bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Sage of al-Andalus
Authors: Anderson Glaire D.
Published: March 2024

Chapter 1, “The Sage of al-Andalus,” sketches a portrait of Ibn Firnās’s personality, and his social and intellectual contexts, which has come down to us thanks to the Arabic sources. It introduces the earliest and most substantive account of Ibn Firnās’s career, the Arabic chronicle compiled by the eleventh-century Córdoban court historian Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 1076), its discovery by Arabists, subsequent loss to scholars, and eventual rediscovery. The chapter then discusses the portrait of Ibn Firnās as related in the chronicle’s sources. These sources characterize Ibn Firnās as a polymath who had mastered both ancient and modern fields of knowledge. It sets the polymath’s personality and reputation into a broad historical context of early Islamic intellectual culture.
The Fivefold Symphony of the Psalter
Authors: Bodner Keith
Published: March 2024

There are three parts to this chapter. First, the various superscriptions (apart from those that mention a particular event in David’s life) are assessed, along with some explanation of how they developed over time and some guidelines for interpreting them. Second, the positioning of Psalms 1 and 2 at the outset of the collection is carefully considered, as these opening psalms are often referred to as the gateway to the Psalter. Psalm 1 is a meditation on the virtues of a righteous life, contrasted with the instability and ephemeral nature of a life lived apart from God, while Psalm 2 articulates the dangers of other nations resisting a future ruler of international domain. Third, there is a substantial discussion on the five-book structure of the Psalms, and it is proposed that there is a larger metanarrative or overarching storyline that can be discerned in the final form of the text.
The Dynamics behind Peace
Authors: English Richard
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines how the UK state in Northern Ireland secured a political deal which largely achieved peace. The UK showed a willingness to compromise, whether in its utilization of the language of self-determination, the serious reforms of Northern Ireland that were involved in the peace process, or the concessions given to terrorist groups in relation to prisoner release. The Irish government likewise made their own concessions to help secure unionist and loyalist support for the Good Friday Agreement. Part of the rationale for terrorist groups to opt for this lengthy process of remarkable compromise was this: their violence could no longer credibly be considered to be leading to the victory that they had long believed possible. The tactical aspects of UK counter-terrorism therefore played a crucial part in limiting terrorist capacity, containing political violence, and undermining the possibility of victory for terrorist groups. UK tactical counter-terrorism was far from flawless and could involve seriously counter-productive elements. But tactical achievements did help to create one of the conditions necessary for the UK’s partial strategic success in Northern Ireland.
Tactical Successes, Strategic Failures?
Authors: English Richard
Published: March 2024

This chapter evaluates the efficacy of Israeli counter-terrorism in relation to Palestinian violence. Much of what has happened in Israeli counter-terrorism has embodied tactical responses to a terrorism from which Israeli governments and people have simply wanted to protect people on a daily basis. Between intelligence-based prevention, the toughening of defensive measures, the capture and detention of terrorist activists, and targeted assassinations, Israel has at times had considerable tactical-operational success in diminishing the number of Palestinian terrorist attacks against it. Ultimately, there is evidence both of different tactical outcomes existing in tension with each other and also of tactical successes possibly making Israel’s strategic position much more challenging. Nevertheless, it still remains possible that a two-state resolution could be reached in Israel/Palestine. While this would be unlikely to eradicate all political violence, it might prove the long-term basis for decisively lowering levels of terrorism and could be considered a partial strategic success if it did so. The chapter then considers pro-state, Jewish terrorism, which has been a repeated theme in Israeli politics.
“Giving Full Faith to Every Symbol,” 1843–1849
Authors: Blumberg Ilana M.
Published: March 2024

Mary Ann Evans’s translation period, which lasted about a decade, saw her wrestle to find a sensibility and an idiom with which to analyze and dissect, but also to invent and explore new frameworks of meaning. Her freethinking, like many of her contemporaries’, emerged as a critique of the faith from within the faith. Moving away from the debate over the historicity of scriptural events, Evans was drawn to approaches that revivified Christian ideas and allowed them to answer the needs of modernity without shying away from scientific or moral truth. Her father’s death would allow her to leave the Midlands and explore the Continent and then London.
“Pilgrims on Earth,” 1859–1860
Authors: Blumberg Ilana M.
Published: March 2024

The Mill on the Floss, Marian’s first novel to be set before a public aware of its author’s controversial identity, returned to her desire for a natural history of English Protestant life and for a consideration of faith under conditions of relative poverty and a lack of culture and education. The novel dramatizes the existential need for faith in a social system that is not equitable, whether because of gender, class, or other forces, and underscores the fellowship of shared passibility: the “we mortals” so central to George Eliot’s consciousness. In an extended dialogue with Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, Eliot tests the idea of Christian renunciation as a response to temptation, sin, and suffering, suggesting its strength as a basis for the solitary invention of a sufficient faith, made manifest in a life of prayer and meditation.
“A Heart without a Livery”? 1864–1869
Authors: Blumberg Ilana M.
Published: March 2024

Christianity as a set of particular doctrines, shaped by a theology of sin, suffering, and salvation, now receded in Eliot’s works, yielding its centrality to other ethnicities and religions, as well as their nationalist implications. In Eliot’s English landscapes, the higher yearnings of “religion” became more disconnected from initially doctrinal Christian expressions, as if processes of personal ethical development no longer needed to be routed through Christian conversion. Such religious convictions as Eliot represented in her Christian characters became more rapidly assimilated into political or social convictions and affiliations. In Felix Holt, heroic action transferred to the social and political reformer, and in “The Spanish Gypsy” Eliot offered a concentrated rebuke of Christendom’s violence even as she considered the limits of a universalism that rejected religious or national loyalties and affiliations.
“In Heaven or On Earth,” 1873–1881
Authors: Blumberg Ilana M.
Published: March 2024

“George Eliot” had become an unrivalled literary great and also a sacred celebrity. In her final novel, Daniel Deronda, Eliot pivoted from an English world bereft of religious enthusiasm or moral vision to imagine a dynamic future that was Jewish, Hebraic, and proto-Zionist. Working against the general English ignorance of Judaism, Eliot suggested that any Christian future depended on deeper understanding of its relation to its Jewish prehistory. The novel was characterized by a new, agnostic openness to all systems that required faith in order to be brought into being, from science to spiritual phenomena. In an extension of that agnosticism, Eliot wrote Impressions of Theophrastus Such, a fully first-person fiction. At the end of her immense career, she pivoted to ask readers to question the reliability of any narrator.
Evolutionary Cell Biology
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Life’s most recent common ancestor was a cell. Hence, a mechanistic understanding of how evolutionary potential is channelled must start at the cellular level. Evolutionary cell biology is the conjoining of cell biology and evolutionary theory in ways that integrate principles of biophysics, biochemistry, and population genetics. Although this field is relevant to all of life, it is particularly germane for unicellular organisms, which constitute the bulk of global biomass and species diversity. Evolutionary theory is as well-established as any other quantitative field in the life sciences, and the challenge now is to connect genotypes to phenotypes to fitness in meaningful ways that incorporate the progressive fixation of new mutations. Natural selection is a significant driver of evolutionary change, but it is not all powerful. Rather, the evolutionary divergence of phenotypes across phylogenetic lineages is often substantially influenced by the nonadaptive forces of mutation, recombination, and random genetic drift. Thus, a mature field of evolutionary biology needs to incorporate knowledge of the molecular and cellular resources available for descent with modification as well as of the relative power of different evolutionary forces in guiding such change. The major challenges to arriving at such a point are outlined in this chapter.
The Origin of Cells
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Laboratory experiments provide compelling support for life’s inevitable emergence out of inorganic materials on an Earth-like planet. Moreover, although many uncertainties remain, the fossil record makes clear that microbial life was established on Earth nearly four billion years ago. Potential geological settings for the origin of life include specialized environments, such as hydrothermal vents and geothermal fields, that may have provided the peculiar mix of metabolic building blocks and metal cofactors upon which all of life came to depend. However, the order in which the three major requirements for life (metabolism for resource acquisition, a mechanism for heritable genome transmission, and external membranes for individuality) were established remains unclear. A plausible scenario for the earliest steps in the emergence of life invokes a world in which RNA provided the basis for all aspects of information storage and biosynthesis, although the validity of this hypothesis remains unclear. The major challenge for genome expansion, essential for a breadth of metabolic functions, must have been the establishment of mechanisms for accurate replication and transcription.
The Cellular Environment
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

The biochemical and biophysical properties common to all of life ultimately constrain the ways in which cells evolve. The majority of cell mass consists of water molecules, whose highly unique properties govern almost every aspect of biology. About half of dry weight is composed of carbon atoms, mostly incorporated into proteins and lipids. Only about 20 additional elements are utilized in biology, most with intracellular concentrations many orders of magnitude higher than environmental levels. Amounts of DNA and numbers of protein and messenger RNA molecules per cell scale in predictable ways with cell volume across the Tree of Life. Stochasticity in molecular numbers is a significant constraint on the evolution of small cells, whereas molecular diffusion rates can limit the biological potential of large cells. Through its influence on molecular motion and stability, temperature plays a central role in all cellular processes, and mathematical summary statements can be made on the scaling of such effects. In today’s world, almost all of biology is dependent on organic compounds produced by photosynthetic organisms, which provide both carbon skeletons and energy for growth and other cellular functions. The heat of combustion of such compounds provides a reliable indicator of their available energy content. The upper limit to the efficiency of utilization of ingested carbon is about 80%, and general statements can be made as to the rate of biomass production per unit ATP utilization.
Cell Growth and Division
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Numerous correlates of cell growth are thought to be general enough to be christened as growth laws, although few have been examined thoroughly in multiple organisms. One well-established relationship is the linear increase in ribosome number with the cell-division rate, which reflects the necessity of ribosomes for the construction of cellular material. Cell division rates have a hyperbolic relationship with concentrations of limiting nutrients. The growth of individual cells is generally exponential, with cytosolic compositions remaining constant throughout growth. Cells often determine their times of division by waiting for critical increments in growth, which naturally results in cell-size homeostasis. Although the detailed molecular mechanisms governing these kinds of behavior are generally unknown, modifications of a small number of genes have been implicated as potential routes to cell-size evolution. In all observed species, whereas cell size increases with nutrient availability, it decreases with increasing temperature, although the molecular mechanisms driving these universal responses remain unknown. Despite these general features of cell growth, stochastic sources of internal cellular variation translate into considerable phenotypic variation among genetically identical cells. Such variation can obscure the visibility of genetic differences to natural selection, while also leading to parent–offspring similarity associated with non-genetic effects. These aspects of phenotypic inheritance are inevitable consequences of the structure of cells, and there is no evidence that high levels of phenotypic variation are advanced by natural selection as means for coping with variable environments.
Cytoskeleton, Cell Shape, and Motility
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Many prokaryotes and eukaryotes rely on cell walls for external support. However, the chemical compositions of cell walls vary substantially among phylogenetic lineages, especially among the major eukaryotic groups. The summed costs of cell envelope components are commonly on the order of one-third of a cell’s total energy budget, decreasing in larger cells with reduced ratios of surface area to cell volume. As both prokaryotes and eukaryotes also harbor internal polymeric filaments, such fibrils must have been present in the last universal ancestor of all life. Cytoskeletal functions are elaborated in eukaryotes, where they serve as both endoskeletons and as highways for vesicle trafficking. Unlike prokaryotes, which rely on intracellular diffusion for most molecular motion, eukaryotic cells invest heavily in molecular motors for vesicle transport and other functions. The families of such motors have expanded substantially within and among phylogenetic lineages by gene duplication and divergence. Nearly all swimming cells achieve motility by use of external flagella, which have evolved independently and operate by different mechanisms in archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. Swimming speeds, in units of cell length, are several times higher in prokaryotes than in eukaryotes. However, the conversion of chemical energy to swimming motion is universally inefficient. Owing to the energetic expense of constructing and running flagella, there is a strong selective premium for their elimination unless the advantages outweigh the costs.
Intracellular Errors
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

All cells are confronted with the recurrent production of errors at the genome, transcriptional, and translational levels. Transcript errors arise orders of magnitude more frequently than do replication errors, and translation error rates are inflated to even higher degrees. As a result, all cells contain populations of variant molecules. Although arguments have been made that high rates of production of erroneous mRNAs and proteins are promoted by natural selection, there is no direct evidence for this. Rather, the strength of selection for accuracy is naturally reduced by the transient nature of mRNA and protein molecules. Intracellular error surveillance is provided by processes of kinetic proofreading, which rely on repeated rounds of competitive binding of alternative substrate molecules to diminish the rates of acceptance of erroneous substrates. However, the energetic costs of such processes result in intrinsic trade-offs between speed, energetic expense, and accuracy. The existence of multiple layers of error-correcting mechanisms for various cellular processes encourages the view that cells have evolved mechanisms for enhancing robustness. However, such evolutionary layering does not appear to result in improved overall accuracy, but instead simply leads to more complex systems with the ultimate performance being similar to the ancestral state.
Environmental Sensing
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Unicellular organisms use signal transduction (ST) systems to sense external environmental stimuli and relay information to internal regulators of intracellular responses, chemotaxis being one such example. Most ST systems operate via additions and removals of phosphoryl groups on the participating proteins. Substitutions of just a few amino-acid residues are often sufficient to alter the mode of intermolecular communication, providing a potential means for the origin of new systems as well as the neutral drift of pre-existing systems. Bacterial ST systems are typically quite simple and modular in nature, relying on pairs of sensor and regulator proteins whose crosstalk is insulated from other such pairs; in most species, dozens to hundreds of such systems are specialized to sensing different environmental stimuli. The maintenance of ST systems in states of readiness entails a considerable cost in terms of recurrent ATP expenditure. Although the underlying participants operate as conventional Michaelis–Menten enzymes, the pathways are structured in ways that can generate very steep responses to external signal concentrations, in some cases allowing for near switch-like behavior in downstream responses. With certain kinds of positive-feedback loops included, such systems can lead to semi-stable bimodal phenotype distributions among otherwise genetically uniform cells. This may be either advantageous or maladaptive depending on the environmental context. Eukaryotic ST systems tend to be much more complicated than those in bacteria, commonly involving cascades of multiple intermediate steps, and with considerable crosstalk among different partners. It remains unclear whether this added complexity has been driven by adaptive or nonadaptive forces peculiar to multicellular species.
Origins of Organismal Complexity
Authors: Lynch Michael R.
Published: March 2024

Rather than being an inexhaustible search for ways to construct more complex organisms, selection instead favours simplicity. Observations from the microbial world show that, despite their tendency not to gravitate to more complex forms, microbes are capable of doing so when the appropriate ecological opportunities are present. Although a substantial increase in genome size accompanied the emergence of eukaryotes from prokaryotes, most of it involves non-coding and non-functional DNA, particularly in multicellular lineages. This considerable bioenergetic and mutational burden was an inevitable outcome of the increased tendency of random genetic drift to overpower natural selection’s ability to oppose insertions of excess DNA. Further reorganization of the ancestral eukaryotic genome by gene-duplication events, followed by gene loss and subfunctionalization, led to new reproductively isolated lineages and encouraged transitions of homomeric molecular complexes to heteromeric forms. Ecological opportunity played a central role in the emergence of land plants and animals, but the evolution of complex multicellularity relied more on division of labor among cell types than on the emergence of new gene functions. Multicellular lineages experienced a further reduction in effective population sizes, imposing additional downstream costs including reduced growth-rate capacity, increased energetic cost and mutational vulnerability of genomes, gratuitous investment in overly complex cellular features, and the constant threat of mutant somatic cheater cells. The paths down which evolution proceeds are constrained by both the population-genetic environment and historical cellular contingencies, and this provides a mechanistic basis for understanding all aspects of biodiversity across the Tree of Life.
Introduction
Authors: Davies David
Published: March 2024

The Introduction briefly summarizes certain considerations that have been proposed as explananda for an ontology of ‘multiple artworks’. These proposed explananda structure the overall argument of this book, on the assumption that the ontology of multiple artworks is in the business of explaining such things. But this might be disputed. On Amie Thomasson’s ‘easy’ view of ontology, the task of the art ontologist is to analyse the concepts of those responsible for grounding our art-referential terms in the world. According to my ‘pragmatic constraint’ and Julian Dodd’s ‘discovery view’, on the other hand, ontology of art is a genuinely explanatory project that aims to better understand the nature of the things that are central to our artistic practices. Thomasson’s position is sketched and it is argued that the methodological approach in this book is something Thomasson should recognize as a legitimate alternative to the conceptual analysis required by ‘easy’ ontology. Nine purported features of multiple artworks that have been proposed by ontologists, as things their accounts purport to explain, are then sketched. A first pass is made at characterizing these explananda, and at grounding them in aspects of our artistic practices. It is made clear how they have played a central role in contemporary debates about the ontology of multiple artworks.
A counterfactual cycle
Authors: Patard Adeline
Published: March 2024

The chapter investigates the existence of a linguistic cycle for counterfactual imperfect constructions based on data from Latin and French. It further aims at explaining why (imperfective) aspect is ‘fake’ in counterfactuals (Iatridou 2000). After arguing for a strict definition of counterfactuality, the chapter expands on the idea that imperfects may trigger counterfactual implicatures. Then it explores the pragmatic origin and conventionalization of the counterfactual imperfect in Latin data and French corpora. Data unveil the repetition of a cycle: (i) the imperfect first develops in counterfactual contexts to refer to the past; (ii) it then extends to non-past counterfactual contexts and becomes part of the construction; (iii) finally the cycle ends when the imperfect construction is reanalysed as a marker of unreality. In the proposed analysis, aspect is ‘fake’ in counterfactuals because it has bleached as a consequence of the constructionalization of the imperfect counterfactual construction.
Variation and stability
Authors: Bruyn Bert Le , van der Klis Martijn , de Swart Henriëtte
Published: March 2024

In recent work, we showcased Translation Mining as a novel translation corpus-based approach to cross-linguistic research. This chapter works out how Translation Mining compares to other translation corpus-based approaches, and in particular how its analyses compare to those of Primary Data Typology and Corpus-Based Contrastive Linguistics. Study 1 shows how Translation Mining allows one to compare multiple constructions across multiple languages in parallel. Study 2 checks the foundational assumption of translation corpus-based approaches according to which the meanings of contexts across translations are constant. The two studies focus on the have-perfect as their empirical domain, consolidate and extend the findings of our earlier work, and contribute to translation corpus-based research methodology.
Empirical contributions to the study of aspect from the field of cognitive science
Authors: Madden-Lombardi Carol , Flecken Monique
Published: March 2024

The present chapter offers an overview of empirical contributions to the study of the linguistic category of aspect in cognitive science. While a great deal of linguistic research focuses on the study of the language system itself, cognitive researchers are interested in how the human mind processes and represents language. The field of linguistics has provided many interesting perspectives on the temporal nature of language, which should have consequences for the mental representations that we form when understanding language input, called ‘situation models’. Cognitive research has indeed provided empirical tests to explore the extent to which, and how, aspect constrains the mental processes and representations underlying language in use. The present chapter presents an overview of experimental research on aspect, reviewing the questions and specific experimental methodologies used by cognitive researchers to tap into the mental processes and representations associated with the use of grammatical aspect.
Final Conclusions and Recommendations
Authors: dos Santos Fernando
Published: March 2024

The chapter concludes that Africa possesses the ability to reclaim its space in global innovation if philosophical, policy, legal, and institutional interventions are effected. It summarizes the findings of the book and emphasizes the important role that intellectual property (IP) plays in promoting technology transfer and fostering innovation. The chapter asserts that while IP is generally seen as the main culprit for Africa’s exclusion on technological progress, the corollary is that, within the same system, remedies can be found. The chapter reiterates that Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement offers the strongest legal basis to support Africa’s claims regarding innovation and technology transfer. The chapter highlights two alternatives to address the obstacles that have prevented the effective transfer of technology to LDCs: either improving the implementation of Article 66.2 or adopting an all-encompassing international legal instrument on technology transfer: the Agreement on Trade-Related Issues of Technology Transfer and Innovation (TRITTI).
Physiological mechanisms of heat tolerance in insects
Authors: González-Tokman Daniel , Villada-Bedoya Sebastián
Published: March 2024

Insects use a wide variety of physiological mechanisms to survive high temperatures. After appropriately sensing temperature, a stress response mediated by heat shock proteins is triggered and protects insect tissues together with changes in metabolic rates, antioxidant defenses, biogenic amines and neuroendocrine factors, as well as physiological and behavioral mechanisms of thermoregulation. Bacterial endosymbionts also contribute to heat tolerance but their role remains largely unexplored. These mechanisms of heat tolerance are the basis for heat acclimation and adaptation, but are limited by life-history trade-offs and the presence of additional environmental stressors, which will define insect survival in a warming world.
Globalization and Medical Education in a Post-Pandemic World
Authors: Rao Nyapati R.
Published: March 2024

The chapter opens with a general definition of globalization, its characteristics, and its consequences on medical education. Globalization is a complex phenomenon with positive and negative impacts on the world: Central to globalization is the movement of people and ideas across borders in search of better opportunities. However, this rapid movement of people also enables the transmission of pathogens causing pandemics such as COVID-19 and Ebola. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented devastation in all walks of life, but it hastened the adoption of innovative models of educating medical students and residents. To appreciate the profound changes in medical education caused by the pandemic, one needs to understand the pre-pandemic reforms in medical education. In this context, the author will discuss the pivotal points in a historical review of modern medicine’s global origins and development. He will highlight the contributions made by Flexner and his influence on the further development of American medical education. Simultaneously, the author will explore the critically important role of the World Health Organization in the worldwide expansion of medical education. A brief discussion of the quality of medical education and the controversies surrounding the proposed institutional accreditation as a tool to monitor will follow. Finally, a consideration of the significant impact of differences in colonial and current socio-economic realities between LMICs and HICs on the evolution of medical education will conclude the chapter.
Canada
Authors: Brager Nancy , Paget Mike , Holm Johanna , Wilkes T. Christopher R.
Published: March 2024

This chapter critically reviews the findings of two surveys, 2019 and 2021, on medical student wellbeing completed at the Cummings School of Medicine completed at the University of Calgary, Canada. Medical student endorsed a significant level of exhaustion at 74% with 20% of students reporting a diagnosis of a mental health disorder. Most common was attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and a depressive disorder. 13% tested Cut, Annoyed, Guilty, and Eye (CAGE) positive and 18% endorsed using non-prescription drugs for mood enhancement. 9% reported using medication for cognitive enhancement. 39% reported previous use of cannabis. The role of mitigating factors in the personal, organizational, and cultural domains are explicated. The authors endorse a paradigm shift from pathogenesis to salutogenesis to enhance wellbeing and better coping strategies and avoid pathologizing which may inadvertently blame, and shame stressed students. Innovations in curriculum and student wellness (SAW) hub supports are outlined. In particular, SAW encourages confidential and timely access to mental health supports through a variety of student resources including workshops on the CaRMS matching process, mentoring, and FOF (Forum on Failure). The promotion of a university culture of liberal science, viewpoint diversity, and truth-seeking is emphasized as essential for the development of critical thinking skills, agency, and student resilience.
Wales
Authors: Dave Umakant , Grant Andrew , Forty Liz , Horn Chris , Hunt Sara
Published: March 2024

This chapter describes support for medical students’ mental health and wellbeing at Cardiff and Swansea medical schools. We present data from a 2019 study of medical students in Wales in which they were asked to describe their experience of mental ill-health and substance misuse. We describe a tailored, multidisciplinary approach to providing support. We look at ways in which issues relating to student support and wellbeing have been included in the curriculum. We present ways in which students prepare for the challenges in clinical practice, including the value placed on hearing the experiences of near-peers. We also examine how professionalism dilemmas are used as a basis for learning. A near-peer mentoring scheme is presented with evaluation data comparing those who come forward as mentors and mentees. There is similar provision of support for students where there is particular concern regarding their health and wellbeing.
Georgia
Authors: Berdzenishvili Ekaterine , Machavariani Eteri , Chkonia Eka
Published: March 2024

A number of potentially stressful factors have been reported among medical undergraduates. These include a highly stressful environment, competitiveness, excessive workload, sleep deprivation. A substantial number of studies have established that medical education does not provide a favourable environment for the mental health and wellbeing of medical students. The stressful factors accompanying the stringent educational process prevent medical doctors from acquiring the necessary personal and professional qualities to provide high-quality patient care. Our study, described as part of this chapter, aimed to investigate the main stress factors and mental health problems among medical students in Georgia. Interventions aiming to improve the wellbeing of medical students have been suggested.
Jordan
Authors: Masri Rawan , Khamees Almu’atasim
Published: March 2024

As the second highest refugee host in the world, Jordan, a middle eastern country has been on the spot due to its political stability despite conflicted neighbouring countries. Jordan has been struggling financially due to natural resource insufficiency and a disturbing water crisis. Jordan has a population of 11,057,000. Over 20% of Jordanians are unemployed, though most Jordanians are educated, and the country has a very high literacy rate of 98%. Regarding medical education, there are currently six medical schools in Jordan all of which are public. Medical education consists of six years (three preclinical and three clinical). Even though medical education is very costly, medical schools are overloaded with students and there is an accelerating growth of undergraduate and postgraduate physicians in Jordan. As a result, Jordanian physicians are facing high levels of unemployment and low income. For this and many other reasons, medical students are suffering from stress as high as 92% shown in one study. Mental health services are facing challenges due the insufficiency of mental health providers and the huge number of flowing refugees. Rapid access to mental health services should be one of Jordan’s main strategies in fighting mental illness and establishing preventive and screening methods should be highlighted.
Aisha and the Ḥadīth Tradition An Emergent Methodology
Authors: Rehman Sofia
Published: March 2024

The research thus far has been invested in analysing the various themes and topics presented in al-Ijāba in an attempt to critically engage with Aisha’s correctives. Chapters 4–6 have foregrounded key reoccurring techniques Aisha invoked when responding to ḥadīth. This chapter seeks to clearly delineate the emergent methodology of Aisha in approaching the ḥadīth tradition as well as examining her emergent technical terminology (muṣṭalaḥ) as well. This chapter argues that Aisha measures the validity of an alleged Prophetic statement against the Quran, her knowledge of the Sunnah more broadly, her logic, and her ethic of care towards the Muslim community, both her peers and generations to come. It is proposed that this emergent methodology be considered in tandem with the reopening of the canon.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Structural Change in European Regions
Authors: Schrijvers Mirella Theresia , Bosma Niels S. , Stam Erik
Published: March 2024

The process of structural change is investigated in six European regions that have been confronted with a severe decline in manufacturing jobs. The chapter focuses on entrepreneurs, the agents driving the creative destruction that is needed to transform the economy. The entrepreneurial ecosystem of each of the regions is analysed using ecosystem metrics and case study methods. Having a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem helps regions to be resilient to shocks, such as a decline in traditional industries or closures of large, focal firms. Institutions, knowledge, and skilled labour play key roles in a successful economic transformation. Formal institutions can provide the leadership and investment needed to quickly adapt to shocks, as shown in the West Midlands (United Kingdom), Eindhoven (Netherlands), and Oulu (Finland). The cases of Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Ruhr region (Germany) show however that a strong ecosystem does not guarantee a swift structural transformation. To explain these exceptions, it is important to consider the economic history and regional context. For example, a strong dependence on one industry or firm can create a lock-in effect that prevents resilience in the face of shocks. When diagnosing ecosystems to inform policies, it is therefore crucial to combine metrics with a thorough understanding of the regional context.
Demystifying Silicon Valley
Authors: Scheidgen Katharina , Hruskova Michaela
Published: March 2024

Silicon Valley is widely recognized as a leading entrepreneurial ecosystem as it provides a plethora of key resources that promote entrepreneurship. Although the existing ecosystem debate implicitly assumes that entrepreneurs have equal access to resources, we argue that this is not necessarily the case. We explore how entrepreneurs access ecosystem resources, specifically risk capital, and compare Silicon Valley with Berlin. We find that each ecosystem has a different ecosystem entry threshold at which start-ups become investable and can access financial resources. Entrepreneurs share an understanding of investors’ criteria: in Silicon Valley start-ups must demonstrate venture traction, while in Berlin a strong founding team is sufficient. Consequently, they undertake legitimizing activities to fulfil these anticipated investment criteria accordingly prior to fundraising. Our study demonstrates how Silicon Valley is a highly selective and demanding ecosystem, and argues that it excludes many entrepreneurs, fosters inequality, and leads to homogeneity among start-ups.
Uncovering Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Mechanisms
Authors: Kapturkiewicz Agata , Helanummi-Cole Heli
Published: March 2024

One of the challenges in existing research on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) is that it can strongly emphasize either the structure aspect of the EEs or agency—especially that of entrepreneurs. These emphases can sometimes make it difficult to untangle the mechanisms of how various EE actors interact with and co-create their EEs, and understand how such mechanisms might vary across locations and bring about different types of entrepreneurial and socio-economic outcomes. In this chapter, we follow in the footsteps of several pioneering EE studies using the theoretical lens of organizational fields (e.g. Thompson et al., 2018; Auschra et al., 2019). We elaborate on how the focus on fields’ institutional infrastructure (Hinings et al., 2017) can be a useful analytical tool to examine the link between EE actors’ agency and EE elements and structures. Our discussion highlights how the institutional infrastructure concept can help researchers to uncover key EE mechanisms, their variations, and diverse outcomes. We illustrate our conceptual propositions with case vignettes from comparative contexts of Japan, India, and Finland, which are based on in-depth empirical studies conducted by the authors of this chapter. The vignettes from these diverse contexts, coupled with insights from relevant past literature on organizational fields and EEs, highlight a spectrum of possible modes of engagement—and outcomes of such engagement—of EE actors with their EEs’ institutional infrastructure. Overall, this chapter offers a contribution to how researchers can better understand EE processes by using the theoretical lens of organizational fields—especially the institutional infrastructure concept.
The Trumpian Exception of Trade Protection in the USA
Authors: Rathgeb Philip
Published: March 2024

This chapter shows how trade protection acted as a functional equivalent of social protection in the welfare state agenda of the Trump administration. Although the Republican Party (GOP) radicalized towards a nativist-authoritarian agenda similar to European radical right parties, it diverged in its social and economic policy impact. Rather than enhancing the social protection of labour market insiders or expanding familialist policies, the Trump administration connected the GOP’s traditional reliance on tax cuts and deregulatory reform with a new focus on trade protection and immigration control. Understanding Trump’s policy impact requires an understanding of long-standing dynamics within the Republican Party as well as a comparative contextualization of America’s hostility to a European-style welfare state. Without strong public support for collective risk protection, the radical right’s ambition to protect ‘deserving’ social groups—typically the male white core workforce—may shift its attention to questions of trade rather than welfare.
Introduction
Authors: Ladkin Sam
Published: March 2024

The introduction establishes the monograph’s main thesis and method. O’Hara is a mannerist—a mannerist poet, critic, and late-modernist courtier—and the New York School understood in its aggregation of art forms (painting, poetry, music, dance, photography, and film) constitutes a ‘mid-century Mannerism’. Perfectly Disgraceful offers close comparative readings across a number of art forms illuminated by a genealogy of rhetorical terms: sprezzatura, grace, parrhesia, the agon, the figura serpentinata, the ornate, the marvellous. Rhetoric itself mediates aesthetics, poetics, and styles of sociability. Mannerist style—maniera—understands artworks to be inherently rhetorical; artworks stage complex forms of sociability and aspiration, just as the self-presentation of the artist involves a performative aesthetics.
Figura Serpentinata
Authors: Ladkin Sam
Published: March 2024

Chapter 4 interprets Frank O’Hara’s canonical ‘In Memory of My Feelings’ in the light of the art-historical term figura serpentinata. The figura serpentinata names the torsion in figuration popular in mannerist art, including statuary. Readings of the ancient statuary that inspired mannerist statuary helps trace the recovery of the figura serpentinata to the mediating influence of rhetoric: for Quintilian, praise of the figura serpentinata in statuary inspires techniques of eloquent language. The figure continues to be significant through the Enlightenment development of a ‘scientific’ art history from out of the discourse of rhetoric. The translation of formal tropes across aesthetic mediums (sculpture, painting, poetry) in the history of the figura serpentinata discloses a queer genealogy within that history of the history of art, drawing on the criticism of Johan Joachim Winckelmann and Walter Pater.
Frank Speech
Authors: Ladkin Sam
Published: March 2024

The ornate privileges movement and animacy. O’Hara’s ornate poetics are a way to avoid the deathly statuary he abhors, to maintain mobility, and to rhetorically persuade the reader of the vividness and vivacity of his poetry, its enargeia. Rather than luxuriating in ornamentation, however, O’Hara’s poetics work by offsetting onrushing energy: lines unwind themselves only to be cut off by moments of parrhesia, of ‘frank speech’. Paul Goodman’s account of grief and anger offers one stimulus for this parrhesia, Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry another. The tension between the ornate and the sudden—even the expletive—aligns with the discordia concors of Mannerism rather than the organic, folding and unfolding infinity of the ornate during the Baroque, and is the topic of Chapter 5. The tension between the ornate and parrhesiastic is discerned in close readings of ‘In Memory of My Feelings’ and ‘To Hell with It’.
Natural Law as a Theory of Practical Philosophy
Authors: Grunert Frank
Published: March 2024

The chapter aims to show that Wolff’s ethics were normatively based on natural law arguments from the very beginning to his last works. Natural law as a concept was defined as a “science of good and bad actions” which lends its normative substance to ethics as the means to harmonize actions with the norms of natural law. The reconstruction of the development of Wolff’s idea of the relationship between natural law and ethics indicates that after the elaboration of the natural law in his monumental Jus Naturae, Wolff cedes the general normative justificatory function of the natural law partly to Philosophia practica universalis. The natural law, on the other hand, is more focused on the theoretical justification of law. Natural law as a distinct work became a philosophy of law while ethics still received its norms from natural law as a concept, which now is incorporated in the Philosophia practica universalis.
Wolff’s Powerful Concept of Perfection and its Roots
Authors: Goldenbaum Ursula
Published: March 2024

It is the aim of this chapter to show that Wolff’s approach to morals from naturally equal individuals who strive for perfection is not teleological but rests on Hobbes’s and Spinoza’s striving to persevere and to act. Increasing one’s power to act means greater perfection and relates to joy, and decreasing it causes lesser perfection and relates to sadness. Making progress in understanding is the path to greater perfection. Wolff considers constant progress as the highest good humans can reach by natural means. Thereby, he can secure the objectivity of moral values, provide valid concepts of obligation as well as of accountability, and secure human freedom as self-determination based on rational knowledge instead of free will. Given that traditional morality, based on free will as the precondition for responsibility, is increasingly questioned by modern science, I am convinced we can still learn much from Wolff: to find a new foundation of morals.
Perfectionism and Duties to Self in Wolff and Kant
Authors: Guyer Paul
Published: March 2024

Kant rejects Wolff’s perfectionism as a general approach to morality. At the same time, Kant models his specific account of our duty to ourselves as self-perfection on Wolff’s account of our duties to ourselves. Is this a contradiction? No, because Kant’s approach to moral philosophy can also be considered a form of perfectionism, but one on which our primary goal is the—collective—perfection of our ability to set our own ends freely rather than merely the perfection of our natural faculties as naturally given and empirically known. This general difference is explored and illustrated with differences in the two philosophers’ treatments of the highest good and the specific duty of self-perfection.
Introduction
Authors: Wager Alan
Published: March 2024

The idea that ‘England does not love coalitions’ is something approaching a common-sense understanding of how British politics operates. Inter-party politics are nearly always seen as deviations from the norm, and the assumption is that cross-party co-operation comes with high political costs attached. Yet, as this chapter sets out, this has not stopped many different politicians attempt coalitions, electoral pacts, and formal deals with their competitors. This chapter sets out a theory for how the pluralist politics of cross-party politics operates in the majoritarian institutional culture of politics at Westminster. It then goes on to introduce seven flashpoints since 1945 where coalition politics has become a central feature of British politics.
Churchill and the Liberal Party, 1945–1951
Authors: Wager Alan
Published: March 2024

Between 1946 and the formation of his first peacetime cabinet in October 1951, as leader of the opposition Winston Churchill made a concerted effort to form an electoral arrangement with the Liberal Party. The basis for his efforts was the shifting promise of shared policy principles; a reconstruction of the electoral system; mutually assured short-term electoral benefits for both parties; and, with increasing traction as his time in opposition progressed, a belief in the logic, practicality, and inevitable implications of forming an ‘Anti-Socialist Front’ against the Labour Party. Led by Clement Davies, the Liberal Party—close to extinction—rejected back-channel attempts at an arrangement, and many within Churchill’s own party consistently resisted his attempts to co-operate with a party they assumed could soon be subsumed within the Conservatives. This case study demonstrates that enduring concerns about electoral repercussions stopped the co-operation—at a key historical juncture in the development of the British party system.