bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Economy, Industry, And Trade
Authors: Foster Lynn V
Published: November 2023

Maya civilization flourished with a Stone Age technology and thrived in areas considered to have low agricultural potential. The preindustrial economy was primarily founded on agriculture and partially on craft production; the method of exchange was through tribute and trade. Agriculture produced foodstuffs for the eight to 10 million Maya living in the lowlands during the eighth century, and it produced valuable trade items as well, such as cacao and cotton. Artisans produced household tools as well as exotic trade goods, and industry produced salt, honey, and dyes. Regional and long-distance trade was fueled by both utilitarian products and luxury items that added prestige to members of the elite class and to the sacred cities themselves.
Daily Life
Authors: Foster Lynn V
Published: November 2023

Sixteenth-century Spanish observations provide the greatest detail about daily life among the Maya. Unless there is additional evidence, however, these observations must be accepted with some caution in regard to Maya lifestyles during earlier periods. Fortunately, archaeologists have provided supporting evidence for understanding earlier periods of Maya civilization. They have identified the foods eaten by Classic Period Maya and can sometimes determine how the food was cooked, and they have excavated simple Maya residential compounds, such as the well preserved ones at Cerén, as well as palaces. Art historians and epigraphers have also revealed many aspects about kinship and the concepts of personal beauty. Despite these understood aspects of Maya existence before the Spanish invasion, many other details are unknown, and they may have been very different from those that existed in the 16th century.
Handbook To Life In Ancient Mesopotamia
Authors: Bertman Stephen
Published: November 2023

Modern-day archaeological discoveries in the Near East continue to illuminate our understanding of the ancient world, including the many contributions made by the people of Mesopotamia to literature, art, government, and urban life The Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia describes the culture, history, and people of this land, as well as their struggle for survival and happiness, from about 3500 to 500 BCE. Mesopotamia was the home of a succession of glorious civilizations--Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria--which flourished together for more than three millennia. Sumerian mathematicians devised the sixty-minute hour that still rules our lives; Babylonian architects designed the famed Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; Assyrian kings and generals, in the name of imperialism, conducted some of the shrewdest military campaigns in recorded history. Readers will identify with the literary works of these civilizations, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as they are carried across centuries to a period in time intimately entwined with the story of the Bible. Maps and line drawings provide examples of Mesopotamian geography, while other chapters present the Mesopotamian struggle to create civilized life in a fertile land racked by brutal conquest.
Archaeology and History
Authors: Bertman Stephen
Published: November 2023

The lost world of Mesopotamia would not have been found had it not been for the curiosity of travelers, the zeal of archaeologists, and the diligence of philologists. Without their efforts and writings, the ruined sites, buried treasures, and dead languages of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians would have remained forgotten.
Religion and Myth
Authors: Bertman Stephen
Published: November 2023

Manifold are the divine powers that ruled over Mesopotamia and the minds and hearts of its people. The multiplicity of these ancient gods can be explained by many factors. What we in our scientific age would describe objectively as “the environment,” the ancients viewed as alive with diverse spirits. The spirits were immanent in nature and as numerous as nature’s parts: the sky above, the fertile earth beneath, and the waters that nourished the soil; the Moon, Sun, and stars; and the generative powers that helped the creatures of nature, including humanity, reproduce and flourish. The ancients also saw the hand of the divine at work in the arts by which human culture and civilization were sustained: the making of fire, the molding of brick, the raising of crops, the tending of flocks and herds, the healing of the sick, the invention of writing, and the creation of justice and law. To address these numinous powers, to thank them for their beneficence and to appeal to them in time of need, the ancients conceived of their gods in anthropomorphic form with eyes to see them and ears to hear their hymns and prayers. In a naturalistic way, they also endowed them with human emotions because nature seemed alternately compassionate and cruel. They also envisioned the existence of other powers-darker, demonic powers-that lurked in a subterranean realm and were ever ready to rise and to steal from human beings the very things they regarded as most precious.
Military Affairs
Authors: Bertman Stephen
Published: November 2023

Mesopotamia is geographically defined by its mountains in the north, its alluvial plains in the south, and the rivers that connect them. The existence of not one but two major river valleys promoted the development of multiple settlements; the fertility of the valleys generated wealth; wealth, in tum, incited competition and greed; and the flatness of the plains made individual communities vulnerable to attack. The net effect in the south was a coalescence of power through imperialism: Akkad absorbed Sumer, and Babylon absorbed both. Eventually, mountainous Assyria in the north-which had always been topographically separate from the south and, because of its terrain, more defensible-marched upon the south and conquered it, and then went on to build an even wider empire. To life in Mesopotamia, therefore, warfare was a natural condition.
Everyday Life
Authors: Bertman Stephen
Published: November 2023

Because ancient Mesopotamia was fundamentally an agrarian society, the principal occupations were growing crops and raising livestock.
The Network Structure of Food Webs
Authors: Dunne Jennifer A
Published: November 2023

Descriptions of food-web relationships first appeared more than a century ago, and the quantitative analysis of the network structure of food webs dates back several decades. Recent improvements in food-web data collection and analysis methods, coupled with a resurgence of interdisciplinary research on the topology of many kinds of “real-world” networks, have resulted in renewed interest in food-web structure. This chapter reviews the history of the search for generalities in the structure of complex food webs, and discusses current and future research trends. Analysis of food-web structure has used empirical and modeling approaches, and has been inspired both by questions from ecology such as “What factors promote stability of complex ecosystems given internal dynamics and external perturbations?” and questions from network research such as “Do food webs display universal structure similar to other types of networks?” Recent research has suggested that once variable diversity and connectance are taken into account, there are universal coarse-grained characteristics of how trophic links and species defined according to trophic function are distributed within food webs. In addition, aspects of food-web network structure have been shown to strongly influence the robust functioning and dynamical persistence of ecosystems.
The Structure of Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks
Authors: Bascompte Jordi , Jordana Pedro
Published: November 2023

Plant-animal mutualistic networks can be described as bipartite graphs depicting the interactions between two distinct sets: plants and animals. These mutualistic networks have been found to be highly structured. Specifically, they show a nested pattern in which specialists interact with proper subsets of the set of species with which generalists interact. This pattern is important for understanding coevolution in species rich communities, which can be reduced neither to pairs of coevolving species nor to diffuse, randomly interacting assemblages. We discuss the dynamic implications of network structure from the points of view of coevolution, community ecology, and conservation biology.
Exploring the Evolution of Ecosystems with Digital Organisms
Authors: Wilke Claus O , Chow Stephanie S
Published: November 2023

We study the evolution of ecosystems in self-replicating computer programs (digital organisms). In previous work, we have shown that in a well-stirred, multiple resource environment, resource limitations are sufficient to induce adaptive radiation. At intermediate resource availability, the digital organisms evolved from a clonal population into a number of distinct, coexisting, and persistent genotypic and phenotypic clusters (species). Here we examine the phenotypic changes that occur as populations diversify and separate into distinct species. We find that there are multiple ways in which new species can arise, including through acquisition or loss of the ability to utilize certain resources, or through conversion, whereby a pathway to utilize one resource is transformed into a pathway to utilize another resource. In future work, we will be able to study the evolution of multilayered food webs as well, by allowing digital organisms to feed on each other instead of only on basal resources.
Network Evolution: Exploring the Change and Adaptation of Complex Ecological Systems Over Deep Time
Authors: Martinez Neo D
Published: November 2023

One of the most exciting new directions in research on food webs and ecological networks is network evolution or, in other words, the development of the structure and function of ecological networks over time scales long enough for node selection and speciation to occur (Caldarelli et al. 1998; Drossel and McKane 2002; Worden 2003; Yoshida 2003; Cattin et al. 2004; Rossberg 2004; Anderson and Jensen 2005). Most food-web studies focus on shorter-term snapshots of network structure and time series of network dynamics. The difference between long-term evolution over “deep time” and short-term structure and dynamics is a familiar one. Hutchinson distinguished the two by suggesting that we “view the natural world as the ecological theater, serving as a stage for the evolutionary play” (Hutchinson 1965). Following this suggestion, research on network evolution goes well beyond contemporary topology, theatrical population booms and busts, and more staid equilibria. That is, network evolution encompasses a broad spectrum of studies, from the dynamics of intra-node stocks and inter-node flows to the evolutionary play of node survival, adaptation, and speciation over time. Though the distinction between network dynamics and network evolution may be familiar, much research occupies a kind of gray area in between these two ends of a spectrum. For example, in adaptive prey preference and feeding behavior models
Biodiversity Loss and Ecological Network Structure
Authors: Memmott Jane , Alonso David , Berlow Eric L , Dobson Andy , Dunne Jennifer A , Weitz Ricard Solé ,Joshua
Published: November 2023

The world is currently experiencing exceptionally high rates of species extinctions, largely as as result of human activity (Lawton and May 1996). Currently, most conservation research on habitat destruction focuses on the species as the unit of study, looking at either the impact of habitat destruction on individual species, or collections of species from particular habitats. There is, however, increasing recognition that species and species lists are not the only, nor perhaps the best, units for study by conservation biologists. This is because species are linked to other species in a variety of critical ways, for example as predators or prey, or as pollinators or seed dispersers. Consequently, the extinction of one species can lead to secondary extinctions in complex ecological networks (Dunne et al. 2002a; Memmott et al. 2004; Sole and Montoya 2001). The presence of links between species can also lead to community closure after the loss of a species, with the result that this species cannot then be reintroduced (Lundberg et al. 2000). Moreover, in the case of restoration biology, restoration will not be sustainable for a given species unless the ecological links with other species are also restored (Palmer et al. 1997).
Peter: Solid Rock or Shifting Sand?
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

As happens so often, the Gospels appear to disagree on when Jesus bestowed the name Peter (Rocky) on Simon. The first Gospel to be written was probably Mark, dated by most scholars to around 65 or 70 CE, that is, about thirty-five or forty years after the events it narrates.
The Rocky Beginning
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

Christianity is the largest religion in the world today. And among the Christian denominations, the largest is the Roman Catholic Church, with around one billion members. The official Catholic view is that Peter was the first pope, the bishop of Rome, the leader on whom all else was built. Apart from whether that’s a historically tenable position or not, I think everyone would agree that the Christian church allegedly founded on Peter—embracing not just Catholics but also Protestants and Orthodox—has been the most important religious, cultural, political, economic, and social institution in the history of Western civilization. Given the almost unimaginable reach of the church in both the public and private spheres over the centuries, one might expect that its beginning was equally spectacular.
Mary at the Passion
Authors: Ehrman Bart D
Published: November 2023

Nothing sears our memory like a tragic death. No one in my generation can forget where they were when they learned that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. And who can erase the memory of his widow, Jacqueline, still spattered with his blood, standing beside Lyndon Johnson as he took the oath of office to ensure a smooth transition of government at the moment of its greatest peril?
The Historical Origins of Modern International Health
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

Now that you have a sense of what constitutes the international health field and what are its principal goals and dilemmas, it is worth pausing to ask how concern with international health arose historically. Central issues include the following: what part was played by international (as opposed to local or national) factors in shaping patterns and perceptions of sickness and disease; how did these factors interact with the social experience of ill health; and how This chapter explores the main antecedents of modern international health, beginning with the 300-year-long waves of Eurasian plague. Next we examine the rise of imperialism and the slave trade and their health consequences. We then turn to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the rise of the sanitary reform movement, and their implications for international health. We will also touch upon the so-called demographic and epidemiologic transitions and the constellation of factors that have led to the worldwide decline in mortality and increase in life expectancy over the past century. The ;nal section of the chapter traces the appear- ance and development of a new set of international health institutions—both inter- governmental and nongovernmental—from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.
What Do We Know, What Do We Need to Know, and Why it Matters—Data on Health
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

The political economy approach to international health provides a theoretical under- standing of the distribution of health and sickness in a given country or population, which necessarily rests on the existence of health data. Health-related information, and knowing how to obtain it, is essential to taking action to improve health. Although the policies that affect health—both inside and outside the health services sector—are ultimately determined in the political arena, health data play a vital role in helping to identify needs and shape solutions. Notwithstanding the importance of health information, many countries have limited data collection capacity at national and/or subnational levels, leaving policy makers to rely on extrapolations of older data or data from other countries. Such extrapolated data may be of limited relevance and may even jeopardize population health by indicating erroneous needs and priorities.
Health under Crisis
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

In December, 1988, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake (and 5.8 aftershock) struck Spitak, Armenia, killing 45,000 people. Two-thirds of the deaths were estimated to be among children attending school. One year later, in Loma Prieta, California, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck at peak rush hour, causing only 57 deaths and 3,700 injuries. Why such a marked difference in casualties, for earthquakes of the same intensity? No doubt differences in geology, population density, and timing were all important, but even these factors are insufficient to explain the full extent of differential impact.
Health and the Environment
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

Worldwide environmental conditions have changed more rapidly in the past half- century than at any other time in human history, shaped and strained by economic, social, and military exploits. Increases in agricultural output have been accompanied by pollution from fertilizers, pesticides, and excessive irrigation. Wars have displaced millions of people, with weapons producing dangerous radiation and chemical toxins. Continuing to this day, manufacture of high-demand disposable electronics generates harmful waste; oil drilling and spills challenge ecosystems, and destroy bird and fish habitats; coal mining denudes mountainsides and its by- products threaten water and wildlife; and the burning of fossil fuels contaminates and heats the earth’s atmosphere.
Health Economics and the Economics of Health
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

Global spending on health is immense but inequitable. The WHO estimates that in 2004, US$4.1 trillion was spent on the health sector—both public and private (WHO 2007b)—totaling over 10% of world income (see Table 11–1). Some consider health care to be the world’s largest industry. As such, one of the key concerns of both inter- national and national health policy making is determining how to allocate and spend available resources in an appropriate and effective way in order to achieve particular health-related goals and objectives. The field of economics can help in providing a road map to this end. The main issue in health economics is not simply minimizing costs, but obtaining the greatest value from an efficient use of resources. For a specific health problem, health economics attempts to calculate how to accomplish a better outcome for the same cost, the same outcome at a lower cost, or ideally, a better outcome at a lower cost.
Doing International Health
Authors: Birn Anne-Emanuelle , Pillay Yogan , Holtz Timothy H
Published: November 2023

We hope that taking a course or reading this book on your own will have made you passionate about the importance of international health and sparked your desire to become involved—in small or large measure—in addressing the challenges of international health.
Fundamentalism as a Social Phenomenon
Authors: Marsden George M
Published: November 2023

After 1925, the fragmentation and relocation of fundamentalism was taken by many observers for evidence of its disappearance. Fundamentalism, they assumed, was the offshoot of a social adjustment. As the interpretation of the original movement passed into the hands of the historians, this became a recurring theme. On the first page of his History of Fundamentalism, published in 1931, Stewart Cole pronounced, “For a half century the church has suffered a conflict of social forces about and within it that accounts for the present babel of witnesses to Christian truth and purpose.” H. Richard Niebuhr, writing in the mid-30s, emphasized the “social sources” of fundamentalism “closely related to the conflict between rural and urban cultures in America.”2 Statements like this abounded in textbooks on the 1920s.
Clinical Epidemiology
Authors: Weiss Noel S
Published: November 2023

Examining the principles and methods of research on the evaluation of factors affecting the outcome of illness, this book emphasizes diagnostic and therapeutic interventions - the factors most readily modified by health care providers. It discusses the various ways of structuring observations on patient groups, and appraises the nature and strength of inferences drawn from those observations. It also demonstrates how the results of this type of research, clinical epidemiologic research, can be incorporated into the decision-making process utilized in clinical medicine. The book contains a concise account of topics such as the assessment of the use of diagnostics and screening tests and their role in improving the outcome of illness, the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy through experimental and nonexperimental studies, and a particularly useful chapter on assessment of therapeutic safety. It is an essential reference and guide to the quantitative assessment of the consequences of illness for clinicians in training or in practice. This new edition features a greatly expanded chapter on randomized control trials, and includes a new chapter on meta-analysis, authored by Peter Cummings. Meta-analysis, the statistical synthesis of data from comparable studies, was unheard of 30 years ago, but with the advent of increased computer technology, the method has been steadily growing in importance in the epidemiology community.
Diagnostic and Screening Tests
Authors: Weiss Noel S
Published: November 2023

Ordering or performing a diagnostic or screening test can reduce the frequency of disease occurrence (or progression, or complications) only if the test can (a) detect the condition or abnormality before it or its consequences would otherwise be evident, and (b) lead to treatment that is more effective when administered soon after the time of testing than if it were to be administered either later in the natural history of the condition, when the condition or abnormality becomes evident in the absence of testing, or not administered at all.
A Practical Approach to Formulating Evidence-Based Questions in Social Work
Authors: Yeager Kenneth R , Roberts Albert R
Published: November 2023

Leonard Gibbs (2002) in his chapter in Oxford’s Social Workers’ Desk Reference eloquently underscores the harm-reducing importance of formulating specific, well-built questions as a critical element in evidence-based clinical reasoning: The history of the helping professions provides many vivid examples of dedicated “helpers” who were harming . . . those whom they sought to help. Beyond any doubt, those professionals cared deeply about the children, aged persons, and clients whose troubled lives they sought to aid, but such caring, though vital and necessary, does not provide sufficient footing to assure success. Learning how to pose specific, well-built questions [e.g. related to adolescent suicide potential, child abuse risk assessment, etc.] as part of an evidence-based approach to practice can provide one approach to avoiding harm. . . . If we can learn how to pose specific questions from practice, we have a chance to find a specific answer, and conversely, if we do not learn how to pose specific questions from practice, how can we ever find specific answers? As Yogi Berra once said, “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going cause you might not get there.” . . . In summary, caring is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to avoid harm. Practitioners who learn how to pose specific questions about their practice, and who resolve to avoid common errors in practice reasoning, may better avoid harming those to whom they have dedicated their professional lives. Such practitioners can avoid consigning their clients to endure effects of repeated failure. (pp. 752, 755–756) On any given day, social workers engage in complex interactions with persons who present with unique mental health needs and problems in social functioning. Each clinical encounter will generate questions regarding the care of the individual, family, or group. Many of these questions will be difficult and beyond the means of the social worker to readily answer. Complex questions relating to specific needs of patients/clients as framed by their circumstance, illness, or environment may well require the application of an evidence-based approach. Social workers frequently work with high-risk, vulnerable, and special needs clients.
Will the Real Evidence-Based Practice Please Stand Up? Teaching the Process of Evidence-Based Practice to the Helping Professions
Authors: Shlonsky Aron , Gibbs Leonard
Published: November 2023

Suppose a practitioner at an agency serving children and families encounters a 15-year-old, female client who discloses that she is suicidal. What methods of assessment and treatment are most effective for working with this youth? Where does this knowledge come from?—experience? training? Is clinical expertise enough to guide casework decisions? If knowledge is gained from research, is the information up-to-date? Is it of sufficient rigor? Is it inclusive of all knowledge or is it selective? Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a systematic process that blends current best evidence, client preferences (wherever possible), and clinical expertise, resulting in services that are both individualized and empirically sound. Applicable to all forms of practice, EBP is particularly relevant to crisis intervention, where, given the gravity of problems faced by clients and the short amount of time in which to act, approaches taken must be both effective and efficient. This process is distinguished from other types of practice, whereby “best practices,” “evidence-based practices,” or “practice guidelines” are identified and promoted for use with clients. There is a concern that such practice guidelines and standards are top-down (that is, subject to being authority based), may become quickly obsolete, and may or may not be sufficiently transparent in how they were developed. While guidelines and standards may have some merit if truly effective services are identified, the process of EBP is bottom-up and begins and ends with the client, moving well beyond a one-size-fits-all model and encompassing clients’ unique experience with their presenting problems. In addition, since information is continually updated, EBP practitioners avoid obsolescence.
Toward Common Performance Indicators and Measures for Accountability in Behavioral Health Care
Authors: Teague Gregory B , Trabin Thomas , ray Charles
Published: November 2023

In this chapter we describe an initiative that focuses broadly on organizations and systems of care. Other chapters in this volume focus on implementing specific evidence-based practice models or on developing or using measures to inform clinical practice, together offering practitioners an inviting array of diverse alternatives oriented to the clinical needs of particular groups of clients. Here, in contrast, is a plan to bridge this diversity of measurement by formulating common performance indicators and measures and promoting their widespread use across a wide array of service settings. The Adult Mental Health Workgroup (AMHW) of the Forum on Performance Measures in Behavioral Health and Related Service Systems (Forum) is a nationally representative group that has formulated and now proposes broad adoption of a few organizational performance measures for accountability and quality management in behavioral health care. The measures were carefully selected to reflect key aspects of care—access, quality/appropriateness, and outcomes—in essentially all settings providing mental health services to adults. Although the focus of the AMHW and consequently of this chapter is adult mental health services, the AMHW is working in conjunction with other Forum workgroups with corresponding initiatives in performance measurement for prevention and treatment of mental health and substance use disorders for all age groups.
Developing a Systematic Evidence-Based Search Plan for a Client With Co-occurring Conditions
Authors: Thomlison Barbara , Jacobs Robin J
Published: November 2023

When you do an evidence-based practice (EBP) search, you are trying to find the most useful research in the shortest possible time for a practice situation. An evidence-supported practice is a treatment or intervention protocol that has at least some empirical research evidence for its efficacy with its intended target problems and populations. To be useful to practitioners, evidence-based practices consider three elements: (1) client values and preferences; (2) the clinical expertise and abilities of the professional; and (3) the best available research evidence (Petr & Walter, 2005). Practitioners want research that is useful (i.e., clinically appropriate to the client’s conditions), relevant (pertinent to the clinical context), and valid (derived from sound research methods). Practitioners will want the best available evidence where the outcome findings consistently show the interventions actually help clients change and improve (Thomlison & Corcoran, in press). Why should you engage in evidence-based practice? In the years after you graduate, keeping your knowledge and skills up to date is important and necessary if you are to remain a good practitioner or become a better one. As a practitioner, you should refrain from using untested or potentially dangerous treatments. You need to stay on top of new developments, new interventions, and practice frameworks as they occur.
Task-Centered Practice An Exemplar of Evidence-Based Practice
Authors: Reid William J , Fortune Anne E
Published: November 2023

The task-centered model (TC) is a short-term, problem-solving approach to social work practice (Doel & Marsh, 1992; Reid, 1992, 2000; Reid & Epstein, 1972; Reid & Fortune, 2002). Originally designed for practice with individuals and families, the model has been adapted for work with groups (Fortune, 1985; Garvin, 1974) and larger systems (Tolson, Reid, & Garvin, 2003).
Aryan National Religion(s) and the Criticism of Asceticism and Quietism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Authors: Deeg Max
Published: November 2023

When I drew my first sketch for a contribution to this volume from mainly European literature on Indian and Germanic cultures and religions from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, I found that it would be easy to come up with concrete notions and quotations of criticism of asceticism and qui­ etism. I have to confess that after browsing the immense amount of material I ran into two problems: First, there is the problem of defining asceticism. I initially looked up the word asceticism in some of the standard research sources. Walter 0. Kaelber’s article on “Asceticism” in Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion states that “the modern word asceticism had eluded any universally accepted definition.”1 Second, beyond the difficulty of finding a clear definition of asceticism, there is the problem of uncovering the full scope of the criticism of asceticism, because very often this criticism is not explicit and remains hidden and somewhat elusive.
“I Have Chosen Sickness”: The Controversial Function of Sickness in Early Christian Ascetic Practice
Authors: Crislip Andrew
Published: November 2023

Joseph of Thebes belongs to the group of early Christian ascetics known as the “Desert Fathers,” fourth- and fifth-century monastics who lived for the most part in the loosely organized lavra monasteries of Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta and its outlying oases.1 The literary remains of these ascetics consist primarily of aphorisms, or apophthegms, short, memorable sayings, passed down orally for several generations and finally compiled into a number of collections in the monasteries of Palestine.2 Joseph of Thebes is among the many ascetics included in the collection about whom no bio­ graphical information-reliable or otherwise-has been preserved.
Why Break Robert’s Rules?
Authors: Susskind Lawrence E , Cruikshank Jeffrey L
Published: November 2023

Let’s imagine that you are someone who is called upon to run a meeting and to help a group make a decision. Maybe you face a situation like one of those described in the introduction. Maybe a community program has run into a problem (these tend to generate high emotions). Maybe your company needs to attack an existing challenge in a new way. Or maybe your church is hoping to launch a new community-outreach program and is having trouble getting the new initiative organized. Let’s imagine further that you have some concerns about this upcoming meeting. Maybe you’ve never run a meeting and you’re worried about getting the procedures right. Or maybe you suspect that there is likely to be a controversy at the meeting, and you want to make sure everyone gets a chance to be heard. Or maybe you just don’t want to preside over one of those meetings that turns into an unproductive gabfest—or worse, a rock-throwing session.
What Is Consensus?
Authors: Susskind Lawrence E , Cruikshank Jeffrey L
Published: November 2023

The consensus building approach, or CBA, is not a new concept, and lots of people have at least a hazy idea of what it means. Some readers may be familiar with terms like “win/win,” or “zero-sum.” Some may have read Getting to Yes, one of the many useful books that summarize the basic principles of reaching negotiated decisions through consensual means. But we still find lots of confusion out there in the world about consensus building. Some of that confusion begins with the word “consensus.” Our word-processing program’s dictionary defines consensus as “general or widespread agreement among all the members of a group.” This is the kind of definition that should scare a sensible person away from consensus building. Anyone who has ever worked in a group knows how difficult it is to get “all the members of a group” to reach agreement on anything, even when you have fudge words like “general” or “widespread” thrown in. Unless the group is selected very, very carefully, achieving unanimity is like pushing a greased boulder up a hill: usually, something goes wrong along the way, with bad consequences.
The Importance of Facilitation
Authors: Susskind Lawrence E , Cruikshank Jeffrey L
Published: November 2023

As we’ve described in previous chapters, CBA requires careful preparation. That means identifying the right people, assessing the problem accurately, thinking through a work plan and budget, setting up at least a preliminary set of ground rules so that people can start to work together at the table, and then getting the right people to join the effort. Once they’re at the table, roles and responsibilities must be assigned. But this is all “table-setting,” in a sense, for the problem-solving process that is to follow. How do people start talking in a way that builds consensus on a solution, or an agreement? Every consensus-building process is different. Working backward from a number of very successful deliberations, in a broad range of contexts, we can identify eight features of successful consensus-building deliberations. Those eight features (illustrated by a couple of visits to our friends in Blaine) constitute the heart of this chapter. First, let’s look at the tone that should dominate your deliberations—and the mind-set that gives rise to that tone.
Overcoming the Barriers to CBA
Authors: Susskind Lawrence E , Cruikshank Jeffrey L
Published: November 2023

Consensus building can get you to far better solutions than Robert’s Rules. CBA is often the best way to generate an agreement that is fairer, more efficient, wiser, and more stable than would otherwise be possible. That begs an obvious question: if CBA is such a superior approach, why isn’t the whole world doing it? There are several reasons: General Robert had a serious head start. Robert’s Rules became widely available in the late nineteenth century. Consensus building (as we practice it today) is only a few decades old. Robert’s Rules are the “law.” This is an outgrowth of the previous point. As noted in chapter 1, a wide range of institutions, public and private, have articles of incorporation or bylaws that specifically call for the use of Robert’s Rules. Our strong sense is that for many of these groups, parliamentary procedure is no longer the most appropriate approach, if it ever was. Think about it: Robert’s Rules and the telegraph were invented at the same time. When a better alternative (the telephone) became available, the telegraph slowly withered away.
Reaching Agreement
Authors: Susskind Lawrence E , Cruikshank Jeffrey L
Published: November 2023

Straw polls are a good device for determining how close the participants are to reaching agreement on a single-text (presented by the facilitator or the group leader). Often, it is necessary to add items to the emerging agreement to provide additional benefits to parties that have not yet indicated their approval. This does not mean that everyone involved needs to find the proposed agreement entirely to their liking. Rather, participants should be asked to consider the “full package” in relation to estimated gains and losses they are most likely to get if there is no agreement. While this undoubtedly involves estimates or forecasts of what is likely to happen (rather than something that can be calculated with certainty), it provides the most appropriate point of comparison for each participant. Thus, the objective of CBA is to seek unanimity on a written package that offers all stakeholders something more valuable than what they can expect in the absence of an agreement.
Quantum hard spheres in a channel
Authors: Liu K S , Kalos M H , Chester G V
Published: November 2023

One of the early applications of Green’s function QMC is that described in this paper for systems of hard spheres confined in a channel. The GFQMC method was applied to a collection of up to 64 hard spheres in a rectangular box, with rigid repulsive walls at top and bottom and periodic boundary conditions at the sides. Earlier variational QMC studies0 provided good trial functions for importance sampling and variational upper bounds to the energies.
Relativistic corrections to atomic energies from quantum Monte Carlo calculations
Authors: Kenny S D , Rajagopal G , Needs R J
Published: November 2023

This paper describes the first calculations incorporating electron correlation effects in the prediction of relativistic corrections for atoms as large as Ne. The importance of correlation in relativistic corrections had been previously shown for two-electron atoms in conventional calculations and VQMC calculations0 for the LiH molecule. This study extends such treatments to ten electrons in VQMC and DQMC calculations. The calculations are perturbational and are based on an effective Hamiltonian correct to order 1/c2, where c is the speed of light. Both variational and diffusion QMC calculations were performed for the 2-electron systems He, Be2+, and Ne8+, for the 4-electron atom Be, and for the 10-electron atom Ne.
A quantum Monte Carlo perturbational study of the He-He interaction
Authors: Huiszoon C , Caffarel M
Published: November 2023

The well depth for interaction of two helium atoms at their equilibrium internuclear distance is less than 1/105 the total electronic energy of the pair. Thus, a perturbational approach is a natural way to attack the problem of predictions of the interaction energy, and several such attempts have been made. The work described in this paper is perturbational, but it differs from previous work in that it uses a Q!vIC method, specifically simple diffusion QMC, to determine the values of the perturbation terms required. The interaction energy for the two helium atoms was expressed by a sum of Rayleigh-Schri:idinger (RS) terms and exchange terms as: Caffarel and Hess0 showed earlier that the RS terms could be evaluated in terms of multitime integrals of autocorrelation functions along the trajectories of a diffusion process related to the unperturbed Hamiltonian and that these integrals could be determined by solution of the Fokker-Planck diffusion equation exactly, as in simple diffusion QMC calculations. The exchange terms could be similarly evaluated. The calculations were carried out for several internuclear distances and, within their relatively large statistical errors, gave agreement with “exact” valuesb given by other QMC methods.
Theoretical studies of the structure and dynamics of metal/hydrogen systems: Diffusion and path integral Monte Carlo investigations of nickel and palladium clusters
Authors: Chen B , Gomez M A , Sehl M , Doll J D , Freeman D L
Published: November 2023

In this study, the effect of adsorption of a single hydrogen atom upon the properties of Ni and Pd clusters of up to ten atoms was investigated. The required potential energies for the interactions of the atoms within the clusters were determined with the embeddedatom method, a semi-empirical method with parameters fit to data for bulk systems, giving reasonable agreement in comparisons with experimental observations. with the potential energies then available in convenient form, the properties of the clusters could be investigated to determine minimum-energy structures with and without zero-point energies, preferred hydrogen binding sites, hydrogen vibration frequencies, and related properties as a function of cluster size, using classical and quantum Monte Carlo methods. For the smaller clusters, the lowest-energy structures occur with the hydrogen atom on the outside of the clusters, but for the larger, inclusion of the hydrogen atom within the cluster is favored. Zeropoint vibrations were found to have no significant effects on the favored structures. Classical harmonic vibration analyses for the entire clusters gave about the same zero-point energies as diffusion QMC calculations. For the ground states, the QMC calculations showed the hydrogen atoms to be localized. For some clusters, Pd7H and Pd10H, quantum effects as indicated by diffusion Ql\IC were important in determining the favored structure. The studies were carried further with finite-temperature energy averages determined with the Fourier path integral method. The variation of energy with temperature clearly shows the quantum behavior of the smaller clusters at low temperatures and the shift toward classical behavior with increasing cluster size.
Fixed-sample optimization in quantum Monte Carlo using a probability density function
Authors: Barnett R N , Sun R N , Lester R N
Published: November 2023

The optimization of trial wavefunctions ‘I/Jr for use in QMC calculations can be accomplished with a fixed set of configurations selected with probabilities proportional to ‘1/Jf, often using Metropolis sampling and occasionally using other methods. By varying the coefficients of ‘I/Jr, one can minimize the variance in local energies for the original set of configurations. This is effective except when coefficients affecting the node locations are varied and occasional very high weighting factors ‘I/J}(new)/’1/J}(original) can give large fluctuations in the variance. In this paper, the authors propose the use of probability density functions p to produce nodeless distributions of points replacing the original ‘1/Jf distributions. This has two advantages: it avoids the unbounded weighting problem allowing nodes to be varied, and it facilitates sampling without a Metropolis walk and its associated serial correlation. To be effective, i.e., for high efficiency, p must be carefully selected, it must at least resemble ‘1/Jf, and its distributions must be easily sampled. Tests were performed for the case of CH with optimization of all parameters of a two-determinant-and-Jastrow trial function. These included basis set exponents, MO coefficients, CI coefficient, and SchmidtMoskowitz Jastrow parameters. The resulting variance in local energy was 0.19 h2, versus 0.25 h2 for optimization of the Jastrow coefficients only. More interesting is the improvement in diffusion QMC energy for the complete optimization including node movement. The energy was lowered by 0.004 hartree, or 2.5 kcal/mol, with recovery of correlation energy increased from 92.8 to 94.8%.
Quantum Monte Carlo investigation of exchange and correlation in silicon
Authors: Hood R Q , Chou M Y , Williamson A J , Rajagopal G , Needs R J , Foulkes W M C
Published: November 2023

QMC calculations can be used to calculate wavefunctions, electron densities, and a wide variety of functions and integrals, all of which may in turn be useful in improving other types of electronic structure calculations. In this variational QMC study of diamond-structure silicon, the quantities of central importance in Kohn-Sham density functional theory were calculated and compared to those from local-density and average-density approximations. In this case, the quantities were the coupling-constantintegrated pair correlation function, the exchange-correlation hole, and the exchange-correlation energy density. All are related to the total exchange-correlation energy. The calculations were carried out for 3 x 3 x 3 fee unit cells containing 54 nuclei with pseudopotentials and 216 valence electrons. The VQMC wave functions were optimized Slater-Jastrow functions giving 85% of the fixed-node correlation energy. Several different techniques were used in sampling to accumulate the diamond quantities, which were illustrated in full-color contour plots showing variations with position in the lattice. Differences between VQMC and local density approximation (LDA) results were similarly illustrated, and the largest errors in the LDA exchangecorrelation energy densities were found in the bonding regions and around the pseudoatoms. As pointed out by the authors, such calculations should aid in developing better functionals by providing much more data than the total energy and the bulk moduli previously available for comparison.
Positronium chemistry by quantum Monte Carlo. I. Positronium-first row atom complexes
Authors: Bressanini D , Mella M , Morosi G
Published: November 2023

Predictions of the energetics of systems containing a positron (e+) present a special challenge to most of the conventional methods of quantum chemistry. The prediction of the binding energy of positronium-atom complexes [A, Ps], where A is an atom and Ps =[e+, e-J, is a good example and one for which different theoretical methods have given widely different results. This paper describes all-electron (or all-electron and one positron) VQMC and DQMC calculations to determine the energies of atoms A, their anions A- or [A, e-J, and their complexes [A, Ps] or [A, e-, e+], where A = Li, B, C, 0, or F. From these energies, the binding energies of complexes relative to dissociation to [A + Ps] could be predicted. The calculations were carried out in fixed-node DQMC with trial functions composed of single determinants for the electrons, a positron-nucleus term, electron-electron correlation terms, and electron-positron correlation terms. The electron affinities of the atoms, given by differences in DQMC-calculated energies for the atoms and their anions, were found in excellent agreement with experimental measurements. The binding energies similarly determined for the atom positronium complexes show the Li, C, 0, and F complexes to be stable and. the B complex to be unstable to dissociation. Other types of electronic structure calculations give a variety of conflicting energetics. Since the DQMC calculations have the ability to recover not only electron-electron correlation energy, but also electron-positron correlation energy, the results “appear superior in accuracy” to previously published values.