bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
OnabotulinumtoxinA treatment for chronic migraine: experience in 52 patients treated with the PREEMPT paradigm
Authors: Pedraza María Isabel , de la Cruz Carolina , Ruiz Marina , López-Mesonero Luis , Martínez Elena , de Lera Mercedes , Guerrero Ángel Luis
Published: April 2015

OnabotulinumtoxinA (OnabotA) was approved for treatment of chronic migraine (CM) after publication of PREEMPT trials. Thus, we set out to evaluate the efficacy of OnabotA in a series of patients with CM treated according to the PREEMPT protocol.

In May 2012 we began to offer OnabotA to patients with CM who did not respond to topiramate and at least one other preventive therapy (beta blocker and/or calcium channel antagonist). We prospectively recorded demographic data and the characteristics of migraine, and we assessed the modifications in monthly headache and migraine days, as well as the number of days of symptomatic medication and triptan intake.

By September 2014 we had treated 52 patients (8 male, 44 female), whose age at treatment onset was 42.8 ± 12.7 years (range: 16–71) and age at migraine onset was 16.8 ± 7.8 years (3–32). In 43 of these patients (82.7%) symptomatic overuse of medication was observed at the onset of treatment. A total of 168 procedures were performed and after the first session, we observed a significant reduction in all the variables considered. Twelve (23.1%) patients failed to perceive a positive effect after the first procedure and it was not repeated in 4 of them. By contrast, there was a significant decreasing in all the variables evaluated compared to the baseline in the 39 patients that received a second series of injections.

The use of OnabotA according to the PREEMPT paradigm is an effective treatment in patients with chronic migraine in a real-life setting.
Phase I/II Study of HSP90 Inhibitor AUY922 and Erlotinib for EGFR-Mutant Lung Cancer With Acquired Resistance to Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors
Authors: Johnson Melissa L. , Yu Helena A. , Hart Eric M. , Weitner Bing Bing , Rademaker Alfred W. , Patel Jyoti D. , Kris Mark G. , Riely Gregory J.
Published: April 2015

Purpose

AUY922 is an HSP90 inhibitor that causes degradation of HSP chaperones and their client proteins, including epidermal growth factor receptor. We conducted a phase I/II trial to evaluate AUY922 and erlotinib for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer and disease progression during erlotinib treatment.

Patients and Methods

All patients had developed acquired resistance after treatment with erlotinib and underwent repeat tumor biopsies before study entry to assess for EGFR T790M. In phase I, 18 patients were treated with AUY922 intravenously once per week and erlotinib once per day in 28-day cycles using a 3 + 3 dose-escalation design. In phase II, 19 additional patients were treated at the maximum-tolerated dose. The primary end point of the phase II trial was complete plus partial response rate.

Results

In phase I (n = 18), three patients were treated in each cohort, except the highest-dose cohort (AUY922 70 mg and erlotinib 150 mg), which expanded to six patients because of a dose-limiting toxicity (ie, junctional cardiac rhythm). Common drug-related adverse events were diarrhea, skin rash, hyperglycemia, and night blindness. All patients treated at maximum-tolerated dose (n = 25) were evaluable for response. The partial response rate was 16% (four of 25 patients; 95% CI, 5% to 36%) and was independent of tumor T790M status.

Conclusion

Partial responses were observed, but the duration of treatment with AUY922 and erlotinib was limited by toxicities, especially night blindness. This phase II study of AUY922 and erlotinib did not meet its primary end point.
Systemic Aldosterone, But Not Angiotensin II, Plays a Pivotal Role in the Pathogenesis of Renal Injury in Chronic Nitric Oxide-Deficient Male Rats
Authors: Suehiro Takaichi , Tsuruya Kazuhiko , Ikeda Hirofumi , Toyonaga Jiro , Yamada Shunsuke , Noguchi Hideko , Tokumoto Masanori , Kitazono Takanari
Published: April 2015

Chronic inhibition of nitric oxide synthase by Nω-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME) causes progressive renal injury and systemic hypertension. Angiotensin II (Ang II) has been conventionally regarded as one of the primary causes of renal injury. We reported previously that such renal injury was almost completely suppressed by both an Ang II type I receptor blocker and an aldosterone antagonist. The aldosterone antagonist also inhibited the systemic Ang II elevation. Therefore, it remains to be elucidated whether Ang II or aldosterone directly affects the development of such renal injury. In the present study, we investigated the role of aldosterone in the pathogenesis of renal injury induced by L-NAME-mediated chronic nitric oxide synthase inhibition in male Wistar rats (aged 10 wk). Serial analyses demonstrated that the renal injury and inflammation in L-NAME-treated rats was associated with elevation of both Ang II and aldosterone. To investigate the direct effect of aldosterone on the renal injury, we conducted adrenalectomy (ADX) and aldosterone supplementation in L-NAME-treated rats. In ADX rats, aldosterone was undetectable, and renal injury and inflammation were almost completely prevented by ADX, although systemic and local Ang II and blood pressure were still elevated. Aldosterone supplementation reversed the beneficial effect of ADX. The present study indicates that aldosterone rather than Ang II plays a central and direct role in the pathogenesis of renal injury by L-NAME through inflammation, independent of its systemic hemodynamic effects.
American Academic Freedom and Chinese Nationalism: An H-Asia Debate
Authors: Shao Qin
Published: April 2015

The unfolding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) incident in spring 2006 led to lively exchanges and debates among scholars on the US-based Asian studies listserv, H-Asia, which lasted from early May to mid-June. They were the most rapid, intense exchanges and debates on a single topic in the more than two decades' history of the listserv, providing a small window onto the mentality of the academic world mostly dominated by US scholars regarding the MIT incident and other relevant issues. Some commentators on H-Asia were thoughtful and open minded. But a number of the posts, critical of the MIT students, quickly framed the debate as Chinese nationalism vs. US academic freedom. They implied that the MIT Chinese students were motivated by Chinese nationalism because of the Chinese Communist Party's indoctrination. According to those critics, the MIT Chinese students failed to appreciate the nuance of humanities and social sciences and the spirit of US academic freedom. This article takes a critical look at the H-Asia debate on Chinese nationalism and US academic freedom over the MIT incident. It raises a number of issues, including academic freedom; nationalism; academic hierarchy; culture of victimization; scholars' responsibility; racial, political, and cultural prejudice; and some Western scholars' own aversion toward “Chinese nationalism.” It questions whether the threat to academic freedom is not within each of us because of our own prejudices.
The Social in Media: Race, History, and the Visualizing Cultures Controversy at MIT
Authors: Condry Ian
Published: April 2015

Online communication has a tendency to operate without clear contextual cues. What does the Visualizing Cultures controversy say about the contexts in which race, Asians, and history intersect? The website All Look Same offers an intriguing example of the difficulties of combating racism. As we come into contact with images online, we expand our awareness but also simultaneously move into realms where we have only a limited grasp of the contexts in which things are made, and the goals to which they aspire.
Interview with 2005–6 MIT CSSA President Huan Zhang
Authors: Wang Jing , Wong Winnie Won Yin
Published: April 2015

This piece is an interview conducted as an e-mail Q&A by the editors with Huan Zhang in November 2013.
Efficient and Continuous Decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide Using a Silica Capillary Coated with a Thin Palladium or Platinum Layer
Authors: Javaid Rahat , Qazi Umair Yaqub , Kawasaki Shin-Ichiro
Published: April 2015

The decomposition of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was studied using a silica capillary tube (o.d. 0.45 mm, i.d. 0.33 mm, length 1000 mm) coated with a thin palladium (Pd) or platinum (Pt) layer. The inner walls of the capillary were coated with a homogenous thin layer of metal by electroless plating. This metal-coated capillary provided rapid and continuous decomposition of H2O2 at room temperature within a residence time of 9.6 s, simply by passing the solution through the capillary. A capillary without Pd or Pt coating was unable to decompose H2O2 even at 50 °C. Pt proved to be a better catalyst than Pd. We also studied the effect of temperature, pH, concentration of H2O2 and the residence time on decomposition of H2O2.
Strategy of Structure Generation within Applicability Domains with One-Class Support Vector Machine
Authors: Kaneko Hiromasa , Funatsu Kimito
Published: April 2015

Generation of virtual chemical structures is applied in material, product, and drug designs to obtain structures having desired activity or properties. Quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) models and quantitative structure–property relationship (QSPR) models are used to estimate values of activity and those of properties of structures, respectively. However, estimated values are unreliable when new structures are out of an applicability domain (AD) which is defined using a training data set. Data density around a new structure, which can handle nonlinearities between descriptors and multimodal data distributions, can be an index of ADs. We focus on one-class support vector machine (OCSVM) as a data density estimation method and propose a strategy of structure generation within ADs. The partial derivative of an OCSVM model with respect to each descriptor is used as a guideline to change each descriptor to get structures within ADs. It was confirmed that structures could be changed to increase data density around the structures, and could be generated within ADs through QSAR and QSPR data analyses.
Chance Constrained Selection of the Best
Authors: Hong L. Jeff , Luo Jun , Nelson Barry L.
Published: April 2015

Selecting the solution with the largest or smallest mean of a primary performance measure from a finite set of solutions while requiring secondary performance measures to satisfy certain constraints is called constrained selection of the best (CSB) in the simulation ranking and selection literature. In this paper, we consider CSB problems with secondary performance measures that must satisfy probabilistic constraints, and we call such problems chance constrained selection of the best (CCSB). We design procedures that first check the feasibility of all solutions and then select the best among all the sample feasible solutions. We prove the statistical validity of these procedures for variations of the CCSB problem under the indifference-zone formulation. Numerical results show that the proposed procedures can efficiently handle CCSB problems with up to 100 solutions, each with five chance constraints.
An itch to scratch: skin diseases in the older person
Authors: Watkins Jean
Published: April 2015

As people get older they are much more susceptible to different types of skin disorder. Jean Watkins provides an overview of which problems are particularly prevalent in care homes and offers advice on how best to treat the symptoms
Fathers, care and family policy in France: an unfinished revolution?
Authors: Milner Susan , Gregory Abigail
Published: April 2015

This article reviews policy debates and output on employment rights for fathers in France, focusing on paternity leave and the debates leading to reform of leave in 2014. Since the extension of paternity leave to 10 days in 2002, take-up has increased but a minority of fathers, particularly those in managerial positions, find it difficult to access. The new law on parental leave enjoys public support but has been politically controversial. Policy debates around paternity and parental leave indicate an unfinished revolution in French family policy and law. Evidence of attitudinal change and workplace initiatives suggests that existing tensions are inevitable given the strength of a ‘hyper-maternalised’ policy tradition and also that such tensions may themselves be part of a longer-term process of ‘lagged adaptation’.
“This is how I remember the finest man I ever knew”: War Commemoration, the Politics of Healing, and the Miraculous in the Cause of Emil Kapaun
Authors: Holscher Kathleen
Published: April 2015

U.S. Army chaplain Father Emil J. Kapaun died a prisoner in Korea in 1951. Today, the Catholic Church recognizes him as a Servant of God—a step along the path to sainthood. His sainthood cause is one example of a turn within American devotionalism toward honoring chaplains. Saint-making happens via practices of public remembering; in Kapaun’s case, Catholics remember his work alongside non-Catholic veterans and with support from the U.S. military. Kapaun is remembered as a healer who nursed the damaged bodies of his comrades. These remembrances have always been innovative and retrospective, engaging a changing present along with the past. For ex-POWs who told Kapaun’s story when they returned from Korea, memories of his healing work contributed to a public history of war that eased their homecomings. Later, Kapaun commemoration happened as an extension of Reagan-era initiatives to honor veterans. Kapaun memorials participated in a post-Vietnam “politics of healing” which obscured the memory of political dissent, replacing it with sentimental models for imagining war. Today Kapaun’s reputation as a wartime healer mingles with his reputation as a saint with intercessory power to heal. The article concludes with a reflection on the relationship between remembered healer and present healer, between commemoration and the supernatural.
Quest for the Holy Grail: Central American War, Catholic Internationalism, and United States Public Diplomacy in Reagan’s America
Authors: Strauss Charles T.
Published: April 2015

Among the polarizing ideological concerns of the 1980s was President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America. The Reagan Administration prioritized its anticommunist agenda over other concerns by supporting military generals and their governments and by condemning left-leaning groups in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The development and consequences of Reagan’s foreign policy in Central America, as well as the White House efforts to sell its Central American policy to the American people, have been well researched by historians and social scientists. Reagan’s hardline against communism in Central America excited his political base in advance of his 1984 reelection bid and shore up a coalition of Reagan voters, including Protestants in the so-called “religious right” and working class Catholics who had recently abandoned the Democratic Party. However, less is known about the ways in which the Reagan White House contended with Catholics in the United States and in Central America who were actively concerned about the potentially dangerous implications of Reagan’s policies for the Catholic Church and the poor in Central America. Transnational Catholic institutions and networks, including missionary associations, bishops’ conferences, colleges and universities, peace and justice organizations, and the Catholic press, challenged Reagan’s policies on the ground in Central America and in Washington, D.C. By the end of Reagan’s first term, this “Catholic internationalism” became an obstacle to Reagan’s Central American “public diplomacy.” The White House Office of Public Liaison (OPL) targeted American Catholics whose loyalty to Reagan may have been tested by reports from Central America that U.S. allies in the region were targeting the poor as well as Catholic priests and sisters. OPL officials, specifically Faith Ryan Whittlesey (director, 1983–1985) successfully situated the Central America policies within a popular anticommunist discourse, allowing Reagan’s political advisers to sidestep the transnational criticisms from Catholic missionary associations, including Maryknoll, and their allies in the Central America solidarity movement, including the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) and the United States Catholic Conference (USCC). Although Reagan never won support for his Central America policy in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, his agenda in Central America generated popular enthusiasm for anticommunist ideology and methods even as it spurred on transnational Catholic activism, marking one of the defining moments of the 1980s “war of ideas.”
From Harvard to Nuremberg: Father Fabian Flynn’s Service as Catholic Chaplain to the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1942–1946
Authors: Brennan Sean
Published: April 2015

Despite daunting circumstances, including the survival of stomach cancer in 1938, the Passionist priest Fabian Flynn desired to enter the United States Army as a chaplain almost immediately after America’s entry into the Second World War in December 1941. Once he received approval to enlist from his Passionist superiors ten months later, his training began in his hometown at Boston’s Harvard University. Flynn spent six months at an Army Medical Training Center in southwest Texas before joining the First Infantry Division’s 26th Infantry Regiment in the summer of 1943. He served the next four years with them, from Tunisia to Sicily, Italy, France (during the D-Day invasion at Normandy), Belgium, Germany, and Czechoslovakia. Serving at the front lines for many of the U.S. Army’s engagements in Western and Central Europe, Flynn would then face a very different and complex challenge, as the first Catholic chaplain at the International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg. Throughout his service as a U.S. Army chaplain, Flynn strove to provide moral and spiritual leadership on a continent ravaged by war. His triumphs and missteps in pursuing these goals serve as a revealing microcosm of the Catholic Church’s role during the Second World War.
American Evangelical Attitudes Toward Catholicism: World War II to Vatican II
Authors: Chapman Mark B.
Published: April 2015

From the close of World War II to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, anti-Catholicism marked the attitudes of U.S. fundamentalists and neoevangelicals. Exploring anti-Catholicism’s forms and how they differed and changed within the two groups, this study examines the early documents of the National Association of Evangelicals, the neoevangelical Christianity Today , and the fundamentalist Christian Beacon . Both groups’ opposition to Catholicism was assumed more than stated, but by the early 1960s greater openness to Catholicism could be seen, especially among neoevangelicals, representing important seeds of change that would later flower into dialogues including “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” Developments were ambiguous, however, with countertrends found especially when issues of church and state became pronounced. Nevertheless, seen against the backdrop of fundamentalism’s continued anti-Catholicism, the changing attitudes of neoevangelicals were significant, laying groundwork for future engagements with Catholicism.
Educating “Sister Lucy”: The Experiential Sources of the Movement to Improve Higher Education for Catholic Teaching Sisters, 1949–1964
Authors: Mulderry Darra D.
Published: April 2015

In 1949 Sister Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C., addressed the National Catholic Educational Association with the argument that many bright young sisters quickly “deteriorated” into states of anxiety and discouragement because they were assigned to teach in Catholic schools without adequate academic preparation. If the Church hoped to retain the newest generation of sisters and form effective educators, she maintained, it needed to stop “squandering” sisters’ talents and educate them according to their “potencies.” By 1954 Sister Mary Emil Penet, I.H.M., following Sister Madeleva’s lead, co-launched the Sister Formation Conference (SFC), a sister-led commission that urged women’s orders to improve academic, spiritual, and professional education for sisters. As the SFC leaders travelled the nation promoting the “discovery and development of talent in the Sisterhoods,” they countered concerns about “intellectual pride” long prevalent in convent culture. While they affirmed most features of convent asceticism, the SFC sisters decisively sidestepped the notion that women’s intellectual pursuits led to corrosive pride. SFC leaders, like all sisters, considered humility a central virtue, but they argued that the frustration of sisters’ intellectual ambitions was harmful, not humble. Notably, the founders of the SFC had emerged from the minority of sisters who held advanced academic degrees and taught in Catholic women’s colleges. The practical and ideological grounding for their reform asceticism is traceable to their experiences as graduate students and college instructors. By the mid-1960s the vast majority of U.S. sisters, immersed in a postwar discourse that promoted the cultivation of individual talent as a moral good and a democratic right, had embraced the SFC leaders’ ideals and become the best-educated group of sisters in the world.
“We are the Church”: The Cursillo Movement and the Reinvention of Catholic Identities in Postwar America and Beyond
Authors: Nabhan-Warren Kristy
Published: April 2015

The Cursillo movement, the three-day “short course” in Christianity that Mallorquín Catholic layman Eduardo Bonnín Aguiló founded in 1944, flourished in the postwar American religious landscape. That the weekend, which emphasizes Bonnín’s theological triptych of piety, study, and action, swept through U.S. Catholic dioceses, parishes, as well as Protestant churches, is a testament to the desire of lay men and women for a personal and communal experience of God. This study of the rapid rise of the Cursillo weekend movement, post-weekend phenomena, and Cursillo spinoffs in the postwar years serves as a case study that illuminates how the global, national, and local were able to work together in new ways in postwar America. A postwar cultural and religious climate of experimentation and global awareness encouraged communalism and working for a common cause. This ethos helped make possible a broad lay-centric spiritual movement that traversed geographic and denominational boundaries.
“The mental grandchildren of Monsignor John A. Ryan”: George G. Higgins, John F. Cronin, S.S., and the Role of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in Post-War American Politics
Authors: Koeth Stephen M.
Published: April 2015

In the 1930s Monsignor John A. Ryan strove to wed Catholic social reform and American liberalism through his interpretation of papal encyclicals, appropriation of Progressive thought, and positive evaluation of New Deal economic policies. In the postwar period, two of Ryan’s students extended his engagement with liberal reform through their own work for the U.S. bishops. From 1945 to 1966, Monsignor George G. Higgins and Father John F. Cronin, S.S., collaborated in using the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference as a national platform from which they could bring the principles of Catholic social theory to bear on national debates. By examining their individual and collective work regarding labor and economics, their approaches to communism, and their advocacy of racial integration and civil rights, this article argues that Cronin and Higgins were “mental grandchildren of Monsignor John A. Ryan,” adapting the principles Ryan had gleaned from the social encyclicals and applying them to the pressing concerns of their own time.
The Outside-Inside Game
Authors: Gutierrez Alfredo , Franco Marisa , Chen Michelle
Published: April 2015

The immigrant rights movement in the United States has moved in many directions over the years, evolving across generations and pivoting across the political spectrum from radical border resistance to inside the Beltway. In this forum, Michelle Chen moderates a dialogue between two veteran immigrant rights advocates who have watched the movement grow, diversify and sometimes contradict itself over the past three decades: longtime organizer, author, and state senator Alfredo Gutierrez and immigrant organizer with the #Not1More anti-deportation campaign Marisa Franco.
Tyranny of Democracy
Authors: Allen Danielle
Published: April 2015

In 1861 Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, gave a legalistic account of why he must leave slavery untouched. By contrast in his second inaugural of 1865, Lincoln spoke as a god or a ghost, as George Kateb writes in his new book Lincoln’s Political Thought. Lincoln blames providence (or God) for the moral evil of slavery and conjures up an ongoing extermination of white Americans as the only possible recompense for the generations of oppression wrought by Southern slave-holders as well as by Northerners who were complicit in their crime. Kateb’s puzzle is how Lincoln moved from neutral broker to impassioned evangelist for freedom.
Updating Debs’ Dream
Authors: Kazin Michael
Published: April 2015

Nearly every morning, hundreds of immigrants from Latin America come to my affluent town in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. to work. They build or clean million-dollar houses, cook and wash dishes at fast-food and fancy restaurants, care for the children of professional parents, pick up the garbage, mow the grass, and rake the leaves. Few, if any, belong to a union; many are burdened with a legal status that is uncertain at best. As I watch a man from Oaxaca hang drywall, or a woman from El Salvador push an infant in a pricey stroller, or a chef from Lima carve a pollo a la brasa, I occasionally muse about a short story by Jack London published in 1909. “The Dream of Debs” describes a general strike in a city which ends only when the workers win all their demands. What if, one day, the Latino workers in my town decided to do the same?
Growth vs. the Climate
Authors: Immerwahr Daniel
Published: April 2015

By now, we’ve raised the average global temperature a little less than one degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The best predictions suggest that, if we go about our business as usual, we will raise it somewhere between four and six degrees by 2100. With the heat will also come side effects: fiercer and more frequent storms, droughts, acidifying oceans, melting glaciers, and the loss of species.
Postcards from Empire
Authors: Bahadur Gaiutra
Published: April 2015

Victorian-era photographs of Indian women in the West Indies advertized their beauty and their prosperity. Almost always, the women depicted are laden with silver and gold, their bodies showcases for jewelry from “the East.” The text accompanying the postcards reflects a preoccupation with how these women looked, especially with their jewelry and the wealth that it suggested. But the irony of the word “coolie”—conventionally used to refer to manual laborers on the Indian subcontinent—being juxtaposed with such riches was clearly lost on the caption writers. In these plantation societies on the verge of becoming tourist paradises, the word had acquired a new meaning—as ethnic slur.
Dangling Man
Authors: Burgin Angus
Published: April 2015

Mark Greif’s The Age of the Crisis of Man is an unusual book. It stands out in part for the grandiosity of its ambitions: Greif tries to provide an expansive new framework for the midcentury trajectory of American ideas. Still more audaciously, he suggests that his findings might help to overcome half a century of factionalism on the left. A founding editor of n+1, he aims to mine the texts of an earlier generation for social philosophies that can serve the political needs of the present day.
Difficult Fun
Authors: Jaffe Sarah
Published: April 2015

“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both,” writes Viv Albertine, once the guitarist for British punk band the Slits, in the introduction to her new book, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys: A Memoir. The first chapter is titled “Masturbation”; her first anecdote ends with the lesson, “Grown-ups lie.” In her fifties now, Viv Albertine is still something of a punk.
The French Dilemma
Authors: Bell David A.
Published: April 2015

The horrific attacks in Paris in January spurred a torrent of commentary, most of which addressed their specifically French context. Commentators, particularly in France itself, recalled the long traditions of French satirical writing behind Charlie Hebdo, which had published deliberately offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. They dissected the militant French form of secularism and the long history of French anti-Semitism—which seemed particularly relevant to the siege of a kosher market where a gunman killed four hostages after earlier murdering a policewoman. They discussed the legacies of French republicanism, French universalism, French racism, French colonization, French decolonization, French immigration, and French urban planning.This emphasis on France itself, however, has been misguided.
Organizing the Unorganizable
Authors: Kim E. Tammy
Published: April 2015

In September 2013, the AFL-CIO, a giant labor federation comprising fiftysix unions and 12.5 million U.S. workers, held its quadrennial convention in Los Angeles. There was plenty of what one might expect from such a gathering: lapel pins and hats with jaunty slogans, rousing speeches, and middle-aged toughs talking working-class politics. There was also a parade of low-wage workers, none of them formally members of the AFL-CIO. Immigrant nannies, Walmart clerks, day laborers, and taxi drivers appeared on stage, cheered by a sincere, if slightly flummoxed, union crowd. The intended message was clear: this is the future of the labor movement. Welcome them and pay attention.
Bankers Without Borders
Authors: Abrahamian Atossa Araxia
Published: April 2015

Does your money cross borders as easily as you do? That’s a question that HSBC, “the world’s local bank,” posed to would-be clients in a slogan that appeared on posters around the world a few years ago. The prompt accompanied a photograph of smiling Asian cyclists before the University of Cambridge. “When life takes you or your family across borders, your money should seamlessly follow,” reads the caption. “You’re at home abroad. Now the same can be said for your money.”
Wanted: Personal Assistant
Authors: Mari Francesca
Published: April 2015

When I was an undergrad at Harvard, the English department produced fancy brochures about the opportunities available to its majors: teacher, editor, Rhodes scholar. Personal assistant was not listed. I hadn’t even heard of such positions until senior year, when older friends, artistically inclined friends, started snagging them. It’s the position I think I’ve heard most about now.
Chinese Labor Divided
Authors: Hurst William
Published: April 2015

It is tempting to see all these actions as evidence of a growing labor movement in the largest country in the world. There are, after all, over 26 million more workers in China than the combined total in the next three of the world’s most populous countries (India, the United States, and Indonesia). Alas, this massive labor force has never built a unified movement and is not close to having one now.
The Men in the Middle
Authors: Kamat Anjali , Crabapple Molly
Published: April 2015

There is a vast underground network of tens of thousands of recruitment agents, brokers, and sub-agents peddling the fantasy of the Gulf as the destination of choice. They operate in the shadows of the law, unregulated but visible everywhere: on street corners, inside the ubiquitous pawnshops, behind the enticing facades of travel agencies that promise untold riches in faraway lands, and in the suddenly lavish homes of the relative who just returned from the Gulf. They concentrate their efforts in the small towns and villages across South Asia—places that have been ravaged by the effects of neoliberal economic policies and declining public investment in agriculture. There, among the most desperate and daring, they find an eager audience for their stories of easy money and promises of a future dipped in gold.
Introduction: From the Margins
Authors: Asoka Kaavya , Chen Michelle
Published: April 2015

What do the workers, asylum seekers, parents and children, the many ordinary men and women who leave their homes every day imagine when they depart for a new country? For many, migration spells promise—of wealth and opportunity, of shelter and refuge, of freedom and escape. But as we know, not everyone makes it out safely and not everyone is welcome upon arrival.
Liberal Punishment
Authors: Konczal Mike
Published: April 2015

Naomi Murakawa’s The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, is a remarkable investigation into the historical relationship between postwar liberalism and the growth of mass incarceration. Through a detailed analysis of several key Democratic crime bills, she demonstrates how the ideology of liberalism played a role in the growth of the carceral state. And though Murakawa isn’t fully convincing that liberal law and order was necessary for mass incarceration, she makes a strong case that liberalism is unlikely to undo the prison state.
Fit for Citizenship?: The Eugenics Movement and Immigration Policy
Authors: Chen Michelle
Published: April 2015

When America was starting to define itself as a “nation of immigrants,” it sought a more perfect union by engineering the masses at its gateway. Ellis Island was not simply the vaunted passage en route to a land of opportunity. The border was a laboratory for the construction of nationhood, where social scientists, medical specialists, and border officials dissected the subjects of a vast social experiment.
American Orientalism
Authors: Bald Vivek
Published: April 2015

One group of South Asians had become objects of fear and derision and targets of immigration enforcement and extra-legal violence. Another group of South Asians was being heralded for their social, economic, and cultural contributions to the United States. The aftermath of 9/11 had brought into relief a deep set of divisions within the South Asian American community. In some ways, these years called into question the very utility of “South Asian” as an identity marking the common experiences of Americans with roots in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.These were nations that shared colonial histories as different parts of British India and Ceylon, but they were now divided by military, religious, and ethnic conflicts on the subcontinent, and their diasporic communities had significantly different levels of power, income, and influence in the United States
Classroom Saints and Fiends
Authors: Barkan Joanne
Published: April 2015

The ed reformers’ stance looks like a Madonna-whore complex: teachers are miracle-working saviors of poor and downtrodden children, or they are villains preventing these children from benefitting from a good education. According to Dana Goldstein in The Teacher Wars, this kind of saint-fiend split has characterized Americans’ view of teachers since universal public education first took hold in some states in the 1830s. Again and again since then, reformers of different stripes have tried to improve teaching with some of the same fixes—merit pay based on test scores, fast-track training programs, ranking teachers—with the same lack of success.
The Story of My Teeth: An Excerpt
Authors: Luiselli Valeria
Published: April 2015

I’m the best auctioneer in the world, but no one knows it because I’m a discreet sort of man. My name is Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, though people call me Highway, I believe with affection. I can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums. I can interpret Chinese fortune cookies. I can stand an egg upright on a table, the way Christopher Columbus did in the famous anecdote. I know how to count to eight in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi. I can float on my back.
Executive Justice?
Authors: Ngai Mae , Kanstroom Daniel
Published: April 2015

Harsh immigration laws and policies have turned the United States—what was once one of history’s most open and immigrant-friendly societies—into a “deportation nation.” For more than a quarter of a century, the United States has undertaken a radical social experiment with deportation practices of unprecedented size, ferocity, and scope. The result is that millions of undocumented immigrants as well as many legal permanent residentsn still live in this country in a state of fear.
Close Encounters
Authors: Fraser Max
Published: April 2015

Historians, journalists, and political commentators of various stripes have been pointing to such displays of plutocratic excess and venal disregard for the less fortunate as evidence of a second “Gilded Age” in our own time, a retrogression to the latter decades of the nineteenth century when America’s financial elite first put on the airs of the aristocrat. To be sure, there is much to recommend this analogy. But a close reading of David Huyssen’s new book Progressive Inequality, a finely written and anecdotally rich account of class relations in New York City between 1890 and 1920, suggests that there is a better historical comparison to be made to the period that historians conventionally refer to as the Progressive Era.
The Presidential Empire
Authors: Tushnet Mark
Published: April 2015

The imperial presidency’s place in international affairs will be secure—as long as U.S. foreign policymakers seek to preserve the nation’s hegemonic role in the world—and dangerous, because the stakes, war and peace, are so high. In the domestic arena, the imperial presidency is a response to contemporary political gridlock. But although such gridlock has existed for a while, the imperial exercise of presidential power has not become as deeply embedded in our domestic politics as it has—at least as elite consensus would have it—in our nation’s role in the world beyond. Given that the president’s leading role in domestic affairs has significant legal justification, it also poses less of a threat to the ideal that the actions of the U.S. government are always bound by the Constitution. Exploring the different reasons for the imperial presidency in foreign affairs and domestic policy may help identify future possibilities for more democratic control over policy-making in both domains.
What’s in a Name?: House Revival, Adoption, and the Bounds of Family in Late Medieval Japan
Authors: Spafford David
Published: April 2015

David Spafford examines the relationship between warrior houses and their names in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Japan. Widespread reliance on adoption of heirs and the less common revivals of extinct houses reveal how late medieval warriors framed the membership and boundaries of the house ( ie ). Together and separately, adoptions and revivals force us to reckon with the malleable nature of warrior houses—which included both kin and non-kin—and their essentially political character. They force us to think through the several dimensions of the ie as an analytical framework: heraldic group, house/lineage, household. The decisions of individuals and individual lineages about naming, affiliation, and identity demonstrate both that a house’s surname served to symbolize familial continuity and that the openly constructed nature of the house-as-multigenerational-named-entity allowed strategic use of marriage and adoption for family survival through the long age of civil strife.
Within and Between Cultures: The Liang-Zhu Narrative in Local Korean Cultures
Authors: Cho Sookja
Published: April 2015

Sookja Cho examines how an ancient Chinese love story, the legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, was disseminated and received in Korea. Although this legend originated in China around the fourth century, it successfully crossed cultural boundaries and took up residence in Korea, where it has been continually modified and adapted to address everyday concerns of Koreans. By contrasting Korean and Chinese versions of the tale, Cho demonstrates that the Korean versions employed local lore, enriched shaman rituals, rendered the male protagonist Liang Shanbo with a distinctive realism, and embodied Korean values of family and education. Cho shows how the case of a single Chinese story, one with deep historical roots and a rich cultural legacy, illuminates the force of Korea’s own conventions and cultural traditions in literary appropriation and suggests the literary agency of ordinary people.
Swamp Sistas: Beth McKee and a socio-musical swamp revival online and real time
Authors: Mills Susan Wilson
Published: April 2015

Beth McKee, the singer/songwriter known for her Mississippi roots and music-recording career created a community of mostly American women known as the Swamp Sistas. Although the network was developed to energize McKee’s female fan base, it quickly became a virtual and real-time social fabric, where artists, authors, colleagues and friends weave an ongoing tapestry of tradition and renewal. McKee’s performances, tours, merchandise and albums ground the artistic and social repertoire of the Swamp Sistas. The message of sharing with and supporting one another served as a powerful and creative vehicle for McKee’s musical presentations to new audiences. Her collaborations with educators, authors and artists fuelled the shared socio-musical trend, along with the performance venue she created in collaboration with the Swamp Sistas called the ‘La La’. The Swamp Sistas phenomenon is about fans who became co-creators. They inspired song lyrics, planned, staged and performed with McKee or in other groups at La Las, changing a musician and her audience into a community, complete with shared values and social engagement. This article describes the Swamp Sistas based on research in the field that included online and real time musical and social participant observation. Lessons from the swamp include emphasis on the participatory and co-creative culture of Swamp Sistas and implications for building community in music education settings.
‘Are you in a band?!’: Participatory music-making in music teacher education
Authors: Randles Clint , Griffis Sarah-Anne , Ruiz Jose Valentino
Published: April 2015

This article is the account of a music teacher educator, a doctoral student (teaching assistant) and a pre-service music teacher regarding the impact that an innovative course offering at a large research university in the south-eastern United States had on students’ perceptions of their musicianship and notions of what a music teacher is and does. Elements of Tom Turino’s participatory music-making, hi-fidelity and studio audio art (in addition to presentational music-making) were infused into a new course sequence. Students formed independently operated small groups and worked on original arrangements of popular music selections and original songs for both live performance and recording. Pre-service music teachers’ developing musicianship and notions of what a music teacher is and does were impacted. While the scope of the class and complimentary lab class incorporated all of the areas of music-making that Turino details in his work, this piece will focus on the incorporation of participatory music-making into music teacher education. The authors would also like to bring the work of Keith Sawyer into the conversation surrounding participatory music-making that includes elements of improvisation.
Strengthening choral community: The interaction of face-to-face and online activities amongst a college choir
Authors: O’Flynn John
Published: April 2015

This article reports on a small-scale study investigating the interaction of face-to-face and online group activities by members of a Dublin-based college choir (where the researcher is also a lecturer and choral leader) over a period of twelve months in 2009–2010. Research data are gathered by way of participation–observation of – and sometimes participation in – the choir’s Facebook page and through an extended real-time interview with a group of student choir members subsequently carried out in 2011. The overall analytic framework is sociological in orientation, utilizing distinctions between ‘sound’ and ‘musical–social’ groups, as well as ‘bonding’, ‘bridging’ and ‘maintained’ types of ‘social capital’. The review of literature examines notions of choral communities, online communities and the affordances of computer-mediated communication. Data analysis is presented in two sections: the first comprises a narrative interpretation of how face-to-face and online activities interacted over the period under review; the second raises a number of issues that emerge from the interview with students. Overall findings suggest a strong symbiotic relationship between the collective identity of the face-to-face choir and that of the online choral group. Affordances of social media and ‘clip culture’ are realized through series of mutually influential initiatives and interventions on the part of students and the choral leader, thereby bridging perceptions of the choir as institution and the choir as community.
Misuse of ICTs among Turkish children and youth: A study on newspaper reports
Authors: Tanrıkulu İbrahim , Akbaba Altun Sadegül , Erdur Baker Özgür , Yerin Güneri Oya
Published: April 2015

This study investigated the misuse of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) among children and youth. The data source was newspaper reports obtained from three Turkish daily newspapers, between January 2006 and December 2012. In that seven years period, a total of 66 ICT misuse incidents were reported in the selected newspapers. Document analysis was performed on the newspaper reports. Themes and codes were entered as variables to manage the data quantitatively. Results revealed that ICT misuse was most commonly conducted through cell phones, social networking sites, instant messaging and web pages. Young people’s involvement of ICT misuse had three forms; from young perpetrator/s to the young victim/s, from young perpetrator/s to adult victim/s and from adult perpetrator/s to young victim/s. ICTs were commonly misused for sexual abuse, insulting or taking revenge. While perpetrators were mostly males whose ages ranged between 14 and 52, a great majority of ICT misuse victims were females, with an age range from 8 to 46. Negative psychological and physiological impacts were reported by the victims.
Computing the exit-time for a finite-range symmetric jump process
Authors: Burch Nathanial , Lehoucq R. B.
Published: April 2015

This paper investigates the exit-time for a broad class of symmetric finite-range jump processes via the corresponding master equation, a nonlocal diffusion equation suitably constrained. In direct analogy to the classical diffusion equation with a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition, the nonlocal diffusion equation is augmented with a homogeneous volume-constraint. The volume-constrained master equation provides an efficient alternative over Monte Carlo simulation for computing an important statistic of the process. Several numerical examples are given.
Sin and Natural Theology: An Augustinian Framework Beyond Barth
Authors: Allen Paul L.
Published: April 2015

This article focuses on the question of sin in the context of natural theology‚ in light of the Barth/Brunner debate. A contemporary notion of sin would benefit from Barth’s approach, but shorn of his strict doctrine of sin as nothingness (‘Nichtiges’). Brunner holds to the Augustinian tradition’s claim that sin is a paradox by distinguishing between the formal and material in the