bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The European Union Space Policy
Authors: Sigalas Emmanuel
Published: May 2018

The European Union Space Policy (EUSP) is one of the lesser known and, consequently, little understood policies of the European Union (EU). Although the EU added outer space as one of its competences in 2009 with the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the EUSP roots go back decades earlier.

Officially at least, there is no EUSP as such, but rather a European Space Policy (ESP). The ESP combines in principle space programs and competences that cut across three levels of governance: the supranational (EU), the international (intergovernmental), and the national. However, since the EU acquired treaty competences on outer space, it is clear that a nascent EUSP has emerged, even if no one yet dares calling it by its name.

Currently, three EU space programs stand out: Galileo, Copernicus, and EGNOS. Galileo is probably the better known and more controversial of the three. Meant to secure European independence from the U.S. global positioning system by putting in orbit a constellation of European satellites, Galileo has been plagued by several problems. One of them was the collapse of the public–private partnership funding scheme in 2006, which nearly killed it. However, instead of marking the end of EUSP, the termination of the public–private partnership served as a catalyst in its favor. Furthermore, research findings indicate that the European Parliament envisioned an EUSP long before the European Commission published its first communication in this regard. This is a surprising yet highly interesting finding because it highlights the fact that in addition to the Commission or the European Court of Justice, the European Parliament is a thus far neglected policy entrepreneur. Overall, the development of the EUSP is an almost ideal case study of European integration by stealth, largely in line with the main principles of two related European integration theories: neofunctionalism and historical institutionalism.

Since EUSP is a relatively new policy, the existing academic literature on this policy is also limited. This has also to do with the degree of public interest in outer space in general. Outer space’s popularity reached its heyday during the Cold War era. Today space, in Europe and in other continents, has to compete harder than ever for public attention and investment. Still, research on European space cooperation is growing, and there are reasons to be optimistic about its future.
Technocratic Government and Economic Policy
Authors: Alexiadou Despina
Published: May 2018

The surge in the appointments of technocrats to the top economic portfolios of finance since the 2009 Great Recession, and even the formation of fully technocratic governments in Europe, raises questions regarding the role of technocrats and technocratic governments in economic policy in democracies. Who are the technocrats? Why are they appointed in the first place? What is their impact on economic policy, and finally what are their sources of policy influence?

Surprisingly, we know little about the role of technocrats in economic policy despite their prominent presence in Eastern Europe since the early 90s and in Latin America since the early 80s. Technocrats were behind major market-conforming reforms in Latin America with lasting economic and political effects in the region. Technocrats we also appointed in many former Eastern European countries to reform the system of production and the labor market. Yet, to this day, we have little systematic knowledge and even less cross-regional comparative work on the policy effects of technocratic appointments.

Moreover, the term “technocrat” itself does have a shared meaning and is not uniformly used by scholars across the European and American continents, further inhibiting the study of technocrat policymakers. This article seeks to advance the study of technocratic government by providing a clear definition of a technocrat and of technocracy more generally; by reviewing the extant literature on the role of technocrats in economic policy with a special focus on the sources of their policy influence and finally by proposing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of technocrats as policymakers.
Psychological Considerations for Children and Adolescents in Sport and Performance
Authors: Fry Mary , Hogue Candace M.
Published: May 2018

There is a large literature base within the field of sport psychology that provides tremendous direction to coaches and parents on how to structure youth sport so that young athletes develop sport skills and concurrently reap psychological benefits from their sport participation. Much of this research has employed Nicholls’ Achievement Goal Perspective Theory and a Caring Framework to (a) identity the processes children undergo as their cognitive development matures across the elementary years, allowing them to accurately judge their ability by adolescence, (b) formulate their personal definitions of success in sport (develop their goal orientations), and (c) note features of the team and overall sport climate created by coaches and parents. Of particular importance is athletes’ perceptions of the motivational climate prevailing on their teams. Athletes can perceive a caring and task-involving climate where coaches reward effort, improvement, and cooperation among teammates, make everyone feel they play an important role on the team, and treat mistakes as part of the learning process. In contrast, athletes can also perceive an ego-involving climate where the coach rewards ability and performance outcome, fosters rivalry among teammates, punishes mistakes, and gives most of the recognition to a few “stars.”

When athletes perceive a caring and task-involving climate on their teams, they are more likely to have fun, exert high effort, experience intrinsic motivation, have better interpersonal relationships with coaches and athletes, display better sportsperson-like values and behaviors, have better psychological well-being, and even perform better. In contrast, when athletes perceive an ego-involving climate on their teams they experience fewer adaptive and positive motivational outcomes and greater problematic outcomes (e.g., increased cortisol; greater endorsement of unsportsperson-like behaviors). Research has clearly identified the benefits of coaches and parents creating a caring and task-involving climate for young athletes, yet there are still many ego-involving climates in the youth sport world. A number of organizations are committed to helping coaches and parents transform youth sport culture into a positive arena where young people can develop their athletic skills and have a rewarding sport experience.
Applications of Cognitive Neuroscience in Educational Research
Authors: De Smedt Bert
Published: May 2018

The application of neuroscience to educational research remains an area of much debate. While some scholars have argued that such applications are not possible (and will never be possible), others have been more optimistic and suggest that these are possible, albeit under certain conditions, for example when one aims to understand very basic cognitive processes. Concrete examples of these applications are increasing in the emerging interdisciplinary field of mind, brain, and education or educational neuroscience, which posits itself at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and educational research. From a methodological point of view, cognitive neuroscience can be applied to (some types of) educational research, as it offers a toolbox to investigate specific types of educational research questions. Promising applications of cognitive neuroscience to educational research include comprehending the origins of atypical development, understanding the biological processes that play a role when learning school-relevant skills, predicting educational outcomes, generating predictions to be tested in educational research, and undertaking biological interventions. The challenges of applying cognitive neuroscience deal with ecological validity, the scope of a biological explanation, and the potential emergence of neuromyths.
Rohingya: The History of a Muslim Identity in Myanmar
Authors: Leider Jacques
Published: May 2018

The name Rohingya denotes an ethnoreligious identity of Muslims in North Rakhine State, Myanmar (formerly Burma). The term became part of public discourse in the late 1950s and spread widely following reports on human rights violations against Muslims in North Rakhine State during the 1990s, and again after 2012. Claims for regional Muslim autonomy emerged during World War II and led to the rise of a Rohingya ethnonationalist movement that drew on the local Muslim imaginaire, as well as regional history and archaeology. To explore the historical roots of distinctive identity claims and highlight Buddhist-Muslim tensions, one must reach back to the role of Muslims in the precolonial Buddhist kingdom of Arakan and their demographic growth during the colonial period. Civic exclusion and state harassment under Burma’s authoritarian regimes (1962–2011) put a premature end to political hopes of ethnic recognition, and yet hastened a process of shared identity formation, both in the country and among the diaspora. Since the 1970s, refugees and migrants turned to Bangladesh, the Middle East, and Southeast Asian countries, forming a transnational body of Rohingya communities that reinvented their lives in various political and cultural contexts. A succession of Rohingya nationalist organizations—some of whom were armed—had negligible impact but kept the political struggle alive along the border with Bangladesh. Although Rohingya nationalists failed to gain recognition among ethnic and religious groups in Burma, they have attracted increasing international acknowledgment. For postdictatorial Myanmar (after 2011), the unresolved Rohingya issue became a huge international liability in 2017, when hundreds of thousands fled to Bangladesh following military operations widely interpreted as ethnic cleansing. In December 2017, the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights acknowledged that elements of genocide may be occurring.
Treaty Ports and the Foreign Community in Modern China
Authors: Cassel Pär
Published: May 2018

Unlike other parts of the non-European world, China was never fully colonized by the Western imperial powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Instead, the Western powers built up a network of open ports, where foreigners could reside and trade under the protective shield of consular jurisdiction and gunboat diplomacy. Even though the treaty ports arguably played a limited role in transforming China’s domestic economy, they became emblematic of China’s and East Asia’s encounter with capitalist modernity, and they left an indelible legacy on Chinese domestic politics and foreign relations. With the notable exception of Beijing and some other cities, most major urban areas in China today are former treaty ports and many of them were the first to open for trade when the People’s Republic of China embarked on economic reform in 1978.
The Interiors of Jupiter and Saturn
Authors: Helled Ravit
Published: May 2018

Probing the interiors of the gaseous giant planets in our solar system is not an easy task. It requires a set of accurate measurements combined with theoretical models that are used to infer the planetary composition and its depth dependence. The masses of Jupiter and Saturn are 317.83 and 95.16 Earth masses (M⊕), respectively, and since a few decades, it has been known that they mostly consist of hydrogen and helium. The mass of heavy elements (all elements heavier than helium) is not well determined, nor are their distribution within the planets. While the heavy elements are not the dominating materials inside Jupiter and Saturn, they are the key to understanding the planets’ formation and evolutionary histories.

The planetary internal structure is inferred from theoretical models that fit the available observational constraints by using theoretical equations of states (EOSs) for hydrogen, helium, their mixtures, and heavier elements (typically rocks and/or ices). However, there is no unique solution for determining the planetary structure and the results depend on the used EOSs as well as the model assumptions imposed by the modeler.

Major model assumptions that can affect the derived internal structure include the number of layers, the heat transport mechanism within the planet (and its entropy), the nature of the core (compact vs. diluted), and the location (pressure) of separation between the two envelopes. Alternative structure models assume a less distinct division between the layers and /or a non-homogenous distribution of the heavy elements. The fact that the behavior of hydrogen at high pressures and temperatures is not perfectly known and that helium may separate from hydrogen at the deep interior add sources of uncertainty to structure models. In the 21st century, with accurate measurements of the gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn from the Juno and Cassini missions, structure models can be further constrained. At the same time, these measurements introduce new challenges for planetary modelers.
Lunar and Planetary Geology
Authors: Basilevsky Alexander T.
Published: May 2018

Lunar and planetary geology can be described using examples such as the geology of Earth (as the reference case) and geologies of the Earth’s satellite the Moon; the planets Mercury, Mars and Venus; the satellite of Saturn Enceladus; the small stony asteroid Eros; and the nucleus of the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Each body considered is illustrated by its global view, with information given as to its position in the solar system, size, surface, environment including gravity acceleration and properties of its atmosphere if it is present, typical landforms and processes forming them, materials composing these landforms, information on internal structure of the body, stages of its geologic evolution in the form of stratigraphic scale, and estimates of the absolute ages of the stratigraphic units. Information about one body may be applied to another body and this, in particular, has led to the discovery of the existence of heavy “meteoritic” bombardment in the early history of the solar system, which should also significantly affect Earth. It has been shown that volcanism and large-scale tectonics may have not only been an internal source of energy in the form of radiogenic decay of potassium, uranium and thorium, but also an external source in the form of gravity tugging caused by attractions of the neighboring bodies. The knowledge gained by lunar and planetary geology is important for planning and managing space missions and for the practical exploration of other bodies of the solar system and establishing manned outposts on them.
Environment in the Global Political Economy
Authors: Haas Peter M.
Published: May 2018

The literature on the political economy of the global environment is a hybrid of political economy, international relations (IR), and international environmental politics, looking at the formal and informal institutional factors which give rise to unsustainable habits. The physical environment has long been the subject of social scientists, who recognized that patterns of social activity might contribute to environmental degradation. One of the most common formulations of environmental issues as a collective action is through the metaphor of the Tragedy of Commons, which argues that overpopulation worldwide would undoubtedly contribute to extensive resource depletion. Following the formulation of the core properties of environmental issues as lying at the interstices of a variety of human activities, implications followed for how to conduct research on international environmental politics and policy. Realist and neorealist traditions in international relations stress the seminal role of power and national leadership in addressing environmental problems. Neoliberal institutionalists look at the role of formal institutional properties in influencing states’ willingness to address transboundary and global environmental threats. On the other hand, the constructivist movement in international relations focuses on the role of new ecological doctrines in how states choose to address their environmental problems, and to act collectively. Ultimately, the major policy debates over the years have addressed the political economy of private investment in environmentally oriented activities, sustainable development doctrines, free trade and the environment, environmental security, and studies of compliance, implementation, and effectiveness.
American Foreign Mission Movement, c . 1870–1920s
Authors: Leavelle Tracy Neal
Published: May 2018

The American foreign mission movement at the turn of the 20th century adopted as its watchword “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” The rapid expansion of missionary boards and the enthusiasm of volunteers and supporters corresponded with European and US colonial expansion around the world. For many evangelical observers, the opening of the world seemed to offer the greatest opportunity yet to share the gospel with all. “The crisis of missions,” as one prominent author put it, required that Christians recognize the spiritual importance of this moment. Divine providence appeared to be removing obstacles to evangelization. Failure to act decisively would be a form of apostasy, an abandonment of responsibility toward God and the world.

Inspired by a revivalistic spirit, women and men joined a growing list of missionary and moral reform organizations. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions continued the work it had started in the early 19th century. New organizations like the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions and the World Student Christian Federation created networks that linked Christian evangelists and communities around the world. They published magazines, books, and pamphlets and sent inspectors, organizers, and speakers on tours of the United States and Great Britain and on grand transoceanic voyages. In 1910 the movement celebrated progress and planned for next steps at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland. Steeped in a sense of moral and racial superiority, attendees promised to transform the world.

Women found an increasingly important place in the US foreign missionary movement, especially as evangelical work diversified to include the establishment of schools and medical missions. American women labored in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere and eventually made up the majority of workers in the field. Women brought with them an ideology of domesticity that they hoped to share with their sisters abroad. Women from the US viewed local women in the missions as socially degraded and in desperate need of moral uplift. The moral authority that came with female standing in the home seemed to explain the elevated status and Christian liberty enjoyed by American women. At the same time, as more highly educated single women entered the field, the movement created space for new models of womanhood. These “New Women” lived independent lives out in the world, apart from the confines of the home.

American missionaries at the turn of the century became deeply entangled in the imperial connections of the United States and the world. While it would be a mistake to reduce their work simply to a particular strand of imperialism, it is important to understand their connections to American expansion. Missionaries took advantage of openings created by colonial activity and contributed to the spread of American cultural, political, and economic influence at a critical moment in the development of national power in the international arena.
American Religious Empire and the Caribbean
Authors: McKee Andrew R.
Published: May 2018

America has been closely linked to the Caribbean since at least the Age of Revolutions. Across the Atlantic World, revolutions in France, Santo Domingo, and the eastern United States drastically changed interlocked understandings of citizenship, religion, and freedom. From the 19th century onward, imperial views and laws about religions developed from prerevolutionary era roots. The dominant understandings of Caribbean religious history are those of migration, diaspora, syncretism, and diversity. Studying how the American religious empire worked to regulate and control the religious practices in the Caribbean shows how the distinct religions associated with the region—Obeah, Santeria, and Vodou, for example—developed. It is impossible to study the Caribbean without centering on the processes of Anglo-European colonization and the forced migration of enslaved peoples predominantly, but not only, from Africa. Labor and economic concerns underline nearly every Caribbean religious culture that exploded in the region from the colonial period onward.
Liberalism in American Religious History
Authors: Hedstrom Matthew S.
Published: May 2018

Liberalism describes an interrelated set of political and religious frameworks that grew out of the Enlightenment and the English, American, and French revolutions, though the term itself dates only from the early 19th century. Liberalism values individual rights and freedoms, secular rule of law, and reasoned public discourse, and has become the dominant political and economic philosophy of the Western democracies. Critics argue that there are oppressions entailed in this dominance, especially for women and racial, religious, and sexual minorities—members of groups that stand outside liberalism’s implicit, normative subjectivity—while proponents contend that liberal individualism has provided the conceptual framework for civil and human rights movements.

Liberalism has shaped religion in the West in two interrelated senses. As a political philosophy, liberalism considers religion to be a matter of personal conscience and free association, and advocates broad (if always imperfectly applied) religious freedoms. The religion clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution represent the quintessential legal forms of liberalism regarding religion. Liberalism has also greatly shaped religious thought and practice, especially among European and North American Protestants. Religious liberals have sought to apply reason, modern scientific and scholarly advances, and notions of minority rights and freedom of conscience to theology and ethics. Religious liberalism has shaped mainline Protestantism and related religious movements such as Unitarianism and Quakerism most especially, but also laid the groundwork for the growth of post-Protestant and post-Christian forms of spirituality. Given the historic dominance of Protestantism in the United States, Protestant liberalism has determined the nature of American secularism and thereby required theological and political adaptation from religious minorities, most notably Roman Catholics and Jews.
Science and Religion in America
Authors: Croce Paul J.
Published: May 2018

Science and religion provide alternative ways to understand the world. In American history, they have each commanded authority at different times and for different people and groups based on the varying appeal of knowledge and belief, of inquiry and conviction, and of liberal and traditionalist values. Science and religion have interacted with each other in many ways ranging from widespread harmony between them until the late 19th century to a spectrum of interactions that have included conflict, separation, integration of their insights, and spiritual kinship.

Colonial American science was dominated by religion, both in the concentration of ministers practicing what was then called natural philosophy and in the conviction that such inquiries would inevitably support religious truths. Common Sense philosophy articulated this calm confidence and buttressed the assurance of harmony between science and religion that dominated until the 1860s. However, even during this period, the tremendous growth in scientific information strained the harmonious relations of science and religion. Darwinism presented the most significant challenge to traditional religion by inaugurating a new approach to science: it was a theory supported by probabilistic plausibility rather than deterministic proof; Darwinian theory served as a synthetic framework for organizing natural facts and ongoing research, and its investigations did not require religious assumptions.

Since the late 19th century, science began to grow still more rapidly with greater professional organization and specialized investigations into a vast amount of information about the natural world, while religion became more pluralistic and more private on the American scene. With their distinct social and intellectual paths, science and religion could no longer operate with assumed harmony. Some advocates of each field took this as a reason to understand them in sharp conflict, however many more sought to renew their harmony, but on new, more intricate and diverse terms. The simplest ground for harmony, consideration of each domain in separate spheres, was suggested by their very distinct practices. However, when the very inquiries and reflections of these fields spilled beyond each of their own domains, other practitioners and observers in science and religion comprehended them in relation, with science adapting to religious questions or religion adopting scientific answers. For those who sought still deeper integration, inquiry about the relation of science and religion took them beyond the mainstreams in both fields for embrace of their spiritual kinship.

The varied methods and insights championed by science and religion have provided Americans with their deepest guideposts for being and doing: these fields supply varied paths of inquiry and conviction for comprehending the deepest character of the world and for choosing ways of living.
The “Classic” Age of Christian Worship, 4th–6th Century
Authors: Baldovin John F.
Published: May 2018

The 4th–6th centuries can be considered a classic period in the development of Christian worship. During this time many of the liturgical forms that are still recognizable today were consolidated: the architectural disposition of church buildings, the shape of the Eucharist and the various traditions of the eucharistic prayer, the rites of initiation, the annual liturgical cycle (calendar), and the rites associated with ordination, weddings, the anointing of the sick, penance, and the burial of the dead. This was the period in which the great diversity and variety that characterized the first Christian centuries gradually settled into the basic structures that are familiar today. At the same time, it was the period of the development of the great rites of Christian worship that were centered on the major cities of the Roman Empire: Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Edessa, Jerusalem, and Rome. The new diversity of these rites often corresponded to the various languages in which they were celebrated: Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and Latin.
Animals in Latin American History
Authors: Vergara Germán
Published: May 2018

The evolutionary history of vertebrate nonhuman animals such as mammals in what is now Latin America extends back tens of millions of years. Given that anatomically modern humans first appeared in Africa a mere 200,000 years ago and would not reach Latin America until some 12,000 years ago, nonhuman animals in the region evolved for most of their history without interference from human activities. Once they appeared, humans began to shape the history of the region’s animals in profound ways. In fact, one could argue that animal history in Latin America has been a story of increasing human impact; from the Paleo-Indians, who may have driven countless species of megafauna to extinction; to the agrarian societies that domesticated species such as dogs, turkeys, and llamas (or tolerated the animals’ self-domestication); to the radical transformations brought about by the Columbian Exchange; to the industrialization process of the last two centuries. But animal history in the region is also marked by adaptation and agency on the part of animals, who have influenced the course of human history. This dynamic and adaptive human–animal relationship has been pushed to the limit during extinction pulses, manifest in the currently accelerating biodiversity crisis. Environmental history makes the convincing case that any historical account that neglects the environment offers an inaccurate depiction of the past. By the same token, animal historians suggest that a more complete understanding of history requires redefining its boundaries to include the often underappreciated story of nonhuman species and their interrelationships with human societies.
The Virgin of Guadalupe as an Iconic Image in Mexican Culture
Authors: Villaseñor Black Charlene
Published: May 2018

According to believers, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared in 1531 to recent indigenous convert Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac, north of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, an area in the environs of Mexico City. The series of apparitions culminated with the miraculous appearance of her image imprinted on his native cloak, or tilma. This painting, housed in the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the Villa de Guadalupe in northern Mexico City, has been venerated from the 16th century. The Virgin of Guadalupe is considered the patroness of Mexico, and special protector of its native and mestizo populations. She is perhaps the best-known symbol of Mexico, and her image is very common in the fine and popular arts. She has played a number of roles over the centuries—as object of religious devotion, emblem of national pride, symbol of peace and justice, and feminist icon. Similarly, her image has transformed over time, from the original sacred icon of 1531 to controversial contemporary images from the 1970s. Her image is also frequent in the United States, where 20th- and 21st century Chicana/o (Mexican American) artists represent her in community murals, prints, photographs, sculptures, and paintings. Chicana (Mexican American) women artists have transformed her into a feminist icon, generating controversy and provoking censorship in both the United States and Mexico. Held sacred by many Mexican, Chicana/o, and Latina/o Catholics, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe has never been neutral, but instead, represents the mutability and political potential of Catholic sacred imagery.
Foreign Travelers in Mexico
Authors: Garza James A.
Published: May 2018

The history of foreign travel to Mexico has been dependent on the country’s political, economic, and social conditions. Travel restrictions, banditry, the condition of transportation routes and ports, political stability, revolution, and the development of a tourist industry have all played a role in how travelers have written about Mexico. Despite periodic challenges, Mexico has proven to be an alluring destination for foreign travelers since the colonial era. Men and women have journeyed to Mexico for different reasons, some on official business and others for pleasure or to escape their lives back home, and in turn have produced numerous accounts that have served to attract more visitors and have functioned as a valuable source of information on the everyday life of Mexico’s peoples. Still others have traveled to Mexico for conquest, and while their motivations were violent, their journals have served as a guide for those interested in retracing the same routes. Travelers have depicted landscapes, communities, peoples, and practices; offered insight into important historic periods; and depicted Mexico as exotic, bountiful, primitive, or dangerous.

This historical topic is divided into three distinct eras: the colonial period, the 19th century, and the 20th century. The Spanish Crown restricted foreign travel to Mexico during the colonial era (1521–1821), resulting in the relative scarcity of accounts from the period. Foreign travelers during this period were conquistadors, clerics, officials, or explorers, all with varying degrees of literacy. During the 19th century, foreign travelers came in three overlapping waves: the early republic era (1821–1840), when most were either investors or diplomats; the middle period (1830–1870), an era dominated by soldiers, travelers, and archeologists; and the Porfiriato (1876–1911), when investors and wealthy tourists flooded Mexico. The 1910 Mexican Revolution marks the beginning of Mexico’s 20th century and two distinct periods of foreign travel, both influenced by state power and violence. The revolutionary and state-building era (1910–1946) saw foreign travelers as primarily war journalists and writers exploring the effects of the revolution’s social and cultural measures. After World War II, foreign travelers encountered the tourism era (1946–1968), a period under the influence of a burgeoning state tourism industry. Despite this challenge, travelers, many of them writers, carved out their own niches.
War and Peace between Mexico and the United States in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Authors: Zoraida Vázquez Josefina
Published: May 2018

The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) formed the background for independence movements in the Americas. Great Britain increased its colonial land and was forced to make reforms in order to govern its territory, as was Spain, in order to modernize. Their subjects felt the consequences. Because of their experience in politics, those from the Thirteen Colonies resisted and eventually declared independence in 1776. France had been weakened by its losses and recognized the Confederation in 1778, before drawing Spain into the short fight. Because they were less important than their territory in the West Indies, Great Britain recognized their independence in 1783, ceding them the territory up to the Mississippi. The French Revolution allowed them to strengthen their government, trade as a neutral country, and purchase Louisiana in 1803.

New Spain was unfortunate in that it was a valuable viceroyalty of Spain, and, as it did not have allies, its long and bloody fight broke apart the administration. Upon achieving independence in 1821, it found itself in a deplorable situation. Impoverished and without political experience, it aroused the ambition of new trade countries and of the United States, the uninhabited territory to its north. To populate it, Mexico offered facilities and attracted American settlers, who violated the conditions that had been set and declared independence in Texas, joining the United States in 1845.

Mexico’s political inexperience, coupled with the siege coming from Spain, France, and the United States, prevented the country from consolidating a system of government and reviving its economy. By 1840, it exhibited a substantial contrast with the United States, which had a stable government, a connected and productive territory, and a growing population. In 1845, after annexing Texas, population reached nearly 20 million, while Mexico scarcely had 7 million.

By the time the United States initiated the attack, the result was foreseeable. Various armies were invading, and their fleets seized the ports in February 1847. New Mexico and California had been invaded and annexed, and the occupation was a heavy burden, as President Polk forced Mexico to pay. The bitter peace treaty was signed in 1848, and the United States’ newly annexed territory stretched to the Pacific.
The Reforma Period in Mexico
Authors: Vanderwood Paul , Weis Robert
Published: May 2018

By revealing the weaknesses of its political system and the fragmentation of its social fabric, Mexico’s devastating loss to the United States in 1848 forced a reexamination of the nation’s very foundation. It also emboldened leaders to redouble efforts to either refashion Mexico into a modern, democratic republic or strengthen colonial-era institutions that had ensured unity and stability despite cultural and regional heterogeneity.

Those who hoped to modernize Mexico were the liberals. Their ideas regarding the depth and pace of change varied considerably. But they coalesced around broad principles—democracy, secularism, and capitalism—that, they insisted, would help Mexico overcome the vestiges of colonialism. In pursuit of equality under the law, liberals proposed to dismantle legal privileges for nobles, ecclesiastics, and the military. In order to stimulate the economy, they wanted to force corporate entities, especially the church, to sell their lands to individual owners. Finally, liberals sought to establish the primacy of the state by granting civil leaders authority over the church.

Conservatives countered that the liberal program and its exotic ideas constituted an attack on Mexico’s Hispanic Catholic legacy and would only further weaken the nation. It was a chimera, if not demagoguery, to declare the equality of citizens in a society where the masses were illiterate, isolated hamlets who barely spoke Spanish, and residents in the far-flung regions regarded national rule with deep suspicion. Conservatives feared that the liberal program would foster more of the peasant revolts, threats of regional succession, and racial antagonism that had roiled the nation since independence. They wanted to conserve the pillars of order—the military and the Catholic Church—reinstate monarchism, and curtail political participation. Liberals and conservatives vociferously debated these divergent visions in the public forum. But ultimately their differences plunged the country into civil war.
Integrating Access and Functional Needs in Community Planning for Natural Hazards
Authors: Campbell Nnenia
Published: May 2018

Populations that are rendered socially invisible by their relegation to realms that are excluded—either physically or experientially—from the rest of society tend to similarly be left out of community disaster planning, often with dire consequences. Older adults, persons with disabilities, linguistic minorities, and other socially marginalized groups face amplified risks that translate into disproportionately negative outcomes when disasters strike. Moreover, these disparities are often reproduced in the aftermath of disasters, further reinforcing preexisting inequities. Even well-intentioned approaches to disaster service delivery have historically homogenized and segregated distinct populations under the generic moniker of “special needs,” thereby undermining their own effectiveness at serving those in need.

The access and functional needs perspective has been promoted within the emergency management field as a practical and inclusive means of accommodating a range of functional capacities in disaster planning. This framework calls for operationalizing needs into specific mechanisms of functional support that can be applied at each stage of the disaster lifecycle. Additionally, experts have emphasized the need to engage advocacy groups, organizations that routinely serve socially marginalized populations, and persons with activity limitations themselves to identify support needs. Incorporating these diverse entities into the planning process can help to build stronger, more resilient communities.
Global Climate Change and the Reallocation of Water
Authors: Larson Rhett B.
Published: May 2018

Increased water variability is one of the most pressing challenges presented by global climate change. A warmer atmosphere will hold more water and will result in more frequent and more intense El Niño events. Domestic and international water rights regimes must adapt to the more extreme drought and flood cycles resulting from these phenomena.

Laws that allocate rights to water, both at the domestic level between water users and at the international level between nations sharing transboundary water sources, are frequently rigid governance systems ill-suited to adapt to a changing climate. Often, water laws allocate a fixed quantity of water for a certain type of use. At the domestic level, such rights may be considered legally protected private property rights or guaranteed human rights. At the international level, such water allocation regimes may also be dictated by human rights, as well as concerns for national sovereignty. These legal considerations may ossify water governance and inhibit water managers’ abilities to alter water allocations in response to changing water supplies. To respond to water variability arising from climate change, such laws must be reformed or reinterpreted to enhance their adaptive capacity. Such adaptation should consider both intra-generational equity and inter-generational equity.

One potential approach to reinterpreting such water rights regimes is a stronger emphasis on the public trust doctrine. In many nations, water is a public trust resource, owned by the state and held in trust for the benefit of all citizens. Rights to water under this doctrine are merely usufructuary—a right to make a limited use of a specified quantity of water subject to governmental approval. The recognition and enforcement of the fiduciary obligation of water governance institutions to equitably manage the resource, and characterization of water rights as usufructuary, could introduce needed adaptive capacity into domestic water allocation laws. The public trust doctrine has been influential even at the international level, and that influence could be enhanced by recognizing a comparable fiduciary obligation for inter-jurisdictional institutions governing international transboundary waters.

Legal reforms to facilitate water markets may also introduce greater adaptive capacity into otherwise rigid water allocation regimes. Water markets are frequently inefficient for several reasons, including lack of clarity in water rights, externalities inherent in a resource that ignores political boundaries, high transaction costs arising from differing economic and cultural valuations of water, and limited competition when water utilities are frequently natural monopolies. Legal reforms that clarify property rights in water, specify the minimum quantity, quality, and affordability of water to meet basic human needs and environmental flows, and mandate participatory and transparent water pricing and contracting could allow greater flexibility in water allocations through more efficient and equitable water markets.
TEcandidates: prediction of genomic origin of expressed transposable elements using RNA-seq data
Authors: Valdebenito-Maturana Braulio , Riadi Gonzalo
Published: May 2018

Motivation

In recent years, Transposable Elements (TEs) have been related to gene regulation. However, estimating the origin of expression of TEs through RNA-seq is complicated by multi-mapping reads coming from their repetitive sequences. Current approaches that address multi-mapping reads are focused in expression quantification and not in finding the origin of expression. Addressing the genomic origin of expressed TEs could further aid in understanding the role that TEs might have in the cell.

Results

We have developed a new pipeline called TEcandidates, based on de novo transcriptome assembly to assess the instances of TEs being expressed, along with their location, to include in downstream DE analysis. TEcandidates takes as input the RNA-seq data, the genome sequence and the TE annotation file and returns a list of coordinates of candidate TEs being expressed, the TEs that have been removed and the genome sequence with removed TEs as masked. This masked genome is suited to include TEs in downstream expression analysis, as the ambiguity of reads coming from TEs is significantly reduced in the mapping step of the analysis.

Availability and implementation

The script which runs the pipeline can be downloaded at http://www.mobilomics.org/tecandidates/downloads or http://github.com/TEcandidates/TEcandidates.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Fourier–Mukai Transform on a Compactified Jacobian
Authors: Bhosle Usha N , Singh Sanjay Kumar
Published: May 2018

We use Fourier–Mukai transform to compute the cohomology of the Picard bundles on the compactified Jacobian of an integral nodal curve $Y$. We prove that the transform gives an injective morphism from the moduli space of vector bundles of rank $r \ge 2$ and degree $d$ ($d$ sufficiently large) on $Y$ to the moduli space of vector bundles of a fixed rank and fixed Chern classes on the compactified Jacobian of $Y$. We show that this morphism induces a morphism from the moduli space of vector bundles of rank $r \ge 2$ and a fixed determinant of degree $d$ on $Y$ to the moduli space of vector bundles of a fixed rank with a fixed determinant and fixed Chern classes on the compactified Jacobian of $Y$.
How Media Influences Perceptions of Suicide
Authors: Sofer Dalia
Published: May 2018

A panel separates myths from facts.
Caring with Intention: Hospice Care and the Human Family
Authors: Dee Vivian
Published: May 2018

Updated several times a week with posts by a wide variety of authors, AJN's blog Off the Charts allows us to provide more timely—and often more personal—perspectives on professional, policy, and clinical issues. Best of the Blog will be a regular column to draw the attention of AJN readers to posts we think deserve a wider audience. To read more, please visit: www.ajnoffthecharts.com.
Clinical Outcomes in Preterm Infants Following Institution of a Delayed Umbilical Cord Clamping Practice Change
Authors: Fenton Christen , McNinch Neil L , Bieda Amy , Dowling Donna , Damato Elizabeth
Published: May 2018

Background:

Evidence supports a significant reduction in the incidence of intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) in preterm infants receiving delayed umbilical cord clamping (DCC).

Purpose:

This study evaluated clinical feasibility, efficacy, and safety outcomes in preterm infants (<36 weeks' gestational age) who received DCC following a practice change implementation intended to reduce the incidence of IVH.

Methods:

Infants receiving DCC (45-60 seconds) were compared with a sample of infants receiving immediate umbilical cord clamping (<15 seconds) in a retrospective chart review (N = 354). The primary outcome measure was the prevalence of IVH. Secondary safety outcome measures of 1- and 5-minute Apgar scores, axillary temperature on neonatal intensive care unit admission, and initial 24-hour bilirubin level were also evaluated. Gestational age was examined for its effect on outcomes.

Results:

Although the small number of infants with IVH precluded the ability to detect statistical significance, our raw data suggest DCC is efficacious in reducing the risk for IVH. For infants 29 or less weeks' gestational age, admission axillary temperature was significantly higher in those who received DCC. No differences were found in 1- and 5-minute Apgar scores, 24-hour bilirubin level, or hematocrit level between the two groups. Infants more than 29 weeks' gestational age who received DCC had significantly higher 1-minute Apgar scores, temperature, and 24-hour bilirubin level.

Implications for Practice:

Clinicians should advocate for the implementation of DCC as part of the resuscitative process for preterm neonates.

Implications for Research:

Future studies are needed to evaluate the effect of DCC on other clinical outcomes and to investigate umbilical cord milking as an alternative approach to DCC.