bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Origins of ESG in Pensions
Authors: Lachance Stéphanie , Stroehle Judith C.
Published: July 2023

As intergenerational stewards of capital, pension funds can have many good reasons to embrace environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues in their investment practices. Yet the particular structure of pension funds creates both advantages and disadvantages for the integration of ESG. This chapter reviews the historical origins, regulatory mandates, and fund structures of pensions, to tease out exactly which of these characteristics enable and which of them impede the inclusion of ESG in pension funds. We use the case of capital market company PSP Investments to lend depth to the application of the strategies that emerge in the pensions industry.
Unweaving Crossweave Poems
Authors: Lefteratou Anna
Published: July 2023

This introduction discusses the function of cut-up techniques, modern and ancient, and cento. It places the analysis within the State of the Art and discusses the methodologies used. It calls for the re-contextualizing of the first edition of Homeric Centos within the framework of Late Antiquity and re-evaluating it with an eye for the biblical poetry of that period. It introduces the reader to authors that had compiled Homeric and Virgilian centos, long poems that repurposed lines from Homer and Virgil’s poetry by weaving the lines together with at least two interlinked strands: the weft and the wrap. It also analyzes how the centos applied the art of pastiche as the playful imitation of another author’s work but also how Christian poetry reused this technique towards a serious end. Christian centos engage with authoritative religious and secular narratives whose appropriations prompts specific audience responses.
De fructu lignorum
Authors: Lefteratou Anna
Published: July 2023

The chapter centers on the proem and the revision of Genesis in the I HC and contextualizes the text vis à vis the exegetical approaches to Genesis and the late antique reception of didactic hexaemeral literature in general. After summarizing the Sitz im Leben (3.1), it examines how Homer and other classicizing models such as Hesiod are used to recast the Old Testament in hexameters. The cento revision of the Creation and the Fall (3.2) indicates a rich intertextual background, both epic and biblical. As far the female author is concerned (3.3), it will discuss the gendered and rather positive representation of Eve in the Fall as a possible indication of Eudocian authorship. Finally, at the metaliterary level, the combination of Eve’s guilt (οὐλομένη) and its debt to the Iliadic proem, shows the poem’s self-conscious appropriation of the long tradition of epic beginnings.
A Racist Foundation
Authors: Dettlaff Alan J.
Published: July 2023

Chapter 2 presents the early origins of what would become the child welfare system, which emerged following abolition of slavery through the “child-saving” efforts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most significantly to the origins of the child welfare system, this included the establishment of the Children’s Aid Society and the Orphan Train Movement, the precursor to modern foster care placements. While these efforts were designed to “save” poor, European immigrant children, they intentionally excluded Black children who were deemed unworthy of the citizen-building efforts of this time. Rather, through provisions in the Black Codes, Black children were forced into apprenticeships, often with their former enslavers, or funneled into the rapidly expanding juvenile legal system. The chapter concludes with a description of the philosophy of White saviorism that undergirded the child-saving efforts of this time and ultimately became the philosophy that undergirded the modern child welfare system.
Reforms Are Designed to Fail
Authors: Dettlaff Alan J.
Published: July 2023

Chapter 6 provides a review of popular reforms used by the child welfare system and the history of failures these reforms have produced. These reforms are used by the child welfare system as a means of reassuring the public that it is aware of its challenges and is responding to these challenges through these various reform efforts, which include prevention-oriented reforms, decision-making reforms, and training and workforce reforms. Yet despite minimal evidence of success or meaningful improvements, these reforms are allowed to continue due to the myth of indispensability the child welfare system has created. This chapter closes with a response to critiques of abolitionist efforts, which are another tool used by reformers to maintain the current system and justify its continued existence.
Conclusion
Authors: Scheuers Timothy R.
Published: July 2023

By examining Calvin’s thoughts and actions surrounding the relationship between oaths, confession, conscience, and discipline within the local context of the reformers’ conflicts with religious dissidents and obstinate laypersons, this study has suggested three important revisions to the generally received impressions of Calvin and the Reformation. First, it has reassessed the notion that Calvin’s mature ecclesiology represents a radical enlargement of church law and authority that effectively undercut his earlier commitment to the freedom of conscience. Second, it has demonstrated how Calvin and the reformers defended a modified form of individual liberty on the basis of a highly nuanced conception of the relationship between conscience and tradition—a “divine adiaphora.” Finally, it has enhanced the view of Calvin as a pastoral theologian by further illustrating Calvin’s ability to accommodate law—and even conscience—to the causes that ranked, for him, even higher: namely, to the causes of individual and communal reform.
A Wide-Ranging Tour of Perspectives on Dignity
Authors: Hitlin Steven , Andersson Matthew A.
Published: July 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the leading accounts and definitions of dignity, sourced from philosophy, human rights law, and the social and medical sciences. How the public thinks about dignity diffuses from these social institutions. The chapter discusses how dignity often is understood against proposed synonyms such as autonomy or respect, or in the context of phrasal uses (such as “dying with dignity” or “beneath one’s dignity”). Rather than throwing up their hands at this complexity, the authors find it is far more useful to think of dignity as a practical, situational experience rather than a formally defined entity. The chapter offers a sociological critique of Kantian approaches to dignity that focus on rationality or autonomy in generalized terms. With this, it provides an overview of current approaches to dignity in sociology, which measure it in terms of power or hierarchy, especially at work, and in terms of how individuals cope with or resist mistreatment or unfairness.
Is a Dignified Life a Healthier Life?
Authors: Hitlin Steven , Andersson Matthew A.
Published: July 2023

Individuals who report subjective dignity also report better past, current, and predicted health and lesser frequency of depressive symptoms. These associations hold across a variety of demographic backgrounds and rival in size those linked to income and social status. Meanwhile, individuals experiencing dignity threat are much more likely to report a variety of health issues. An instrumental variable analysis provides support for the proposition that dignity leads to better health. Dignity relates to better health net of mastery, life meaning, and mattering to others. In fact, it is most strongly linked to general health when these other resources are lacking, suggesting its unique role in promoting well-being among those who are structurally or extremely disadvantaged.
Mandates, Minorities, and the League of Nations
Authors: Schabas William A.
Published: July 2023

The League of Nations did not have a comprehensive human rights framework but it did address racism and racial discrimination, primarily in the context of its oversight of the minorities treaties and of the Mandate system. In both systems, petition mechanisms were developed. In the case of minorities in Europe, petitions were able to reach the Permanent Court of International Justice. African American leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey engaged with the League institutions, as did representatives of indigenous peoples. Several petitions to the Permanent Mandates Commission contained allegations of racism. The system of the mandates was little more than colonialism by another name although petitions opened a few cracks that let the light in. Brutal suppression of the Nama people in South West Africa by South Africa at Bondelzwarts was addressed in the League of Nations Assembly, the first of many international interventions into South Africa’s racist policies. The League also dealt with slavery, but its efforts were targeted at the two African members, Liberia and Ethiopia.
Religious cleavages and religious voting
Authors: Montero José Ramón
Published: July 2023

This chapter undertakes a thorough examination of three basic associations between religiosity and voting choice—religious coalescence, religious cleavage, and religious voting. Given their extraordinary relevance in the intellectual history of social sciences, the chapter devotes much attention to religious cleavages, from their original elaboration by Lipset and Rokkan to the canonical approach developed by Bartolini and Mair. The chapter also examines the main characteristics of the so-called religious coalescence in the United Kingdom and above all in the Scandinavian countries, where religion was a ‘non-issue’ for historical and structural reasons. Finally, the chapter introduces the concept of religious voting, analyses its differences with religious cleavages, and relates the upsurge of this new phenomenon in secularized societies with the so-called morality policies. Ultimately, the chapter is an attempt to break the usual tendency in the literature to treat religious voting as merely synonymous with religious cleavages.
Belgium
Authors: Billiet Jaak , Abts Koen
Published: July 2023

This chapter deals with the relationship between religion, pillar membership (or segmented pluralism), and politics at the individual level. It covers the federal election surveys in Belgium between 1991 and 2010. The main research questions consist of the extent to which voters’ religious orientations and membership of pillar organizations are still related in Belgium in 2010 to political preferences, and what are the differences in evolution between the Flemish and Walloon regions. Six successive post-election surveys are analysed. Individualization theories suggest that value orientations became more important as predictors for voting behaviour than structural variables as Church involvement and memberships of ‘pillarized’ social organizations. Empirical evidence is not yet found to fully support this idea. Levels of Church involvement and ‘belonging’ to vertically segmented organizations are still effective in the formation of party vote, but the marginal probabilities of both core Catholics and the electorates of ‘pillar’ related parties became much smaller.
Spain
Authors: Calvo Kerman , Martínez-Pérez Álvaro , Montero José Ramón
Published: July 2023

This chapter discusses religion and voting in Spain. It investigates the salience of religiosity as a factor shaping electoral decisions in the face of profound secularization but also in a context of dramatic transformations in the party system. Long considered the Catholic country par excellence, religious politics in Spain are adapting to a shifting scenario defined by rapid change, but also by the endurance of previous legacies. The chapter shows that religiosity remains a relevant influence in electoral politics, a cultural signifier that allows for activation by political parties when competing in elections. In line with the findings of the book, the chapter questions the need to approach religious politics as examples of structural, long-term divisions. Religiosity, however, in as much as it appeals to moral and cultural divides, but also to mobilizing strategies by religious actors, still help voters decide between political parties.
Noun classes
Authors: Skilton Amalia
Published: July 2023

This chapter surveys nominal classification systems in Australian languages, focussing on noun class systems proper—those where all nouns are assigned to a class, and govern concord on other elements of the noun phrase and/or verb phrase. Noun class systems are widely attested and richly diverse on the continent. Non-Pama-Nyungan languages possess the most elaborate systems, with as many as eight noun classes in the lexicon and eight constituent types undergoing noun class agreement. Though these noun class systems vary widely in form, some aspects of their structure—such as the number of noun classes and the semantic basis of noun class assignment—are extremely similar, even across unrelated language families. By contrast, Pama-Nyungan languages with noun class typically display smaller systems, with only two noun classes in the lexicon, and demonstratives and pronouns as the sole targets of noun class agreement.
Demonstratives
Authors: Louagie Dana
Published: July 2023

This chapter provides a survey of demonstratives in Australian languages. It discusses their morphosyntax, semantic and pragmatic functions, and potential grammaticalization pathways, in relation to findings and questions from the general typological literature. Morphosyntactically, the focus is on their distribution across pronominal, adnominal, adverbial, and identifying contexts, their inflectional possibilities, and their relation to other determining elements in nominal expressions. Semantically, it is shown that, while some Australian languages have simple systems of two or three demonstratives which can be used in a range of contexts, others have very complex and intricate systems, with a range of demonstratives each having specific spatial, non-spatial, anaphoric, recognitional and/or other senses. Finally, the chapter makes some observations on (signs of) grammaticalization into definite markers, personal pronouns, or relative pronouns.
Relative clauses
Authors: Hendery Rachel
Published: July 2023

Many Australian languages do not have a dedicated relative clause construction, if ‘relative clause’ is narrowly defined. All languages have, however, constructions that fill the functional role of a relative clause, and these constructions are surveyed here for Australian languages. These often resemble a construction known as the ‘adjoined relative clause’, which can have temporal, conditional, relative and/or purposive functions. Lack of data for some languages makes dedicated relative clauses difficult or impossible to identify. This chapter surveys constructions and shows how Australian languages vary as to whether relative clauses are adjoined or embedded, linear order, finiteness, whether they are externally or internally headed, and the type of relative marking.
Discourse and social interaction
Authors: Blythe Joe , Mushin Ilana
Published: July 2023

In this chapter we survey what we know about the ways in which speakers of Australian languages structure discourse. We show how advances in recording and data management technologies at the end of the 20th century and into the 21st century have enabled the focus of research on Australian language discourse to move from the analysis of transcribed text collections to the in situ analysis of language use in authentic social interactions. Our survey includes ways in which grammatical features of Australian languages are reflective of different interactional contingencies, from word order preferences to the development of kintax. It also includes ways that speakers of Australian languages conduct conversations in terms of turn taking, the formation of social actions, and the organization of actions into sequences.
Sociolinguistic variation
Authors: Mansfield John
Published: July 2023

This chapter provides an overview of sociolinguistic variation in Australian Indigenous languages, illustrated with examples from Western Desert and Yolngu dialect groups, and from Murrinhpatha. Australian Indigenous society is characterized by geographic and social mobility, which complicates the notions of ‘speech community’ and ‘dialect’. Before colonization, sociolinguistic indexicality appears to have focused on clan, kinship, and geography. These indexicalities have been reconfigured by colonization and town settlement, with the distinction between generations now at least as salient as that between clan lines. This chapter also highlights some linguistic features of Australian sociolinguistic variation, such as socially indexed demonstratives, morphology, and word-initial lenition.
Australian Indigenous sign languages
Authors: Green Jennifer
Published: July 2023

Australian Indigenous sign languages hold a special place in typologies of the world’s many and varied sign languages. This is partly a consequence of the unique determinants of their use, where sign is predominantly employed by hearing people as a replacement for speech in certain cultural contexts when speech is either disallowed or impractical. In some circumstances sign may be used alongside speech, in others it may replace speech altogether, and in others sign is used in narrative practices and other performative traditions. Senior people, and in particular women, are the acknowledged experts, especially in some communities in Central Australia. That said, younger people sign as well, and new signs are developed to keep pace with sociocultural and environmental changes. This chapter outlines some of the early documentations of sign, discusses some contexts when sign is used, and then gives an overview of various features of sign articulation, such as handshape. The chapter concludes with examples of community-directed resources designed to support knowledge of sign, particularly in educational contexts.
Language, land, identity, and wellbeing
Authors: Amery Rob , Gale Mary-Anne
Published: July 2023

This chapter investigates links between Australian languages and the well-being of their speakers, owners, and custodians. It explores the strong relationship that exists between language and land, and the important role that both play in identity formation. In turn individual identity, plus being proud and comfortable with who one is as a member of a group, influences health and well-being. Although research on the positive impacts of Indigenous language programs on mental and physical health is in its infancy, there is considerable anecdotal evidence of the benefits, especially for lost or ‘stolen’ languages. Reclaiming one’s ancestral language can be life-changing by offering a sense of agency and purpose. As a society it seems we cannot afford not to invest in Indigenous language programmes. The outcomes improve individuals’ quality of life, have employment and education benefits, and potentially save money on incarceration, mental health interventions, and corresponding physical health costs.
Wajarri
Authors: Marmion Doug
Published: July 2023

This chapter presents an introduction to Wajarri, a Pama-Nyungan language from the Murchison-Gascoyne region of Western Australia. Wajarri is a typical Western Australian Pama-Nyungan language, having a fairly free word order and a suffixing, agglutinative structure. It has a split-ergative case marking system and an incomplete set of bound pronouns which encliticise to the first clausal constituent. Wajarri has two open verb conjugation classes and a small set of irregular verbs, which inflect for tense, aspect and mood. Additionally it shows a switch-reference system that applies to certain subordinate clause types. The phonemic inventory has six places of articulation for consonants, with both a laminal and apical contrast, and three vowels. Wajarri traditional country extends across a large area and has a number of named varieties, which vary primarily in lexicon.
Bosnian War, 1992–1995
Authors: Bradley Miriam
Published: July 2023

Chapter 4 focuses on the 1992–1995 Bosnian War and the failure of the international response to protect the civilian population. When war broke out, the international community mounted a huge and high-profile humanitarian relief effort, led by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and supported by a UN peacekeeping force, the United Nations Protection Force in Yugoslavia (UNPROFOR). The relief effort represented an impressive accomplishment, but neither the humanitarian agencies nor the peacekeeping forces succeeded in protecting the civilian population from attack. The UN Security Council designated a number of predominantly Bosnian Muslim towns as safe areas but failed to protect them from Serb forces, who attacked as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing. Despite the obvious limitations of the humanitarian response, it served as a ‘humanitarian alibi’ which major powers could point to in order to show they were doing something even as they avoided serious foreign policy engagement. Not only did the humanitarian response thus conceal a lack of more concerted political or military action, but it was also sometimes in tension with it. With thousands of aid workers and lightly armed peacekeepers spread thinly across Bosnian territory, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) could not engage in substantial airstrikes, such that the Serb forces could violate international humanitarian law without fear of serious reprisals. Only after numerous attacks on the so-called safe areas and the ethnic cleansing of around 8,000 men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 was NATO shamed into serious intervention, ending the war.
Donors and the Funding of Humanitarian Action
Authors: Bradley Miriam
Published: July 2023

Chapter 18 explains how the largest international humanitarian agencies are funded and by whom. A large majority of funding for international humanitarian assistance comes from a small number of wealthy governments (Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors), although recent decades have seen an increase in the number of non-DAC donors and in the size of their contribution to humanitarian funding. The principle of impartiality requires that humanitarian aid is provided on the basis of need, and need alone, but this chapter shows that need is not the only factor determining which emergencies donors provide funding for or how much funding they provide. In general, the level of need does matter but so too do media coverage and celebrity engagement, the political and strategic interests of donor governments, and the activism of operational humanitarian agencies. The chapter further argues that it is not only the quantity of funding but also its quality which affects humanitarian response. Donor governments frequently earmark their funding for particular places and activities, which can restrict the independence of the operational agency receiving that funding and may prevent them from working impartially. With these concerns in mind, a number of initiatives at the international level have sought to improve the quantity, distribution, and quality of humanitarian funding, and the last part of this chapter examines three of the most important such initiatives—Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD), pooled and country-based funding mechanisms, and the Grand Bargain.
Armed Actors
Authors: Bradley Miriam
Published: July 2023

Chapter 20 turns to international humanitarian agency relationships with armed actors, including international forces, national militaries, insurgent groups, and criminal organizations. These different kinds of armed actors can have important impacts on humanitarian operations and humanitarian outcomes. Insofar as armed actors control territory, agencies need their consent to be able to operate on that territory. Beyond facilitating humanitarian assistance by granting access, armed actors also often have direct impacts on the population. In some cases, for example, armed actors provide material assistance directly to the population. Sometimes they also pose a violent threat to the population. Operational agencies therefore need to engage with armed actors to negotiate access and acceptance for their work and can also engage with the goal of improving protection outcomes. In practice, the way they engage depends on the agency in question, the context, and the type of armed actor. While the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières engage with a wide range of armed actors, they also seek to maintain their independence from them. Many of the other large international humanitarian agencies are less comfortable engaging with armed non-state actors but sometimes work quite closely—even to the point of compromising their independence and neutrality—with international military forces.
Virtue Epistemology and Epistemic Responsibility
Authors: Brogaard Berit
Published: July 2023

Virtue epistemologies about knowledge have traditionally been divided into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Initially, what set them apart was that virtue responsibilism took intellectual character virtues and responsible agency to be necessary to knowledge acquisition, whereas virtue reliabilism took reliable cognitive faculties to be constitutive of it instead. Despite recent concessions between these camps, there are residual disagreements. Chapter 8 focuses primarily on Linda Zagzebski’s account of virtue responsibilism and John Greco’s and Ernest Sosa’s defenses of virtue reliabilism. It argues that despite their misgivings about virtue responsibilism, Greco and Sosa are ultimately required to accept that intellectual character virtues involve a substantial truth-motivational component, and that knowledge requires a kind of epistemic responsibility that is far more substantive than a causal, naturalistic notion of attribution.
Proper Functionalism and the Organizational Theory of Functions
Authors: Graham Peter J.
Published: July 2023

Proper functionalism explicates epistemic warrant in terms of the function and normal functioning of the belief-forming process. There are two standard substantive views of the sources of functions in the literature in epistemology: God (intelligent design) or Mother Nature (evolution by natural selection). Both appear to confront the Swampman objection: couldn’t there be a mind with warranted beliefs neither designed by God nor the product of evolution by natural selection? Is there another substantive view that avoids the Swampman objection? There are two. The first is the generalized selected-effects theory of functions. The second is the organizational theory of functions. Both, however, require some history to assign functions, for both are etiological theories of functions: past effects help explain current function. Swampman can then acquire functions, perhaps soon after creation, though he has none at the moment of inception.
An Explanationist Defense of Proper Functionalism
Authors: Boyce Kenneth , Moon Andrew
Published: July 2023

This chapter defends an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, it notes two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. The chapter then notes how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what is called warrant-compatible malfunction. Chapter 10 formulates the authors’ own view: explanationist proper functionalism, which explains the warrant-compatible malfunction cases and helps to block the above objections. It also advances a positive argument for explanationist proper functionalism.
Boghossian, Müller-Lyer, the Parrot, and the Nazi
Authors: Williamson Timothy
Published: July 2023

Internalist accounts of epistemic justification typically imply that the bigoted beliefs of consistent bigots are epistemically justified. Given plausible connections between norms of belief and norms of action, internalism about the former extends to internalism about the latter, and by internalist standards consistent bigots are justified in acting on their bigoted beliefs. The chapter explores such disturbing consequences of internalism with reference to recent work by Paul Boghossian. One problem raised for Boghossian’s internalist account concerns the connection between perceptual and non-perceptual seemings on one hand and dispositions to have the corresponding beliefs on the other, in both humans and non-human animals. Another problem concerns the connection between the justification of action and the justification of belief, especially the belief that one should perform a given action.
Pathologizing the supernatural present
Authors: Davies Owen
Published: July 2023

The growth of asylums and their trained medical superintendents revealed many first-hand, observable examples of individuals anguished in mind and tortured in body due to their belief in divine communications, devils, witches, and spirits. For some psychiatrists such people demonstrated aberrant, relict mindsets and beliefs, but collectively they also challenged the psychiatric confidence that the enlightened West had progressed far beyond the benighted era of the witch trials. Psychiatric categories of insanity, such as demonomania, hysteria, and Folie à deux were applied to try and explain such modern manifestations. Come the turn of the twentieth century, though, and there was no sense that the profusion of asylums and their medical staff were in any way curing the perceived ills of belief in the supernatural.
Encounters with witches, spirits, and fairies
Authors: Davies Owen
Published: July 2023

For some patients the interaction with witches, ghosts, and fairies was grounded in the everyday experiences of misfortune, grief, and social relations. For others it was an expression of a mental otherworld inspired by the motifs and narratives of folk tales and legends made real in the imagination. Some asylum superintendents categorized such beliefs as ‘monomania of superstition’ or ‘monomania of witchcraft’ but many of the patients’ beliefs and concerns were held by many thousands who were never diagnosed as insane. The asylum records provide a particularly unique insight regarding the continued concerns about witches in urban-industrial environments as well as in the countryside.
Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy
Authors: Zenobi Luca
Published: July 2023

This book is about how societies shaped and were shaped by space, and about the role of borders in the making of states and communities. It centres on the fifteenth century and on the establishment of a frontier which would shape much of Italy for over three centuries. In contrast to other treatments, the book takes an all-encompassing approach to the topic of borders, charting how they were conceptualized (Chapter 1), negotiated (Chapter 2), disputed (Chapter 3), delimited (Chapter 4), crossed (Chapter 5), recorded (Chapter 6), and mapped (Chapter 7). Three arguments are developed. First, the book demonstrates that far from being porous and ill-defined, as is often assumed by scholars, pre-modern borders could be precisely located and widely understood by contemporaries. It does so by showing that borders were never universal artefacts; rather, their nature and meaning varied, depending upon the actors and cultures through which they were shaped. Second, the book establishes that border-making was a fundamentally interactive process, one driven by peripheral interests as much as central designs and by everyday practices as much as authoritative projections. In turn, this challenges the preconception that exerting power over space in pre-modern Europe was primarily a top-down affair. Finally, the book offers a radical reinterpretation of Italian states, by deconstructing their borders and questioning their reputation as territorial polities.
Confinium Compositio
Authors: Zenobi Luca
Published: July 2023

This chapter develops the inquiry begun in Chapter 2 one step further. It does so by searching for the adoption of the same principles at play during territorial negotiations in the resolution of border disputes—episodes in which treaties broke down, mistakes occurred, and new conflicts arose. The chapter pays particular attention to instances when the politics of space was driven by localized exigencies. This is to evaluate the contribution of pre-existing groups and formations in novel political landscapes. What it finds is that, despite the seemingly authoritative character of border-making, implementing territorial changes was far from a top-down process imposed by leaderships and centres of government. Instead, it was the result of sustained exchanges with local agents and of a careful consideration of their interests and ways of doing things with space.
Committing Borders to Paper
Authors: Zenobi Luca
Published: July 2023

This chapter responds to the current surge of interest in the history of archives by examining how the written memory of borders was recorded, shared, and preserved. Bringing full circle the argument developed earlier in the book, it shows that borders were committed to paper at different levels and by a plurality of actors: locally, by notaries and representatives performing a diffused verbal mapping of community boundaries; centrally, by secretaries and chancellors recording everything they deemed relevant for future use; and on the move, by agents connecting centres and peripheries. The chapter argues that the distributed handling of records concerning borders did not result from governmental weakness but rather from the necessity for dialogue between centres and peripheries over the division of space.
Pain After Anterior Vertebral Body Tethering
Authors: Yang Michael J. , Samdani Amer F. , Pahys Joshua M. , Quinonez Alejandro , McGarry Maureen , Toll Brandon , Grewal Harsh , Hwang Steven W.
Published: July 2023

Study Design:

Retrospective case series.

Objective:

To examine the incidence and risk factors for postoperative pain following anterior vertebral body tethering (AVBT) for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS).

Summary of Background Data:

Up to 78% of patients with AIS report preoperative pain; it is the greatest patient concern surrounding surgery. Pain significantly decreases following posterior spinal fusion, but pain following AVBT is poorly understood.

Materials and Methods:

We retrospectively reviewed 279 patients with a two-year follow-up after AVBT for AIS. We collected demographic, radiographic, and clinical data pertinent to postoperative pain at each time interval of preoperative and postoperative visits (6 wk, 6 mo, 1 y, and annually thereafter).

Results:

Within our cohort, 68.1% of patients reported preoperative pain. Older age (P=0.014) and greater proximal thoracic (P=0.013) and main thoracic (P=0.002) coronal curve magnitudes were associated with preoperative pain. Pain at any time point > 6 weeks postoperatively was reported in 41.6% of patients; it was associated with the female sex (P=0.032), need for revision surgery (P=0.019), and greater lateral displacement of the apical lumbar vertebrae (P=0.028). The association between preoperative and postoperative pain trended toward significance (P=0.07). At 6 months postoperatively, 91.8% had pain resolution; the same number remained pain-free at the time of last follow-up. The presence of a postoperative complication was associated with new-onset postoperative pain that resolved (P=0.009). Only 8.2% had persistent pain, although no risk factors were found to be associated with persistent pain.

Conclusion:

In our cohort of 279 patients with a minimum 2-year follow-up after AVBT, 68.1% reported preoperative pain. Nearly 42% reported postoperative pain at any time point, but only 8.2% had persistent pain. Postoperative pain after AVBT was associated with female sex, revision surgery, and Lenke lumbar modifier. AVBT is associated with a significant reduction in pain, and few patients report long-term postoperative pain.
Improving the identification and management of diabetic nephropathy in patients with diabetes in primary care
Authors: Picow Eden
Published: July 2023

Background:

Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of renal failure in the United States. Screening for albuminuria in individuals with diabetes is critical to identify the early stages of DKD. Prompt identification and management of DKD improves patient outcomes, increases life expectancy, and decreases health care costs.

Local problem:

The DKD screening rate for patients ≥18 years of age with diabetes at the project site was 29%, below the national benchmark of 90%. Patients diagnosed with DKD were not receiving appropriate management. This quality-improvement project used a standardized protocol consisting of a checklist and educational initiatives to improve DKD identification and management.

Methods:

The Knowledge-to-Action Framework was used for this project at a primary care practice in the southeastern United States. Data collection included demographic data, DKD screening with urine albumin-to-creatine ratio, diagnosis rates, DKD treatment with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEi) or angiotensin II receptor blocker (ARB), and a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor (SGLT2i) reviewed 6 months before and after intervention.

Interventions:

Evidence-based interventions included a DKD educational in-service for clinical staff, creation of a standardized protocol through a checklist for screening and appropriate management of DKD, and implementation of patient educational handouts.

Results:

Diabetic kidney disease screening rates increased by 100%, patients diagnosed with DKD decreased by 8%, patients with DKD on ACEi/ARB increased by 39%, and patients with DKD on SGLT2i increased by 15%.

Conclusion:

Implementation of a standardized protocol through a checklist and providing patient education on DKD can improve DKD identification/management.
Students’ perspectives of sustainable development goals in a Japanese higher education institute
Authors: Jones Thomas E. , Mack Lindsay , Gómez Oscar A.
Published: July 2023

Purpose

As UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are integrated across Asia-Pacific Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), the purpose of this descriptive and exploratory study is to investigate undergraduates’ own self-stated commitment to the SDGs and their perceived feasibility by the 2030 target.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed-methodology approach covered quantitative and qualitative approaches facilitated by purposive selection of an Asia-Pacific HEI via a Japanese liberal arts college where a questionnaire survey was administered in Autumn 2021. Responses were monitored from freshmen students in twin courses within the same major (introduction to “Environment” and “Development” studies, respectively;n= 177) that both integrated SDGs within their respective curricula.

Findings

Students in both classes rated the SDGs as a useful learning tool but were sceptical of their feasibility by 2030. A self-stated commitment was high, especially among environment studies students. Multiple regression was run to predict SDGs commitment from gender, major, perceived SDGs’ usefulness and feasibility. These variables partially predicted SDGs commitment but only gender and major variables added statistical significance. Moreover, the same variables were less equivocal in terms of predicting the self-stated belief that the SDGs could be achieved by 2030.

Practical implications

The findings can inform instructors of students’ perceptions towards SDGs. Significant differences raise academic and applied discussion points, such as how to engage male students, for example, by setting up sustainability “business case” practicums.

Originality/value

As global HEIs grapple with effective ways to vertically integrate SDGs into a university’s curriculum, students’ opinions are often underrepresented. This paper’s originality and value address these gaps by exploring a holistic student-centric perspective on SDGs in the context of commitment. This paper also has implications for more effective cross-curricula integration of the SDGs.
Building smallholder farmers' capacity to adopt climate‐smart agricultural practices in flood prone areas: Lessons from Bangladesh
Authors: Akter Asma , Jahan Mohammad Shah , Geng Xianhui , Mwalupaso Gershom Endelani , Hoque Fazlul , Adeel Adnan
Published: July 2023

Currently, there is an increased interest in promoting climate‐smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) around the globe, however, application of these practices may vary for different climate risk hotspots. Although, climate field schools (CFS) are conducted with the aim of empowering farmers with knowledge on the various agricultural practices, little attention has been devoted to building the capacity of smallholder farmers to facilitate adoption of appropriate CSAPs. Given the effects of climate change on agriculture, it is fundamental for agricultural sustainability to answer the question that has hardly benefited from empirical analysis in previous land use studies, which is: Do CFS build farmers' capacity to adopt CSA in flood prone areas? Cross‐sectional data from 600 rural farm households in south Bangladesh is used and the recursive bivariate probit (RBP) is applied to address this knowledge gap. The results reveal that participation in CFS increases the probability of a farmer's soil salinity consciousness by 25% and eventually improves the probability to adopt climate‐smart agricultural practices by 20%. We also analyzed the spillover effects of CFS participation on CSA adoption and found that there is a strong spillover effect which has important implications on the cost effectiveness and sustainability of the program. Overall, the study provides empirical evidence demonstrating that participatory approaches stimulate adoption of appropriate CSAPs by building farmers' capacity in recognizing the existing climate risk hotspots.
The Practice of Decolonizing Migration Studies
Authors: Bashi Vilna
Published: July 2023

Decolonizing thought, a useful effort for academics committed to social justice and equity, requires examining the colonial and imperial premises undergirding scholarship and teaching. I explain what I think it takes to develop a decolonial approach to migration studies, offer examples from in my own career, and end with some suggestions for scholars interested in decolonizing migration studies.
Pūao-te-Ata-tū and dissenting voices of change at New Zealand’s oldest school of social work
Authors: Cairns Tamati , Fulcher Leon
Published: July 2023

INTRODUCTION: The Ministerial Advisory Committee Report on a Māori Perspective for the New Zealand Department of Social Welfare (1986) offers an historic reference point from which to examine education and training reforms initiated at Aotearoa New Zealand’s oldest school of social work and designed to better address the needs and aspirations of Māori and those working with Māori. Pūao-te-Ata-tū is an internationally unique example of social research facilitated by distinguished Māori leaders and senior government officials using indigenous methods. The Vice Chancellor of Victoria University was approached in 1986 along with its new Professor of Social Work about becoming drivers of Pūao-te-Ata-tū Recommendation 10(c) to “assess the extent to which tertiary social work courses are meeting cultural needs for those public servants seconded as students to the courses”. The early passing of alumnus- Elder John Rangihau, shortly after Pūao-te-Ata-tū was published, left a legacy—acknowledged posthumously by the Council of Victoria University in 1989—when a senior Te Rangihau Scholar teaching and research position was established with Ngāi Tūhoe. A decade of reform in social work education and research at Victoria University saw important movement towards supporting and promoting Māori perspectives in the delivery of community social services in three New Zealand regions.
IMPLICATIONS: Five lessons learned about partnerships from the Victoria University experience are highlighted as issues that promote cultural responsiveness in support of Māori whānau, tamariki and rangatahi. The Wellington programme closed at the start of the new millennium without addressing the VUW Council relationship with Ngāi Tūhoe, highlighting broken promises.
Identification of interfascial plane using injection pressure monitoring at the needle tip during ultrasound-guided TAP block in cadavers
Authors: Roberto Dossi , Quadri Christian , Capdevila Xavier , Saporito Andrea
Published: July 2023

Introduction

Consistency in needle tip positioning within interfascial planes while performing infiltrative blocks under ultrasound guidance can be difficult. The exact determination of such planes may beyond the physical limits of common ultrasound machines. Aim of this pilot study was to understand if real-time continuous injection pressure monitoring at the needle tip, combined with ultrasound guidance, can help to immediately and consistently identify an interfascial plane needle tip placement.

Methods

We performed four ultrasound-guided transversus abdominis plane (TAP) blocks on fresh cadaver using a modified conventional peripheral nerve block needle. The sensing needle contains Fabry-Perot miniaturized pressure sensor floating at the needle tip, connected to a measuring unit via an optical fiber. Injection-pressure measured at the needle tip was continuously recorded, while the needle was advanced toward the target and 0.9% saline was continuously injected via an electronic pump.

Results

A recognizable, recurrent three-peaks injection pressure pattern was identified, while advancing the needle through the abdominal wall, the pressure peaks being identified with the needle to fasciae contact. In four different blocks, a total of 12 peaks and 12 troughs were identified. The mean injection pressure (95% CI) of the peaks varied substantially from the mean injection pressure of the troughs, from 119.55 kPa (95% CI 87.3 to 151 kPa) to 30.99 kPa (95% CI 12.5 to 47.5 kPa), respectively. The peaks (troughs) arose from reproducible pressure curves and were related to the needle tip encountering the muscle fasciae.

Conclusion

The identified injection pressure pattern, together with ultrasound image, may help in determine real-time the needle tip position, while performing a TAP block.
Teaching of drug disposition using physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling software: GastroPlus as an educational tool
Authors: Morningstar-Kywi Noam , Morris Denise N. , Romero Rebecca M. , Haworth Ian S.
Published: July 2023

Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling is a major growth area in drug development, regulatory submissions, and clinical applications. There is a demand for experts in this area with multidisciplinary backgrounds. In this article, we describe a course designed to teach PBPK modeling and the underlying scientific principles in parallel.