bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Demography and weak selection drive patterns of transposable element diversity in natural populations of
Arabidopsis lyrata
Authors: Lockton Steven , Ross-Ibarra Jeffrey , Gaut Brandon S.
Published: September 2008

Transposable elements (TEs) are the major component of most plant genomes, and characterizing their population dynamics is key to understanding plant genome complexity. Yet there have been few studies of TE population genetics in plant systems. To study the roles of selection, transposition, and demography in shaping TE population diversity, we generated a polymorphism dataset for six TE families in four populations of the flowering plant
Arabidopsis lyrata
. The TE data indicated significant differentiation among populations, and maximum likelihood procedures suggested weak selection. For strongly bottlenecked populations, the observed TE band-frequency spectra fit data simulated under neutral demographic models constructed from nucleotide polymorphism data. Overall, we propose that TEs are subjected to weak selection, the efficacy of which varies as a function of demographic factors. Thus, demographic effects could be a major factor driving distributions of TEs among plant lineages.
Global jumping and domain-specific intersegment transfer between DNA cognate sites of the multidomain transcription factor Oct-1
Authors: Doucleff Michaeleen , Clore G. Marius
Published: September 2008

At high DNA concentration, as found in the nucleus, DNA-binding proteins search for specific binding sites by hopping between separate DNA strands. Here, we use
15
N

z

-exchange transverse relaxation optimized NMR spectroscopy to characterize the mechanistic details of intermolecular hopping for the multidomain transcription factor, human Oct-1. Oct-1 is a member of the POU family of transcription factors and contains two helix–turn–helix DNA-binding domains, POU
HD
and POU
S
, connected by a relatively short flexible linker. The two domains were found to exchange between specific sites at significantly different rates. The cotranscription factor, Sox2, decreases the exchange rate and equilibrium dissociation constant for Oct-1 ≥5-fold and ≈20-fold, respectively, by slowing the exchange rate for the POU
S
domain. DNA-dependent exchange rates measured at physiological ionic strength indicate that the two domains use both an intersegmental transfer mechanism, which does not involve the intermediary of free protein, and a fully dissociative or jumping mechanism to translocate between cognate sites. These data represent an example of dissecting domain-specific kinetics for protein–DNA association involving a multidomain protein and provide evidence that intersegmental transfer involves a ternary intermediate, or transition state in which the DNA-binding domains bridge two different DNA fragments simultaneously.
Enzymes with lid-gated active sites must operate by an induced fit mechanism instead of conformational selection
Authors: Sullivan Sarah M. , Holyoak Todd
Published: September 2008

The induced fit and conformational selection/population shift models are two extreme cases of a continuum aimed at understanding the mechanism by which the final key-lock or active enzyme conformation is achieved upon formation of the correctly ligated enzyme. Structures of complexes representing the Michaelis and enolate intermediate complexes of the reaction catalyzed by phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase provide direct structural evidence for the encounter complex that is intrinsic to the induced fit model and not required by the conformational selection model. In addition, the structural data demonstrate that the conformational selection model is not sufficient to explain the correlation between dynamics and catalysis in phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase and other enzymes in which the transition between the uninduced and the induced conformations occludes the active site from the solvent. The structural data are consistent with a model in that the energy input from substrate association results in changes in the free energy landscape for the protein, allowing for structural transitions along an induced fit pathway.
A powerful method combining homologous recombination and site-specific recombination for targeted mutagenesis in
Drosophila
Authors: Gao Guanjun , McMahon Conor , Chen Jie , Rong Yikang S.
Published: September 2008

Gene targeting provides a powerful tool for dissecting gene function. However, repeated targeting of a single locus remains a practice mostly limited to unicellular organisms that afford simple targeting methodologies. We developed an efficient method to repeatedly target a single locus in
Drosophila
. In this method, which we term “site-specific integrase mediated repeated targeting” (SIRT), an
attP
attachment site for the phage phiC31 integrase is first targeted to the vicinity of the gene of interest by homologous recombination. All subsequent modifications of that gene are introduced by phiC31-mediated integration of plasmids carrying an
attB
attachment site and the desired mutation. This highly efficient integration results in a tandem duplication of the target locus, which is then reduced into a single copy carrying the mutation, likely by the efficient “single strand annealing” mechanism, induced with a DNA double-strand break (DSB). We used SIRT to generate a series of six mutations in the
Drosophila nbs
gene, ranging from single amino acid replacements and small in-frame deletions to complete deletion of the gene. Because all of the components of SIRT are functional in many different organisms, it is readily adaptable to other multicellular organisms.
Poststroke neuronal rescue and synaptogenesis mediated
in vivo
by protein kinase C in adult brains
Authors: Sun Miao-Kun , Hongpaisan Jarin , Nelson Thomas J. , Alkon Daniel L.
Published: September 2008

Global cerebral ischemia/hypoxia, as can occur during human stroke, damages brain neural networks and synaptic functions. The recently demonstrated protein kinase C (PKC) activation–induced synaptogenesis in rat hippocampus suggested the potential of PKC-mediated antiapoptosis and synaptogenesis during conditions of neurodegeneration. Consequently, we examined the effects of chronic bryostatin-1, a PKC activator, on the cerebral ischemia/hypoxia–induced impairment of synapses and neurotrophic activity in the hippocampal CA1 area and on hippocampus-dependent spatial learning and memory. Postischemic/hypoxic bryostatin-1 treatment effectively rescued ischemia-induced deficits in synaptogenesis, neurotrophic activity, and spatial learning and memory. These results highlight a neuroprotective signaling pathway, as well as a therapeutic strategy with an extended time window for reducing brain damage due to stroke by activating particular PKC isozymes.
Refractive index maps and membrane dynamics of human red blood cells parasitized by
Plasmodium falciparum
Authors: Park YongKeun , Diez-Silva Monica , Popescu Gabriel , Lykotrafitis George , Choi Wonshik , Feld Michael S. , Suresh Subra
Published: September 2008

Parasitization by malaria-inducing
Plasmodium falciparum
leads to structural, biochemical, and mechanical modifications to the host red blood cells (RBCs). To study these modifications, we investigate two intrinsic indicators: the refractive index and membrane fluctuations in
P. falciparum
-invaded human RBCs (
Pf
-RBCs). We report experimental connections between these intrinsic indicators and pathological states. By employing two noninvasive optical techniques, tomographic phase microscopy and diffraction phase microscopy, we extract three-dimensional maps of refractive index and nanoscale cell membrane fluctuations in isolated RBCs. Our systematic experiments cover all intraerythrocytic stages of parasite development under physiological and febrile temperatures. These findings offer potential, and sufficiently general, avenues for identifying, through cell membrane dynamics, pathological states that cause or accompany human diseases.
Self-made shelters protect spiders from predation
Authors: Manicom Carryn , Schwarzkopf Lin , Alford Ross A. , Schoener Thomas W.
Published: September 2008

Many animals modify their environments, apparently to reduce predation risk, but the success of such endeavors, and their impact on the density and distribution of populations, are rarely rigorously demonstrated. We staged a manipulative experiment to assess the effectiveness of self-made shelters by web spiders as protection from natural enemies. Scincid lizards were included or excluded from 21 replicated 200-m
2
plots, and spiders therein were classified as exposed or sheltered, depending on whether they were uncovered in their web or hidden in cocoons, leaves/debris, or burrows. We found that exposed spiders were greatly affected by the presence of predatory scincid lizards, whereas sheltered spiders were not. More specifically, lizards, which forage close to the ground, reduced the abundance of exposed spiders by two-thirds but had no effect on the abundance of sheltered spiders. Sheltered spiders were able to avoid predation and share space with lizards, suggesting that shelter construction is a mechanism for reducing predation risk and has important population consequences.
Regulation & Legitimacy in the Mining Industry in Africa: Where does Canada Stand?
Authors: Campbell Bonnie
Published: September 2008

There are more than 1,000 mining companies listed on Canadian stock exchanges, more than any other country and, as such, represent the most important source of investment in mining in Africa. This article provides a preliminary evaluation of the experience and report of the Canadian National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It does so in the context of the surge of Canadian investment in mining in Africa and of increasing public awareness of the negative impacts of the activities of Canadian mining enterprises. It examines the issues of resource governance and the ‘securitisation’ of mining activities. The recommendations favouring adoption of a Canadian set of CSR Standards for Canadian extractive‐sector companies operating abroad is contextualised in the global expansion of transnational mining investment that since the 1990s led to increasing conflicts with local communities.
3 The Conservative Tradition
Authors: Cook Nicholas
Published: September 2008

Schenker's sometimes virulently conservative politics have been a major problem for later commentators, who have sought to minimize their relevance to his theory. Taking as its starting point his essay “The mission of German genius” (1921), this chapter argues that while prompted by the experience of the First World War, Schenker's politics expressed an underlying cultural conservatism, with roots in the previous century, that is fundamental to his work. In early 20th-century Vienna, the collision between this conservative tradition and processes of modernization resulted in a perniciously binary pattern of thought that is reflected in Schenker's writings, but also prompted a desire for reconciliation heavily coloured by nostalgia. Both the desire and the nostalgia — which are shared with such disparate contemporaries as the piano manufacturer Ludwig Bösendorfer and T. W. Adorno — are central to Schenker's project, for which music is understood as always imbued with social meaning.
4 The Politics of Assimilation
Authors: Cook Nicholas
Published: September 2008

A Galician Jew who came to Vienna on a government scholarship, Schenker arrived just as a fully racial anti-semitism was developing; the binary pattern of thought discussed in Chapter 3 became most pernicious when linked to the binary opposition Jew/not Jew. True to the tradition of German cultural conservatism, Schenker constructed his identity through an extreme appropriation of high German culture, while at the same time maintaining his personal adherence to the Jewish tradition. Though attempts to explain Schenker's theory in terms of that tradition are ultimately unconvincing, his situation in an increasingly anti-semitic society explains much about the motivation of Schenker's project and the way it developed. These issues of culture and race are drawn out through comparisons with two of the principal Others of Schenker's cultural and intellectual universe: Richard Wagner, to whom Schenker's entire project can be understood as a response, and Arnold Schoenberg.
Jewish Biblical Fundamentalism
Authors: Schimmel Solomon
Published: September 2008

This chapter asks why modern and haredi (ultra) Orthodox Jews affirm the outmoded traditional belief that the Torah (Pentateuch) was revealed by God to Moses at Sinai (TMS) and refuse to accept the findings of modern biblical scholarship that the Pentateuch is a humanly authored multiple source post‐Mosaic (MSPM) work. It suggests emotional, psychological, and social forces that account for why smart people cling to foolish beliefs, and describes the defenses they use to ward off scholarly and scientific arguments and evidence that threaten cherished beliefs and evoke fear of loss of faith. The chapter analyzes the ArtScroll commentary on the Torah, and responses to his questions addressed to Orthodox Jews: Why do you believe in TMS? Can you imagine any kind evidence that would induce you to give up your belief in TMS? He also points to immoral and unethical teachings of the Pentateuch as evidence for its human authorship.
Modernity, Religion, and Moral Worldviews
Authors: Wellman Jr. James K.
Published: September 2008

Peter Berger has argued that modernity marginalizes religion to the private sphere, thus creating a secularization of culture. Later he reneged, suggesting that religion can survive without a “sacred canopy.” Christian Smith has used the term “sacred umbrella,” and in this study the metaphor “sacred tent” is used to suggest that subcultures use religion to solidify and mobilize identity. This chapter gives a definition of religion, arguing that groups form religious subcultures around symbolic and social boundaries that involve forces and powers that go beyond the self and group, which create powerful moral worldviews‐defining identity, creating tension with outsiders, and, on occasion, violence.
Method, Data, and Demographics
Authors: Wellman Jr. James K.
Published: September 2008

This chapter outlines the methodology of the study, developing a non‐random group of thirty-four churches, ten liberal and twenty-four evangelical, which are defined as vital. Vitality means the ability to sustain growth in numbers and finances, stability of leadership, and a coherent institutional vision. The data from the interviews is statistically presented. The data shows that liberal churches do not grow in part because they mirror the social and moral ethos of the region. Evangelicals do grow because they overlap the region in their entrepreneurial emphasis and are attractive to those in the region because they offer strong family programs, community to new immigrants, and a “non‐church” church relative to architecture, aesthetics, and social ethos.
Religion, Ideology, and Belief
Authors: Wellman Jr. James K.
Published: September 2008

In this chapter the natural history of religious ideology is examined relative to each groups' view on Jesus Christ, the Bible, and epistemology. Ideology is a neutral term meaning the way in which cultural processes are used to shape and guide social and political behavior. For evangelicals Jesus Christ saves one from sin and nurtures one in love; for liberals Jesus Christ exemplifies the way of compassion, hospitality, and justice. For evangelicals truth is absolute, given by scripture, relatively static though deeply personal and persuasive; for liberals truth is love, justice in a dynamic spiritual journey that deepens one's perception of what is means to live out these principles in the world.
Religion, Outreach, and Mission
Authors: Wellman Jr. James K.
Published: September 2008

This chapter on religion and culture argues that H. Richard Niebuhr's model of Christ and Culture is too abstract in this context. The Pacific Northwest has no assumed religious ethos; it is an open religious market, where religions live and die on how well they sell their brand. The taken for granted aspects of Protestant mainline and liberal Protestant churches have less success though they do have a market in gay and lesbian men and women who make up nearly a third all these congregations. The evangelical brand offers an extensive program in local and global missions that challenges their congregations to evangelize their community and the world.
Conservation of Sensitive Biodiversity Areas
Authors: Goodland Robert
Published: September 2008

This chapter describes the approaches being taken by the World Bank to conserve biodiversity in developing countries. It argues that the conservation of biodiversity also means conserving habitats and ecosystems that are critical to sustaining those environmental services on which the poor, more than the wealthy, depend. Therefore, the chapter states, the presumed conflict between conservation and humans is false. The World Bank must implement and strengthen its social and environmental policies, grant exceptions only when projects meet a stringent set of criteria that unambiguously demonstrates that benefits outweigh losses, and demand insurance or escrow bonds in such cases. The World Bank can also promote both biodiversity and social progress through the rehabilitation of degraded areas.
Ecological and Intellectual Baselines: Saving Lions, Tigers, and Rhinos in Asia
Authors: Seidensticker John
Published: September 2008

This chapter begins by stating that one of the great problems in conservation biology is so-called ecological amnesia, the disappearance in the public mind of what environments were like even a few decades ago. Once species and natural environments are lost, mental adjustments are made in the minds of local people; what is “natural” now is not what was natural twenty or fifty years ago. If Asian conservation and restoration are to take place at all, it must be done in concert with the human populations that have always been part of the landscape. Two case studies are described: (1) Asian lions and the Gir Forest (India) and (2) rhinos, tigers, and the Chitwan Valley (Nepal).
Sustainable Use of Wild Marine Living Resources: Notion or Myth?
Authors: Holt Sidney J.
Published: September 2008

This chapter analyzes the idea that extractive use of “renewable” living resources can be sustained by imposing simple management measures. It reviews the history of the analyses and models developed to describe the reproductive behavior of marine living resources in relation to exploitation. Many of these were deterministic models and they led to the development of the concept of maximum sustainable yield (MSY), an approach to fisheries management that is still dominant although it has been discredited scientifically for many years. The question of sustainability is addressed and problems of the current approaches to multispecies management and ecosystem management are discussed.
Evolving Earth's Environmental Law: Perspectives on a Work in Progress
Authors: Robinson Nicholas A.
Published: September 2008

This chapter discusses the evolution of environmental laws and examines current international environmental law. It traces the primary sources of international law: (1) general principles of law, (2) customary law and conventional or treaty law, (3) analysis of legal experts who elaborate the principles, and (4) customs or treaty obligation through their commentaries. It discusses EIAs and ways to streamline the complexities of international environmental legal norms by recodification of the norms on a regional basis.
The Evolution of Sustainability in Forest Management Policy
Authors: Sample V. Alaric
Published: September 2008

This chapter characterizes sustainability as a central and traditional concern within the science and management practices of forestry. It summarizes the historical evolution of sustainability in forest management and the concept of a “regulated forest”. It then examines the means by which natural resource policy developed in the United States, the influence of the European concept of sustained yield, and the promotion of forest conservation practices, and additional possibilities for policy development to achieve sustainable forest management both on local levels and in a global context.
A New Environmentalism: Conservation and the Core of Governmental Purpose
Authors: Woodwell George M.
Published: September 2008

This chapter argues that the environment must be elevated to a position of prominence, not secondary to war and terrorism. For this to happen, scientists must be more effective in communicating environmental concerns so that the public consciousness can be galvanized into action. While the current focus on protection of biodiversity and the establishment of parks and reserves is important, it is inadequate by itself in preserving functional ecosystems.
Climate Change and Prospects for Sustainability
Authors: Lovejoy Thomas E.
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines the meaning of sustainability in the face of climate change. It discusses how we can begin stemming and then reducing the tide of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. One way is to pay landowners to grow trees and maintain the carbon stock of a forest, while allowing them to use the forest for anything else that would not affect its carbon content.
The Holy Spirit
Authors: Beeley Gregory A.
Published: September 2008

The central chapter of the book evaluates Gregory's distinctive doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit's role in the work of Christian theology, focusing on the soteriological character of Gregory's Pneumatology in distinction from that of his Christology. It traces the development of Gregory's doctrine of the Spirit from his early episcopal sermons to the climax of his work in Constantinople and provides a new reading of the structure and argumentation of his monumental Oration 31 On the Holy Spirit, which is aimed at both the Eunomians and Pneumatomachians. At the heart of the matter is Gregory's account of the full divinity of the Spirit in light of the Bible's silence at the literal level—an argument that involves tracing the sequence of Trinitarian revelation through the covenants and the age of the Church, the direct proof of the Spirit's divinity from baptismal divinization, and Gregory's subsequent exegesis of the Spirit “according to the Spirit.” In conclusion, the chapter identifies the Spirit's central epistemic function for all theology and Gregory's literary rhetoric of piety, which frames and unifies the Theological Orations as a series.
The Trinity
Authors: Beeley Gregory A.
Published: September 2008

This chapter brings the argument to a focus by considering Gregory's doctrine of the Trinity as a whole, which is “theology” in the fullest sense. After cataloging Gregory's major and minor texts on the Trinity, it demonstrates of the nature of Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine as the “theology of the divine economy,” in which the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is confessed, against the well known separation of these categories in certain ancient, medieval, and modern systems. It then identifies Gregory's core doctrine in the dynamic monarchy of God the Father—who is the cause (aitia) and first principle (arche) of the Trinity—as being the root of both the unity and the distinctions among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the fundamental element of Gregory's entire theological system. In its necessary combination of divine equality and dependence, Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine is shown to repudiate both ancient and modern assumptions that the monarchy of the Father contradicts the consubstantiality and equality of the three persons, as well as the false distinctions between Trinitarian personalism and essentialism and between Christocentrism and Trinocentrism in modern theological analysis. It goes on to interpret the secondary types of Gregory's Trinitarian discourse in light of this core doctrine, namely his formulaic summaries of the Trinity—the most common being “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the one Divinity and power” and the most famous being the Nicene language of consubstantiality—and his clarification of several technical matters. Finally, the basic meaning of Gregory's doctrine is located in the believer's participatory knowledge of the Trinity.
Bringing Race to the Center
Authors: Edwards Korie L.
Published: September 2008

This chapter investigates interracial churches' participation in extra‐religious activities, paying particular attention to the ways in which they address issues of race and racial inequality. Findings suggest that interracial churches are no more or less inclined to participate in political, community, or race‐related activities than white churches. And they are less likely than black churches to participate in activities that have been shown to be racially salient, namely race or ethnicity focused activities and political activities. Furthermore, when interracial churches do participate in these kinds of activities, they are marginal to church life and avoid addressing the structural consequences of race.
Why Do They Come?
Authors: Edwards Korie L.
Published: September 2008

This chapter addresses why people attend an interracial church by exploring their past interracial and religious experiences as well as those qualities and practices they appreciate most about attending an interracial church. The chapter gives an understanding of how past experiences and religious preferences influence people's reasons for attending interracial churches.
The National Problem
Authors: Scheindlin Raymond P.
Published: September 2008

Halevi’s work is partly a reaction to the deteriorating political and intellectual conditions of the time, the former undermining the Jewish claim to a special covenant with God, and the latter portraying individual religions as mere social contrivances. The Kuzari grounds Jewish claims to special status on their gift for prophecy. In Halevi’s poetry, this status is expressed in themes of competition with Christianity and Islam. (The claim of Israel’s superiority complicated Halevi’s attitude toward Arabic-style Hebrew poetry, which he came to see as debasing the holy tongue; he probably did not, however, vow to abstain from writing poetry.) Halevi wrote extensive poetry dealing with the messianic redemption. But his pilgrimage was not a messianic gesture; rather, it reflects his embrace of quietism, the national counterpart to the theme of trust in God so prominent in his personal poetry. The chapter concludes with three poems that exemplify these themes.
Cairo
Authors: Scheindlin Raymond P.
Published: September 2008

Late in 1140, Halevi and Ḥalfon traveled to Fustat/Cairo, Halevi exclaiming in verse about the thrill of nearing the place once inhabited by Moses and the ancient Israelites. Halevi considered whether to travel to Palestine overland or to return to Alexandria and complete his journey by ship. He visited Samuel ben Ḥanania and exchanged formal Hebrew epistles with Nathan ben Samuel, his secretary, including a poem surprisingly erotic for a pilgrim and raising again the problematic religious status of poetry. Halevi reported to Aaron Ibn al-’Ammānī in Alexandria on his meeting with the Nagid. An Alexandrian correspondent informed Halevi that Ibn al-’Ammānī had circulated Halevi’s poems to him, arousing envy of him and hostility toward Halevi.
Alexandria Again
Authors: Scheindlin Raymond P.
Published: September 2008

Back in Alexandria, Halevi was accused before the Islamic court of withholding money entrusted to him on behalf of a Jewish apostate in order to coerce the apostate to return to Judaism; Halevi escaped punishment thanks to legal maneuvering and powerful friends. Soon thereafter he embarked, but had to wait on board six days before the winds permitted him to sail. A letter from al-Andalus arrived, notifying Halevi that another member of the Ibn Ezra family had decided to travel east; Halevi deposited a valuable piece of cloth with a friend to be held for this relative’s arrival. Halevi’s ship sailed on May 14, 1141; letters written later that year permit the inference that he reached Palestine and died shortly thereafter.
Argumentation
Authors: Scheindlin Raymond P.
Published: September 2008

Halevi justifies his journey to himself and others in four poems. In the first poem, he reproaches himself for worldliness and urges himself to put his ideas of trust in God to the test. In the second poem, he disputes the contention that the Holy Land has lost its sacredness since the Jews were exiled by asserting that it will be the locus of resurrection of the dead and by unleashing his famous tirade against Greek philosophy. The third poem is a reply to someone who attempted to persuade him to stay in Egypt on the grounds that it, too, was the site of miracles for the Jewish people. The last poem is a long internal monologue in which he responds to friends who objected not only to his pilgrimage but to his whole turn from worldliness to piety.
Crisis Management in a Complex World
Authors: Gilpin Dawn R. , Murphy Priscilla J.
Published: September 2008

Managers, business owners, public relations practitioners, and others grapple daily with issues that have the potential to radically redefine the reputation of a person, company, or industry. They confront a fundamental question about contemporary crisis management: to what extent is it possible to control events and stakeholder responses to them, in order to contain escalating crises or safeguard an organization's reputation? This book addresses this question head-on. This book operates from a strong theoretical orientation. This book pairs real-world examples from across the globe with theory-based analysis to show why simplification often fails to alleviate crises, and can even intensify them. The book proposes a complexity-based approach to organizational learning that can allow organizations to adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
Crisis Communication
Authors: Gilpin Dawn R. , Murphy Priscilla J.
Published: September 2008

This chapter examines the evolution and crisis communication and its dominant perspectives. It begins by providing a definition of what constitutes a crisis. It then discusses the tactical, strategic, and adaptive approaches to crisis management.
Theories of Complexity
Authors: Gilpin Dawn R. , Murphy Priscilla J.
Published: September 2008

This chapter defines major concepts in complexity theory, giving an overview of its foundations and describing the most important theoretical perspectives currently being explored. It links complexity with crisis management, laying out the approach that will guide the discussion in the remainder of this book. It discusses the seven principles of complex systems: interacting agents, adaptability, self-organization, instability, influence of history, permeable boundaries, and irreducibility. It then presents the three approaches to complexity theory: reductionist complexity science, soft complexity science, and complexity-based thinking.
Adapting to a Complex World
Authors: Gilpin Dawn R. , Murphy Priscilla J.
Published: September 2008

This chapter adopts two perspectives to examine major assumptions about developing teams and carrying out crisis plans. It looks first at assumptions made by mainstream crisis management and then at how those assumptions are modified and extended by theories of complexity and organizational learning. Topics discussed include assumptions about teamwork, crisis planning, and crisis plans versus the enacted environment.
Conclusion
Authors: Gilpin Dawn R. , Murphy Priscilla J.
Published: September 2008

This chapter discusses principles that an organization can adopt if it regards itself as a learning organization and sees its relationships as part of a complex adaptive system that changes through continuous interactions within itself and its context. It cites two types of change relevant in crisis management: the gradual diffusion of local change and an avalanche of pent-up disturbance. It recommends a paradigm shift for crisis management in which uncertainty, adaptiveness, and improvization replace certainty, goal orientation, and control.
Introduction
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the increasing number of ethnic groups throughout Africa claiming a Jewish, or Hebrew, or Israelite ancestry. It then lays out the main objective of the book, which is to review the processes and the complex interactions that shaped these new religious identities in Africa. The factors influencing African Jews' religious identities are discussed. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.
The Lost Tribes of Israel
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This chapter explores the prehistory of African Judaism, focusing on the lost tribes of Israel. According to the Bible, the tribes of the kingdom of Israel's northern part were exiled in the 8th century BC, at which time they disappeared from the stage of history. Over time, a belief based on the Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel prophecies took hold of the Jewish imagination, whereby the idea developed and survived: one day the Ten Tribes would be reunited, and this event would prefigure the messianic era. For more than 2,000 years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims attached fundamental importance to the fate of these tribes and speculated on their exile and return. Theologians and exegetes, ancient and modern historians and geographers, ethnographers and missionaries of varied beliefs, and more recently geneticists contributed — through constructions, deconstructions, and imbrications — to the edification of the colossal and shifting knowledge of the Ten Tribes.
Jewish Accounts and Christian Traditions
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This chapter focuses on the myth of the Lost Tribes. It argues that from the earliest times to the first conquests, the myth of the Lost Tribes and its plasticity gave weight to the world of interrelated representations, commonplace and stereotyped images, for laying out supposedly historical realities. The mental perception that resulted divided the world into categories in terms of these stereotypes. The myth gave birth, throughout these centuries, to a tendency to invoke the “Lost Tribes” to make sense of any unknown population. Isaiah's and Ezekiel's prophecies predicting the return of the tribes from the land of Kush provided an authoritative infrastructure for all future speculation concerning the presence of the Ten Tribes in Africa.
The Mythography of Africa
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This chapter argues that people in the early medieval times knew almost nothing Africa and Africans. Through geographical errors and confusion between India and Ethiopian Africa, biblical traditions about the presence of Jews in the land of the Son of Kush, the legend of Solomon and the queen of Sheba, and the location of Ophir in Africa came to be set pieces in the repertoire of Jewish and Christian ethnography of Africa.
Blacks and Jews the Archetypal “Others”
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This chapter explores encounters between European and non-European that raises questions of “difference” and “otherness”. It argues that Europeans, when absorbing the newly discovered lands in America, Africa, and the Pacific, both shaped and distorted to their liking the image of the “other.” The long history of blackness as a common denominator of the inferiority of Africans as well as Jews in Western culture is discussed.
African Jews in Western and Central Africa
Authors: Bruder Edith
Published: September 2008

This chapter surveys various groups in western and central Africa that self-proclaimed a Jewish identity. These include the Zakhor Jews of Timbuktu, Mali; the Igbo of Nigeria; the House of Israel of Ghana; the The Tutsi-Hebrews of Havilah; and the Cape Verde-Israel Friendship Society.
1 From the Blue Planet to Google Earth
Authors: Heise Ursula K.
Published: September 2008

This chapter traces environmentalist visions of the planet from the 1960s to the present. In the 1960s and 1970s, environmentalist thought combined utopian visions of global ecological connectedness with fears of world-wide corporate domination; as the extremes of both visions vanished, they were gradually replaced by the perceptions of ongoing risk and uncertainty summarized in Beck's concept of the “risk society.” These ambivalent views of the global translated into a strong emphasis on a “sense of place” in U.S. environmentalism that has persisted to this day, ultimately because it is consonant with a long tradition of defining American identity in terms of mobility that sees local rootedness as a cultural antidote. The chapter proposes the concept of “eco-cosmopolitanism,” derived from connections between ecocriticism and recent theories of transnational identity, as a more suitable way of thinking about environmental commitment today, and suggests that the zooming techniques enabled by recent digital technologies provide a material instantiation of such cosmopolitan connections between local, national, regional, and global perspectives. In literature and art, these connections tend to be represented by combinations of allegory or epic with modernist and postmodernist techniques of fragmentation, montage, and collage, as shown in some exemplary analyses.
2 Among the Everywheres
Authors: Heise Ursula K.
Published: September 2008

Building on Ch. 1, this chapter analyzes scientific texts, novels, films and poems between the 1960s and the 1990s that explore the relationship between local, national, and global forms of identity and community through portrayals of population growth and urban spaces. Works from the 1960s and 1970s represent “overpopulation” in the form of urban crowding that forces individuals to remain confined to the local. Works from the 1990s, by contrast, such as David Brin’s science fiction novel Earth or John Cage’s poem “Overpopulation and Art,” imagine in sometimes utopian fashion how digital technologies open up virtual spaces that span the globe and enable new kinds of identity and community. The more recent texts highlight how the experience of virtual spaces has come to form part of living in local places, and thereby highlight the necessity of integrating such mediated experiences into environmentalist theories of inhabitation. They also provide innovative narrative and lyrical solutions to the formal problem of how to represent global connectedness in literary texts.
3 Adventures in the Global Amazon
Authors: Heise Ursula K.
Published: September 2008

This chapter, building on Ch. 1, explores how a sense of globally connected places develops from innovative aesthetic techniques in two works that focus on the Amazon rainforest as an icon of environmentalist concern. German installation artist Lothar Baumgarten’s experimental nature documentary The Origin of the Night: Amazon Cosmos presents images and sounds that ostensibly portray the Brazilian jungle, but are revealed as images of the river Rhine in Germany at the end of the film. The superimposition of the two landscapes generates a complex reflection on global interconnectedness. Japanese American novelist Karen Tei Yamashita’s novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest revolves around a mysterious substance discovered in the Brazilian jungle that becomes the point of departure for global business and media ventures and is ultimately revealed to be geologically transformed First-World trash. Yamashita’s thematic focus on a local place transformed by the global, as well as her combination of Latin American techniques derived from the work of Mário de Andrade and Gabriel García Márquez with North American postmodernist strategies, create a narrative world that links the local, national, and global realms in innovative ways. Both works aim to create an “eco-cosmopolitan” awareness of global cultural and ecological spaces.
Gossip, Letters, Phones
Authors: Schantz Ned
Published: September 2008

For over two hundred years of narrative culture, when female characters try to get together, crazy things happen. Indeed, the greater the means at women’s disposal, the more severe and twisted is the anxious reaction. But behind this broad anxiety lurks a powerful ideal of sympathetic and strategic female networks, an ideal that takes its intimate shape from the expectations of communications media, and that underwrites the very culture that would deny it. The book examines novelistic culture from the British novel to Hollywood film as a series of responses to the threat and promise of female networks. In texts from Clarissa, Emma, and The Portrait of a Lady to Sorry, Wrong Number, Vertigo, and You’ve Got Mail, it argues that a recurring gothic nightmare haunts plots of courtship and marriage, and that the concept of female networks illuminates the exits, for culture and criticism alike. And while this study must of necessity visit an uncanny realm of lost messages and false suitors, telepathy and artificial intelligence, locked rooms and time-traveling stalkers, these occult concerns only confirm the power at stake in the most basic modes of female communication, in gossip, letters, and phones.
Gossip and the Novel
Authors: Schantz Ned
Published: September 2008

With attention to major incarnations of the British novel, this chapter positions gossip as the central, disavowed source of interest in novelistic discourse. Reading Emma and The Portrait of a Lady closely, it tracks the seduction of the reader into gendered habits of scapegoating and sadism that characterize gossip at its worst. To counteract these dynamics, the chapter mobilizes untapped textual resources toward a more generous feminist mode of gossip, and thereby challenges conventional assumptions about character and plot from the status of Mrs. Elton to the fate of Isabel Archer.
The Space of Crime
Authors: Schantz Ned
Published: September 2008

This chapter considers how a cultural insistence on confined space emerges in direct proportion to the manifest range or intensity of female networking. Beginning with the tradition of the locked room mystery and its disturbing misogynistic tendencies, the chapter analyses the isolating effects of technologies from telephones to e-mail when deployed in the name of romance or safety. A brief philosophical detour yields a curious opportunity in the epistemology of artificial intelligence as established by the so-called Turing Test, where the locked room required by the test’s controls creates an unanticipated space of gender ambiguity and desire. This dynamic returns in the pseudonymous e-mail choreography of You’ve got Mail, only to be shut down by gothic forces in thin disguise. The chapter comes finally to consider the gendered inversion of space in Bound as an impressive, if still troubling, escape from the space of crime.
Time Stalkers
Authors: Schantz Ned
Published: September 2008

This chapter identifies the isolating effects of stalkers on female figures, emphasizing the temporal isolation accomplished through the control of storage media such as tape recorders and answering machines that would otherwise connect the heroines to a vital past of female networks. Following the stalker through two pairs of films: The Terminator and Klute, then Blade Runner and Vertigo, it becomes clear that this abuse of the past constitutes criminal necrophilia. This necrophilia will nonetheless be relentlessly projected back onto the heroines, whose female networks will be figured in various ways as morbid simulation. At stake is always the cultural verdict on the modern city, a city seen as fraught with female independence and male shame.
Epilogue: Radio-Free Middlemarch
Authors: Schantz Ned
Published: September 2008

This thought experiment attempts to liberate Middlemarch from a predictable place in the novelistic culture of gossip, mobilizing the question of anachronism to locate the novel on the threshold of modern sound technology. Indeed, listening to Middlemarch with an ear for this coming future reveals an astonishing discourse of necrophilia, black magic, and resilient, time-traveling female networks. Installing the figure of radio as a bridge to our own moment, the epilogue thereby moves to reclaim the lost futures of the Victorian past as a resource for feminism.
When the Immune System Is the Problem, Not the Solution: Microbial Immunopathology
Authors: Clark William R.
Published: September 2008

The immune response to microbal infection is massive and brutal — it has to be. But on occasion, particularly when an initial infection is not rapidly cleared, the ongoing immune attack against invaders can cause significant collateral damage to otherwise healthy self cells and tissues. This damage is refered to as immunopathology. This chapter examines three examples of immunopathology: tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, and bacterial sepsis.
When the Wall Comes Tumbling Down: HIV/AIDS
Authors: Clark William R.
Published: September 2008

AIDS presents one of the greatest medical and scientific challenges of the past sixty years. This chapter examines AIDS as a medical problem, as a problem in virology, and from an immunological point of view. Current approaches to dealing with AIDS have dramatically improved survival rates, but long-term survival has not been achieved. Treatments are hugely expensive, have unacceptable side effects, and have had minimal impact outside of first-world countries. The chapter thus also looks at future directions for AIDS research, including gene-therapy approaches, and DNA-based vaccines.
When the Wall Comes Tumbling Down: Primary Immune Deficiency Diseases
Authors: Clark William R.
Published: September 2008

AIDS provides an example of destruction of the adaptive immune system by an external agent, HIV. But immune function can also be disrupted by natural mutations in any of the hundreds of genes that underlie operation of the immune system, from genes that direct assembly of antibodies and cytokines or their receptors, to genes that guide production and maturation of immune system cells. The result is primary immunodeficiency disease. One category of these diseases (severe combined immunodeficiency disease: SCID) even produces newborns that are, in effect, tiny AIDS patients. This chapter presents research directions that may lead to better management of these diseases.
The Immune System and Cancer
Authors: Clark William R.
Published: September 2008

Cancers arise as a result of mutations in genes controlling cell division. They may well arise in the body on a fairly frequent basis. Most or all cancers display information on their surface that should make them seem foreign; the rare tumors that emerge have somehow escaped detection by the immune system. Immune surveillance of tumors is largely the job of T cells and a specialized cell called the NK (natural killer) cell. Our improved understanding of the interaction between tumor cells and the immune system has led to promising possibilities for treating cancer in the future, including forms of gene therapy and DNA-based cancer vaccines.
Holiness and Ministry
Authors: Dozeman Thomas B
Published: September 2008

This book is an initial response to the call of the World Council of Churches for renewed theological reflection on the biblical roots of ordination to strengthen the vocational identity of the ordained and to provide a framework for ecumenical dialogue. It is grounded in the assumption that the vocation of ordination requires an understanding of holiness and how it functions in human religious experience. The goal is to construct a biblical theology of ordination, embedded in broad reflection on the nature of holiness. The study of holiness and ministry interweaves three methodologies. First, the history of religions describes two theories of holiness in the study of religion — as a dynamic force and as a ritual resource — which play a central role in biblical literature and establish the paradigm of ordination to Word and Sacrament in Christian tradition. Second, the study of the Moses in the Pentateuch and the formation of the Mosaic office illustrate the ways in which the two views of holiness model ordination to the prophetic word and to the priestly ritual. And, third, canonical criticism provides the lens to explore the ongoing influence of the Mosaic office in the New Testament literature.