bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Population Biology of Culicoides-Borne Viruses of Livestock in Europe
Authors: Gubbins Simon
Published: February 2021

Culicoides biting midges are the principal vectors for a number of internationally important arboviruses that infect animals. Over recent decades two viruses they transmit, bluetongue virus (BTV) and Schmallenberg virus (SBV), have emerged as major threats to European livestock. Here, the host, vector, viral, and environmental factors which influence the transmission of these viruses are reviewed. The influence of these factors on the patterns of spread that followed their emergence are explored, both for different viruses (BTV and SBV) and for different strains of the same virus (BTV). Finally, consideration is given to the longer-term dynamics of Culicoides-borne viruses and, in particular, their ability to persist from one vector season to the next.
Habsburg Histories of Internationalism
Authors: Sluga Glenda
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores points of ideological and institutional intersection in the Habsburg and Austrian past in the context of a new historiography of internationalism and studies of the League of Nations. Drawing from the expanding historiography of international ideas and institutions, on the one hand, and the uncollected evidence of people and politics of the Habsburg empire-cum-Austrian republic, on the other, its intention is to gauge the political, cultural, and economic significance of strands of the ‘new internationalism’ in the history of the Habsburg empire, and its afterlife. This is nowhere more obvious than in the persistent invocations, through the first half of the twentieth century, of the affinities between the post-First World War history of internationalism and Austria’s prewar experience with diversity and multi-nationality, and the persistent political and cultural ambitions attached to the specific idea of Weltösterreich.
Beyond the League of Nations
Authors: Lemmen Sarah
Published: February 2021

The founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918 was, at its core, an international endeavour—campaigned for during wartime exile in Europe and the USA and internationally confirmed during the Paris Peace Treaty—and this international orientation continued throughout the interwar period. International security mechanisms were put in place, most notably through the founding of the Little Entente as well as through a strong involvement in the League of Nations. Beyond these ties to international organizations that were to guarantee the country’s safety, this chapter traces examples of worldwide outreach and public debates pertaining to the global standing of Czechoslovakia, focusing on its relations with countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. These world regions played a significant role in Czechoslovakia’s quest for a global diplomacy, a global economy, or even the founding of Czechoslovak colonies, and highlight the country’s orientation far beyond the Central European scope.
A Mystery within an Enigma. The Economy 1355 to 1375
Authors: Bailey Mark
Published: February 2021

The economic response to plague outbreaks in 1348–9 and 1361 has long puzzled historians. Despite the collapse in population, landholding size remained small and prices of foodstuffs remained high, causing the real wages of the mass of the populace to fall below their pre-plague level. The traditional explanation for this paradox is that a combination of seigniorial repression, the spare capacity in the pre-plague economy, monetary inflation, and a succession of poor harvests created an ‘Indian Summer’ for landlords, where rents, prices, and profits remained unexpectedly buoyant. But this oversimplifies the complexities of the period, and a careful reconstruction of what actually happened helps to explain its paradoxical elements. This chapter surveys the wide range of responses in different sectors of the economy, principally increases in mean household incomes and shifting patterns of consumption. Supply-side responses were remarkably rapid in some sectors (textiles, brewing), but sluggish in others. Responses were disrupted by a succession of extreme events—recurrent plague outbreaks, climate change, and repeated livestock epidemics—that generated uncertainty and risk for producers. Historians have tended to generalize too broadly about the third quarter of the fourteenth century, which is a pivotal period of change deserving much closer and more careful scrutiny.
Injustice and Revolt
Authors: Bailey Mark
Published: February 2021

If a seigniorial reaction did not materialize in the generation after the arrival of Black Death, and if villeinage really was dissolving rapidly during that period, how then do we explain the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381? The arguments and evidence for the centrality of serfdom to the revolt are discussed, and the latest research into the targets and participants considered. This chapter takes its lead from new approaches to medieval revolts, which move away from modern preoccupations with class and revolution to reconstruct how common grievances united disparate groups of people. It explores the experience of royal justice—principally the labour laws and the leasing of hundreds—from ‘below’, based upon a fresh dissection of the legislation and original research into petitions, the sessions of JPs and King’s Bench, and other court records. The nature of the legislation, the mechanics of its enforcement, the powers and discretion vested in local officials well below the level of the JPs, and the wide range of jurisdictions for handling and sanctioning the same offence resulted in wide inconsistencies in its enforcement. This created divisions within communities, not just along class lines between lord and peasant, and generated common cause and forged temporary alliances among diverse groups. The unifying aim of the rebels was the removal of all forms of lordship other than the king and the removal of all intermediary private and royal courts: opposition to serfdom was one element within this greater aim.
A New Equilibrium? Economy and Society, 1375 to 1400
Authors: Bailey Mark
Published: February 2021

Historians have traditionally argued that the social and economic equilibrium of the post-plague period was finally established with the downturn in grain prices from the late 1370s and the softer policies of landlords after the revolt of 1381. Upon closer inspection, however, neither the economic nor the social trends were so straightforward. First, the economy experienced three distinct sub-periods and did not finally stabilize until the late 1390s. Second, the deteriorating economic conditions combined with changing attitudes to labour to fuel social conflict during the 1380s between certain types of landlords and their villein tenants and serfs. Tougher seigniorial attitudes are evident in the targeting of hereditary serfs on a few estates and in draconian revisions to the labour laws in 1388. This mini seigniorial reaction failed, however, and the bark of the new legislation proved worse than its bite. From the early 1390s the great landlords largely abandoned direct exploitation of their demesnes, running down their administrative structures and further releasing their grip upon their peasantry. The implications of all these changes by the 1390s for a possible golden age of the peasantry are discussed.
Scales of Memory
Authors: Collings Justin
Published: February 2021

Since the Second World War, constitutional justice has spread through much of the democratic world. Often it has followed in the wake of national calamity and historical evil—whether fascism or communism, colonialism or apartheid. Unsurprisingly, the memory of such evils plays a prominent role in constitutional adjudication. This book explores the intersection of constitutional justice and collective memory. It focuses on three jurisdictions—the United States, Germany, and South Africa—and on three towering evils—Nazism, apartheid, and slavery. It argues that courts tend to approach historic evil through one of two principal modes of memory: the redemptive mode, which treats the evil past as an aversive reference point against which the new constitutional order must aggressively define itself; and the parenthetical mode, which treats the evil past as an aberration from an otherwise noble tradition. The redemptive mode emphasizes caesura, the redemptive mode continuity. Most courts deploy both modes at various times. But some tend to emphasize one over the other, and some tend to fuse the two in something of a hybrid. These emphases have consequences. They help shape the stability of a constitutional regime, and they profoundly influence a polity’s capacity to come to terms with its past.
After Hitler: 1951–1975
Authors: Collings Justin
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the German Constitutional Court’s engagement with the memory of Nazism in the first quarter century of the Court’s operation. The chapter shows how the Court came to identify itself, internally and externally, as an overtly anti-Nazi institution. It highlights how the Court construed the postwar German Basic Law as a fundamentally anti-Nazi document and the basis of an anti-Nazi state. The most dramatic case in this regard is the Court’s Civil Servants judgment of 1953, which is discussed at length. The chapter also explores the mnemonic backdrop to the Court’s landmark fundamental rights judgments of the late-1950s. The chapter concludes by discussing the Court’s 1975 abortion judgment, which controversially invoked the memory of Nazism to explain why the right to life had a different valence in Germany than in other democratic states, and why the German Constitution accordingly required the state to protect unborn life throughout the duration of pregnancy.
Finale
Authors: Guirao Fernando
Published: February 2021

The Nine failed to establish an industrial free-trade area with Spain and thus to gain access to the Spanish market, the largest west European industrial market outside their direct influence. The decision of the Council of Ministers of the European Communities, in October 1975, to suspend FTA negotiations with Spain, without denouncing the 1970 Agreement, meant the ultimate success of the Spanish government’s politico-economic strategy, the last episode of the European rescue of the Franco regime. The EC Council decision might have been inevitable in terms of public opinion and democratic morality, but it meant to permit Madrid to retain full control over the country’s import policy while fully exploiting the export prospects offered by the 1970 Agreement. In the end, the decision was detrimental for the overall interests of all the parties involved, whether the Spanish population or Western Europe. The final section of this book invites economic historians to estimate the costs of the Spanish EEC policy concerning the inefficient allocation of resources, weak technological transfer, lesser accompanying investment, and limitations to total-factor-productivity increases. Political historians, in turn, should explore what specific interests explain, in each case, why, if official Spanish trade practices in export promotion and import restriction gave the Six every incentive to denounce the 1970 Agreement, apart from obvious political reasons, they did not do so. Finally, scholars dealing with Spanish EEC-membership negotiations should determine the extent at which the Community experience over the 1970 Agreement explains Community attitudes towards some Spanish demands after 1979.
Historiography
Authors: de Lisle Christopher
Published: February 2021

Study of the literary sources on Agathokles has been characterized by speculation on the lost sources that our surviving sources might have used. This chapter endorses the recent trend of seeing the surviving texts as works of literature in their own right, but emphasizes that to do this it remains necessary to understand what we can of the sources that confronted surviving sources. Firstly, what is known about the lost authors—Antandros, Kallias, Douris, and Timaios—is presented with an emphasis on the limits of our knowledge about them. Then, Diodoros, Justin/Trogus, Polyainos, and other surviving sources on Agathokles are discussed, focusing on how the sources that they had available to them and their approach to them shaped their narratives of Agathokles and how their accounts of him were also shaped by their broader narrative purposes and themes.
Coinage
Authors: de Lisle Christopher
Published: February 2021

The only truly contemporary source material that we have for Agathokles is his coinage and it has a number of stories to tell that no other source offers. The circulation patterns of Agathokles’ coinage show that Syracuse’s economic interactions with the wider world under Agathokles were similar to those which took place under his predecessor Dionysios. Quantification of Agathokles’ coinage allows us to compare his economic resources with those of his predecessors and contemporaries. The iconography of Agathokles’ coinage shows the same effort to connect Agathokles to both his Sicilian predecessors and Macedonian contemporaries. The idea that the legends and iconography of Agathokles’ coins illustrate a transition from tyrant to Hellenistic king is challenged.
Two Non-senses of “Probability”
Authors: Myrvold Wayne C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter engages in some ground-clearing. Two concepts have been proposed to play the role of objective probability. One is associated with the idea that probability involves mere counting of possibilities (often wrongly attributed to Laplace). The other is frequentism, the idea that probability can be defined as long-run relative frequency in some actual or hypothetical sequence of events. Associated with the idea that probability is merely a matter of counting of possibilities is a temptation to believe that there is a principle, called the Principle of Indifference, which can generate probabilities out of ignorance. In this chapter the reasons that neither of these approaches can achieve its goal are rehearsed, with reference to historical discussions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It includes some of the prehistory of discussions of what has come to be known, misleadingly, as Bertrand’s paradox.
Moral Disagreement and Reason-Giving
Authors: Sinclair Neil
Published: February 2021

According to practical expressivism, moral disagreement is a species of disagreement in attitude whereby agents have moral commitments that advocate incompatible policies of action and reaction. This follows from a unified general account of disagreement as involving mental states that cannot collectively fulfil their constitutive functions, and the practical expressivist hypothesis that the constitutive function of moral attitudes is to advocate and reinforce collective patterns of action and reaction. To reason in favour of a moral claim is to cite a feature of the world to which the related moral attitude is a response, typically in order to alter the attitudes of others. Further, the constraint of ascriptive supervenience and a standing preference for ‘guiding’ over ‘goading’ in moral discussion make sense in light of the practical function that practical expressivism attributes to moral practice. A general pattern for some aspects of moral discourse can be discerned, and this pattern can be applied to the phenomenon of moral avoidability.
Subsentential Metasemantics
Authors: Sinclair Neil
Published: February 2021

A subsentential metasemantics provides an explanation of the meaning of subsentential parts. Practical expressivism holds that moral predicates’ contribution to the explanation of meaning is a function from the subject of a sentence to a moral attitude directed at that subject. Similarly, non-moral or descriptive predicates contribute a function from the subject of a sentence to a descriptive representation (a belief) that attributes a property to that subject. These claims are consistent with standard views of quantifiers as allowing us to make claims about the scope of the correct application of the predicates they govern, and tenses as delineating the range of subjects to which those predicates apply. The explanation of meaning provided by practical expressivism is potentially compatible with truth-conditional semantic theories so long as practical expressivists can claim that moral sentences are truth-apt.
Long-run stock market returns
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents facts and concepts regarding long-run stock market returns. It starts out briefly defining stock returns.The chapter then looks at the historical data, starting with US data and then turning to international data. It decomposes stock returns into a risk-free rate and a risk premium. The chapter also introduces concepts that will be used repeatedly throughout the book, such as different kinds of averages (arithmetic and geometric), standard deviations, variances, and other important concepts in finance.The chapter presents stylized facts about long-run stock returns. It does not try to explain what generates these returns. This is the topic of subsequent chapters.
Drivers of stock returns
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter demonstrates how we can decompose stock returns into three underlying ‘drivers’:Yield, growth, and valuation change.The chapter also examines the relative importance of each driver for stock returns.It shows that changes in valuations contribute only little to stock returns over very long horizons, but are of first-order importance for stock returns over shorter horizons. This insight will be important when we in Part V deal with expectations to future stock returns.When valuation changes cancel out in the long run, long-run returns will be given as the sum of the first two components. In simple terms, in the long run, stock returns are ‘yield plus growth’.
Predicting short-to-medium horizon returns
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter lays out what we know about stock return predictability on the short-to-medium horizon. It recognizes that most of the fluctuations in the stock market are unpredictable, but characterizes those that are. Another important lesson of this chapter is that stock markets are very volatile in the short run but appears to be less so in the long run. Paradoxically, this implies that it looks as if we can say a little more about the future movements in the stock market when dealing with the longer run (several years). From today until tomorrow, or next week, we can say very little. The chapter illustrates how stock returns are somewhat predictable by indicators such as the yield spread and the dividend yield.
Predicting returns over several decades
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at expectations of returns several decades out. This is obviously a difficult task, as fundamental economic structures might change over such long periods. But we need multi-decade forecasts in certain situations. One conclusion of this chapter is that we must look beyond variables that predict turning points in the business cycle and stock-price multiples when dealing with the very long run. Over multiple decades, we will live through multiple business cycles. Variables that predict the next business cycle will not be particularly informative about the returns we expect over many decades. The chapter focuses on the deep underlying drivers of long-run returns, primarily expectations to long-run economic activity.The chapter also looks at expected long-run interest rates.
Diverse Threats, Diverse Responses
Authors: Ghiselli Andrea
Published: February 2021

As the Chinese leadership became more aware of the threats to the country’s interests overseas, this chapter shows that the different agencies under their control started to change and adapt. While the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was the first to undergo significant change as great efforts were made to establish and strengthen the consular protection system, the Chinese Communist Party set up the Central National Security Commission in order to improve inter-agency coordination to respond to non-traditional security threats overseas. Even state-owned companies tried to adapt to the new situation and, in an interesting twist, they attempted (and failed) to lobby the government in order revise and expand the legislation. Naturally, the People’s Liberation Army, too, had to change. The analysis of the institutional and doctrinal evolution of the Chinese military reveals the marked sophistication of the thinking about Military Operations Other Than War overseas and the growing preparation to carry them out in the post-2011 period.
Guarding the Interest Frontiers
Authors: Ghiselli Andrea
Published: February 2021

The Chinese government’s changing understanding of the relationship between non-traditional security issues and foreign policy, that is, the same process behind the awareness of the necessity to protect the interest frontiers, has driven and shaped China’s military footprint in Africa and the Middle East since the 1990s. Hence, it is not surprising that the quantity, the type, and the ways that Chinese military assets have been deployed there started to change as Chinese policymakers became more convinced of the necessity to use military tools to support the efforts to protect the lives and assets of Chinese nationals and firms. A Chinese multidimensional security architecture has emerged in recent years with the newly opened base in Djibouti at its center. The presence of Chinese soldiers changed from being country- to subregion-focused and from single- to multipurpose-oriented. Yet, this chapter also shows how two key issues—the difficulties of acting through the United Nations and technical and legal uncertainties—have shaped this process.
What Is Doxa?
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: February 2021

I have argued that Plato conceives of doxa first and foremost as cognition of what seems. This may sound like a marginal or technical notion. This chapter argues that it is in fact central to Plato’s thought. Throughout the dialogues Plato is particularly concerned to point out and warn against two cognitive deficiencies: (1) the tendency to mistake images for reality (“dreaming”), and (2) the failure to look beyond particular phenomena to underlying unifying explanations (atheoretical thought). Given his epistemology and metaphysics, Plato holds that these two deficiencies go together, and thus he is concerned with a particular way of thinking that exemplifies both. This way of thinking, moreover, is naturally characterized as cognition of what seems. I show how this view of doxa relates to previous interpretations.
Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics
Authors: Mauldin Joshua
Published: February 2021

Recent political events around the world have raised the specter of an impending collapse of democratic institutions. Contemporary worries about the decline of liberal democracy harken back to the tumult of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe. Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived in Germany during the rise of National Socialism, and each reflected on what the rise of totalitarianism meant for the aspirations of modern politics. Engaging the realities of totalitarian terror, they avoided despairing rejections of modern society. Beginning with Barth in the wake of the First World War, following Bonhoeffer through the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany, and concluding with Barth’s postwar reflections in the 1950s, this study explores how these figures reflected on modern society during this turbulent time and how their work is relevant to the current crisis of modern democracy
Against Trivialism and Mere-Verbalism (and Toward a Better Understanding of the Kind of Non-Factualism Argued for in This Book)
Authors: Balaguer Mark
Published: February 2021

Chapter 2 does two main things. First, it distinguishes the kinds of non-factualist views argued for in this book from two other kinds of anti-metaphysical views, namely, trivialist views and mere-verbalist views. Second, it argues that (a) mere-verbalist views are false, and given this, (b) trivialist views are metaphysically irrelevant in the sense that even if they’re true, they’re metaphysically uninteresting and unimportant. This is important for two different reasons. First, trivialist and mere-verbalist views have been extremely popular among philosophers—they’ve been endorsed by, e.g., Hume, Carnap, Putnam, Dennett, Parfit, van Fraassen, Chalmers, Hirsch, Thomasson, Sidelle, Schiffer, Rayo, and Sosa—and so it’s important to see how my non-factualist views differ from these more popular views. Second, the arguments that I construct for my non-factualist views later in the book depend on the arguments that I give in this chapter for the metaphysical irrelevance of trivialist views.
Speculations
Authors: Earlie Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the vexed relationship between deconstruction and science. ‘Speculation’ is a term common both to Derrida’s early reading of Hegelian speculative philosophy and to his extensive reflection on psychoanalysis in texts such as La Carte postale (The Post Card). In its account of Freud’s singular synthesis of concrete observation and fictive speculation in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, La Carte postale provides an unexpectedly rich interrogation of the logic of scientific discovery, one at odds with recent caricatures of Derrida’s thought by proponents of a ‘speculative’ materialism. Freud’s speculations on the pleasure principle allow Derrida to explore psychoanalysis’s status as a ‘positive’ science, its relationship to technology (or technoscience), as well as the limits of psychoanalysis’s own self-delimitation vis-à-vis its various others: metaphysics, religion, and literature or fiction. Positive science’s structural dependency on ‘speculative fictions’ has implications for our understanding of both science and fiction, but it also has implications for recent calls by neuropsychoanalysts to do away with the speculative dimensions of psychoanalytic inquiry.
Politics of Affect
Authors: Earlie Paul
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the importance of affect in Derrida’s understanding of the political. The recent ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences is often seen as a turn away from the earlier ‘textualist’ models of poststructuralism. This chapter shows that affect is, however, central to deconstruction and to Derrida’s account of the relationship between subjectivity and the political, a relationship it traces to Derrida’s involvement in the 1980s with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique (Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political). Derrida’s writings on the political (le politique) and on politics (la politique) begin from the premise that the passionate bonds which tie us to ourselves and to others are always accompanied by anxiety in the face of loss or destruction. This aporia, which emerges in dialogue with Freud’s theory of affect and group psychology, is fundamental to the psychical (an)economy of the subject of deconstruction. The latter poses difficult questions to contemporary philosophical and theoretical approaches to affect, some of which are explored here. Texts such as Politiques de l’amitié (Politics of Friendship), Voyous (Rogues), and Le “concept” du 11 septembre (Philosophy in a Time of Terror) underscore how politics can exploit the fragility of the bond between self and other in promising an end to anxiety. For Derrida, however, such anxiety is interminable because it is part of the aporetic structure of subjectivity from the very beginning.
Agency, Force, and Inertia in Descartes and Hobbes
Authors: Brown Deborah
Published: February 2021

Deborah Brown looks at how Hobbes and Descartes used the language of ‘tendency’ in their natural philosophies. She contrasts the problems that arise for Hobbes as he tries to reduce tendencies away with a Descartes, for whom ‘tendency talk is not a mere façon de parler’ but rather is ‘real and causally explanatory’, and who strives to incorporate inherent tendencies into his broader mechanistic ontological framework. The resulting interpretation of Descartes sees him as much closer in his conception of natural laws to Nancy Cartwright than to David Lewis. One of the real benefits of this interpretation, claims Brown, is that it ‘might just help to demystify Descartes’s references to active forces’. Having thus establishing that Descartes was a realist about tendencies who nevertheless remained committed to a non-teleological, mechanistic account of nature, Brown contrasts this Cartesian picture with Hobbes’s reductive mechanics that eliminated forces and tendencies by equating them with actual motions, including even the ‘force of a body at rest’.
Due Diligence in the Law of the Sea
Authors: Papanicolopulu Irini
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses due diligence obligations in law of the sea instruments, particularly in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It demonstrates the linkage between general principles, their application to non-state actors via the due diligence obligations of states, and their eventual transformation into binding detailed technical standards, such as the ones incorporated in maritime safety conventions. The chapter advances an integrated reading of due diligence rules in the law of the sea and argues that increased reference to technical standards would facilitate their application in practice. Following a review of two advisory opinions—one of the International Tribunal for the Law of Sea and one of its Seabed Disputes Chamber—the chapter finally contextualises its core findings within the broader debate on the legal nature of due diligence and its primary or secondary character.
Engaging with Śrīvaiṣṇavas
Authors: Duquette Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter pursues the analysis of Appaya’s Śivādvaita works with a special focus on his engagement with the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. It examines a number of arguments and strategies Appaya employs to criticize Rāmānuja’s theology and his reading of the Brahmasūtras, and thereby establish Śrīkaṇṭha’s theology as the superior system. It sums up the content of two key works of Śivādvaita Vedānta—the Ānandalaharī and the Śivādvaitanirṇaya—and also pays attention to a little-studied work of Śivādvaita Vedānta, the Ratnatrayaparīkṣā, a short devotional hymn with self-authored commentary in which Appaya encapsulates his original vision of Śrīkaṇṭha’s ‘esoteric’ theology. It features a detailed analysis of Appaya’s response to the doctrine of aikaśāstrya, one of the core doctrines developed by Sudarśanasūri, a late thirteenth-century scholar who may well have been Appaya’s nemesis. The chapter concludes with an examination of Appaya’s critical take on Pāñcarātra, a key source of Śrīvaiṣṇava theology.
Failure Management
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the notion of failure management in depth, proposing an overall integrated approach to failure management via surveillance and control. Failure management tasks are defined, and failure surveillance and control are discussed. The conceptual design of an integrated decision support is presented. The applicability to all 18 case studies is discussed. The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in failure management is considered.
The hippocampus, memory, and spatial function
Authors: Rolls Edmund T.
Published: February 2021

The hippocampal system provides a beautiful example of how different classes of neuronal network in the brain work together as a system to implement episodic memory, the memory for particular recent events. The hippocampus contains spatial view neurons in primates including humans, which provide a representation of locations in viewed space. These representations can be combined with object and temporal representations to provide an episodic memory about what happened where and when. A key part of the system is the CA3 system with its recurrent collateral connections that provide a single attractor network for these associations to be learned. The computational generation of time, encoded by time cells in the hippocampus, is described, and this leads to a theory of hippocampal replay and reverse replay. The computational operation of a key part of the architecture, the recall of memories to the neocortex, is described.
Categories
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

In this chapter, categories are defined, and basic concepts are reviewed. Starting from the definitions of a category, a functor, and a natural transformation, the chapter reviews limits, adjunctions, equivalences, the Yoneda Lemma, monads, monoidal categories, and Mac Lane's Coherence Theorem. Enriched categories, which provide one characterization of 2-categories, are also discussed. This chapter makes this book self-contained and accessible to beginners.
CHARLOTTE BRAY (b. 1982)Sonnets and Love Songs (2011)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses British composer Charlotte Bray’s Sonnets and Love Songs (2011). Bray’s musical style is cohesive, fluent, and evocative, with a strong harmonic sense and tonalities occasionally reminiscent of the English Romantics, albeit with a modernist ‘take’. The texts are by the distinguished Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who revered Shakespeare as his model. They concern complex philosophical issues and dilemmas of life and love—three of the poems are actual sonnets. The composer has assembled her selection to describe a clear trajectory: from musings on innocence, through turbulence, to eventual liberation—an ambitious, bold concept, achieved with assurance. There is no getting away from the fact that the cycle demands a singer of exceptional accomplishment—the wide compass might indicate a bass-baritone, but the upper range is exploited mercilessly. Indeed, notes frequently have be held high in the voice, and many end with diminuendos, requiring technical skill in travelling through register changes.
SEBASTIAN CURRIER (b. 1959)The Nymphs Are Departed (2006)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses American composer Sebastian Currier’s The Nymphs Are Departed (2006). Disarmingly simple in appearance, and confined throughout within a practicable range, this arresting short piece should have a direct appeal in its almost hypnotic concentration and economy. The vocal part shows the composer’s instinctive ability to communicate without resorting to expressionist extremes. The musical style is basically tonal and exceptionally uncluttered, but, as all singers will be aware, controlling exposed, undecorated lines requires a secure technique. Note-values are straightforward, and pitches and phrases are frequently repeated. This means that the singer can develop ‘muscle memory’ as well as aural familiarity, useful for places later in the piece where the accompaniment holds fewer pitch cues. The piano part consists mainly of minimalist, repetitive figures, which gradually proliferate and intensify towards the centre of the piece, which takes the form of a balanced arc. Since a great many dynamics are soft, light, lean voices will have the advantage, especially sopranos and tenors, who will be comfortable singing low notes without recourse to an overrich sound.
TIM EWERS (b. 1958)Moondrunk (2000)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses English composer Tim Ewers’s Moondrunk (2000). This short piece is a confident and clearly imagined setting of an English translation of the first poem of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 masterpiece for voice and ensemble, Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21. Though brief, it should prove a useful and characterful item for a recital programme, especially one containing lengthier pieces, perhaps based around other works from the Second Viennese School or, alternatively, a collection of songs about the moon. The tessitura is wide-ranging, but within the reach of most voices, although a female voice was originally envisaged, in direct reference to Schoenberg’s seminal work. The musical idiom is pleasingly logical in its chromaticism, with frequent use of tritones. As always, when singing unaccompanied, the vocalist will need to be scrupulous about tuning intervals, avoiding microtonal slippage. Despite moments of freedom and rubato, rhythmic discipline is an important factor, and a sense of pulse needs to be preserved. Within this modest time span, the singer has to create and sustain a welter of shifting nocturnal moods, both threatening and intoxicating.
DAI FUJIKURA (b. 1977)Love Excerpt (2010)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Japanese composer Dai Fujikura’s Love Excerpt (2010). This was one of a series of short pieces commissioned by the author to celebrate a major birthday. Although it suits the soprano voice admirably, its broad tessitura and gentle, unforced writing make it highly practicable for other voices, except perhaps those of the heavier ‘operatic’ variety. Tenors and light mezzos would sound especially well in it. This ‘miniature’ is rewarding to sing, exploiting the natural colours and resonances of the voice, making use of its most delicate sonorities. The evocative text was written specially by Harry Ross, a regular collaborator of the composer’s. The mood throughout is inward and contemplative, requiring poise and concentration. Despite the meticulous notation, there is a prevailing sense of rhythmic flexibility and spontaneity, helped by a few well-judged pauses, so that each syllable is significant and poignant in both sound and meaning.
SADIE HARRISON (b. 1965)Easter Zunday (2008)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights Australian-born composer Sadie Harrison’s Easter Zunday (2008). This poem by William Barnes paints a lively portrait of an Easter celebration in the West Country, and is set with artful, infectious relish—an ingenious amalgam of the rustic and the sophisticated. It undoubtedly needs a tenor of special histrionic gifts, one unencumbered by inhibition, able to assume and sustain a ripe Dorsetshire accent with confidence. As the piece nears its climax, stamina will be put to the test—phrases expand, and an exhilarating final surge of energy could prove dauntingly strenuous. The composer’s indications aptly confirm the uplifting spirit of both text and music. Like the voice part, the accompaniment is rhythmically complex, and both performers will need intense concentration in order to coordinate perfectly.
ERIC NATHAN (b. 1983)Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses American composer Eric Nathan’s Forever Is Composed of Nows (2011). This hauntingly lovely setting is simple enough to be tackled by beginners, but all singers will find it a rewarding vehicle. Nathan demonstrates conclusively that ‘less is more’. With admirable economy of language and structure, he captures and matches the pith and essence of the succinct texts with unerring musicality, so that every phrase tells. The voice is given every chance to hone each fragment to perfection, monitoring every morsel of sound, paying close attention to colour, nuance, and subtly graded dynamics. The musical style, a fluent and intuitive fusion of past and present, is reminiscent of late romanticism, evoking in particular the rarefied atmosphere of French music.
YVES-MARIE PASQUET (b. 1947)Music (2013)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at French composer Yves-Marie Pasquet’s Music (2013). This is an undeniably challenging but rewarding vehicle for a soprano and pianist of exceptional ability: three songs of exhilarating virtuosity written in an elegantly disciplined idiom which could be termed ‘sensuous serialism’. Pasquet’s ear for vocal timbre and colour is unerring: he continually exploits the voice at its radiant best and shows a deep understanding of the physical aspect of singing. The pianist also will have a field day with a cornucopia of luscious harmonies, dynamic percussive effects, and exuberant passagework. A bright, pearly vocal quality must be found, in order to weave the highly decorative lines with agility and grace, even in pianissimo. Swinging over wide intervals keeps the voice pliable and relaxed. This means that the lower tessitura of the last song should cause no problems. The singer will be ‘sung in’ but not ‘sung out’, and low notes will still feel comfortably centred.
JONATHAN PITKIN (b. 1978)Feather-Small and Still (2010)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses Jonathan Pitkin’s Feather-Small and Still (2010). Pitkin was commissioned to make a setting of this evocative poem by Sophie Stephenson-Wright, following its commendation in a prize competition for young poets. Its subject is that mysterious bird, the nightjar. The composer has succeeded admirably in capturing the text’s intriguing, distinctive flavour, responding to its nature imagery and heightened language with great sensitivity. Vocal lines are tellingly clear and simple, and it is left to the piano to amplify and illustrate the words to haunting effect, with solo passages bridging the gaps between vocal fragments, always colouring and enriching the sound world. The poem is a villanelle, a classic form in which repetitions of the first and third lines recur throughout. The composer has not adhered strictly to the format in his music, but, by subtle brush-strokes, he manages to preserve traces of reverberation, and his fluent, cohesive musical style enables him to expand and contract textures, often leading off into fresh territory. Though tightly constructed, the piece flows naturally and should prove enjoyable to perform. The voice part is especially suitable for a young singer, and not at all taxing.
GEOFFREY POOLE (b. 1949)Heynonnynonny Smallprint (2008)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Geoffrey Poole’s Heynonnynonny Smallprint (2008). This witty, inventive showpiece gives the impression of being written in a spontaneous surge of energy. Poole has tapped a rich vein of wickedly accurate parody and sly humour in both his text and music. The piece certainly requires a special kind of singer, with a ripely uninhibited performing manner, vocal versatility, and considerable acting flair. A baritone is perhaps the ideal choice, but there is no reason why other voices should not make a success of it. The composer is sympathetic to the idea of transposition, but a strong low register will definitely be an advantage. Unaccompanied works always enliven the concert experience, and can be slotted easily into almost any recital programme. This one would also make a winning encore.
MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE (b. 1960)Three Songs (2000)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Three Songs (2000). This assured, agreeably compact cycle should prove a boon to baritones seeking a winning concert item by an established British composer. Phrase lengths are judged perfectly and the range and timbres of the baritone voice are heard with unfailing accuracy. Word-setting is impeccable and plentiful dynamics and nuances help to guide the interpretation. The first two poems celebrate cats (‘The Singing Cat’ and ‘Mourned’—a eulogy for a departed pet); and the last song reflects on the merits of animals in general (‘Last Words’). The score is presented with exemplary clarity, so that performers can assimilate it quickly. The ‘friendly postmodern’ idiom should not prove a barrier—piano parts are light and spare, so useful pitch-cues can be easily heard. The singer will need to be conscientious about tuning intervals. As the piece progresses, there are some wide leaps, but these are vocally gratifying. Although the work is not particularly taxing, it needs a crisp, neat delivery and a secure high range, as well as a lively presence and an instinct for characterization.
An Education in Intensity
Authors: Nadel Ira
Published: February 2021

The chapter opens with Roth’s 1959 marriage to Margaret (Maggie) Williams, a divorced mother of two from the Midwest Roth met at the University of Chicago. The impact of the marriage on his self-esteem and mental health, and its effect on his early efforts to shape his developing publishing career, receives special attention. But at the same time, while facing personal challenges, he appeared in the Paris Review, began a new friendship with its editor, George Plimpton, and oversaw the appearance of his first book, Goodbye, Columbus. A year in Rome on a fellowship and a new publisher (Random House replacing Houghton Mifflin) furthered his advances, while he also began to teach at the University of Iowa’s prestigious Writers’ Workshop and then Princeton. New friendships with William Styron and Donald Klopfer of Random House, and work with his early editor Joe Fox, soon shaped the direction of his writing. He also started psychoanalysis, necessary to maintain his mental balance as the relationship with Maggie unraveled and a divorce proved to be impossible. The chapter also examines the reception of his first novel, Letting Go.
Supercarnal Productions
Authors: Nadel Ira
Published: February 2021

Anchoring this chapter is Philip Roth’s London life with Bloom and a set of new friends: Al Alvarez, critic, Harold Pinter, playwright, R. B. Kitaj, painter, Michael Herr, journalist, and Edna O’Brien, novelist. Roth enjoyed a culturally rich and satisfying life with Bloom, while working on The Professor of Desire. But he soon sensed the fraying of his relationship as Bloom became increasingly dependent on her daughter, the opera singer Anna Steiger. He soon began to work on adaptations, principally for Bloom but also for himself: one early attempt was his effort to adapt Eugenia Ginzburg’s Journey into the Whirlwind, her Gulag autobiography. Another, new development was Roth’s involvement with Janet Hobhouse, novelist, their affair transposed to The Counterlife. And by the late 1970s, Roth turned to the experiences of an isolated writer in the countryside and the impact of the Holocaust through the possible afterlife of Anne Frank expressed in The Ghost Writer. Roth’s relationship with the New Yorker editor Veronica Geng and the continued importance of his editor Aaron Asher are also formidable figures. Comments on Roth’s enigmatic relationship with his mother (who died suddenly in 1981) end the chapter but not before a detailed accounting of Roth’s many illnesses (including a 1989 quintuple bypass) and the debilitating impact of illness on his physical and mental health.
QMaker: Fast and Accurate Method to Estimate Empirical Models of Protein Evolution
Authors: Minh Bui Quang , Dang Cuong Cao , Vinh Le Sy , Lanfear Robert
Published: February 2021

Amino acid substitution models play a crucial role in phylogenetic analyses. Maximum likelihood (ML) methods have been proposed to estimate amino acid substitution models; however, they are typically complicated and slow. In this article, we propose QMaker, a new ML method to estimate a general time-reversible $Q$ matrix from a large protein data set consisting of multiple sequence alignments. QMaker combines an efficient ML tree search algorithm, a model selection for handling the model heterogeneity among alignments, and the consideration of rate mixture models among sites. We provide QMaker as a user-friendly function in the IQ-TREE software package (http://www.iqtree.org) supporting the use of multiple CPU cores so that biologists can easily estimate amino acid substitution models from their own protein alignments. We used QMaker to estimate new empirical general amino acid substitution models from the current Pfam database as well as five clade-specific models for mammals, birds, insects, yeasts, and plants. Our results show that the new models considerably improve the fit between model and data and in some cases influence the inference of phylogenetic tree topologies.[Amino acid replacement matrices; amino acid substitution models; maximum likelihood estimation; phylogenetic inferences.]