in the survey. Current surveys that include a “select all that apply” list format may be underestimating ever and past 30-day prevalence estimates of tobacco products.
The Effects of Nicotine and Tobacco Use on Brain Reward Function: Interaction With Nicotine Dependence Severity
Authors: Addicott Merideth A , Sweitzer Maggie M , McClernon F Joseph
Published: March 2018

Introduction

This study investigated the effects of nicotine/tobacco on neural activation during performance of a monetary incentive delay task.

Aims and Methods

Prior to each scan, nonsmokers received nicotine or placebo nasal spray, and smokers were smoking satiated or 24-hour withdrawn. During the scan, participants made timed responses to reward-related cues and received feedback. Parameter estimates from cue- and feedback-related activation in medial prefrontal regions and the nucleus accumbens were extracted and underwent within- and between-group analyses. Smokers’ nicotine dependence severity was included as a continuous predictor variable for neural activation.

Results

Among smokers (n = 21), withdrawal decreased cue-related activation in the supplementary motor area and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the difference in activation (satiety > withdrawal) in these regions negatively correlated with nicotine dependence severity (Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence). Among nonsmokers (n = 22), nicotine increased the difference in nucleus accumbens activation between rewarded and nonrewarded feedback phases. Tobacco withdrawal and acute nicotine also had widespread effects on activation throughout the brain during the feedback phase.

Conclusions

Acute nicotine in nonsmokers may have increased the salience of feedback information, but produced few effects on reward-related activation overall, perhaps reflecting nicotine’s modest, indirect effects on reward processing. Conversely, tobacco withdrawal decreased activation compared with satiety, and this difference between conditions correlated with nicotine dependence severity. This suggests that as smokers become more dependent on nicotine, tobacco withdrawal has a more pronounced effect on reward processing.

Implications

Relative to the acute effects of nicotine in nonsmokers, withdrawal from daily tobacco use had more significant effects on reward-related brain activation. This study suggests that the effects of tobacco withdrawal on reward-related brain function interact with subjects’ level of nicotine dependence severity. These are potentially important sources of variability that could contribute to smoking cessation outcomes.
Sundered Flocks, Militant Godliness, and the Woes of Embattled Churchgoers during the Civil War
Authors: Volkman Lucas P.
Published: March 2018

Chapter 5 provides new insights into exactly how the vicious wartime struggle between pro- and antislavery partisans in Missouri drew impetus from antagonistic northern and southern evangelical worldviews infused by religious belief and sentiment. Conflict between northern and southern evangelicals over the question of slavery contributed substantially to the pro- and antislavery guerrilla depredations that disrupted congregations and church activities through the bloody conflict. This chapter also demonstrates that northern and southern evangelicals invoked Divine Providence variously to justify their respective causes and to settle the daunting existential question of which worldview was true.
Wartime Trials and Tribulations
Authors: Volkman Lucas P.
Published: March 2018

Chapter 6 reveals that antislavery Unionists embraced the view that disloyalty to the United States and support of slavery were tantamount to sin. Northern evangelicals, Union troops, and Radical Republicans sought to impose these beliefs on southern evangelicals as a new civil religion via wartime ecclesiastical sanctions and loyalty oaths. Such sentiments also prompted Union authorities to muzzle the proslavery evangelical press, while spurring Unionist evangelicals to appropriate the church buildings of their proslavery counterparts. Challenged in the courts by dispossessed southern evangelicals, these were seizures that local tribunals under Radical control ratified. This variegated body of law, however, did not determine such outcomes as much as the religious, social, and political preferences of partisan judges. Their rulings, moreover, obscured the division between church and state, while powerfully generating popular understandings of evangelical faith and the armed struggle.
The Image as Text and Context in Early Mormon History
Authors: Cannon Jeffrey G.
Published: March 2018

In “The Image as Text and Context in Early Mormon History,” Jeffrey G. Cannon examines the creation of images that capture aspects of the foundational period of Mormonism though made in subsequent decades. Understanding the context for the creation of these images facilitates a discernment of their full meaning to later generations. While very few contemporary images of early Mormonism exist, later attempts to document or illustrate the movement’s origins inform the Mormon attitudes of their own past. Cannon looks at several frequently used photographs or images and the context in which they were created, revealing in them the rivalry and insecurity over competing succession claims and how Mormons made sense of their identity following the death of Joseph Smith.
“Here It Is Told”
Authors: Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles María
Published: March 2018

Chapter 1 offers readers a more general understanding of the significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe in México and the United States. It introduces the traditional story, dating back to the 16th century, when Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to have appeared to a Nahua man by the name of Juan Diego and charged him with the task of asking the local Catholic bishop to build a hermitage in her honor. The author follows with a general overview of Our Lady of Guadalupe in history, theology, US politics and the entertainment industry, Chicana feminist thought, and her influence in Latina/o communities in the United States today.
The Making of Girls in the Mexican Catholic Imagination
Authors: Del Socorro Castañeda-Liles María
Published: March 2018

Obedience and respect are typically defined as a positive (both at the level of feeling and as action) toward another person or entity. However, while engaging in this type of behavior may be perceived as positive, this does not necessarily mean that it is a positive experience for women. The performance of obedience and respect can also be actions exercised by a girl who, out of free will or obligation, is moved to not disrupt the status quo imposed by a given culture, society, and religion. The author argues that the Catholic culture in which the mothers socialized the participants also provides the parameters within which they learn how to be good girls in ways that reduces a girl’s agency to rubble.
A History of DIY Recording
Authors: Bell Adam Patrick
Published: March 2018

Chapter 1 charts the evolution of DIY recording from Edison’s first successful recording in 1877 to the present era of digital audio workstation (DAW)-dependent recording. Examining a recording technology’s ease of access and ease of use during a given era—the prime determinants of self-sufficiency—the viability of DIY recording is assessed from decade to decade. DIY recording is as old as the phonograph, and has a long lineage in recording history, best exemplified by “sound-on-sound” pioneer and guitar namesake Les Paul. With key advancements in recording techniques such as overdubbing and multitracking being popularized by Les Paul and other DIY-ers during the early era of tape recording, conventions and conceptions of recording music were challenged and changed. Instead of performing for the recording, the recording process became the performance, and this recording consciousness, devised in DIY studios, has persevered to the present.
Displacements on a Pathless Terrain
Authors: Goodstein Elizabeth S.
Published: March 2018

Kafka’s Der Proceß exposes the irrationality generated in and through the (bureaucratic) rationalization of the law. But the text operates as a modernist spectacle, inscribing the reader into the process it describes, by which the self-creation of the social converges with the negation of the subject. It thus presents the seductive possibility of absolutizing K.’s experience—as existentialist paradigm, as apophatic revelation, and as allegory for modernity. But such modes of reading elide the distinctions between judge and victim, witness and bystander, and thereby reify and reinforce the very operations of the law that Kafka dissects. In the author’s own terms, they “belong to the court.” Walter Benjamin’s unfinished encounter with Kafka suggests a strategy of reading that better resists the insidious temptation of submission to the modernist spectacle, which construes a process at once absolute and arbitrary as the modern (subject’s) fate.
Socio-Economic Inequality in Health
Authors: Middleton Nicos , Ellina Panayiota , Zannoupas George , Lamnisos Demetris , Kouta Christiana
Published: March 2018

Socioeconomic position (SEP) refers to the relative place an individual or a social group holds within the structure of society. SEP is determined by a multitude of factors, from individual and household circumstances across the life course to social processes operating at higher levels. Even though a complex construct, it is often operationalized using single person-based indicators and/or subjective measures of an individual’s own perceived position in the social ladder. Furthermore, recognizing that social stratification is geographically defined, area-based measures place a community in the socioeconomic disadvantage continuum and are used to quantify the magnitude of geographically defined social inequalities Data driven approaches have been mostly used to construct socioeconomic deprivation indices, commonly using census-based indicators which reflect the sociodemographical compositions of areas. Increasingly, a wider set of methods are been used to capture features of a community’s environment pertaining to the physical, built and social environment.
The Military Response Today
Authors: Freilich Charles D.
Published: March 2018

Chapter 7 assesses Israel’s military responses to the primary threats it now faces. It argues that Israel has gained overwhelming conventional superiority, but that it is unclear whether it could have effectively attacked Iran’s nuclear program. Israel has reduced terrorism to a level its society can tolerate, but it remains a strategic threat, nevertheless. Israel does not yet appear to have an offensive response to the Hezbollah and Hamas threats, at an acceptable price, requiring greater emphasis on defense. Conversely, there have been over 10 years of quiet with Hezbollah, partly because of the deterrence gained in 2006. Israel’s rocket defenses largely neutralized the Hamas threat during the 2014 operation, and if a similar lull is gained with Hamas, limited deterrence will have been achieved. The real challenge is Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. Israel has become a global leader in cybersecurity but is concerned that its adversaries will narrow the gap.
Seeking Accommodations
Authors: McCrory Calarco Jessica
Published: March 2018

Chapter 4 describes social class differences in children’s efforts to seek accommodations from teachers. Classroom rules, procedures, and expectations sometimes conflicted with students’ individual needs or desires. In those situations, middle-class children treated rules as flexible—trying to negotiate changes and exemptions. When middle-class children were caught breaking rules, they would offer excuses for their actions, and they were generally able to avoid punishment by doing so. Working-class children almost never tried to negotiate changes to or exemptions from rules, expectations, and procedures. They treated rules as fixed and adjusted their behavior accordingly. When working-class students were caught misbehaving, they rarely offered excuses; instead, they endured their punishment without complaint. Those contrasting approaches to rules and expectations also contributed to inequalities. Because teachers generally said “yes,” middle-class students had more opportunities to express their creativity, experienced less discomfort and fewer inconveniences at school, and even avoided consequences for misbehavior.
Conclusion
Authors: McCrory Calarco Jessica
Published: March 2018

This chapter argues that the middle-class advantage is, at least in part, a negotiated advantage. That argument has implications for research on cultural capital, teacher bias, student resistance, and teacher authority. It also supports recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in reducing class-based inequalities in school. First, I urge teachers to be sensitive to social class differences in student problem-solving. Second, I encourage schools to alleviate the challenges teachers face in assessing and responding to students’ individual needs. Third, I call on policymakers to avoid deficit-oriented programs that teach working-class students to act like their middle-class peers. Those programs ignore the fact that working-class families are often the ones complying with institutional expectations and the fact that middle-class families are the ones demanding support in excess of what is fair or required. Thus, unless educators are willing to deny such requests, middle-class children will always stay one step ahead.
Thinking Through Breast Cancer
Authors: Cutter Mary Ann G.
Published: March 2018

Anyone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer or is acquainted with someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer knows that cancer raises a host of questions concerning its nature, how we know it, and how we treat it. Such questions frame the difficult decisions that patients must make about their treatment, care, and mortality. Thinking Though Breast Cancer: A Philosophical Exploration of Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival is a philosophical investigation of the second leading cause of cancer death among women. It is a study of how breast cancer is described, explained, evaluated, and socialized in medicine. Further, it is an investigation of the ethical implications of understanding breast cancer. These include the extent to which informed consent is secured, patient harms are minimized, patient benefits are maximized, and access to appropriate breast cancer care is made possible. The inquiry draws on clinical information as well as philosophical advice and provides suggestions about how to navigate the complex and, at times, uncertain terrain of breast cancer knowledge and care. In this way, the book is not simply an academic overview of what we know about breast cancer. It is a personal search for guidance about managing the complex, confusing, and scary terrain of breast cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
How Is Breast Cancer a Social Phenomenon?
Authors: Cutter Mary Ann G.
Published: March 2018

The question “How is breast cancer a social phenomenon?” raises a host of issues, including ones about the collaboration, medicalization, commodification, and politicalization of breast cancer. What we find is that initially our understanding of breast cancer appears to be insulated from social, nonmedical, economic, and political forces. But things are not as simple as one would initially think. Upon reflection, breast cancer is a collaborative endeavor, one framed by formal and informal social forces. Breast cancer is medicalized, commodified, and politicalized. The medicalization of breast cancer is found in cases of labeling a breast phenomenon as “carcinoma” or “cancer” when it is not. The commodification of breast cancer comes about through endowing it with economic and commercial value. The politicization of breast cancer comes about through endowing breast cancer with political agency, as found in debates about breast cancer policy and law.
The Problem of Self-Creation
Authors: Callard Agnes
Published: March 2018

The new values, acquisition of which constitutes my act of self-creation, must be either continuous or discontinuous with the ones I already have. If they are continuous, I am not changing but rather working out the implications of the person I already was. If they are discontinuous and the new values contradict or come at a tangent to my old values, the change is not a product of my agency. I change, but I do not change myself. This paradox, adapted from the work of Galen Strawson, can be solved if we allow that the direction of value-dependence may be teleological: the aspirant’s values depend on, and are entailed by, those of the person she is trying to be. The aspirant does not fashion, control, or make the self she creates. Instead, she looks up to that self, tries to understand her, endeavors to find a way to her.
Bringing Back Gendered States
Authors: True Jacqui
Published: March 2018

Feminist scholars of international relations argue that gender is central, not peripheral, to the constitution of the state and to change “in” and “of” the interstate system. Western and non-Western patriarchal structures shape and constrain what states are, what they do, and how. They have played a crucial role in the constitution of state identities, diplomatic practices, and the maintenance, transformation, and expansion of the society of states. The unraveling of patriarchal structures in many parts of the world has implications for international society and the quest for order and justice. The increasing breakdown of patriarchal social contacts is fueling gendered violence at all levels, including the explicit targeting of women and girls in intrastate and international conflicts. This violence is at once an embodiment of, and a threat to, sovereign statehood.
A Global South State’s Challenge to Gendered Global Cultures of Peacekeeping
Authors: Pruitt Lesley J.
Published: March 2018

This chapter explores the first all-female formed police unit (FFPU) in UN peacekeeping, deployed from India to Liberia. The FFPU has fostered important outcomes supporting the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. However, global norms that presume efforts can only be “legitimate” when conducted in ways that align with particular, Global North approaches can hinder implementation of the WPS agenda. Such norms marginalize differences that intersect with gender and influence participation. Effective implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the WPS agenda will not occur under assumptions that only some states, or only certain kinds of states, can credibly contribute; instead, a plurality of approaches is needed.
The Economics of Commodities and Commodity Markets
Authors: Ielpo Florian
Published: March 2018

This chapter covers the economic fundamentals of commodity markets (i.e., what shapes the evolution of the price of raw materials) in three steps. First, it covers the theories explaining why the futures curve can be upward or downward sloping, an essential element for commodity producing companies. The evolution of inventories and hedging pressures are the two dominant sources of explanation. Second, the chapter reviews the fundamentals of commodity spot prices: technologies, supply, demand, and speculation. Production costs draw the long-term evolution of prices, but demand and supply shocks can trigger substantial variations in commodity prices. Third, the chapter presents how commodity prices interact with the business cycle. Commodities are influenced by the world activity but can also have a material impact on it.
Commodity Mutual Funds
Authors: Camilo Gustavo
Published: March 2018

The chapter describes the main institutional features of commodity mutual funds, including active management, the assets in which these funds invest, the process through which shares are bought and sold, the fees borne by investors, as well as the risks associated with investing in the funds. It also examines trends in fund flows and the correlations to commodity returns. Correlations to commodity returns are positive but lower than those of commodity exchange-traded funds that invest directly in underlying commodities, as opposed to commodity mutual funds, which invest largely in equities. Lastly, the chapter examines data on fees and net-of-expense commodity mutual fund performance between 1996 and 2016. The data show a decline in fund expense ratios over time, with the exception of large funds, negative average risk-adjusted performance using a four-factor model, and evidence consistent with lack of persistence in fund returns over the sample period.
Putin’s Favorite Oligarch
Authors: Brown Kate Pride
Published: March 2018

As Russian business emerged from collapse and mafia-style capitalism in the 2000s, the surviving oligarchs set their sights on the global market. As they entered the field of global capitalism, they learned the norms and business practices of Western capital, including corporate social responsibility. One corporation, Oleg Deripaska’s En+ Group, emerged as the primary corporate sponsor for Baikal environmentalism. Activists were ambivalent about the relationship, but accepted the money and donned the corporate logo. In so doing, these two generalizable power holders enacted a trade: money for virtue. Not only does such an interaction bolster the capacity of civil society, it also ensures its independence—only an independent civil sector can garner virtue and possess it in such a quantity to trade. Moreover, such a trade is superior to En+’s in-house attempt to create public will, because concern for the company’s image exceeds concern for environmental outcomes.
Coda
Authors: Brown Kate Pride
Published: March 2018

The coda brings readers up to date with developments around Lake Baikal since the study upon which the book is based was completed (2013–2017). The coda discusses the closing of the Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill, Mongolian dam projects on Selenga River tributaries, problems resulting from the growth in tourism, and a recent drop in the level of Baikal below the officially safe minimum. The coda also informs readers about the trajectories of the people and organizations described in the book in the years since 2013. Only one of the three principal organizations comprising this study remains, but the individuals are still involved in a variety of environmental projects around Lake Baikal.
Trance Systems
Authors: Weinel Jonathan
Published: March 2018

This chapter explores how sound systems place electronic sounds in a social context, eliciting powerful affective experiences that are framed by conceptual meaning. The chapter begins by tracing the origins of the sound system culture and dub-reggae of Jamaica. This approach, which prioritizes DJ performances over ‘live’ musicians, would prefigure the electronic dance music culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Exploring this area, this chapter examines how the design of Chicago house and Detroit techno provided high-energy dance experiences that reflected the ethos of the respective sub-cultures. Later, in the UK rave scene, breakbeat hardcore, drum & bass, and ambient house each used sound design to support an accelerated youth-culture fuelled by ecstasy, delivering trance-like experiences framed by conceptual meaning. In the global Goa trance and psy-trance scenes, this capability is explicitly characterized as ‘technoshamanic’, and the DJ as a ‘master of ecstasies’.
Virtual Unreality
Authors: Weinel Jonathan
Published: March 2018

This chapter explores altered states of consciousness in interactive video games and virtual reality applications. First, a brief overview of advances in the sound and graphics of video games is provided, which has led to ever-more immersive capabilities within the medium. Following this, a variety of games that represent states of intoxication, drug use, and hallucinations are discussed, in order to reveal how these states are portrayed with the aid of sound and music, and for what purpose. An alternative trajectory in games is also explored, as various synaesthetic titles are reviewed, which provide high-adrenaline experiences for ravers, and simulate dreams, meditation, or psychedelic states. Through the analysis of these, and building upon the previous chapters of Inner Sound, this chapter presents a conceptual model for ‘Altered States of Consciousness Simulations’: interactive audio-visual systems that represent altered states with regards to the sensory components of the experience.
When to Let Go
Authors: Honig Dan
Published: March 2018

This chapter illustrates what Navigation by Judgment is and some of its basic costs and benefits relative to Navigation from the Top. Navigation by Judgment is an organizational strategy in which front-line employees are able to meaningfully guide their organization’s work based upon their judgments. Key to Navigation by Judgment is that this judgment guides not merely the application of policy but also substantive strategic direction. This chapter introduces the basic trade-off between principal control and agent initiative as well as the parallel tension between Navigation by Judgment and top-down controls. It also differentiates Navigation by Judgment from autonomy and discretion.
Gender in Sámi Shamanism
Authors: Fonneland Trude
Published: March 2018

Religion is a core unit in terms of how gender stereotypes are produced and realized. By exploring how shamans in Norway use the past to construct narratives of gender in the present, my presentation in this chapter represents an attempt to localize religion and culture in a social and gendered reality.
If You Meet the Buddha on the Road
Authors: Jerryson Michael
Published: March 2018

It is said that the famous ninth-century Chinese Buddhist monk Linji Yixuan told his disciples, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” The statement deliberately confounds people and is meant to jolt them from complacent ways of thinking. However, beyond this purpose there is another. One should seek the inner Buddha nature that resides within, not an external Buddha for liberation. In this way, the thought of killing the Buddha dislodges a person from the illusionary perspective that enlightenment lies outside her/himself. The proclamation also highlights the power of violence, even on a symbolic level. Violence abounds in Buddhist thoughts, doctrine, and actions. However, it is not widely acknowledged or understood. This book addresses one important absence in the study of religion and violence: the religious treatment of violence. In order to pursue an understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and violence, it is important to first ask, how do Buddhist scriptures and Buddhists understand violence? Drawing on Buddhist treatments of violence, this book explores the ways in which Buddhists invoke, support, or justify war, conflict, state violence, and gender discrimination. In addition, the book examines the ways in which Buddhists address violence as military chaplains, cope with violence in a conflict zone, and serve as witnesses of blasphemy to Buddhist doctrine and Buddha images.
Still Life
Authors: Fay Jennifer
Published: March 2018

China’s Three Gorges Dam is the largest hydroelectric megadam in world history and the subject of Jia Zhangke’s digital film Still Life (2006), Liu Xiaodong’s oil paintings, and Yang Yi’s digital photographs. Built in part to address the problems of global warming, the dam has had a number of surprising effects on the environment and has led to massive displacement of people to make way for the water. Jia populates his film with migrant workers, refugees, tourists, visitors, and even aliens from outer space, none of whom are at home in this world. Jia captures the city at the moment of its undoing, a place that is changing, he remarks, too fast for film. Reading Jia’s film together with Liu and Yang’s artwork and through the genre of still life painting, the chapter argues that Jia’s film envisions a kind of minimal hospitality that emerges when the world is past.
The Fourth Warner Brother
Authors: Smyth J. E.
Published: March 2018

Bette Davis crafted her career in opposition to conventional images of femininity, battling for equal treatment and pay, and by the end of the 1930s, the media, her fans, and the Hollywood industry itself paid tribute to “Queen Bette.” While Harry, Sam, and Jack Warner concealed their repressive studio practices behind the mask of a family brand, as “the fourth Warner Brother” Davis shrewdly promoted filmmaking’s capacity for transparency, realism, and equality, from her public contract dispute in 1936 to her unconventional roles and off-screen persona. While a number of actresses kept their distance from long-term studio contracts, Davis put her “team player” capital to good use. As president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, president of the Hollywood Canteen, and public Democrat, she built networks of working women inside Hollywood and inspired her female fans to develop their independent political voice and faith in equal rights.
Joining the Choir
Authors: Manglos-Weber Nicolette D.
Published: March 2018

Immigration and race are contentious issues in North America. As a result, black immigrants from Ghana and other countries of West Africa face significant challenges, even as their experiences and accomplishments confound stereotypes about blacks and foreigners. Religious congregations have often helped immigrants navigate the tricky waters of integration in the past; yet how do these particular black immigrants approach organized religion in light of their identities and aspirations? What are they looking for in religious membership, and how do they find it? In Joining the Choir, the author takes a deeply personal look at the lives of a few central characters in Accra, Ghana, and in Chicago, examining what religious membership means for them as Christians, transnational Ghanaians, and aspirational migrants. She sheds light on their search for people they can trust, and their desires to transcend divisions of race, ethnicity, and nationality in the context of Evangelical Christianity. Her characters are memorable, as motivated but also adaptable persons with complex identities and goals, for whom religious membership answers some questions of integration while raising others. Their stories show how racial divides are subtly perpetuated within congregations in spite of hopes for religious integration. Yet they also reveal the potential of religious-based personal trust to bridge those divides, as an imaginative and symbolic “leap of faith” in the unknown stranger. Finally, their stories highlight the continuing role of religion as a portable basis of trust in the modern world, where more and more people live between nations.
Introduction
Authors: Manglos-Weber Nicolette D.
Published: March 2018

The introduction to the book presents its central argument about religious membership as a basis of social trust. It explains the background of the research, particularly trends in immigration to the United States and the historic place of the religious congregation as a vehicle for integration. It describes the changes that have occurred in immigration since the 1960s, and how greater diversity among immigrants has led to wide variation in patterns of integration. It also explains how these trends, along with the global rise in Evangelical Christianity, have affected how new immigrants interact with the religious landscape of the United States, and in particular how they view available options for religious membership. Finally, it presents the central research questions of the study, and gives an overview of how the research was conducted.
The Setting
Authors: Manglos-Weber Nicolette D.
Published: March 2018

This chapter presents the historical and conceptual background to the book’s argument. It starts with a history of Ghana, followed by an analysis of the trends that have led to high levels of out-migration, and then to a description of Ghanaian populations in Chicago. Next, it addresses the concept of social trust in general and personal trust in particular, developing a theory of personal trust as an imaginative and symbolic activity, and analyzing interracial relations through the lens of racialized distrust. It concludes by describing the role of religion in the integration of immigrant groups into the United States and the particular religious frameworks that characterize Charismatic Evangelical Christianity in Ghana.
The Sources of Risk
Authors: Manglos-Weber Nicolette D.
Published: March 2018

There are a number of reasons why aspirational migrants from Ghana are engaged in a particularly risky enterprise. This chapter analyzes the sources of that risk in both the modern Ghanaian context of economic growth and inequality and in the U.S. context of anti-immigrant sentiment and the racial order. The chapter focuses particularly on how these larger forces place a strain on their relationships, both with others in the immigrant community and with native-born Americans in the host community. It shows how even extended migrant networks, which are usually portrayed as a resource for transnational migrants, can be a source of risk in the context of high aspirations and group competition.
The Nature of Faith
Authors: Manglos-Weber Nicolette D.
Published: March 2018

This final empirical chapter shows how becoming embedded in religious-based relationships of personal trust can effect changes in migrants’ personal trajectories. In other words, new religious memberships and their associated trust networks can lead transnational Ghanaians to revise their aspirations and negotiate their identities in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. One example is how dedicated members and leaders in the congregation often retrospectively attach new meanings to their migrations, coming to believe that they came abroad to serve the religious community, even if they were not aware of it at the time of their initial moves. Another example is how members base their identities in religion in order to transcend the significance of ethnic, racial, and national identities. These effects reinforce the central argument that religious memberships indeed serve as a basis of trust networks, which are the relations in which people answer questions about meaning, identity, and desires for the future.