bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Presence of Clock genes in equine full-term placenta
Authors: Parsons Aubone Agata M , Bisiau Christian M , McCue Patrick M , Bouma Gerrit J
Published: March 2020

Mammals have a circadian rhythm that is synchronized by a master clock located in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The SCN regulates additional clocks located in peripheral tissues, including some involved in endocrine or reproductive functions. Studies in humans and mice report that molecular clocks also exist in the placenta. However, little is known about the presence of “Clock genes,” namely Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput (CLOCK), Brain and Muscle Arnt-Like 1 (BMAL1), Period 1 (PER1), Period 2 (PER2), Cryptochrome 1 (CRY1), and Cryptochrome 2 (CRY2), in equine placenta. Pregnancy length in mares varies and shows fluctuations in hormone concentrations throughout pregnancy. We postulate that similar to humans and mice, Clock genes are present in the horse placentas. Our goal was to determine if relative levels of clock genes were different between placentas associated with males and female fetuses or correlated with gestational length. We used polymerase chain reaction and immunofluorescence to study the presence of CLOCK, BMAL1, PER1, PER2, CRY1, and CRY2 in full-term mare placentas. Clock genes were present in all placentas, with significant lower levels of CRY2 and CLOCK in placentas that were associated with male fetuses. There was no association between relative levels of Clock genes and gestational length. These data provide the stage for future studies aimed at uncovering a function for Clock genes in the horse placenta.
Michael Skidmore v Led Zeppelin: Copyright infringement in music under US law
Authors: Bosher Hayleigh
Published: March 2020

Michael Skidmore v Led Zeppelin No 16-56057, DC No 2:15-cv-03462-RGK-AGR, 9 March 2020

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld that Led Zeppelin's song Stairway to Heaven did not infringe the copyright of the instrumental song ‘Taurus’ and overruled circuit precedent to reject the inverse ratio rule.
Factors Influencing Minority and Urban Students’ Interest in Natural Resources
Authors: Moreno Bianca , Crandall Chelsey , Monroe Martha C
Published: March 2020

Diversifying the student body of natural resources (NR) programs by increasing numbers of women and people of color is important. This study explored factors influencing undergraduate interest in NR, including forestry, and decision to enroll in an NR undergraduate program at a large 1862 land-grant institution in the southeastern United States. We looked at how their responses differ between gender, race/ethnicity, and the environment surrounding their home where they grew up, a variable we call the environment of influence. Overall, results confirm the importance of connection to nature. Interest in enrolling in an NR program and pursuing a career depend in large part on having a connection to nature and concern for the environment, and this is true for those who grew up in urban as well as rural environments. A notable difference between female and male respondents was when their interest in NR began: females reported early childhood age, and males reported in high school or later. Interest also occurred later in life for nonwhite/Hispanic students than for white/non-Hispanic students. Other racial/ethnic differences include the influence of guest speakers, family, and media in the interest and enrollment in NR. Media also played a strong role in NR enrollment and interest in the respondents from suburban and built environments. We conclude with recommendations for recruiting a more diverse undergraduate NR body and creating a more inclusive environment for people from different genders, races, and environments of influence.
Internet Disruptions in the Doctor–Patient Relationship
Authors: Freckelton Ian R
Published: March 2020

The ubiquitous access by patients to online information about health issues is disrupting the traditional doctor–patient relationship in fundamental ways. The knowledge imbalance has shifted and the last nails are being hammered into the coffin of medical paternalism. Ready access to Dr Google has many positive aspects but the risk of undiscerning acceptance by patients of unscientific, out-of-date or biased information for their decision-making remains. In turn this may feed into the content of the legal duty of care for doctors and contribute to a need for them to inquire sensitively into the sources of information that may be generating surprising or apparently illogical patient treatment choices. In addition, patients, those related to patients, and others have the potential to publish on the Internet incorrect and harmful information about doctors. A number of influential decisions by courts have now established the legitimacy of medical practitioners taking legal proceedings for defamation and injunctive relief to stop vituperative and vindictive online publications that are harming them personally, reputationally and commercially. Furthermore, disciplinary accountability has been imposed on doctors for intemperate, disrespectful online postings. All of these factors are contributing to a disruptive recalibration of the dynamics between doctors and their patients.
The intermediate nebular phase of SN 2014J: onset of clumping as the source of recombination
Authors: Mazzali P A , Bikmaev I , Sunyaev R , Ashall C , Prentice S , Tanaka M , Irtuganov E , Melnikov S , Zhuchkov R
Published: March 2020

At the age of about 1 yr, the spectra of most Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are dominated by strong forbidden nebular emission lines of Fe ii and Fe iii. Later observations (at about 2 yr) of the nearby SN 2011fe showed an unexpected shift of ionization to Fe i and Fe ii. Spectra of the very nearby SN Ia 2014J at an intermediate phase (1–1.5 yr) that are presented here show a progressive decline of Fe iii emission, while Fe i is not yet strong. The decrease in ionization can be explained if the degree of clumping in the ejecta increases significantly at ∼1.5 yr, at least in the Fe-dominated zone. Models suggest that clumps remain coherent after about one year, behaving like shrapnel. The high density in the clumps, combined with the decreasing heating rate, would then cause recombination. These data may witness the phase of transition from relatively smooth ejecta to the very clumpy morphology that is typical of SN remnants. The origin of the increased clumping may be the development of local magnetic fields.
Fast cloud–cloud collisions in a strongly barred galaxy: suppression of massive star formation
Authors: Fujimoto Yusuke , Maeda Fumiya , Habe Asao , Ohta Kouji
Published: March 2020

Recent galaxy observations show that star formation activity changes depending on galactic environments. In order to understand the diversity of galactic-scale star formation, it is crucial to understand the formation and evolution of giant molecular clouds in an extreme environment. We focus on observational evidence that bars in strongly barred galaxies lack massive stars even though quantities of molecular gas are sufficient to form stars. In this paper, we present a hydrodynamical simulation of a strongly barred galaxy, using a stellar potential which is taken from observational results of NGC 1300, and we compare cloud properties between different galactic environments: bar, bar-end, and spiral arms. We find that the mean of cloud’s virial parameter is αvir ∼ 1 and that there is no environmental dependence, indicating that the gravitationally bound state of a cloud is not behind the observational evidence of the lack of massive stars in strong bars. Instead, we focus on cloud–cloud collisions, which have been proposed as a triggering mechanism for massive star formation. We find that the collision speed in the bar is faster than those in the other regions. We examine the collision frequency using clouds’ kinematics and conclude that the fast collisions in the bar could originate from random-like motion of clouds due to elliptical gas orbits shifted by the bar potential. These results suggest that the observed regions of lack of active star formation in the strong bar originate from the fast cloud–cloud collisions, which are inefficient in forming massive stars, due to the galactic-scale violent gas motion.
Extended lens reconstructions with grale: exploiting time-domain, substructural, and weak lensing information
Authors: Liesenborgs Jori , Williams Liliya L R , Wagner Jenny , De Rijcke Sven
Published: March 2020

The information about the mass density of galaxy clusters provided by the gravitational lens effect has inspired many inversion techniques. In this article, updates to the previously introduced method in grale are described, and explored in a number of examples. The first looks into a different way of incorporating time delay information, not requiring the unknown source position. It is found that this avoids a possible bias that leads to ‘overfocusing’ the images, i.e. providing source position estimates that lie in a considerably smaller region than the true positions. The second is inspired by previous reconstructions of the cluster of galaxies MACS J1149.6+2223, where a multiply imaged background galaxy contained a supernova, SN Refsdal, of which four additional images were produced by the presence of a smaller cluster galaxy. The inversion for the cluster as a whole was not able to recover sufficient detail interior to this quad. We show how constraints on such different scales, from the entire cluster to a single member galaxy, can now be used, allowing such small-scale substructures to be resolved. Finally, the addition of weak lensing information to this method is investigated. While this clearly helps recover the environment around the strong lensing region, the mass sheet degeneracy may make a full strong and weak inversion difficult, depending on the quality of the ellipticity information at hand. We encounter ring-like structure at the boundary of the two regimes, argued to be the result of combining strong and weak lensing constraints, possibly affected by degeneracies.
The formation of ultradiffuse galaxies in clusters
Authors: Sales Laura V , Navarro Julio F , Peñafiel Louis , Peng Eric W , Lim Sungsoon , Hernquist Lars
Published: March 2020

We use the IllustrisTNG cosmological hydrodynamical simulation to study the formation of ultradiffuse galaxies (UDGs) in galaxy clusters. We supplement the simulations with a realistic mass–size relation for galaxies at the time of infall into the cluster, as well as an analytical model to describe the tidally induced evolution of their stellar mass, velocity dispersion, and size. The model assumes ‘cuspy’ NFW haloes and, contrary to recent claims, has no difficulty reproducing the observed number of UDGs in clusters. Our results further suggest that the UDG population consists of a mixture of ‘normal’ low surface brightness galaxies such as those found in the field (‘born’ UDGs, or B-UDGs), as well as a distinct population that owe their large size and low surface brightness to the effects of cluster tides (‘tidal’, or T-UDGs). The simulations indicate that T-UDGs entered the cluster earlier and should be more prevalent than B-UDGs near the cluster centres. T-UDGs should also have, at given stellar mass, lower velocity dispersion, higher metallicities, and lower dark matter content than B-UDGs. Our results suggest that systems like DF-44 are consistent with having been born as UDGs, while others such as DF2, DF4, and VLSB-D are possibly extreme T-UDG examples.
Gravitational waves from magnetically induced thermal neutron star mountains
Authors: Osborne E L , Jones D I
Published: March 2020

Many low-mass X-ray binary systems are observed to contain rapidly spinning neutron stars. The spin frequencies of these systems may be limited by the emission of gravitational waves. This can happen if their mass distribution is sufficiently non-axisymmetric. It has been suggested that such ‘mountains’ may be created via temperature non-axisymmetries, but estimates of the likely level of temperature asymmetry have been lacking. To remedy this, we examine a simple symmetry breaking mechanism, where an internal magnetic field perturbs the thermal conductivity tensor, making it direction-dependent. We find that the internal magnetic field strengths required to build mountains of the necessary size are very large, several orders of magnitude larger than the inferred external field strengths, pushing into the regime where our assumption of the magnetic field having a perturbative effect on the thermal conductivity breaks down. We also examine how non-axisymmetric surface temperature profiles, as might be caused by magnetic funnelling of the accretion flow, lead to internal temperature asymmetries, but find that for realistic parameters the induced non-axisymmetries are very small. We conclude that, in the context of this work at least, very large internal magnetic fields are required to generate mountains of the necessary size.
The nature of a primary jet within a circumbinary disc outflow in a young stellar system
Authors: Lynch Chris J R , Smith Michael D
Published: March 2020

Most stars form in binaries, and both stars may grow by accreting material from a circumbinary disc on to their own discs. We suspect that in many cases a wide molecular wind will envelope a collimated atomic jet emanating from close to an orbiting young star. This so-called circumbinary scenario is explored here in order to find common identifiable properties. The dynamical set-up is studied with three-dimensional simulations with chemistry and cooling included. We extract the properties on scales of order 100 au and compare to the co-orbital scenario in which the wind and jet sources are in orbit. We find that the rapid orbital motion generates a wide ionized sheath around the jet core with a large opening angle at the base. This is independent of the presence of the surrounding molecular outflow. However, the atomic jet is recollimated beyond ∼55 au when the molecular outflow restricts the motion of the ambient medium which, in turn, confines the jet. These physical properties are related to the optical H α imaging, providing a means of distinguishing between models. The high excitation sheath and recollimation region can be explored on these scales through the next generation of instruments. However, in general, the amount and location of the ionized material, whether in the knots or the sheath, will depend on several parameters including the orbital period, axis alignment, and pulse amplitude.
Using variability and VLBI to measure cosmological distances
Authors: Hodgson Jeffrey A , L’Huillier Benjamin , Liodakis Ioannis , Lee Sang-Sung , Shafieloo Arman
Published: March 2020

In this paper, we propose a new approach to determining cosmological distances to active Galactic nuclei (AGNs) via light travel-time arguments, which can be extended from nearby sources to very high redshift sources. The key assumption is that the variability seen in AGNs is constrained by the speed of light and therefore provides an estimate of the linear size of an emitting region. This can then be compared with the angular size measured with very long baseline interferometryer to derive a distance. We demonstrate this approach on a specific well-studied low-redshift (z = 0.0178) source 3C 84 (NGC 1275), which is the bright radio core of the Perseus Cluster. We derive an angular diameter distance including statistical errors of $D_{\mathrm{ A}} = 72^{+5}_{-6}$ Mpc for this source, which is consistent with other distance measurements at this redshift. Possible sources of systematic errors and ways to correct for them are discussed.
Deacetylase-independent function of SIRT6 couples GATA4 transcription factor and epigenetic activation against cardiomyocyte apoptosis
Authors: Peng Linyuan , Qian Minxian , Liu Zuojun , Tang Xiaolong , Sun Jie , Jiang Yue , Sun Shimin , Cao Xinyue , Pang Qiuxiang , Liu Baohua
Published: March 2020

SIRT6 deacetylase activity improves stress resistance via gene silencing and genome maintenance. Here, we reveal a deacetylase-independent function of SIRT6, which promotes anti-apoptotic gene expression via the transcription factor GATA4. SIRT6 recruits TIP60 acetyltransferase to acetylate GATA4 at K328/330, thus enhancing its chromatin binding capacity. In turn, GATA4 inhibits the deacetylase activity of SIRT6, thus ensuring the local chromatin accessibility via TIP60-promoted H3K9 acetylation. Significantly, the treatment of doxorubicin (DOX), an anti-cancer chemotherapeutic, impairs the SIRT6–TIP60–GATA4 trimeric complex, blocking GATA4 acetylation and causing cardiomyocyte apoptosis. While GATA4 hyperacetylation-mimic retains the protective effect against DOX, the hypoacetylation-mimic loses such ability. Thus, the data reveal a novel SIRT6–TIP60–GATA4 axis, which promotes the anti-apoptotic pathway to prevent DOX toxicity. Targeting the trimeric complex constitutes a new strategy to improve the safety of DOX chemotherapy in clinical application.
Understanding the paradoxical mechanical response of in-phase A-tracts at different force regimes
Authors: Marin-Gonzalez Alberto , Pastrana Cesar L , Bocanegra Rebeca , Martín-González Alejandro , Vilhena J G , Pérez Rubén , Ibarra Borja , Aicart-Ramos Clara , Moreno-Herrero Fernando
Published: March 2020

A-tracts are A:T rich DNA sequences that exhibit unique structural and mechanical properties associated with several functions in vivo. The crystallographic structure of A-tracts has been well characterized. However, the mechanical properties of these sequences is controversial and their response to force remains unexplored. Here, we rationalize the mechanical properties of in-phase A-tracts present in the Caenorhabditis elegans genome over a wide range of external forces, using single-molecule experiments and theoretical polymer models. Atomic Force Microscopy imaging shows that A-tracts induce long-range (∼200 nm) bending, which originates from an intrinsically bent structure rather than from larger bending flexibility. These data are well described with a theoretical model based on the worm-like chain model that includes intrinsic bending. Magnetic tweezers experiments show that the mechanical response of A-tracts and arbitrary DNA sequences have a similar dependence with monovalent salt supporting that the observed A-tract bend is intrinsic to the sequence. Optical tweezers experiments reveal a high stretch modulus of the A-tract sequences in the enthalpic regime. Our work rationalizes the complex multiscale flexibility of A-tracts, providing a physical basis for the versatile character of these sequences inside the cell.
Black Codes and Slave Codes
Authors: Parker Nakia D.
Published: March 2020

The institution of chattel slavery in the United States was primarily a system of labor and containment. One of the legal strategies that Euro-American enslavers devised to control the time, energy, and mobility of enslaved people of African descent was slave codes. Enslavers began to codify these restrictions into laws in the 17th century. One of the most (in)famous of these laws, partus sequitur ventrem, or “that is which brought forth follows the womb,” defined slavery as a heritable condition from the mother. Other codes, such as prohibitions against interracial marriage, followed. As chattel slavery became more entrenched into American society and economy in the 19th century, slave codes evolved as well. Southern legislatures required that an enslaved person carry a pass that authorized travel away from the plantation. Enslaved people could not own guns, could not learn to read or sing, beat drums, or gather in groups without their enslaver’s permission. Any violations of these codes meant swift and brutal punishment to transgressors. Despite these dehumanizing decrees, enslaved people resisted their bondage in overt and subtle ways. Even free blacks in the Northern states, however, did not escape these legal entrapments. Laws called “black codes” contained similar restrictions to the slave codes that existed in the Southern states. Some “free” regions, such as Ohio and Michigan, temporarily forbade free people of color from settling in their territories. With the end of the Civil War and the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, African Americans may have been nominally free, but state governments and local authorities in the Southern states invented ways to keep a de facto slavery system in place with the passage of black codes. Mississippi passed the first of these regulations in 1865. Vagrancy laws comprised a major component of black codes. Any unemployed African American was considered “idle” and could be charged with the “crime” of vagrancy and sentenced to a fine, jail, physical punishment, and/or forced labor. Other codes outlawed African American ownership of guns, serving on juries, and interracial relationships. In addition, Southern courts used black codes to enforce apprentice contracts that separated children from their parents. In historical scholarship, very few full-length monographs exclusively tackle the subjects of slave codes and black codes. Rather, coverage of these subjects is tied in with discussions of the experiences of enslaved life and resistance and black lives, labor, and activism during the Reconstruction period.
Child Neglect and Emotional Maltreatment
Authors: Simmel Cassandra , Shpiegel Svetlana
Published: March 2020

Child maltreatment is a pervasive and widespread phenomenon in the United States. While the incidence of child maltreatment had been on the decline until approximately 2012, since that time, the rates have increased somewhat. Child maltreatment affects all age groups of children and youth, although infants and younger children are at the highest risk for victimization. In addition, for many years, all forms of child maltreatment were addressed collectively, with scant research on how distinct types might co-occur or individually present. Through many research, policy, and practice advances in recent years, there is growing awareness regarding how each abuse type is relatively unique in terms of the risks for manifestation, as well as in the outcomes from and interventions for their respective perpetration. Two types of maltreatment—child neglect and emotional abuse—reflect intriguing trends in this overall phenomenon. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, across all types of maltreatment, child neglect is the most frequently reported form of abuse, while emotional abuse is among the least reported. These reports, however, are derived from statutory definitions and investigations and likely do not convey the true incidence of abuse that occurs in the United States. Moreover, these two types of maltreatment are all the more compelling because they can be perceived as not having visible signs of victimization, thereby making the recognition and verification of their harm difficult to discern. As such, for this and several other factors, research on neglect and emotional abuse have often been linked together. Since the 1990s, however, research has begun to highlight the unique contextual factors associated with their manifestation as well as the negative ramifications of each. Therefore, this chapter begins by presenting broad reference and resource information relevant to both types of abuse. Subsequently, the chapter diverges to focus solely on neglect and emotional abuse as distinct forms of child maltreatment.
Kolkata/Calcutta
Authors: Moodie Deonnie
Published: March 2020

Some may ponder the relevance of an entry on “Kolkata” in a bibliography on Hinduism. By official accounts, this is not a Hindu city. Nor is it a city with ties to a Hindu kingdom. It is instead a modern city made famous for being the first capital of the British Empire in India. Kolkata is, however, the largest city in the region of Bengal that is home to long-standing and distinctive Hindu traditions. Hindus furthermore make up about 75 percent of the city’s population. As such, Kolkata is home to some of the most well-known and well-frequented temples in the region and also hosts some of the most elaborate celebrations of Bengali Hindu festivals. As a major metropolis, it is also home to vibrant non-Bengali Hindu traditions. Hindus in Kolkata furthermore live alongside a very large Muslim minority as well as smaller religious and ethnic minority communities—leading at times to catholic and hybrid manifestations of Hinduism, and at other times to more defensive ones. Another reason Kolkata is an important site for the study of Hinduism is that it was the center of major Hindu reform and revival movements in the 19th century that went on to shape nationalist movements across India, and continue to influence the way Hinduism is understood around the world today. The first half of this bibliography addresses Hindu sites, practices, and communities in the city, while the second half focuses on major Hindu debates, movements, and leaders that emerged in the city during the colonial era. A short note on scope: This is a bibliography on Kolkata, and yet—much like the category “Hinduism” itself—this is not a bounded entity that lends itself to easy demarcation. It refers to a territory that originally included only three villages on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River: Sutāṇuṭi, Kalikātā, and Govindapur. Yet the Kolkata metropolitan area today includes over 700 square miles of territory that includes towns as far north as Barrackpore, as far south as Joka, and that extends eastward to new developments such as Salt Lake and New Town. This bibliography takes the term “Kolkata” (and “Calcutta” when referring to the city prior to its official name change in 2001) quite liberally. It includes studies dealing with sites close to the city as well as those that hearken to the city as their major locus of authority.
Casualties and Politics
Authors: Gartner Scott Sigmund , Segura Gary M. , Roberts Ericka T.
Published: March 2020

Casualties are elemental to war—from Roman battles two thousand years ago to the current conflict in Afghanistan and into the future—combat involves the loss of military personnel. Military casualties not only represent a citizen’s ultimate sacrifice to defend their country but also one of the few metrics that allows comparison of conflict costs across countries and time. In addition to representing sacrifice, casualties capture information—they represent the most important way that wars, especially those far from home, inform and influence people, politics, and society. The human losses of a conflict drive peoples’ assessments of a war; determine their support for leaders; shape their positions on the conflict; and, ultimately, in a democracy, affect votes, elections, civic cultures, and policies. In some conflicts, there are other observable indicators of success and failure, such as armies driving across maps. In many recent wars, however, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, information from the battlefield is distant and ambiguous to those back home. Citizen military losses can make these remote wars feel close, real, and costly. There are four types of military casualties: (1) military personnel who died (killed in action [KIA]), (2) those who are injured (wounded in action [WIA], resulting from combat or noncombat actions), (3) those who are captured (prisoners of war [POW]), and (4) those unaccounted for (missing in action [(MIA]). In some recent wars and, in particular, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States reported almost no MIAs or POWs. Thus, given these historical trends, and consistent with much of the literature, this article uses casualty to mean military KIA unless specified otherwise. Scholars have identified a variety of ways for wartime casualty information to travel from the battlefield to the home front, including social networks, news media, leader communications, photographs, and other mechanisms. These studies connect distant battlefields to citizens back home and capture how wartime information influences their assessments, attitude formations, and actions. This research can be considered as having occurred in three expanding waves. While the initial wave of Vietnam War–era literature determined that military deaths negatively affected mass opinion, subsequent waves critically examined how variation in military deaths, such as their geographical and temporal proximity, influences mass opinion and, more importantly, individuals’ assessments. Thus, scholars have shown that military casualties profoundly influence mass and individual attitudes toward a war and its leaders, national and local elections, elites’ wartime positions, democratic political culture, and many other critical political phenomena. Together, the body of literature highlighted here reflects a complex set of relationships between casualties and politics that, while not representing a phobia or condition of zero tolerance, remains essential for understanding wartime domestic political behavior.
Foreign Aid and Assistance
Authors: Scott James M.
Published: March 2020

Foreign assistance is a flexible foreign policy tool used by donor states for a wide variety of purposes. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), foreign assistance consists of financial, technical, and commodity flows aimed at social infrastructure and services (e.g., education, health), economic infrastructure (e.g., transportation, energy, financial services), production (e.g., agriculture, mining), humanitarian aid (e.g., disasters), multisector support (e.g., environment), debt relief, and budget support/program assistance (ODA by sector, 2019), and is distinct from military aid. Donors direct foreign assistance at a variety of issues (e.g., development, humanitarian relief, institution and capacity building) and through different means (e.g., bilateral and multilateral), but their interests and preferences dominate aid relationships. As such, it is subject of a vast literature examining its nature and patterns, its allocation, its effects, and its effectiveness. This review focuses on foreign aid and does not address military assistance.
Politics of Ethnic Identity in China
Authors: Barabantseva Elena , Tobin David
Published: March 2020

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), in the eyes of its leadership, has been perceived as a unitary multiethnic state (duo minzu guojia), comprised of the Han majority and fifty-five ethnic minorities. State propaganda routinely emphasizes the inseparability of the Han from other ethnic groups that have seamlessly cohered into one harmonious whole in the course of five thousand years of history. The “ethnic minorities” (shaoshu minzu) concept attained its meaning during the minority identification project (minzu shibie) of the mid-1950s shortly after the establishment of the PRC. Yet, the ideas and principles of the Chinese national model formalized through the ethnic identification project are informed by the centuries of the Chinese central state’s expansion and absorption of new territories and people into its domain. The articulation of the Chinese territorial and cultural borders went hand in hand with the development of new forms of categorization and demarcation of difference encountered as Chinese borders expanded. Prior to the Republican period (1911–1949), to be Chinese was a matter of accepting and converting into Confucian norms. According to the rules of the governing order of imperial China, tianxia, practicing the Confucian ritual and ethical principles was sufficient to become Chinese (huaren). In the period of China’s forced opening-up to the outside world in the mid- to late 1800s, the formulation of national principles was part of the process of negotiating what constituted China and who the Chinese people were. The concepts of ethnicity and nation developed at the intersections between Chinese state’s relations with its domestic Others and its turbulent interactions with the outside world. The themes of national survival, territorial unity, cultural cohesion, stability of borders, and the development of the Chinese nation into a strong modern state are closely related to the formation of the politics of ethnic and national identity.
Indigenous Students in Higher Education in the United States
Authors: Minthorn Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah
Published: March 2020

This article attempts to highlight literature that focuses on Indigenous students, including the various areas that work to support and honor Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and communities. Only since 2000 has there been more literature produced by Indigenous scholars that honors Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. This article attempts to focus on Indigenous-authored and Indigenous-centered literature whose goal is to shed light on how we better support Indigenous students through representation, research, teaching, and learning to the praxis of being an Indigenous student affairs professional and faculty member.
Blockchain and Communication
Authors: Chow-White Peter A. , Mentanko Jennifer , Adams Philippa , Frizzo-Barker Julie
Published: March 2020

Blockchain is an emerging technology that communication scholars have recently started investigating. It is a protocol for a decentralized, digital ledger that facilitates peer-to-peer value transfers of all sorts. Scholars and thought leaders across various disciplines have framed it as a revolutionary technology, potentially disruptive on a global scale—or, from a continuum perspective, as the fifth computing paradigm after mainframes, PCs, the internet, and mobile/social networking. Due to its short history and the burgeoning interest in blockchain across academia and industry, a number of the books and papers in this entry are from other fields such as law, business, or information studies. They are included here because they either inform issues in our field or offer related avenues for communication researchers to integrate into their research agendas. Research on some of the underlying elements of the technology goes back decades. However, Satoshi Nakamoto introduced the first public blockchain, Bitcoin, in 2009 following a white paper outlining the initial Bitcoin protocol. There is some controversy over Nakamoto because this person (or persons) has never publicly revealed his or her identity. In its short history, blockchain has rapidly developed from its libertarian grassroots and creation of decentralized digital currencies to Smart Contracts and social applications that remove the need for other intermediaries, such as governments, banks, accountants, and lawyers. For instance, blockchain advocates cite examples of how the technology can bring lower costs, greater speed, and increased transparency to processes such as voting, supply chain management, and sending overseas remittances. Blockchain has captured public attention as a source of both skepticism and enthusiasm; however, blockchain remains an early-stage domain of research in terms of theory development, methodological diversity, and empirically grounded work. Blockchain is important to the field of communication because, as with the rise of the internet, it creates new social patterns of connection, value transfer, and meaning making. As communication scholars, our investigations of emerging technologies tend to begin with the questions “what is it?” and “what can it do?” That is followed by a deeper dive into understanding the new affordances and constraints these technologies will introduce to people’s experiences of everyday life, organizations, and social change. These experiences can differ greatly from the West to the Global South. The research presented here acknowledges how some of those differences are already evident in relation to blockchain. It begins with a general overview of books and articles, then outlines the major innovation milestones of blockchain, and concludes by exploring a diverse range of themes pertinent to communication research.
Salsa
Authors: Bellaviti Sean
Published: March 2020

While it has broad popular appeal, an instantly recognizable sound, world-famous performers, and is the subject of sundry books, articles, and movies, the music called “salsa” is, nonetheless, remarkably difficult to define or even to describe. Much that makes salsa meaningful as a musical category—including the origins and meaning of its name, the significance of its Afro-Cuban roots, the importance of Latin and especially Puerto Rican New York to its emergence, and its role as a symbol of ethnic or national identity—turns out to be hotly debated and often contested by its fans and musicians, not to mention the various scholars and journalists whose written work is cited and summarized here. We know that the use of the term “salsa” (literally “sauce”) as a marketing label first became widespread in 1970s when it was applied to a new brand of Cuban son-inspired dance music taken up predominantly by Puerto Ricans living in New York’s hardscrabble East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or “El Barrio.” That the term gained popularity only after fulfilling its function as a marketing tool for music that had clear Cuban roots is a key question that few authors fail to address—namely, whether salsa is merely a rebranded version of Cuban music or is, in reality, a new musical form that owes its provenance to the efforts of Nuyoricans, Puerto Rican New Yorkers. That many salsa performers of note including Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Rubén Blades have credited Cuba as the source of the music they played has unquestionably solidified the position of the Cuba camp. At the same time, many scholars have argued that salsa is different from Cuban son. This is particularly true with regard to the subject and message of salsa’s lyrics, the breadth of the musical genres on which it draws, and the social context of Latin Americans in New York City, all factors that, scholars sustain, underpin the features of salsa that are fresh, innovative, and so passionately loved by its creators and fans. The intense Cuban-or-Puerto Rican origins debate notwithstanding, some contemporary salsa scholarship has focused on the ways in which the genre has become a representative music of Latin Americans of diverse national, ethnic, and social backgrounds. These studies have examined salsa practices and performance scenes in places far removed from New York City such as Colombia, Mexico, Spain, and even as far afield as Japan, all of which has expanded our understanding of the various meanings attributed to salsa as it has spread internationally and into increasingly diverse social and cultural settings. This list of resources presents a full picture of the various positions articulated in the debate described here as well as the different theoretical foci taken up by salsa scholars, historians, and writers.
Archaeology and Museums
Authors: Barker Alex
Published: March 2020

If archaeology is a historical social science concerned with study of past societies and cultures through material traces, called the archaeological record, then museum archaeology can be understood as the institutional documentation, study, and preservation of those physical traces, and their representation and interpretation to the public. Increasingly diverse archaeological approaches expand the range of forms those material traces may take, presenting challenges to traditional forms of curation and care. Competing epistemologies and theoretical approaches view the ontological significance of these traces in very different ways—some as material correlates of behavior allowing systematic, scientific study of past cultures (including providing the wherewithal for confirmatory reanalyses); others as objets d’art celebrating and expressing the development of human creativity, from diagnostic markers of reconstructed temporocultural periods (e.g., Clovis or Mousterian) to continuingly reconstrued and manipulated instantiations of memories and identities having their own agency and power. As a result extant collections may be understood as everything from scientific voucher specimens on par with biological holotypes to kidnapped relatives requiring return as elements of restorative justice. Through exhibitions and public programs—and through the implicit logics of what is valued and accepted into permanent collections—museums also create and reify conceptions and appreciations of the archaeological past. Interpretive choices and tropes in representation and display are critical in both translating archaeological scholarship into public knowledge, on the one hand, and inadvertently feeding popular stereotypes on the other. Recent critical approaches examine the ways in which museums appropriate other peoples’ pasts, and attention has increasingly turned to incorporating more diverse and culturally sensitive viewpoints into curatorial practice. These and related concerns have also led to a shift from a primary emphasis on building and preserving synoptic teaching or systematic research collections to issues of collaborative curating, community engagement, and of service to the groups represented in the exhibition galleries and storage cabinets. Concomitant with those changes has been a shift in the role of curator from expert interpreter and connoisseur to interlocutor, with attendant additions to necessary skill sets and training. While largely beyond the immediate scope of this work, there is now a broad and growing critical literature on the implication of museums—of all kinds, not just archaeological—in the shaping of knowledge, formation of academic disciplines, role in nation building and transformation of cultural identities, and the perpetuation of stereotypes and preservation of existing systems of power and privilege.
House Museums
Authors: Terry Andrea
Published: March 2020

House museums are dwellings that are museumized and account for 10 to 15 percent of all museums around the world. Their location, design, construction, and size are often informed by various sociopolitical factors related to issues of class, race, and gender. House museums are a particular subset or “species” within the museum taxonomy, which includes art galleries, natural history and ethnographic museums, history museums, gardens, and zoos. They operate as residential structures preserved, restored, or rehabilitated as public institutions to represent and interpret for the visiting public a particular period. Their institutionalization is informed by strategic decision-making processes. Upon selection for museumification, they are then preserved, conserved, or restored and subsequently staffed by managers, historians, curators, interpreters, and trained volunteers who draw on extensive and meticulous historical research to validate the respective house museum’s institutional authority for the public. Museumized houses function to entice, receive, and engage visitors. House museum visits offer visitors encounters with a particular place and time in what Bennett 1995 (cited under Introduction: Museums) refers to as an “exhibitionary complex.” House museums offer immersive contexts, furnished period room displays in situ to portray “household values.” House museums deploy the lens of domesticity with period rooms, furnishings, and guided tour routes to showcase historic routines and practices in the past and, by extension, make abstract concepts, such as the nation, collective and/or individual identity, and/or the primary characteristics of the locality associated with the shelter’s historical functions known and/or familiar to visitors. House museums first appeared in the world’s cultural landscape in the 1830s in both Europe and the United States, enshrining major political, literary, and society figures and their households. See also Mandler 1997 cited under House Museums, Critical Literature. The opening up of stately country houses in Britain to visitors provided entry to all into the trappings of aristocratic culture, setting the trend for the museumification of Great Houses, including American presidents’ houses, writers’ dwellings, collectors’ residences, plantation museums, and the like. The formation of folk, open-air, and “living history” museums, such as the 1891 opening of Skansen—a seventy-five-acre outdoor museum staffed with period costumed guides, farm animals, musicians, and folk dancers in Stockholm, Sweden, brought about a wider awareness of vernacular housing. The work of social historians, social justice advocates, and community groups from the 1980s onward have fostered the addition of tenement housing, industrial barracks, and cottages to the house museum movement. Not all houses, however, are home.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Authors: Wilcox Rhonda V.
Published: March 2020

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an American television series (1997–2003). Its first incarnation was as a movie (1992) that received mediocre reviews. The film’s writer, Joss Whedon, had the unexpected opportunity to transfer the work to television as part of the fledgling WB network. (Its last two seasons were on UPN.) The series soon garnered high critical praise and devoted viewers, though their numbers were only large in the context of a start-up network, where it was, however, allowed greater creative freedom. The show became culturally significant beyond its immediate fanbase. Buffy became famous for its gender politics: the main character reverses the usual horror trope of the young beauty killed by a monster. Buffy, whose slight stature belies her strength, derives from a long line of female Slayers, only one of whom exists in any generation. However, Buffy’s attractiveness comes in part from her flaws: she is constantly torn between her duties and her desire for a normal life. The California small-town setting suggests the darkness underlying suburbia: Sunnydale sits on a Hellmouth, where monsters converge. Each monstrous encounter is not only an adventure and a test of strength and ethics, but also symbolizes problems faced in reality, the “high school is hell” metaphor central to the show. Buffy is aided by a geeky but loyal boy, Xander; a shy computer whiz (and later witch), Willow; a book-smart mentor, Giles; a vampire seeking redemption, Angel (soon Buffy’s forbidden love); this group later expands to include others. A main theme is the idea of chosen family or working in community rather than fighting alone. Immediately admired for its witty dialogue (known as Buffyspeak or Slayer Slang), the show gradually explored more and more complex problems through building continuity of narrative, which reflects the classic hero’s journey but also involves many other storylines. Buffy is noteworthy for having the first long-running romance between two lesbian characters on network television; one of the two lovers is murdered, setting off a supernatural rampage by the survivor, Willow (and fan indignation as well as concern among scholars). In the final episode Buffy shares her power around the world with Willow’s help. Buffy has a television spin-off, Angel (1999–2004) and continues in comic book form with Season Eight and more; some do not consider the comics canonical. Buffy spawned numerous online discussion forums. Fans and, since 2000, scholars have expressed concern about the series’ lack of racial/ethnic diversity, and recent controversies surrounding Whedon have led to additional reconsideration of the series in terms of collaboration versus auteurism. However, with its aesthetic and cultural value, Buffy has accrued more scholarly writing than any other television series, and scholars continue to publish on Buffy.