bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Curcuma longa essential oils: toxicity and repellency against imported fire ants (Formicidae: Hymenoptera)
Authors: Ali Abbas , Shah Farhan Mahmood , Radwan Mohamed M , Elhendawy Mostafa A , Elsohly Mahmoud A , Khan Ikhlas A
Published: November 2023

Curcuma longa L. (Zingiberales: Zingiberaceae) leaf and rhizome essential oils were evaluated for their toxicity and repellency against invasive fire ants: red imported fire ants (RIFA), Solenopsis invicta Buren, black imported fire ants (BIFA), Solenopsis richteri Forel, and a reproductively functional hybrid (HIFA). Ar-turmerone was the major constituent of leaf (42.4%) and rhizome (40.4%) essential oils. A range of concentrations starting from 156 µg/g until the failure of treatment were used. Removal of treated sand in digging bioassay was used as a criterion for repellency. Leaf essential oil showed significantly higher repellency at concentrations of 19.5, 9.8, and 4.9 µg/g against RIFA, BIFA, and HIFA workers, respectively, as compared with control whereas rhizome essential oil was active at 39, 19.5, and 4.9 µg/g against BIFA, RIFA, and HIFA, respectively. Ar-turmerone exhibited repellency at 19.5 µg/g against HIFA workers whereas DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) failed at 39 µg/g. Leaf essential oil showed LC50 values of 85.8, 97.7, and 182.7µg/g against RIFA, BIFA and HIFA workers, whereas the rhizome essential oil had LC50 values of 127, 109.9, and 151.2 µg/g against these species, respectively. Ar-turmerone, tested only against HIFA, with LC50 value of 57.2 was the most active compound. Bifenthrin, a commonly used pyrethroid, with LC50 of 0.03, 0.32, and 0.018 µg/g was toxic against RIFA, BIFA, and HIFA workers, respectively. Both the essential oils and ar-turmerone showed toxicity and repellency against imported fire ants. Different formulations of these natural products will be tested to explore the use potential of these natural products under field conditions.
Common Cold Coronaviruses Detection at an Academic Hospital Before and During COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Hayek Haya , Amarin Justin Z , Qwaider Yasmeen Z , Stopczynski Tess , Spieker Andrew J , Hamdan Olla , Schmitz Jonathan , Chappell James D , Wrenn Jesse O , Halasa Natasha B
Published: November 2023

Background

Community mitigation measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic altered the seasonality of some respiratory viruses, including the four common cold coronaviruses (CCCs). Since these measures have been relaxed, CCCs have resurged, but limited longitudinal data on CCCs circulation are available to interpret changes in prevalence during the pandemic. Therefore, we defined circulation of the four CCCs before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nashville, TN, for insights into the impact of pandemic human coronavirus emergence and associated containment measures on CCCs infections in the general population.

Methods

We conducted a retrospective cohort study of clinician-ordered respiratory virus panels from 01/01/2018 to 12/31/2022 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, TN). The panels test for common respiratory pathogens, including CCCs (namely HCoV-229E, -NL63, -OC43, and -HKU1). Overall and age-specific detection frequencies for the four CCCs were analyzed. Multiple medical encounters for the same individual were included if they were >14 days apart. The beginning of the pandemic was marked by 04/01/2020, the first day Tennessee’s stay-at-home order was in effect.

Results

A total of 57,930 samples were tested, and 2,003 (3.5%) were CCC-positive. The most frequently detected CCC was OC43 (n=785; 39.2%), followed by HKU1 (n=510; 25.5%), NL63 (n=510; 25.5%), and 229E (n=237; 11.8%). Before the pandemic, CCCs peaked during winter months. This seasonality was disrupted during the pandemic; circulation virtually ceased in April 2020 and resumed in January 2021, peaking during the spring months of 2021 and 2022. Throughout the study duration, OC43 predominated each season except for the 2019–2020 winter months, when HKU1 was predominant (Figure 1). The seasonality of all four CCCs was generally consistent across age groups; however, 229E was uncommon in children 0–4 years.

Figure 1. Detection frequency of the four common cold coronaviruses detected between January 2018 and December 2022 in Nashville, TN, by age group. The dashed line represents the first day Tennessee’s stay-at-home order was in effect.

Conclusion

The four CCCs circulated off-season in Nashville during the pandemic, exhibiting spring seasonal peaks in 2021 and 2022. Long-term monitoring of CCC circulation is required to determine whether the shift in seasonality becomes a permanent feature of CCC ecology. In addition, further studies are warranted to explain the varying predominance of HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1.
Management and Control of Legionella pneumophila Nosocomial Outbreak Risk in a Tertiary Level Pediatric Hospital
Authors: Lagala Yanina , Esposto Sofia , Torre Valeria , Fulvio Fernando , Vescina Cecilia , Eguiguren Paula , Treviño Natalia , Cipolla Lucía , Prieto Mónica , Arias Verónica , Morales Juan Carlos
Published: November 2023

Background

Legionnaires' disease is a rare cause of pneumonia in the pediatric population. Case reports are described in children with risk factors such as immunocompromised. Outbreaks are commonly associated with buildings or structures that have complex water systems like hospitals. The most likely sources of infection include water used for showering, cooling towers, respiratory therapy equipment, humidifiers and other health care devices. Clinical presentation does not distinguish from other respiratory infections, difficult access to rapid diagnostic methods and empirical antibiotic treatment not effective are all factors that delay diagnosis and subsequent control measures, leading to an increased spread risk.

Methods

A case of Legionnaires' disease was rapidly detected in an immunocompromised pediatric patient with nosocomial pneumonia using BIOFIRE® FILMARRAY® Pneumonia Plus Panel and urinary antigen. The Infection Control Committee was reported, initiating control and surveillance measures: hospital's water sources were studied and patients with nosocomial pneumonia with no etiological diagnosis were studied in the same way.

Results

L. pneumophila was isolated in a water tank's sample with the same restriction profile as the clinical sample. A water safety plan was implemented: the water tank's temperature was raised to 65°C and hyperchlorinated to maintain an adequate level of disinfectant. Control cultures were performed, all negative. No new cases were detected.

Conclusions

It is important to consider Legionella pneumophila as a potential agent of pneumonia in children since it can result in life-threatening health conditions and severe nosocomial outbreak infection. The incorporation of rapid molecular or antigen diagnostic techniques allow prompt diagnosis and treatment, as well as rapid environmental and clinical surveillance measures that can reduce morbidity and mortality. When detecting Legionella infection, it is essential to identify the environmental focus so as to prevent the development of new cases.
Single-nucleus RNA sequencing reveals heterogeneity among multiple white adipose tissue depots
Authors: Xie Limin , Hu Wanyu , Zhang Haowei , Ding Yujin , Zeng Qin , Liao Xiyan , Wang Dandan , Xie Wanqin , Hui Hannah Xiaoyan , Deng Tuo
Published: November 2023

Regardless of its anatomical site, adipose tissue shares a common energy-storage role but exhibits distinctive properties. Exploring the cellular and molecular heterogeneity of white adipose tissue (WAT) is crucial for comprehending its function and properties. However, existing single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) studies of adipose tissue heterogeneity have examined only one or two depots. In this study, we employed snRNA-seq to test five representative depots including inguinal, epididymal, mesenteric, perirenal, and pericardial adipose tissues in mice under physiological conditions. By analyzing the contents of main cell categories and gene profiles of various depots, we identified their distinctive physiological properties. Immune cells and fibro-adipogenic progenitor cells (FAPs) showed dramatic differences among WAT depots, while adipocytes seemed to be conserved. The heightened presence of regulatory macrophages and B cells in pericardial adipose tissues implied their potential contribution to the preservation of coronary vascular function. Moreover, the selective aggregation of pericytes within mesenteric adipose tissue was likely associated with the maintenance of intestinal barrier homeostasis. Using a combination of RNA sequencing and snRNA-seq analysis, the major subpopulations of FAPs derived from these depots determined the site characteristics of FAPs to a certain extent. Our work establishes a systematic and reliable foundation for investigating the heterogeneity of WAT depots and elucidating the unique roles these depots play in coordinating the function of adjacent organs.
All the world’s a (hyper)graph: A data drama
Authors: Coupette Corinna , Vreeken Jilles , Rieck Bastian
Published: November 2023

We introduce Hyperbard, a dataset of diverse relational data representations derived from Shakespeare’s plays. Our representations range from simple graphs capturing character co-occurrence in single scenes to hypergraphs encoding complex communication settings and character contributions as hyperedges with edge-specific node weights. By making multiple intuitive representations readily available for experimentation, we facilitate rigorous representation robustness checks in graph learning, graph mining, and network analysis, highlighting the advantages and drawbacks of specific representations. Leveraging the data released in Hyperbard, we demonstrate that many solutions to popular graph mining problems are highly dependent on the representation choice, thus calling current graph curation practices into question. As an homage to our data source, and asserting that science can also be art, we present our points in the form of a play.1
Supernatural Legends in the Western Balkans
Authors: Jurić Dorian
Published: November 2023

This chapter presents a general overview of Slavic supernatural legends in the Western Balkans. Data from current and archival research are used to provide contemporary insights into some long-standing theoretical questions regarding the genre, as well as to suggest avenues for future enquiry. Discussion includes the thought-world of legends, their functional deployment in social spheres, principles that govern the limits of their diffusion, problems of their analytical systematization and categorization (particularly into the subcategories of memorates and fabulates), and elements of subversion used in their telling. In conclusion, the chapter argues that renewed collection projects and theoretical advances in legend research could benefit from a return to producing what the chapter terms “survey studies”—comprehensive and thorough overviews of a singular supernatural being in a specific region based on systematic collation of extant data and synchronic and diachronic mapping of that being’s motifs.
Prenatal and Postnatal Development of Musical Behaviors and Their Role in Infancy
Authors: Partanen Eino , Virtala Paula , Kostilainen Kaisamari
Published: November 2023

The present chapter argues that early musical interaction is to a large degree connected to neurodevelopmental milestones in humans. As the brain matures and the infants become accustomed to their auditory and musical environment, the infants’ abilities for music perception improves. Especially audition plays a large role as the infant is quite passive during the first months of life, and the chapter suggests that the development of musical skills builds especially upon the strengths and capabilities of the auditory system. These developing early musical skills give rise to musical behaviors in interaction with the caregivers, who direct and guide the infant to produce behavior that their own culture classifies as music. While the development of musical behaviors is part of normal development, the contributors believe that caregivers can utilize music to promote the wellbeing of their child and see music as especially helpful for children at risk.
The Social Origins of Music
Authors: Rabinowitch Tal-Chen , Cirelli Laura
Published: November 2023

In all human cultures and throughout human history, music is an important socially interactive medium. At the same time, music plays a positive role in directing social-emotional behaviors of infants and children toward musical partners. Social-emotional development from early infancy also allows us to experience musical interactions with others as socially meaningful events. A growing body of research highlights specific underlying mechanisms of music, such as synchrony, as factors driving music-induced social effects. As a consequence, recent research explores whether musical interventions with infants and children enhance social bonding and general social capacities. This chapter examines the different phylogenetic and ontogenetic theories regarding the development of music as a socially interactive medium, and reviews and synthesizes studies investigating the role of music and musical interventions in influencing social capacities in infants and children. Finally, big open questions in the field and new directions for future research will be discussed.
Cultural Diversity and the Explanation of Musical Development
Authors: Hargreaves David J.
Published: November 2023

This chapter considers the role of cultural diversity in the explanation of musical development. It starts with an outline of three theories of musical development that might be described as social theories, namely sociocultural approaches; ecological and cultural psychological approaches; and social cognitive approaches. The second main part of the chapter describes four specific examples of young people’s engagement with music that examine specific functions in particular cultural settings, namely the social and cultural functions of group singing; sustaining group identity after cultural displacement; the integration of immigrants into new national settings; and the adaptation to new technology. The third part of the chapter assesses the effectiveness of the theories in explaining the four examples, and the chapter concludes by drawing some practical implications for parenting, childcare, and early childhood education.
Section Commentary: Music Development Research Futures
Authors: Hall Clare
Published: November 2023

This commentary responds to expert authors on music development in early childhood who promote the main message that, from our earliest life, music is a fascinatingly complex and diverse dimension of how we come to be. The aim is to learn from and take forward this knowledge by expanding on the key themes in the research, such as music and their sociocultural contexts, neurocognitive development, creativity, and identity. This expansion is achieved by refreshing two familiar questions: what is music and musicality and who are music teachers? In attempting to answer these questions, the author reflects on the importance of our understandings incorporating multimodalities, more than human, decolonized, and interdisciplinary perspectives. The resulting discussion proposes how research futures in early music learning and development might take forward the frontiers of knowledge this section represents.
Building a Profile of Australian Parents’ Musical Beliefs, Values, and Practices
Authors: Abad Vicky , Broughton Mary C. , Barrett Margaret S. , Welch Graham F.
Published: November 2023

Understanding the musical beliefs, values, and practices of parents provides insight into how children experience music in early childhood. This chapter presents a profile of parents enrolled in a longitudinal investigation of Australian families. Strand 1 families attended a Music Early Learning Program (MELP) while Strand 2 families did not. Parents’ musical beliefs, values, and music participation and engagement practices in everyday parenting including music in the home were sought through survey. Parent profiles identify mature-aged, well-educated adults in stable relationships with stable incomes, who were musically experienced. Many had music training in their childhood and/or engaged in music-making throughout their schooling. All parents valued music and reported that they used music almost daily for both personal and family use with their children to create calm, to relax, to re-energize, and to have fun. Emerging themes are identified and considered based on the resulting profile data.
Parental Involvement in a Greek Early Childhood Music Program
Authors: Stamou Lelouda , Abad Vicky , Troulou Rafaela
Published: November 2023

This chapter discusses parental involvement in the context of the Baby Artist early childhood music program operating in Greece. Parents’ notions of their roles in the classroom as well as their musical and social behaviors and the way they influence children’s participation in the EC music classes are examined through the lens of a mixed-methods research study that took place in the context of the Baby Artist early childhood music program. Findings are presented and discussed to provide input on “styles” of parental participation, stimulate a discussion on the importance and complexity of the social and musical environment created by teachers, parents, and students in an EC music class, as well address that ways teachers and parents may work hand in hand to facilitate the young child’s musical growth.
Section Commentary: Elton’s Back
Authors: Ilari Beatriz
Published: November 2023

Music learning and development in early childhood are foregrounded by children’s social interactions in homes, educational settings, and communities. As agentic beings, young children are known to bring their own dispositions, interests, and characteristics to the music that they experience, as they go about their daily lives. This chapter offers a commentary of the eleven chapters found in this section. Here, the commentator focuses on three emergent themes: spatiality, learning intentions and multimodality of children’s musical experiences, and conceptions of childhood, parenting, and music, and their role in our lives in a post-pandemic world. These three themes are discussed in light of recent work and theorizing on children’s wellbeing. Roberts’s (2010) wheel of wellbeing is proposed as a holistic model that early childhood music educators and researchers may adopt as they work with young children and their families.
Music in Children’s Hospitals
Authors: Preti Costanza , Bouteloup Philippe
Published: November 2023

The impact of live music programs in hospitals on children and their families is discussed within the context of a contemporary model of pediatric care. Through an overview of the development of the field of music in hospitals and of the role of the musicians, the chapter proposes a model of music in hospital that is focused on the cultural needs of the children and their right to access culture when they are in hospital. The cultural action that music brings in hospital is based on an intersection between music performance, music as informal education, and music as health. The model is discussed through the case of Musique et Santé, a leading organization in the field of music in hospital in Europe.
Live Bedside Music-Making with Children in Hospital
Authors: Hawley Rosalind , Livesley Joan
Published: November 2023

This chapter discusses the impact of a UK model of live bedside music-making in ameliorating the adverse effects of hospitalization on children in hospital. It examines the responsive and flexible approach taken by two experienced hospital musicians as they encounter children in live bedside music-making interactions on a rehabilitation ward in a children’s hospital. The chapter begins with an overview of the developing role of hospital musician practice in the UK before turning to consider the potential adverse effects of hospitalization on children. Three case studies are used to illustrate the value of live bedside music-making in improving the experience of hospitalization for children, families, and staff. The discussion identifies benefits of bedside music-making opportunities in providing non-clinical patient-centered care for children in hospital.
Music Therapy in Pediatric Neurorehabilitation
Authors: Pool Jonathan , Wood Claire
Published: November 2023

This chapter focuses on the use of music by music therapists, to address functional gains and the social, emotional, and psychological needs of children with neurological problems. The way in which music is used with this population is presented, including its use as an assessment tool to reveal and evaluate the neurological function of the child or young person, as a powerful stimulus to support neuroplasticity in the recovery of function and also the rehearsal of daily routines for activities of daily living, and as a tool to promote participation in rehabilitation for children with acquired brain injury. Hypothetical cases based on clinical experiences are used to provide exemplars of pediatric music therapy in neurorehabilitation. The explanations within these reveal the clinical thinking behind the interventions.
Music Therapy with Children at the End of Life
Authors: O’Grady Kristen , McKee Kelli
Published: November 2023

The death of a child is a difficult topic for most people to consider. This chapter offers an understanding of how music can contribute to the wellbeing of everyone involved. While the presence of music at the end of life can be a meaningful experience, there is a risk of unintended harm. Music therapists are specially trained to provide clinical music experiences designed to improve symptom burden, promote emotional expression, and foster communication and legacy creation at the end of life. A family-centered approach is utilized to reflect the multifaceted needs of both the child and family. The role of the music therapist is to provide simultaneous support to both child and family through co-created music experiences. Preliminary research into the efficacy of music therapy in pediatric end-of-life care yielded positive results, with further research recommended to more clearly define the scope of impact.
Researching Music Early Learning and Development
Authors: Barrett Margaret S. , Abad Vicky , Welch Graham F.
Published: November 2023

This chapter draws on a review of 231 articles published in sixteen anglophone music early development and care research journals in order to map contemporary approaches to research in this field (methods and techniques), the locations where research occurs, the problems leading investigations, and the theories underpinning these. Findings reveal that the methods and techniques are spread evenly between qualitative and quantitative approaches in music education, music psychology, and community music, with some minor differences in music therapy; that investigations are primarily clustered in the US and UK, as well as clear representation from Europe, the Middle East, Australasia, and South America; and that investigations of the instrumental purposes of music predominate. Further investigation is warranted to understand the experience of children and their families across the majority-world and the implications of these for our understanding of the nature and significance of music in early life and learning.
Sounding Out the Ghetto
Authors: Reichard Tobias
Published: November 2023

This chapter discusses how and to what extent spaces influenced the course and perception of Jewish musical events in Nazi Germany. Relying on different inroads and perspectives, it investigates which actors and practices were involved in the emergence, transformation, or disappearance of places and spaces that were significant for Jewish musical life. The concept of ghetto serves as a thread for this inquiry and is understood not only as a bounded place in the common sense, but also as a space that can encompass physical and imagined, material and metaphorical qualities. In this way, an investigation of musical practices that takes into account their spatial conditions can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Jewish musical life in Nazi Germany and the complex relationships between art, politics, and space.
Hasidic Cantors “Out of Context”
Authors: Lockwood Jeremiah
Published: November 2023

Since the mid-nineteenth century, performances of cantorial music increasingly expanded to contexts beyond the synagogue, first through cantorial concerts and later through commercial records, which launched the golden age of cantors in the early 1900s. A good hundred years later, a group of cantors rooted in Hasidism began to bypass the musical norms of their communities, embracing the early twentieth-century styles of recorded cantorial music to launch performance careers in the United States. Their embrace of historical performance practices and repertoires—in spite of rejection from Orthodox religious institutions, and their discovery of new “stages” (virtual and actual) to present prayer music—is the focus of this chapter. Producing internet videos, singing in theaters, and performing at private parties offer Hasidic cantors settings in which to resound an ontology of Jewish prayer that foregrounds the mediated sounds of early cantorial records, prioritizing a musical aesthetic over the social norms of prayer in contemporary synagogues.
Christianity and Law in the Enlightenment
Authors: Berman Harold J. , Witte John
Published: November 2023

The European and American Enlightenment movements of 1688 to 1815 transformed the Western legal tradition, notably in areas of constitutional law, criminal law, private law, legal and political theory, and legal education. Particularly the American and French Revolutions effected massive and sometimes violent changes to traditional patterns of law, politics, and society—separating church and state and placing a new premium on democratic rule of law by the general will and public opinion. These legal reforms were grounded in part in new Enlightenment liberal beliefs in deism, rationalism, individualism, and nationalism—ideas that came to strong expression in the many new constitutions and codes issued in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even so, Enlightenment legal reformers often worked side by side with Christian legal reformers, and they reconstructed traditional Christian legal teachings more than they created laws anew. As a consequence, until the mid-nineteenth century, there was more continuity than discontinuity between Enlightenment-based legal teachings and practices and those of the Western Christian tradition. The Enlightenment, however, provided new secular logics for many of the traditional laws that it adopted and then adapted, and these secular teachings would later fuel the more strident post-Christian, if not anti-Christian, legal campaign of modern liberalism.
Christianity and Law in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Chapman Mark D.
Published: November 2023

The nineteenth century has been characterized as the “Age of Revolution”: there were massive upheavals following the French Revolution, with tectonic shifts in political, social, and ecclesiastical power across much of Europe, as well as in North and South America. Beginning with the rise of Napoleon and the Concordat with the French Roman Catholic Church, there was a fundamental reorientation of the role of the churches in lawmaking and in the autonomy of the state as the sole source of sovereignty. Through case studies of France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, this chapter outlines the shifting relationships between church and state as well as the ways in which law was used to regulate the churches. The lingering existence of two legal powers in tension was decisively challenged throughout the century: religion was increasingly a matter of free choice rather than of corporate privilege, and the definition of the common good was no longer in the hands of churches. Increased democracy challenged the rights of churches to speak for the people. At the same time, a religiously neutral state could prove very useful for the church, especially, as was the case in the Roman Catholic Church, when its ruler had an unprecedented amount of power in ecclesiastical affairs. Without establishments and concordats, there was far less scope for state interference.
Christianity and Law in China Today
Authors: Xie Zhibin , Wang Eric
Published: November 2023

Since China launched its policies of Reform and Opening Up in 1978, China’s Christian population has expanded significantly, both across government-approved religious organizations and unregistered “house” churches. In turn, the Chinese state, led by the Chinese Communist Party, has sought to manage, “Sinicize,” tolerate, and contain Christian activity. Overall, within the past decade, the state has tightened its control on religion. In response to the state, Christian churches in China have engaged in cooperation, resistance, conflict, and dialogue, combining these approaches in varying ways. Despite the state’s grip on religion, Christians in China still have pockets of space in which they can express their faith privately and publicly. Thus, the broader Chinese church has begun to engage Chinese society through areas such as human rights, economic life, and charity and social services. It remains to be seen whether and how the church’s public engagement will concretely affect Chinese law.
Christianity and Criminal Law
Authors: Pihlajamäki Heikki
Published: November 2023

The criminal law of the ancien régime was deeply connected to Christian religion. This showed in the conceptual connection of crime and sin. In both Catholic and Protestant Europe, Christian concerns legitimized severe punishments and social controls, whose administration and enforcement often involved the clergy. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the involvement of the Christian churches in criminal law gradually decreased until largely disappearing today, save within the internal canon law of the churches. The modern state conception of punishment was based on individual guilt and proportionality. Most acts that had been considered crimes against the Christian religion were decriminalized. The role of Christianity as the legitimizing theory behind criminal sanctions was widely replaced by punishment theories drawing on philosophy or the social sciences. However, many of the basic structures of modern criminal law, such as the emphasis on individual responsibility and its different degrees which nineteenth-century criminal law scholars worked out in detail, originated in the work of medieval canonists and early modern Christian jurists. Although religion plays little if any formal role in the criminal law system of the West today, these medieval innovations still form the basis for criminal law in the West.
Christianity and Property Law
Authors: Carmella Angela C.
Published: November 2023

Christian teaching over the millennia has predominantly endorsed the institution of private property embedded in social obligation—eschewing both purely individualist and collectivist notions of property. In that teaching, property rights, established and constrained by the positive laws of a society, are never absolute but are subordinate, derivative, social, and instrumental. Property rights are subordinate to the principle of the universal destination of goods—that is, the right of all to the goods of creation. Property rights derive from the dignity of work. They constitute a social institution with a social function. And they are not ends in themselves but the means by which societies provide their members with the goods of creation, those material and other benefits needed for human flourishing. In short, the “dominion” God gives humanity over the earth is the stewardship of creation. All private property is thus subject to a “social mortgage,” which specifies social obligations, especially to the poor and marginalized. This chapter describes Christian thought on property, with a particular emphasis on Catholic social teaching and its sustained reflection on property for over a century. It also provides examples from American property law that reveal the social mortgage in action, such as dispersed ownership, the public trust doctrine, and efforts to create affordable housing, as well as the subversion of social obligation through a long and disturbing legacy of racialized property laws, starting with the brutal treatment of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans.
Orthodox Canon Law
Authors: Mihai Vasile
Published: November 2023

Canon law is the application in the Christian life of the divine and of Orthodox faith experienced in divine worship. For the first-millennium Christian Church, Orthodox canon law became a tool to preserve God’s teaching and to promote a well-organized and meaningful life. Orthodox canon law is thaumaturgic rather than punitive, its purpose aligned with the framework of God’s plan of redemption and salvation—the theology of the Orthodox Church. Uniquely, Orthodox canon law focuses on edifying the individual rather than on security and prosperity for many. Secular society takes pride in equal treatment by the law; Orthodox canon law treats each individual as a personality rather than as a member of the community who committed a crime. The resistance of the Orthodox Church to codify ancient law rather than revise and adapt it to the times organically comes from the Church Fathers’ profound awareness of the theological character of sacred dogmas, whose meaning and limited understanding are transmitted through revelation. As ultimate truths come from Christ as “law and lawgiver,” the church through the work of ecumenical councils “found” the immutable truths of faith and established a divine canonical tradition that guides the faithful toward salvation. The divine canonical tradition, with the wisdom of the Church Fathers and experience of the early church, equipped the faithful with a clear understanding of humankind’s priorities. In these times of integration and globalization, the Orthodox Church continues its mission and adapts to new circumstances.
Christianity and Natural Law and Natural Rights
Authors: Herdt Jennifer A.
Published: November 2023

Christians have long found scriptural support for the natural law as God’s moral law written on the heart, and they have thus accepted that there are ethical standards to which persons are properly held responsible apart from divine revelation. Medieval theologians, most notably Thomas Aquinas, wove Stoic notions of an immanent rational order together with their understanding of God’s law on the heart to construct a rich account of the natural law. The idea of natural rights, meanwhile, was developed gradually by medieval canonists and became prominent in the early modern period, adding to earlier conceptions of positive legal rights the claim that there are rights that ought to be recognized by any and every legal order. While natural law has at times been contrasted with divine command morality, and some Christian thinkers have regarded natural rights discourse as corrosively individualist and as displacing natural law, increasingly it is acknowledged that Catholic and magisterial Protestant thinkers alike have for the most part harmonized natural law and divine command and seamlessly integrated the doctrine of natural rights. Natural law thinking has frequently been seen to run afoul of the is-ought fallacy. The new natural law and neo-Aristotelian naturalism offer different responses to this charge. Increasingly, Christian thinkers have come to acknowledge the natural law as a theological doctrine of a universally accessible moral standard, which construes nature as ordered to God’s purposes and thus as intrinsically normative.
Christianity and Global Justice
Authors: Cahill Lisa Sowle
Published: November 2023

This chapter approaches the contributions of Christianity to just societies, governments, laws, and, more broadly, global justice from the perspective of Christian theological ethics. Problematizing the idea that Christian beliefs and action lead naturally or easily to social justice, the chapter contrasts three strands of the tradition: radical biblical discipleship, Augustine, and Aquinas. It registers the added complexities of global politics while taking note of new political, liberation, postcolonial, and decolonial theologies that represent the political perspectives and action of those most vulnerable to injustice. It proposes that the depth and extent of injustice caution against an overly sanguine Christian social ethics. Yet it defends Christian commitment to transformative politics on the basis of salvation in Jesus Christ, the death of Jesus on a cross, Christian hope, and social-ethical partnership among Christians and non-Christians. Christian social action should especially and innovatively target “from-the-ground-up” strategies by popular movements, by consumer boycotts, by faith traditions, by intermediary levels of government, by citizens and voters, and by governance authorities and agencies that work “below” the level of the state yet network with similar entities beyond state borders (such as regulatory agencies and judiciaries).
Law in the Context of Medieval Scholasticism
Authors: Porter Jean
Published: November 2023

Beginning in the late eleventh century and continuing through the thirteenth century, scholars of civil and canon law began to work out systematic accounts of the foundations, legitimacy, and scope of positive law, drawing on ancient legal and theological sources and interpreting these in innovative ways. These efforts gave rise to a systematic jurisprudence, developed through ongoing interactions among Scholastic legal scholars and the practicing lawyers and rulers whom they trained and advised. There were of course many debates among legal scholars, but the main lines of this jurisprudence were commonly accepted among civil and canonical jurists alike. While the distinction between legal theory and political theory was not sharply drawn until near the end of this period, it is also apparent that even in its earliest stages, legal theory was focused on questions of authority and legitimacy. This chapter offers an overview of the development and the main lines of Scholastic jurisprudence, focusing on the work of civil and canon jurists, while also commenting on Thomas Aquinas’s influential theory of law.
Law and Orthodox Christianity after Byzantium
Authors: Valliere Paul
Published: November 2023

This chapter outlines the Orthodox Christian experience of law and practice of jurisprudence from 1453 to 1918. The chapter first surveys the legal and political regimes under which Orthodox communities lived after Byzantium: the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, and Western polities. Next, the chapter describes the nomocanonical tradition, the principal jurisprudential tradition of post-Byzantine Orthodoxy until the nineteenth century. Tensions in the nomocanonical tradition are described: the tension between ecclesiastical canons and Byzantine imperial laws within the nomocanon, and between nomocanonical norms and local custom. The history of capital punishment in Russia illustrates these tensions. Following a description of higher education in the Orthodox world, the chapter turns to epochal changes affecting Orthodox jurisprudence and church government in modern times, beginning with Peter the Great’s church constitution (1721). Peter’s synodal system undermined the canonical order of the Orthodox Church. Criticism of the synodal system was the context in which the modern study of Orthodox canon law and other advancements in Orthodox jurisprudence arose in nineteenth-century Russia. The critical wave peaked in the Russian conciliar movement of 1905–17. The nation-states that emerged from the Ottoman Empire between 1830 and 1914 also contributed to modern Orthodox jurisprudence. The prevailing trend in those polities was inclined to state supervision of the church in the interests of nation-building and territorial expansion. The contribution of Orthodox jurists in the Austrian (Austro-Hungarian) Empire is also noted.
Pleistocene and Early Holocene Occupation on the Eastern Wallacean Islands
Authors: Shipton Ceri , Kealy Shimona , O'Connor Sue
Published: November 2023

Here we propose a new index for estimating Paleolithic human population density from archaeological data, combining Bayesian modeled age ranges of stratigraphic contexts with an independent durable proxy in the form of knapped stone artifacts. We employ the measure of lithics per square meter per annum on test cases from multiple islands in eastern Wallacea, examining how populations changed during the period of sea-level rise from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Middle Holocene. There is a complex picture of patterns, varying according to the particular circumstances of each island and site; but overall populations seem to have increased alongside rising sea levels, with increasing exploitation of marine protein resources on those islands that are depauperate in terrestrial fauna. Increasing population goes hand in hand with increasing connectivity, with the emergence of inter-island obsidian exchange and shell bead traditions.
Clonidine
Authors: Gold Mark S. , Blum Kenneth
Published: November 2023

Clonidine’s molecular mechanism of action is agonism at the alpha-2A receptor, a subtype of the alpha-2-adrenergic receptor, found principally within the prefrontal cortex (PFC), where it prevents the secretion of norepinephrine (NE). NE causes the symptoms of withdrawal. Thus, clonidine can treat withdrawal-related symptoms including anxiety, hypertension, and tachycardia. Gold and associates found they could reverse the effects of locus coeruleus stimulation with clonidine. This noradrenergic hypothesis for opioid withdrawal changed the field. The benefits of clonidine in the transition to long-acting injectable naltrexone were confirmed in the 1980s for physicians, executives, and other motivated patients with Opioid Use Disorders (OUDs). Naltrexone, despite poor compliance, provides chronic opioid receptor blockade, prevents overdose, opioid intoxication, and subsequent re-addiction in recovered in motivated patients. The development of clonidine and naltrexone as treatment agents for OUD demonstrates that neurobiological advances could be translated from rodents to nonhuman primates to man into new effective clinical approaches.
How Machine Learning Became Pervasive
Authors: Lehoucq Emilio
Published: November 2023

Machine learning is shaping people’s lives, the digital economy, and contemporary capitalism. This chapter provides historical context to understand how machine learning became pervasive. The introduction reviews social scientific literature about big data, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The following three sections narrate the invention of machine learning between the late 1950s and 1970s, the increasing academic and commercial interest in machine learning during the late 1980s and 1990s, and the machine learning revolution during the 2010s. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of the machine learning revolution in order to understand the digital economy and contemporary capitalism. The chapter argues that sociologists and other social scientists studying the digital economy should expand their focus from competition and profit to also include cooperation and economic activities that are not exclusively driven by profit.
Computational Authority in Platform Society
Authors: Airoldi Massimo
Published: November 2023

A growing body of literature maintains that AI and machine learning (ML) technologies have—or exert—some kind of power: power to act in ways that do not mechanically reflect developers’ intentions and values, as well as power over the individuals, social groups, and cultural manifestations subjected to automated predictions and classifications. This chapter aims to dissect the notion of ML power, intended both as power to and power over. First, two complementary scholarly perspectives on ML power to, here labeled “networked” and “cultural” views, are presented and critically discussed. Second, drawing on both classic and contemporary social theories, the chapter outlines four main dimensions of ML power over—as opaque coercion, computational authority, structural conditioning, and data-driven governmentality.
Fundamentalist Magazine Publishing
Authors: Reynolds Amber Thomas
Published: November 2023

This chapter surveys three generations of fundamentalist magazine publishing in the twentieth century: the pre-war era, the post-war era, and the neo-fundamentalist era of the 1980s. By analysing representative titles, it shows how magazine editors capitalized upon the ‘fundamentalist’ name but prevented the movement from having a single voice. It situates the periodicals within their wider publishing networks and trends, and it shows magazine editors’ awareness of their competition. Ultimately, few periodicals stood the test of time like Moody Monthly or Sword of the Lord without adaptations. Outside of American publications, it surveys organs for British fundamentalists, missionaries in China, and the African Challenge, a popular monthly founded by Sudan Interior Mission agents in Nigeria, which became the continent’s leading Christian periodical. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Britain’s Banner of Truth magazine, whose Puritan-inspired editor demonstrated that not all evangelicals who supported biblical inerrancy embraced American-style fundamentalism.
Literature
Authors: Douglas Christopher
Published: November 2023

American modernism generally adopted the secularization thesis, imagining religion as properly disappearing in modern societies, and mocking a residual fundamentalism as backwards. Quiescent for several decades, the US fundamentalist political resurgence beginning in the 1970s was accompanied by the development of new genres of evangelical fiction and a new evangelical publishing and marketing network. As serious literary writers began to critique the Christian Right’s resurgent threat to pluralism, human rights, and democracy, they frequently misunderstood their object, confused by the secularization thesis and by the reigning paradigms of postmodernism and multiculturalism. In unrecognized ways, serious religiously interested literature often indirectly addressed the concerns and theologies of fundamentalism, the loudest expression of religiosity in the public square. Fundamentalist fiction, meanwhile, frequently had crossover appeal in its bestselling novels and film adaptations. Literary studies continues to trail history and the social sciences in paying attention to fundamentalism and its impact on American literature.
Creationism
Authors: Trollinger Susan L. , Trollinger William Vance
Published: November 2023

Biblical inerrancy is central to fundamentalism, and hence creationism—the belief that the Genesis creation account is factually accurate—has been important to the fundamentalist movement from its beginnings in the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association (1919). In the 1920s fundamentalists sought to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools. In the Scopes trial (1925) fundamentalists succeeded in having Tennessee’s anti-evolution law upheld, but the ensuing national ridicule forced them to abandon their national campaign, focusing instead on building a fundamentalist and creationist subculture. While early fundamentalists accepted mainstream geology, in 1961 The Genesis Flood appeared, making the case for flood geology (Noah’s Flood explains the geologic column). Young earth creationism rapidly spread through fundamentalism, thanks to male-dominated organizations (committed to a version of ‘muscular Christianity’) such as Answers in Genesis and its Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Fundamentalists have spread the creationist word throughout the world, spawning organizations such as the Korean Association for Creation Research.