bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Controls of point and diffuse sources lowered riverine nutrient concentrations asynchronously, thereby warping molar N:P ratios
Authors: Westphal Katja , Musolff Andreas , Graeber Daniel , Borchardt Dietrich
Published: June 2020

The input of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) into rivers has been reduced in recent decades in many regions of the world to mitigate adverse eutrophication effects. However, legislation focused first on the reduction of nutrient loads from point sources and only later on diffuse sources. These reduction strategies have implications on riverine N:P stoichiometry, which potentially alter patterns of algal nutrient limitation and the functions or community structure of aquatic ecosystems. Here, we use a dataset spanning four decades of water quality for the Ruhr River (Germany) to show that the asynchronous implementation of point and diffuse source mitigation measures combined with time lags of catchment transport processes caused a temporally asynchronous reduction in dissolved inorganic nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations. This asynchronous reduction increased the molar N:P ratios from around 30 to 100 in the river sections dominated by point sources, reducing the probability of N limitation of algae in favor of P limitation.

The Ruhr River catchment and the environmental policies implemented here illustrate the unintended effects of nutrient control strategies on the ecological stoichiometry at the catchment scale. We urge to assess systematically, whether unintentionally warped macronutrient ratios are observable in other managed river systems and to evaluate their environmental impacts.
Inaccessible entanglement in symmetry protected topological phases
Authors: de Groot Caroline , Stephen David T , Molnar Andras , Schuch Norbert
Published: June 2020

We study the entanglement structure of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases from an operational point of view by considering entanglement distillation in the presence of symmetries. We demonstrate that non-trivial SPT phases in one-dimension necessarily contain some entanglement which is inaccessible if the symmetry is enforced. More precisely, we consider the setting of local operations and classical communication (LOCC) where the local operations commute with a global onsite symmetry group G, which we call G-LOCC, and we define the inaccessible entanglement E
inacc as the entanglement that cannot be used for distillation under G-LOCC. We derive a tight bound on E
inacc which demonstrates a direct relation between inaccessible entanglement and the SPT phase, namely

log

(

D

ω

2

)

⩽

E

i
n
a
c
c

⩽
log

(

|
G
|

)

, where D

ω
is the topologically protected edge mode degeneracy of the SPT phase ω with symmetry G. For particular phases such as the Haldane phase,

D

ω

=

|
G
|

so the bound becomes an equality. We numerically investigate the distribution of states throughout the bound, and show that typically the region near the upper bound is highly populated, and also determine the nature of those states lying on the upper and lower bounds. We then discuss the relation of E
inacc to string order parameters, and also the extent to which it can be used to distinguish different SPT phases of matter.
Blockchain based Architecture for Digital-right Management in Scientific Data Sharing
Authors: Zheng Xiaoying , Zhu Yongxin
Published: June 2020

The data integration and copyright protection are the essential requirements in promoting the scientific data sharing. We present a blockchain-based architecture for digital-right management in scientific data sharing. The main innovations are the multiple parallel sub-chains based block structure, and the on-chain/off-chain hybrid storage. This leads to an efficient and scalable data management platform for the large-scale scientific data and still maintains the tamper-proof and traceability features of blockchain. The qualitative analysis shows that the parallel sub-chain based architecture can improve the throughput and scalability of the original Hyperledger Fabric chain by up to 10x.
Comparison of HY-2B Passive Brightness Temperatures with SSMI/S, GMI, AMSR2 and MWRI in Land Surface
Authors: Gao Shuo , Li Zhen , Chen Quan , Ping Zhang , Zhou Wu
Published: June 2020

China launched a new marine satellite HaiYang (HY)-2B satellite on October 24, 2018 at 22:57 (UTC time), which provides full-time and all-weather observations with a design life of five years. It can cover 90% of the world’s oceans and obtain marine dynamic environment data. The Scanning Microwave Radiometer (SMR) is the main payload onboard the HY-2B, which can provide near-real-time observations. The instrument is a 5-frequency 9-channel microwave observing instrument with the central frequencies set to 6.925, 10.7, 18.7, 23.8, and 37 GHz. Except for 23.8 GHz, which is vertical polarization only, other four frequencies have both vertical and horizontal polarization detection channels. For the past forty years, passive microwave brightness temperature data from the Scanning Multichannel Microwave Radiometer (SMMR), Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I), Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMI/S), Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) and the Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI) and the microwave imager of Global Precipitation Measurement mission (GMI) have provided considerable information on geophysical and climatic research. In order to expand the use of SMR observations on the earth’s land surface, in this study, SMR is compared with other on-orbit radiometers (SSMI/S, AMSR2, MWRI and GMI), and is conducted the cross-sensor calibration in land surface, which is critical foundation for the inversion of Earth surface geophysical parameters and climate researches in the near future.
The evolution of LiDAR and its application in high precision measurement
Authors: Wang Xin , Pan HuaZhi , Guo Kai , Yang Xinli , Luo Sheng
Published: June 2020

LiDAR is one of the backbones of the remote sensing methods that acquiring high-density and high-accuracy geo-referenced data about the shape of the Earth and its surface characteristics. This paper elaborated the the evolution of LiDAR technology, the main enterprises and their representative products, by listing the research emphasis and application cases where LiDAR technology is being used nowadays, we can find the characteristics and funtions of LiDAR.the future development of LiDAR will mainly focus on new source of radiation, the integration of multi-sensor system and data fusion, the exploration of new mechanism of LiDAR, some suggestions are also made in domestic development directions of high precision LiDAR system.
Lake Ice Phenology Extraction using Machine Learning Methodology
Authors: Xie Pengfei , Qiu Yubao , Wang XingXing , Shi Lijuan , Liang Wenshan
Published: June 2020

Lake-ice phenology is one of the key cryosphere indicators. Based on changes in time series of daily lake ice coverage and the microwave brightness temperature, two machine-learning methods were selected for estimating the phenology of lake ice. Using MODIS lake ice coverage time series, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was used to automatically classify lakes as either having or not having regular freezing signatures. The classification results were compared to the test samples and classification accuracies of 91% and 100% were found for lakes that do and do not freeze annually, respectively. In order to extract the lake ice phenology from passive microwave brightness temperature data, support vector regression (SVR) was used: the freeze-up start (FUS) and break-up end (BUE) were extracted using time series of estimated emissivity. The lake ice phenology results obtained using SVR were compared with the reference results. The values of R2 for FUS and BUE were 0.8928 and 0.8899, respectively. These results show that it is possible to use AI methods for the fast extraction of the phenology of lake ice and that these methods can be applied to lakes globally.
Dynamic visual simulation of growth and management of Chinese Fir Based on Structured Forest Management
Authors: Kang Shen , Tingdong Yang , Huaiqing Zhang , Lili Zhang
Published: June 2020

Based on the theory of Structure-based Forest Management, this paper studies the growth-management process of a forest considering the healthy state of the forest structure, and realizes three-dimensional visual simulation of this process based on unity3D. According to the angle scale, size ratio, crowding degree and other quantitative indexes of forest structure proposed by the theory of Structure-based Forest Management, the Spatial Structural function model and urgency management of forest were established to quantify the state of forest structure from many aspects. The growth equation of Chinese fir was fitted by the single tree growth equation based on the Hegyi competition index and forest density. Pre-thinning timbers are selected according to the rule that the cutting volume is less than the all growth volume in stand and size of competition index, and then the top 30%, 50% or 80% of pre-thinning timbers are extracted by rule sampling on the basis of pre-thinning timbers, and the stand structure function after thinning is alse calculated. The minimum value of thinning plan is taken as the actual thinning plan. Our results show that according to the growth period of 5 years, the growth and management of sample plot 5 were simulated for next 10 years. As in this case, based on the structured forest management, the dynamic visual simulation method of Chinese fir stand growth-management can realize the visual simulation of Chinese fir stand growth and management, which is a good way to show the forest growth management, and has a good demonstration role in improving the forestry informatization.
Study on the spatial distribution of multitype leisure agriculture aggregate centers in Beijing
Authors: Han Chunmeng , Liu Huiping
Published: June 2020

Leisure agriculture aggregate centers are generally multitype leisure agriculture complexes. Due to the processes of urban development, land use succession and urban planning, different types of leisure agriculture have different spatial distribution patterns. Limited by the availability of data and technology, traditional studies have generally been based on a single type or fuzzy type of leisure agriculture spatial distribution. These studies could not adapt to the need for analysis of the microscale mechanisms and had difficulty accurately describing the spatial distributions of the multiple types of leisure agriculture. Based on the components of Beijing leisure agriculture and with the use of multitype leisure agriculture POI data, this paper used the kernel density estimation (KDE) and the natural breaks method to identify the aggregate centers of multitype leisure agriculture in Beijing and then explored their spatial distribution patterns. The results showed that the spatial distribution patterns of Beijing leisure agriculture presented point-axis development patterns, that the spatial distribution patterns of happy farmhouses and picking gardens presented point-axis development patterns, and that the spatial distribution patterns of the fishing gardens and agricultural bases showed multiaxis development patterns. This paper could contribute to the exploration of the relationships between leisure agriculture and urban areas and the rational distribution, establish suitable leisure agriculture projects, and provide an important reference for spatial competition and cooperation.
Application of Multi-data Fusion Technology in Landslide Monitoring
Authors: Zhang Xuehua , Qi Yaolong , Xu Jianhua , Du Xiaoxia , Lai Junyan , Tan Weixian , Huang Pingping
Published: June 2020

At present, there are more than 280,000 hidden danger points of geological disasters in China. It has been proved that one of effective ways of reducing geological disasters is using professional equipment to monitor and mobilize the masses. The commonly professional devices include slope radar, crack gauge, laser radar and optical images in early warning period and in rescue phase. Each device has its own unique advantages and we developed a reasonable technical route to achieve the aim that combining the advantages of these various data. The mainly steps: the first step is to process the various data separately; secondly, to fuse the data that can be merged; thirdly, to perform overlay analysis and display on non-integratable data. We takes the high-level landslide of Xinmo Village, Sichuan Province on June 24, 2017 to verify the route’s effective. The results show that the multi-data fusion method can not only achieved the all-round monitoring of key hidden points, but also combined the advantages of multiple data and achieved millimetre-level monitoring accuracy and clear and intuitive effects.
Scandal
Authors: El-Ariss Tarek
Published: June 2020

What does scandal designate? Is it a narrative of moral outrage, a titillating spectacle of shame, or a violation that simultaneously unsettles and consolidates norms and traditions? Scandal as a phenomenon, event, and analytical category has been the focus of debates and representations in works by Kant, Heidegger, Rousseau, Sade, and Mme de Sévigné, as well as in The Arabian Nights. These engagements with scandal in philosophy, literature, and media constitute a genealogy if not a tradition that emphasizes the relations between scandal and the body, gender, story-telling, visuality, marginality, and power. From the body of Aphrodite that frames scandal in the Greek mythological context to the body of Egyptian activist and nude blogger Alyaa Elmahdi, adulterous affairs and fantasies of debauchery particularly have been used as instruments to critique the rich and powerful but also to oppress women and sexual minorities. What becomes of scandal in the age of the Internet, apps, and social media? The article examines whether the digital is bringing about the demise of scandal as an affective scene that generates outrage and condemnation but also as a model of telling and representing tied to antiquated reportage genres, gossip scenes, and fictional models.
Historical Poetics
Authors: Pryor Sean
Published: June 2020

If poetics customarily deals with generalities, history seems to insist on particulars. In the 21st century, various literary critics have sought to manage these competing imperatives by developing an “historical poetics.” These critics pursue sometimes very different projects, working with diverse methodologies and theoretical frameworks, but they share a desire to think again about the relation between poetics and history.

Some critics have pursued an historical poetics by conducting quantitative studies of changes in metrical form, while others have investigated the social uses to which poetry was put in the cultures of the past. Both approaches tend to reject received notions of the aesthetic or literary, with their emphasis on the individual poet and on the poem’s organic unity. Much work in historical poetics has focused instead on problems of genre and reception, seeking the historical significance of poetry in what is common and repeated. Sometimes this work has involved extensive archival research, examining memoirs, grammar books, philological tracts, and other materials in order to discover how poetry was conceived and interpreted at a particular time. These methods allow critics to tell histories of poetry and to reveal a history in poetry. The cultural history of poetic forms thus becomes a history of social thought and practice conducted through poetry.

For other critics, however, the historical significance of a poem lies instead in the way it challenges the poetics of its time. This is to emphasize the singular over the common and repeated. In this mode, historical poetics aims both to restore poems to their proper historical moment and to show how poems work across history. The history to be valued in such cases is not a ground or world beyond the poem, but the event of the poem itself.
Poetic Cognition
Authors: Brown Marshall
Published: June 2020

Lyric poems have often been treated as expressions of pure or immediate feeling. “Amaze,” by Adelaide Crapsey, exemplifies the pervasiveness of thought even in a seemingly innocuous trifle. Philosophers and aestheticians have wrestled with the relationship between thought and feeling in poetry. Notable formulations come from Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, but the most persuasive is from an essay by Herder, “On Knowledge and Sensation in the Human Soul.” The opening of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Mallarmé’s sonnet “Le Cygne” illustrate how poems struggle to confront feelings, with the smallest words—connectives, deictics, pronouns—bearing the burden of capturing the movement of the mind in thought. The apodictic language of de Manian deconstruction misses the subtleties, as do quasi-mystical theories of the power of imagery and New Critical faith in the formalized rhetoric of “the poem itself.” “Loving in truth” are the opening words of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella; this first sonnet and the entire cycle instantiate poetic discourse as the unending search amid the byways of truth. In a study of Wallace Stevens, Charles Altieri calls the thinking of poetry “aspectual,” and Stevens’s poem “Metaphors of a Magnifico” presents the basic task of poetic cognition through its satire of the magnifico’s failure to think. “Lyric poetry’s exemption from rationalism,” as one new study puts it, is really an exemption from preemptive assertion in the service of exploring and representing the mind’s coursing.
Authorship in Computer-Generated Texts
Authors: Henrickson Leah
Published: June 2020

Natural language generation (NLG) refers to the process in which computers produce output in readable human languages (e.g., English, French). Despite sounding as though they are contained within the realm of science fiction, computer-generated texts actually abound; business performance reports are generated by NLG systems, as are tweets and even works of longform prose. Yet many are altogether unaware of the increasing prevalence of computer-generated texts. Moreover, there has been limited scholarly consideration of the social and literary implications of NLG from a humanities perspective, despite NLG systems being in development for more than half a century. This article serves as one such consideration.

Human-written and computer-generated texts represent markedly different approaches to text production that necessitate distinct approaches to textual interpretation. Characterized by production processes and labor economies that at times seem inconsistent with those of print culture, computer-generated texts bring conventional understandings of the author-reader relationship into question. But who—or what—is the author of the computer-generated text?

This article begins with an introduction to NLG as it has been applied to the production of public-facing textual output. NLG’s unique potential for textual personalization is observed. The article then moves toward a consideration of authorship as the concept may be applied to computer-generated texts, citing historical and current legal discussions, as well as various interdisciplinary analyses of authorial attribution. This article suggests a semantic shift from considering NLG systems as tools to considering them as social agents in themselves: not to obsolesce human writers, but to recognize the particular contributions of NLG systems to the current socio-literary landscape. As this article shows, texts are regarded as fundamentally human artifacts. A computer-generated text is no less a human artifact than a human-written text, but its unconventional manifestation of humanity prompts calculated contemplation of what authorship means in an increasingly digital age.
Innovation Challenges
Authors: Sun Yao , Majchrzak Ann
Published: June 2020

Starting from early 21st century, companies increasingly use open innovation challenges to generate creative solutions to business problems. This revolution in business models and management strategy reflects the evolution supported by new technology. Employing this new strategic model, companies seek to innovate in a wide variety of areas, such as clothes designs, photography solutions, business plans, and film production. Contrary to closed innovation through which companies develop creative ideas internally, innovation challenges are catalyzed by socioeconomic changes such as the rapid advancement of information technologies, increased labor division, as well as ever-expanding globalization. Going hand in hand are trends such as outsourcing, occurring in parallel in the management area, which makes companies more agile and flexible. Multifaceted and multidimensional, open innovation challenges consist of various activities such as inbound innovation (acquiring and sourcing), outbound innovation (selling and revealing), or a compound mix of these two forms. It also pertains to complementary assets, absorptive capacity, organizational exploration, and exploitation. In an attempt to determine how to best support such an important component of society, scholars and practitioners continue to pursue effective innovation challenge architecture (the art or practice that guides participants’ interactions and exchange) that allows open collaboration among the crowd, as well as an approach for incorporating such architecture into technological platforms in order to improve the crowd’s creativity. This issue is addressed by focusing on existing research that delineates various types of effective architecture of innovation challenges. A theory-based framework guides this examination, and work from various scholarly perspectives of innovation challenges, knowledge management, motivated knowledge sharing, and crowdsourcing are integrated into this framework.
Managing Team Diversity in the Workplace
Authors: Schouten Maartje , Khattab Jasmien , Pahng Phoebe
Published: June 2020

The study of team diversity has generated a large amount of research because of the changing nature of workplaces as they become more diverse and work becomes more organized around teams. Team diversity describes the variation among team members in terms of any attribute in which individuals may differ. Examples are demographic background diversity, functional or educational diversity, and personality diversity. Diversity can be operationalized as categorical (variety), continuous (separation), or vertical (disparity).

Initial research on team diversity was dominated by a main-effects approach that produced two main perspectives: social-categorization scholars suggested that diversity hurts team outcomes, as it decreases feelings of cohesion and increases dysfunctional conflict, whereas the information and decision-making perspective suggested that diversity helps team outcomes, as it makes more information available in the team to help with decision-making. In an effort to integrate these disparate insights, the categorization-elaboration model (CEM) proposed that team diversity can lead both to social categorization and to information elaboration on the basis of contextual factors that may give rise to either process. The CEM has received widespread support in research, but a number of questions about the processes through which diversity has an effect on team outcomes remain.
Regional Climate Modeling for the Baltic Sea Region
Authors: Kjellström Erik , Christensen Ole Bøssing
Published: June 2020

Regional climate models (RCMs) are commonly used to provide detailed regional to local information for climate change assessments, impact studies, and work on climate change adaptation. The Baltic Sea region is well suited for RCM evaluation due to its complexity and good availability of observations.

Evaluation of RCM performance over the Baltic Sea region suggests that:

• Given appropriate boundary conditions, RCMs can reproduce many aspects of the climate in the Baltic Sea region.

• High resolution improves the ability of RCMs to simulate significant processes in a realistic way.

• When forced by global climate models (GCMs) with errors in their representation of the large-scale atmospheric circulation and/or sea surface conditions, performance of RCMs deteriorates.

• Compared to GCMs, RCMs can add value on the regional scale, related to both the atmosphere and other parts of the climate system, such as the Baltic Sea, if appropriate coupled regional model systems are used.

Future directions for regional climate modeling in the Baltic Sea region would involve testing and applying even more high-resolution, convection permitting, models to generally better represent climate features like heavy precipitation extremes. Also, phenomena more specific to the Baltic Sea region are expected to benefit from higher resolution (these include, for example, convective snowbands over the sea in winter). Continued work on better describing the fully coupled regional climate system involving the atmosphere and its interaction with the sea surface and land areas is also foreseen as beneficial. In this respect, atmospheric aerosols are important components that deserve more attention.
Behavioral Analysis in the Study of Politics: The Conflict Laboratory
Authors: Del Ponte Alessandro , Kline Reuben , Ryan John
Published: June 2020

Behavioral economics is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that incorporates insights from psychology to enrich standard economic models that assume perfectly rational individuals. Empirical research in behavioral economics typically employs incentivized experiments that use economic games with real money on the line. In these experiments, subjects are awarded financial payoffs based on the decisions they make (either individually or as part of a group) in an institutional context designed by the researcher. Behavioral economics is well suited for political science because behavioral economics is interdisciplinary by nature and political science is not bound by any particular research paradigm. At the same time, the method is still novel to many political scientists despite many years of its use to study political topics in a variety of research areas. What unites the application of the method to these areas is the explicit consideration of conflict. For instance, scholars have uncovered social conflict between groups (e.g., voter polarization in the United States) using behavioral games as measures, or they have designed experiments around elections to test theories of candidate and voter behavior. Because of the clear financial incentives, economic experiments are especially useful for studying people’s actual preferences in areas such as redistribution as opposed to their stated preferences. Finally, the method can be used to design institutions that will help overcome conflict over scarce resources. In sum, the strengths of behavioral economics include: (a) the ability to vary institutional contexts; (b) clear incentives that ensure valid measures of preferences; (c) direct measures of behaviors instead of stated intentions which could be confounded by outside pressures such as social desirability.
Canada and the European Union
Authors: Hübner Kurt , Anderson James
Published: June 2020

Historically, the land known as Canada during the 21st century was colonized by the Kingdoms of France and England and was also the site of an abortive and short-lived colonization attempt by Scandinavian settlers in the 10th and 11th centuries. The early French colony of New France boasted a population in the tens of thousands but was eventually annexed and colonized by the United Kingdom following the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War. As a result, the modern nation-states of the United Kingdom and France have the closest relationships with Canada, and it is through these conduits that much of the contemporary Canada–European Union (EU) relationship lies. Although Canada, being a colony of the United Kingdom, did not conduct its own diplomacy for the entirety of the 19th century and much of the 20th, it was able to establish informal ties through diplomatic attachés to British embassies and consular offices. Following the Statute of Westminster in 1931, Canada gained the ability to craft an independent foreign policy which it pursued wholeheartedly. After the Second World War, it joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alongside the United States, the United Kingdom, and numerous other European nations. Its formal relationship with the EU and its predecessors began in 1959, when it and the burgeoning European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) signed an agreement on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Since then, its cooperation has gained breadth and depth, expanding to myriad other policy areas including agriculture, foreign policy and defense, security, and trade. There have been points of tension between the two partners in the past, most notably around issues with the Quebec independence movement, governance of the Arctic, and governance of international fisheries and the oceans. However, over time the EU has grown to become perhaps Canada’s second most important partner worldwide, after the United States. This has culminated in the signing of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which are major milestones and cement Canada and the EU’s mutually increasing importance to each other.
Party Politics and LGBT Issues in the United States
Authors: Michelson Melissa R. , Schmitt Elizabeth
Published: June 2020

Political parties are a core feature of the American political system, and partisan identification is a major determinant of both individual attitudes and political behavior. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the major political parties in the United States have become increasingly polarized, and partisan affect has intensified, with individuals more hostile toward the opposing party. This increased polarization and tendency to follow elite cues has also affected LGBT politics.

Among openly LGBT candidates for political office, almost all have run as Democrats. In June 2018 only 2.9% of openly LGBT elected officials in the country were affiliated with the Republican Party. Outreach to LGBT voters by Democratic candidates has increased over time; in contrast, Republican candidates have been generally hostile to LGBT people and issues. This growing gap in outreach is reflected in vote choice patterns. Since 1988, at least two-thirds of LGBT voters have supported the Democratic nominee for president. In the 2016 election, 78% of LGBT voters supported the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, while only 14% supported Republican Donald Trump. In the 2018 midterm elections LGBT voters favored Democratic candidates by a margin of 82% to 17%. LGBT interest groups also tend to be affiliated with the Democratic Party, with the notable exception of the Log Cabin Republicans. Until the 1990s, most straight Americans were not interested in or aware of LGBT public policy issues, but today the members of both political parties reflect the increased partisan polarization of the country. Democrats are more likely to support same-sex relationships and marriage, laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination, transgender rights, and other supportive policies; Republicans, in contrast, are more opposed to those policies and support religious exemptions from antidiscrimination laws.

This increased sorting among the LGBT public reflects an increasingly salient national divide between the two major political parties, including their understandings of LGBT identity. Democrats have for several decades understood LGBT identity as permanent (that people are born that way) and thus deserving of maximum legal protection. In contrast, many more Republicans understand LGBT as a choice or as a result of one’s upbringing and environment and thus not a basis for claims for equal rights. This represents a shift over time; in 1977, only 13% of Americans believed that homosexuality was something that people were born with. As more Americans became familiar with the science demonstrating that being gay is genetic and not a “lifestyle choice,” a partisan split emerged. Scholarship suggests partisanship is likely driving acceptance of the science. Regardless of the cause of the partisan split on the nature vs. nurture debate on LGBT identity, that split is reflected in the increasingly large differences between representation of LGBT people in elected office, in party support for LGBT policies, and in LGBT partisanship.
Courts, the Law, and LGBT Rights in Asia
Authors: Lau Holning
Published: June 2020

Courts have played an integral part in advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities in many parts of Asia. Yet courts in other parts of Asia have entrenched LGBT subordination. A vast expanse separates Asia’s most progressive LGBT judicial decisions from the most oppressive. This divergence stems from various factors, including differences among Asian courts’ judicial philosophies and cultural backdrops.

Judicial developments in Asia have disrupted conventional narratives in Anglophone literature about LGBT rights. Conventional wisdom says there is a standard sequence for developing LGBT rights. It is commonly believed that countries will protect sexual orientation rights before gender identity rights; that they will legislate against discrimination before legalizing same-sex marriage; and that legal protections of LGBT rights begin in the West, and then the rest of the world subsequently imports these legal constructs. Developments in Asia have, however, challenged these narratives.

While many Asian courts have galvanized reforms to protect LGBT rights, it is important to remember that these courts are nonetheless constrained in their ability to effectuate change. Case studies from Asia demonstrate that protecting LGBT rights often requires political branches of government to cooperate with courts. Political actors may resist implementing court-ordered reforms, especially if public opinion does not support the reforms.
Political Attitudes and Behaviors of LGBT People in the United States
Authors: Miller Patrick
Published: June 2020

Despite the prominence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans and debates over LGBT rights in modern American politics, a substantial academic literature that examines their political attitudes has yet to develop. Prominent academic surveys have only relatively recently begun to ask respondent sexual orientation, though even the highest quality surveys that rely on random national samples still contain few LGBT respondents given their small share of the population. Further, questions about respondent gender identity are still largely absent in both academic and commercial surveys. As a result, systematic and deep knowledge about the contours of LGBT political attitudes and how they differ from those of non-LGBT Americans is understandably shallow.

However, existing surveys can provide a descriptive overview of the American LGBT community and its politics. Demographically, those who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual in surveys as of the mid- to late 2010s tend to be younger, disproportionately female, less religiously committed, less likely to be white, and somewhat lower income and more highly educated than those who identify as heterosexual. Given how these demographic tilts map onto modern political divides, it should not be a surprise that LGBT Americans skew more liberal and Democratic than others in their political orientations. When differences emerge between LGBT and non-LGBT Americans in their issue attitudes, LGBT respondents in surveys consistently tend toward more liberal-leaning opinions. However, this leftward tilt does not always place LGBT persons on the liberal side of issues on average, nor does it mean that LGBT and non-LGBT survey respondents are necessarily in opposition in the aggregate as oftentimes the difference between them is their degree of collective liberalism. Thus, the nature of these intergroup differences depends on the issue or set of issues under examination.

Existing data and research do have certain limitations that future research may improve upon. Given that most data on LGBT political attitudes comes from general population surveys of which LGBT respondents are only a small part, most current data do not strongly lend themselves to deeper analysis of subgroups within the LGBT community. Surveys specifically of LGBT people suggest important differences between gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals in how they view their identities as LGBT people and how they perceive how LGBT people fit into modern society, so future research may gather the data necessary to explore the consequences of these differences in political attitudes in greater depth. Also, there is substantial room for future research to explore the sources of LGBT political distinctiveness, and to what extent that distinctiveness stems from demographics, socialization, lived experience, psychology, or other factors.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis: Discovering Core Combinations of Conditions in Political Decision Making
Authors: Rihoux Benoît
Published: June 2020

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was launched in the late 1980s by Charles Ragin, as a research approach bridging case-oriented and variable-oriented perspectives. It conceives cases as complex combinations of attributes (i.e. configurations), is designed to process multiple cases, and enables one to identify, through minimization algorithms, the core equifinal combinations of conditions leading to an outcome of interest. It systematizes the analysis in terms of necessity and sufficiency, models social reality in terms of set-theoretic relations, and provides powerful logical tools for complexity reduction. It initially came along with one technique, crisp-set QCA (csQCA), requiring dichotomized coding of data.

As it has expanded, the QCA field has been enriched by new techniques such as multi-value QCA (mvQCA) and especially fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA), both of which enable finer-grained calibration. It has also developed further with diverse extensions and more advanced designs, including mixed- and multimethod designs in which QCA is sequenced with focused case studies or with statistical analyses.

QCA’s emphasis on causal complexity makes it very fit to address various types of objects and research questions touching upon political decision making—and indeed QCA has been applied in multiple related social scientific fields. While QCA can be exploited in different ways, it is most frequently used for theory evaluation purposes, with a streamlined protocol including a sequence of core operations and good practices. Several reliable software options are also available to implement the core of the QCA procedure. However, given QCA’s case-based foundation, much researcher input is still required at different stages.

As it has further developed, QCA has been subject to fierce criticism, especially from a mainstream statistical perspective. This has stimulated further innovations and refinements, in particular in terms of parameters of fit and robustness tests which also correspond to the growth of QCA applications in larger-n designs. Altogether the field has diversified and broadened, and different users may exploit QCA in various ways, from smaller-n case-oriented uses to larger-n more analytic uses, and following different epistemological positions regarding causal claims. This broader field can therefore be labeled as that of both “Configurational Comparative Methods” (CCMs) and “Set-Theoretic Methods” (STMs).
Costa Rica’s Historical Development and New Age of Progress
Authors: Golob Adam
Published: June 2020

Costa Rica has historically faced many of the same challenges as its Central American neighbors, but to a less dramatic extent. This has put the country on a unique path of political and economic development. Even today, it outperforms its neighbors, often including its more developed neighbors, like the United States, in essential measurements of human development, happiness, lack of corruption, and economics. Many Costa Rican scholars have concluded that the nation benefitted from its time as a colonial outcast and from a lack of exploitable resources like gold and silver. The common misbelief that Costa Rica was settled without the destruction of natives, that the country gained a peaceful independence, and that it somehow avoided all the pitfalls of Latin American development is now met with resistance, and a better understanding of Costa Rican history has emerged. Although Costa Rican development has not been without its complications, issues, and bloody epochs, it has been far less extreme and far more open to change, democracy, and progress. Costa Rica was able to gain a semi-peaceful independence, form a strong republic, and endure the “lost decade” better than many other countries in the region. Since 2008, this tiny country has progressed rapidly. It joined CAFTA-DR, elected its first female president, ended 70 years of two-party dominance, survived national-level scandal, legalized gay marriage, and elected a progressive leftist president in 2018 despite a global shift to the right for political leaders. Yet along with progress comes continued struggles. Costa Rica faces new challenges in the 21st century. In the new millennium, it confronts issues of social injustice, rising crime rates, economic dependency on international monetary institutions, corruption, and human rights, to name a few.
Identity in Latin American Regionalism: The Andean Community
Authors: Prieto Germán C.
Published: June 2020

Latin America is usually referred to as a homogeneous region that shares a collective identity based on common history, language and culture in general. As a result, it is broadly expected that collective identity should underpin and facilitate regional integration among Latin American states. However, the idea of a Latin American identity can be problematized, arguing that the concept of “Latin America” is more an exclusionary one than an integrator. Moreover, addressing collective identity as a social construction among state elites reveals the political disputes that lay at the backdrop of regionalism as a political enterprise. The relationship between identity and regionalism in Latin America can be discussed using a study of the role of collective identity in the unfolding of three case studies of the Andean Community. A constructivist approach can be engaged to show that it is possible to observe three dimensions of collective identity in the Andean Community, whose interplay led to advancing regionalism in certain ways but also caused disagreements and failures. Instead of taking a simplistic view of identity as the sharing of similarities, disentangling collective identity into cultural, ideological, and intergroup dimensions helps in understanding that identity is mostly a political issue and therefore a disputed one, and that analyzing the relationship between these three dimensions contributes to explaining the unfolding of regionalism in terms of advance and stagnation.
Group Norms
Authors: Smith Joanne R.
Published: June 2020

As social animals, humans are strongly influenced by the opinions and actions of those around them. Group norms are the expectations and behaviors associated with a social group, such as a nationality, an organization, or a sports team. Group norms can emerge during group interaction as group members are exposed to the opinions, or observe the actions, of fellow group members. Group norms can also emerge by comparing the attitudes and actions of the group with other groups. Leaders can also influence what is seen to be acceptable behaviors for group members to exhibit.

One of the most dominant approaches to the study of group norms is the social identity approach. The social identity approach proposes that belonging to a social group provides individuals with a definition of who one is, and a description and prescription of what is involved in being a group member. A large body of research has confirmed the power of group norms to determine the form and direction of group members’ attitudes and actions, particularly those individuals strongly attached to the group, across many behavioral domains.

In thinking about group norms, it is important to recognize that norms have both prescriptive (i.e., what should be done) and descriptive (i.e., what is done) elements. Research has found that group norms are most influential when aligned, but that misaligned or conflicting norms—either within the group or across multiple groups to which an individual belongs—can be particularly harmful in terms of engagement in a desired behavior. It is critical to appreciate and understand these complexities to be able to change group norms and, therefore, group members’ actions.

The insight that group norms are powerful determinants of behavior has been incorporated into behavior change interventions, including so-called “nudge” interventions. However, norms-based campaigns are not always successful, and can even lead to backlash effects, often because change agents have failed to consider identity-related processes, such as the role of leaders, the source of the influence attempt, and threats arising from attempts to change one’s group. Shared identity is a key mechanism through which people internalize (new) understandings of what it means to be a group member into the self-concept, and understanding these processes may lead to more enduring change in underlying motives, beliefs, and behavior.
Mind Cure and Mental Therapeutics in the Late 19th-Century United States
Authors: Schmit David
Published: June 2020

Mind cure, or mental healing, was a late 19th-century American healing movement that extolled a metaphysical mind-over-matter approach to the treatment of illness. Emerging in New England in the mid-19th century out of a mix of mesmerism and metaphysical philosophies, due to its effectiveness, by the 1880s it achieved national recognition. Three individuals are credited with creating and popularizing mental (or metaphysical) healing: Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, and Mary Baker Eddy. Mind cure was appealing because it helped treat ailments for which the medicines of the day were ineffective, especially problems with the “nerves.” Mental healers employed non-invasive mental and spiritual methods to treat ailing people, called mental therapeutics. As a practice and therapeutic philosophy, mind cure is historically noteworthy because it shaped the earliest forms of psychotherapy in the United States, advanced therapeutic work within the realm of mind-body medicine, birthed the influential New Thought movement, and helped set the stage for the beginnings of religious pluralism and the positive reception of Asian meditation teachers in the West.
Sexual Health and Sexual Behavior
Authors: Bartos Sebastian E.
Published: June 2020

Both academic and lay definitions of sex vary. However, definitions generally gravitate around reproduction and the experience of pleasure. Some theoretical approaches, such as psychoanalysis and evolutionary psychology, have positioned sexuality at the center of psychological phenomena. Much research has also linked sex to health and disease. On the one hand, certain sexual thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and identities have been described as pathological. Over time, some of these have been accepted as normal (especially homosexuality), while new forms of pathology have also been proposed (e.g., “porn addiction”). On the other hand, some aspects of sexuality are being researched due to their relevance to public health (e.g., sex education) or to counseling (e.g., assisted reproduction). Sex research has always been controversial, paradoxically receiving both positive attention and disdain. These contradictory social forces have arguably affected both the content and the scientific quality of sex research.