bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The trend shift caused by ecological restoration accelerates the vegetation greening of China’s drylands since the 1980s
Authors: Li Zidong , Wang Shuai , Li Changjia , Ye Chongchong , Gao Dexin , Chen Peng
Published: March 2022

Satellite observations since the early 1980s have revealed a trend of ‘Earth greening’ across global terrestrial ecosystems. Dryland vegetation is more sensitive to climate change and human activities. China’s drylands are among the largest in extent worldwide, and large-scale ecological restoration of these areas has been implemented since the late 1970s, which has resulted in more complicated but still poorly quantified vegetation dynamics. To figure out the vegetation dynamics and associated driving forces, we provide an assessment of the vegetation dynamics from 1982 to 2015 using the CO2 fertilization effect function, principal component regression, Residual Trend analysis, and Breaks For Additive Seasonal and Trend methods based on the ERA5 climate factors and GIMMS 3.1 normalized difference vegetation index datasets. This study shows that anthropogenic impacts and CO2 fertilization have jointly led to vegetation greening in China’s drylands since the 1980s, and ecological restoration has accelerated this greening since the 2000s. The results show that the vegetation greening in China’s drylands (41.51% of the study area, +0.60 × 10−3 yr−1) is mainly driven by CO2 fertilization (+0.55 × 10−3 yr−1) and anthropogenic activities (+0.12 × 10−3 yr−1). The anthropogenic effects are especially higher on the Loess Plateau (+1.01 × 10−3 yr−1) and the Three-North region (+0.23 × 10−3 yr−1). The vegetation dynamics shifts in 6.73% (31.64 Mha) of China’s drylands were directly attributed to anthropogenic impacts around the 2000s. When the anthropogenic effect was intensified, the vegetation dynamics shifted from no change to greening and vice versa, which significantly intensified the vegetation greening since the 1980s. These results capture the processes of ecological programs and provide an assessment of the effects of ecological restoration. This work provides a credible attribution of the vegetation greenness dynamics and trend shifts in China’s drylands, thus facilitating a better understanding of regional environmental change and management.
Social-ecological interactions in a disaster context: Puerto Rican farmer households’ food security after Hurricane Maria
Authors: Rodríguez-Cruz Luis Alexis , Álvarez-Berríos Nora , Niles Meredith T
Published: March 2022

Islands are uniquely vulnerable to extreme weather events and food insecurity, and have additional response challenges due to their limited landmasses and economies, isolation, colonial legacies, and high dependence of food imports. Domestic farmers have a key role in producing food for island communities like Puerto Rico, which can safeguard food security when food importation may be challenging. Nevertheless, in the context of disaster, farmers themselves may be vulnerable to food insecurity and unable to contribute to domestic markets. This paper examines Puerto Rican farmers households’ food security in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria using a social-ecological lens. Survey data from 405 farmers gathered eight months after Maria, coupled with biophysical data from the hurricane’s impacts (winds, rains, and landslides), were analyzed. Overall, 69% of farmers experienced at least one month of food insecurity in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, and 38% reported persistent food insecurity (three months or more). A multinomial logistic regression suggests that biophysical impacts, but especially social factors, such as age and constraint access to external sources of support, are linked with persistent food insecurity. This suggests that the biophysical impacts of the hurricane interact with existing infrastructure and social resources to affect farmer vulnerability and the food environment in different ways. Thus, strengthening adaptive capacity in multiple domains can help farmers and vulnerable populations better navigate the disruptions faced during disasters to alleviate food insecurity.
Patterns and causes of winter wheat and summer maize rotation area change over the North China Plain
Authors: Liu Zhengjia , Liu Yansui , Dong Jinwei , Baig Muhammad Hasan Ali , Chi Wenfeng , Peng Liuying , Wang Jieyong
Published: March 2022

Cropland area and cropping frequency play very crucial roles in determining regional food production. However, rapid urbanization accompanied by declining surplus-agricultural labor force has greatly altered patterns of agriculture land use and cropping frequency. Due to lack of continuous cropland and cropland-use intensity maps, our knowledge is still limited to understand whether the urbanization process must have a negative effect for changes in cropland-use intensity. Herein, we took the North China Plain (NCP), both the largest winter wheat and summer maize rotation area and rapidly urbanized area in China, as the study area, and used 250 m moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer NDVI anomaly data, the correlation of NDVI time series in two neighboring years and machine learning algorithms to investigate spatiotemporal patterns and trends of cropland area and cropping frequency change over the NCP from 2000 to 2019. Results showed a significantly decreased cropland area observed since 2004 (slope = 783.8 km2 a−1, p < 0.01), while area of double-season cropping presented a relatively steady trend (slope = 446.9 km2 a−1, p = 0.335). As expected, decreased croplands were mainly occupied by urban and built-up land expansion, however, existing cropland-use intensity was yet improved. Patterns and trends of double-season cropping types were varied spatially. Particularly, the area of winter wheat and summer maize rotation presented a significantly increasing trend (slope = 3423.3 km2 a−1, p < 0.01). Furthermore, the respective area of winter wheat and summer maize both displayed significantly increasing trends with slope of 2953.8 and 2874.9 km2 a −1(p < 0.01) in entire period. Land-use and grain subsidy policies are considered as largely responsible for this phenomenon. These satellite-observed findings highlight that positive land-use policies and managements will be helpful for profitably keeping/improving the harvest area.
Recent development on fragmentation, aggregation and percolation
Authors: Hassan M K
Published: March 2022

In this article, I have outlined how an accomplished researcher like Robert Ziff has influenced a new generation of researchers across the globe like gravity as an action-at-a-distance. In the 80s Ziff made significant contributions to the kinetics of fragmentation followed by the kinetics of aggregation. Here, I will discuss fractal and multifractal that emerges in fragmentation and aggregation processes where the dynamics is governed by non-trivial conservation laws. I have then discussed my recent works and results on percolation where I made extensive use of Newman–Ziff fast Monte Carlo algorithm. To this end, I have defined entropy which paved the way to define specific heat and show that the critical exponents of percolation obey Rushbrooke inequality. Besides, we discuss how entropy and order parameter together can help us to check whether the percolation is accompanied by order–disorder transition or not. The idea of entropy also help to explain why encouraging smaller cluster to grow faster than larger clusters makes the transition explosive.
Novel graphdiyne quantum dots for resistive random access memory
Authors: Guo Jie , Cao Xiaofei , Wang Fuhui , Jin Weiyue , Xiong Zecheng , Wang Jizheng , Liu Huibiao
Published: March 2022

Graphdiyne (GDY), a rising allotropic form of carbon, exhibits a rich variety of electronic, optical and mechanical properties due to the unique π-conjugated structure. However, the processability of GDY into perovskite composites is a vital yet challenging area for further optimized applications. Herein, we synthesized a novel GDY quantum dots (QDs) via Sonogashira cross-coupling reaction between GDY and anthraquinones. The as-prepared GDY QDs show good solubility with perovskite precursor and the GDY QDs doped perovskite was obtained. The GDY QDs based perovskite resistive random access memory device shows reliable resistive switching behaviour with enhanced ON/OFF ratio of ∼103 and long endurance due to the optimized electrode/dielectric interface, which offers opportunities in electronic and optoelectronic fields.
Study of transmembrane ion transport under tonicity imbalance using a combination of low frequency-electrical impedance spectroscopy (LF-EIS) and improved ion transport model
Authors: Li Songshi , Kawashima Daisuke , Sugawara Michiko , Obara Hiromichi , Okeyo Kennedy Omondi , Takei Masahiro
Published: March 2022

Transmembrane ion transport under tonicity imbalance has been investigated using a combination of low frequency-electrical impedance spectroscopy (LF-EIS) and improved ion transport model, by considering the cell diameter d [m] and the initial intracellular ion concentration c

in
[mM] as a function of tonicity expressed by sucrose concentration c

s
[mM]. The transmembrane ion transport is influenced by extracellular tonicity conditions, leading to a facilitation/inhibition of ion passage through the cell membrane. The transmembrane transport coefficient P [m s−1], which represents the ability of transmembrane ion transport, is calculated by the extracellular ion concentrations obtained by improved ion transport model and LF-EIS measurement. P is calculated as 4.11 × 10−6 and 3.44 × 10−6 m s−1 at c

s
of 10 and 30 mM representing hypotonic condition, 2.44 × 10−6 m s−1 at c

s
of 50 mM representing isotonic condition, and 3.68 × 10−6, 5.16 × 10−6 , 9.51 × 10−6, and 14.89 × 10−6 m s−1 at c

s
of 75, 100, 125 and 150 mM representing hypertonic condition. The LF-EIS results indicate that the transmembrane ion transport is promoted under hypertonic and hypotonic conditions compared to isotonic condition. To verify the LF-EIS results, fluorescence intensity F [–] of extracellular potassium ions is observed to obtain the temporal distribution of average potassium ion concentration within the region of 3.6 μm from cell membrane interface c

ROI
[mM]. The slopes of ∆c

ROI

/c

ROI1 to time t are 0.0003, 0.0002, and 0.0006 under hypotonic, isotonic, and hypertonic conditions, where c

ROI1 denotes initial c

ROI
, which shows the same tendency with LF-EIS result that is verified by the potassium ion fluorescence observation.
A Survey of Applications of MFC and Recent Progress of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Techniques and Applications, with competing fuel cells
Authors: Gyaneshwar Amogh , Selvaraj Senthil Kumaran , Ghimire Turusha , Mishra Saumya Jayanti , Gupta Shaily , Chadha Utkarsh , Manoharan Manikandan , Paramasivam Velmurugan
Published: March 2022

Tomorrow is a technology for Microbial fuel cells (MFC). It has attracted numerous studies for the continuous development of cell efficiency since the problem of the coming era can be resolved. Implementing artificial learning and machine learning is a change that can effectively achieve the goals. A microbial fuel cell is a complex non-linear procedure that preferably requires a strategy that is not a linear control strategy for the most favorable outcome. The practical and feasible ways to tackle non-linearity existing in the Microbial Fuel Cell, instead of making a computationally tedious and heavy non-linear control strategy a superior single linear model or scheduling or multiple model-oriented control techniques. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence help reduce computation and model costs. It saves time and is more efficient than previously used manual methods, which are now obsolete. In order to find the most accurate results, the study would compare all currently available research efforts and focus on implementing Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning concepts within the Microbial Fuel Cell and comparison with other fuel cells.
Developing an agent-based platform to monitor intelligent buildings
Authors: Nagadi Khalid , Basingab Mohammed
Published: March 2022

In recent times, significant advancements have been evidenced in efforts to enhance connectivity and security within intelligent buildings (IBs). An IB is a contemporary structure that leverages state-of-the-art computer technologies to autonomously control the environmental conditions within a building to enhance occupants’ comfort, safety, work efficiency, and wellbeing while also ensuring optimal energy consumption. In the access aspect of a telecommunication network for IBs, the Main Distribution Frame (MDF) is in the central office. Intermediate Distribution Frames (IDFs) act as the isolation points for additional troubleshooting and further distribute the lines. The MDF is essentially a circuit switch that is typically operated through manual intervention because requests to establish or remove connections are sporadic and occasional. This can be tackled by utilizing Agent Based Systems (ABS) and Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring systems to develop a more holistic perspective of the process by which IDFs and MDF rooms are maintained. Furthermore, it will generate a process overview if we eradicate the process of physically checking a room that is currently used for IoT monitoring. In this research, a case study is presented to determine the feasibility of developing an IoT monitoring system. Currently, the monitoring applied in the case study is long, and over 40% of the equipment has maintenance failures. Distributed simulation of ABS is used to simulate the use of IoT for this project. Its data forecast can be very useful in determining the appropriate actions to improve the process of IDF and MDF and operational cost.
On the essential norms of singular integral operators with constant coefficients and of the backward shift
Authors: Karlovych Oleksiy , Shargorodsky Eugene
Published: March 2022

Let

X
X

be a rearrangement-invariant Banach function space on the unit circle

T

\mathbb {T}

and let

H
[
X
]

H[X]

be the abstract Hardy space built upon

X
X

. We prove that if the Cauchy singular integral operator
<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="left-parenthesis upper H f right-parenthesis left-parenthesis t right-parenthesis equals StartFraction 1 Over pi i EndFraction integral Underscript double-struck upper T Endscripts StartFraction f left-parenthesis tau right-parenthesis Over tau minus t EndFraction d tau">

(
H
f
)
(
t
)
=

1

π
i

∫

T

f
(
τ
)

τ
−
t

d
τ

(Hf)(t)=\frac {1}{\pi i}\int _{\mathbb {T}}\frac {f(\tau )}{\tau -t}\,d\tau

is bounded on the space

X
X

, then the norm, the essential norm, and the Hausdorff measure of non-compactness of the operator

a
I
+
b
H

aI+bH

with

a
,
b
∈

C

a,b\in \mathbb {C}

, acting on the space

X
X

, coincide. We also show that similar equalities hold for the backward shift operator
<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="left-parenthesis upper S f right-parenthesis left-parenthesis t right-parenthesis equals left-parenthesis f left-parenthesis t right-parenthesis minus ModifyingAbove f With caret left-parenthesis 0 right-parenthesis right-parenthesis slash t">

(
S
f
)
(
t
)
=
(
f
(
t
)
−

f
^

(
0
)
)

/

t

(Sf)(t)=(f(t)-\widehat {f}(0))/t

on the abstract Hardy space

H
[
X
]

H[X]

. Our results extend those by Krupnik and Polonskiĭ [Funkcional. Anal. i Priloz̆en. 9 (1975), pp. 73-74] for the operator

a
I
+
b
H

aI+bH

and by the second author [J. Funct. Anal. 280 (2021), p. 11] for the operator

S
S

.
African American Children’s Literature
Authors: Fielder Brigitte
Published: March 2022

African American children’s literature includes a broad array of writing for Black children in the United States. The genre necessarily crosscuts the “children’s literature” and “African American literature” genres. Although Black children have always read literature not intended for them, and scholars have rightly addressed the negative effects of racist depictions on Black child readers, definitions of this genre have most often prioritized writing for children written by African American authors. African American children’s literature is a broad and rich field, with a history originating as early as the 18th century; it includes Black writing addressing children and literature of the present, engaging forms from oral and folkloric traditions to printed books and ranging across a variety of literary genres. Emerging alongside the dominant prioritization of white children and white authors in mainstream publishing, writers of literature for Black children have worked against structural difficulties that continue to leave African American depictions and authors underrepresented in proportion to the country’s Black population. African American children’s literature has also necessarily contended with the preponderance of anti-Black racism in US popular culture, including in white children’s literature. Thus, African American children’s literature has often addressed issues of racial representation and racism in addition to (and often intertwined with) the wide variety of other topics included in this œuvre.
Literature and Disability in the English Renaissance
Authors: Equestri Alice
Published: March 2022

Disability—whether physical, mental, or sensory—is widely represented in Early Modern literature, and as such it has been attracting attention from 21st-century literary scholars, who apply the theoretical and critical tools of disability studies to Renaissance narratives and literary characters. Literary disability in its various forms can be analyzed in the light of various models of disability, including medical, social, moral, or cultural. This helps in understanding early modern representations and experiences of disability in culture and history and making sense of reactions to disability in the period: including stigma, mockery, proud identification with the disabled identity, or also a desire for it. Physical disabilities in the Renaissance encompass anything from deformity to bodily mutilation to dwarfism or monstrosity, and they are especially prone to be emphasized, explained, or scrutinized in search of their meaning. Sensory disabilities, including blindness, deafness, and mutism, prompt interpretations that connect physical impairment with the character’s inability or surprising ability to understand reality—whether in a pragmatic or spiritual sense. Intellectual and mental disabilities have many ramifications in early modern literature, some of which, such as fools and madmen, are staple types of drama. Intellectual and mental disabilities are often described in medical terms, but literary texts tend to differentiate between them, whether in technical or narrative terms. Foolishness normally turns into comedy, whereas madness is often connected with tragic characters undergoing mental breakdowns. Renaissance disability studies are also concerned with less obvious types of disability: disabilities that were disabilities in the past but not in the 21st century, concealed disabilities, and disabilities that are not actually disabilities but do foster a conversation that excludes the character who does not embody what society regarded as the ideal physical shape. Finally, instances of counterfeited disability and disability attached to concepts rather than people help understand how Renaissance culture often viewed the nonstandard body not only as something to beware of or reject but also as an image of empowerment.
Crisis Development: Normal Accidents and Beyond
Authors: Le Coze Jean-Christophe
Published: March 2022

Our current era is one of profound changes and uncertainties, and one issue is to understand their implications for high-risk systems and critical infrastructures (e.g., nuclear power plants, ships, hospitals, trains, chemical plants). Normal Accidents (NA), Perrow’s classic published in 1984, is a useful guide to explore the contemporary epoch, in the third decade of the 21st century. One reason is that this landmark book has triggered a sustained interest by scholars who have debated, challenged, rejected, refined, or expanded its core thesis over almost now 40 years. With La Porte’s, Sagan’s, Vaughan’s, and Hopkins’s contributions into what can be described as the “standard NA debate” in the late 20th century and the more recent “new controversies and debates” by Downer, Pritchard, or Le Coze in the early 21st century, the book can still resonate with current changes in the 2020s. These changes include phenomena as large, massive, intertwined, consequential, and diverse as the advent of internet and of digital societies, the increase of transnational flows of diverse nature (people, data, capital, images, goods) and the ecological crisis captured by a notion such as the Anthropocene. Taking stock, historicizing, and revisiting NA with such debates and changes in mind leads to characterize a post-NA narrative.
The Impact of Constitutional Courts in Asia
Authors: Lin Chien-Chih
Published: March 2022

Courts around the world have become more and more influential, and Asian courts are no exception. The effects of Asian constitutional courts span all political, social, and economic areas and fall into five main categories: (1) consolidating democracies, (2) exacerbating political chaos, (3) perpetuating authoritarianism, (4) facilitating economic development, and (5) spurring social change. Politically, constitutional courts in many Asian countries have helped consolidate fledgling democracies by entrenching constitutional principles, by facilitating the disbandment of unconstitutional parties, by promoting a level political playing field, by permitting the impeachment of authoritarian heads of state, and by minimizing religious clashes. Judicial intervention, however, may spawn unwanted results when it fails to hammer out a solution that facilitates constitutional functioning. Worse still, judicial intervention may perpetuate authoritarian reign. Economically, an efficient and independent judiciary usually signals a government’s commitment to property protection, which is a foundation of economic development, including foreign investment. This principle, interestingly enough, applies to autocracies as well as to democracies. Socially, judicial decisions may either spearhead social change or plant the seeds of future progress. Indeed, decisions unfavorable to petitioners can trigger, in ordinary people, a profound awareness of rights, resulting in even more litigation. Notably, these five types of effects are not necessarily mutually exclusive and are, in some scenarios, complementary. For example, a capable court may simultaneously facilitate economic development and undergird dictatorships. Furthermore, these effects are a function of three interdependent factors: the scope of judicial powers, the degree of judicial activism, and the response of audiences. Other things being equal, the more powerful and active a court is, the more likely its decisions will be able to generate repercussions, thereby strengthening the judiciary. To be sure, other things are not always equal in reality, and these factors are endogenous to a considerable extent. Moreover, the effects of constitutional courts do not remain constant, as political environments in which they are embedded are volatile. Therefore, the relationships between the five judicial effects and the three interdependent factors are rather dynamic. Although constitutional courts in Asia have become much more influential in general since the 1990s, the growth in their judicial effects has not necessarily been a blessing. Sometimes when the decisions of Asian courts have crossed lines that politicians deem inviolable, the courts have encountered various degrees of political revenge. To navigate the storms of political retaliation provoked by controversial judicial decisions, many constitutional courts—particularly those in democratizing Asian states—must steer a middle path between obedience and recalcitrance.
Resistance to Persuasion
Authors: Albarracín Dolores , Karan Alexander
Published: March 2022

Since the 1940s, persuasion processes and the resistance to such processes have been extensively studied, becoming integral components within society affecting everyday life from of marketing and advertising to politics to health. Persuasion and its resistance naturally stemmed from research on attitudes and their formation. The process by which people can form attitudes is either through individual processes or persuasion processes. Regardless of if attitudes are already held, they can either follow along the persuasion process or resist it. Persuasion and its resistance occur for the same reasons: people want to be accurate, defend their self-consistency, or react to the social environment. Knowing why people become persuaded or resist it led to deeply researching how these processes occur. Processes and techniques related to the likelihood of successful resistance include retrieving prior attitudes; selective exposure; bolstering initial attitudes; selective memory; biased processing; derogation of the source, content, or message and persuasive attempt; and counter-arguing, which includes forewarning and inoculation techniques. Although researchers have been prolific and steadfast in determining these facets of resistance, there are more emerging topics that are rife for the exploration. Such topics include more social motives for resistance, the mechanisms underlying successful resistance processes and techniques, how often resistance occurs, what combinations of processes and techniques engender reliable resistance, and the consequences (both individual and interpersonal) of resistance. All in all, the future for this line of work is promising and timely. Everyday life will continue to provide situations that call for the psychology of resistance to persuasion.
Work and Organizational Issues Affecting Young Workers
Authors: Okay-Somerville Belgin , Selenko Eva , Searle Rosalind H.
Published: March 2022

Young people (between ages 15 and 24 years) experience unique difficulties in access to work, compared to the rest of the working population. Young people are in the process of developing career competencies and therefore lack the necessary know-how, know-why and know-whom relevant for securing jobs and developing sustainable careers. Social disadvantage creates a major obstacle in the way of young people’s career competency development. Lifespan career development theories, with a focus on career competency development, explain young people’s struggle for access to work.

When we are younger, we tend to have high growth needs relevant for achieving educational and occupational aspirations and becoming independent adults. These motives may be explained by lifespan theories of aging. Yet, there is a tendency to attribute young people’s work-related motives and behavior to generational differences. Generational perspectives are conceptually and operationally muddled and may serve to heighten age-related stereotypes at work.

Psychological science can make further impactful contributions to improving youth employment, especially by taking the socioeconomic context into account.
Temporal Aspects of Visual Perception and Cognition
Authors: Breitmeyer Bruno , Ogmen Haluk
Published: March 2022

A highly dynamic process, visual perception of the world around us proceeds by sequentially scanning the environment. This is accomplished by rapid eye movements (saccades) that direct the eyes’ foveal center of vision from one fixated location in the visual field to the next. Abstracted from the visual environment into the confines of the laboratory, the dynamics of the entire process can be parsed into subprocesses by studying several temporal properties of visual perception. Most prominent among these are the timing of perisaccadic processes (pre-saccadic and saccadic suppression of vision, post-saccadic enhancement of vision, and perisaccadic time compression), visual latency, temporal integration, visible persistence, temporal resolution, and temporal aspects of the storage and transfer of perceptual information in and through various stages of sensory and cognitive processing. Research has shown that these properties of visual perception interact with the spatial properties of perceptual processing. Among these spatio-temporal interactions, the most frequently researched are those occurring in different types of visual search, visual masking, and visual motion. That said, vision researchers have investigated the temporal properties (interacting with their spatial counterparts) either (a) by presenting static stimuli, in isolation or in temporal sequence, to an observer’s visual field while the eyes are stationary; or (b) by presenting stimuli that move through an observer’s visual field. The results of these research strategies reveal underlying visual mechanisms that define the dynamic range of, and the limits imposed on the temporal efficiency of, visual perceptual processing.
Educational Strategies for Museums
Authors: Polyudova Elena
Published: March 2022

In the rapidly changing world of the internet environment and social media expansion, the role of museum education has been revised and reformed to respond to the new digital and interconnected environment. In addition to academic publications, museum activities, and web and video materials, modern museums are developing new ways to meet current demands, including interactive exhibitions, integration with other disciplines, and virtual expositions. Museum professionals are encountering unprecedented challenges in engaging a diverse audience in vital and meaningful learning experiences. Executing new tasks in the achievement of the museum’s education mission takes interdepartmental teamwork and use of new technologies. It also requires new approaches to rigorous planning, implementation, and assessment. New terminology and strategies have been developed to substantiate new approaches to museums’ activities and reflect what is transpiring in modern museum studies and educational experiments. The focus is on integrative and communicative approaches rather than preservation of collections of artifacts. Modern museum curators are actively engaging in dialogue with educational practitioners and specialists at conferences, in academic publications, and through other forums. Museum education is evolving from a source of sacred knowledge to an open source for diversity and personal development.
Archaeology of Northeast India
Authors: Jamir Tiatoshi
Published: March 2022

The northeast region of India encompasses the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim to the north; Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura to the south; Nagaland to the east; and Assam and Meghalaya to the west. The region is unique not only geopolitically but also in terms of its ecological diversity, culture, and history, with the states of Mizoram and Tripura falling well within the 23° N tropical zone. Northeast India is characterized by uplands and high-altitude mountains in the north, northeast, east, and southeast, while the southwest and western regions comprise tablelands and low-lying floodplains. Early archaeological initiatives began with the colonial administration of the region, but such early reports were confined to surface sites. The first excavations in the region began in the post-Independence period and delved into some of the archaeological problems relevant to the area. Some of these problems concern identifying possible hominin dispersal routes; the scenario of Paleolithic research and what the associated archaeological and geological data yields; the importance of the region as a potential area for early plant domestication; and the archaeological evidence for early agriculture, particularly rice, millet, and tuber crops. Despite immense potential for historical archaeology, empirical research toward an understanding of the rise of early urban centers and early state formations, the emergence of village settlements marked by ancestral sites, and the later historical periods has only been marginal in nature.
Customary Law in Colonial East Africa
Authors: Sippel Harald
Published: March 2022

African customary law has always regulated the legal relationships of the east African population. It is still significant in the fields of land and personal law (succession and inheritance and the family), and it refers to the principles, rules, customs, and practices of a certain local ethnic community that are accepted by its members as binding. Most research on customary law in east Africa has been done so far in Kenya and Tanzania. As a result of the colonization of east Africa, Europeans imported their own legal systems to their colonial territories, while African customary law remained applicable to the autochthonous population. Subsequently, a discriminatory dual legal and judicial system was established. In order to codify and unify the various sets of African customary law, several research projects carried out investigations of such law in east Africa. At the time of independence, African customary law was considered an important element in the formation of nations in Kenya and Tanzania. After academic interest in customary law gradually subsided, it has gained again in importance due to the conflict with human rights and the revitalization of such law on the ground, as observed on the threshold of the 21st century. However, since legal activists regard African customary law as outdated and in need of reform, future legal reform projects should pay particular attention to intergenerational justice and gender equality.
Precolonial Iron Production in the Great Zimbabwe Hinterland (900–1900 CE)
Authors: Mtetwa Ezekia
Published: March 2022

Iron, critical for its utilitarian and ceremonial functions, was the staple metal in the socioeconomic, political, and environmental transformations of the prehistoric settlement of Great Zimbabwe during the first and second millennium of the Common Era (ce). Great Zimbabwe is the largest and one of the earliest settlements associated with social complexity, urbanism, and statehood in the southern African region, established by people with an agro-pastoral, mining, metalworking, and trading lifestyle. The size of the Great Zimbabwe settlement and its significance as a political, religious, and international trade center would have required considerable supplies of finished iron tools and other metal objects, particularly during its fluorescent urban phase spanning the 11th and 16th centuries ce.

Since the early 1990s, research within and around the drystone-walled urban center of Great Zimbabwe reveals that from at least the end of the first millennium ce, the settlement experienced significant transformations in its iron production technologies in the broader hinterland. These changes corresponded, presumably, with other technological and sociopolitical developments at the drystone-built urban center. Forms of evidence including tap slags, tuyeres fused in multiples, and natural draft furnaces (one with a long base), clearly indicate that the people of Great Zimbabwe employed remarkably complex and varied designs and approaches to produce iron from its ores.

Again, evidence of primary and secondary iron production activities at Great Zimbabwe’s domestic and specialized settings outside settlements illuminate more significant spatiotemporal complexities and ambiguities in the organization of iron production than previously thought. Within domestic contexts, the smelting of iron would have offered an inclusive social space, which made possible the transformation of not just materials, but also women and children into active social agents of technology. This way of looking at iron provides an alternative and more socially embedded perspective of Great Zimbabwe and its daily material practices.
An Economic History of Australia
Authors: Shanahan Martin
Published: March 2022

A new world for Europeans and an ancient land for its Indigenous populations, Australia has provided resources that have sustained its inhabitants for millennia. For the past century the nation’s standard of living has been among the world’s highest. This has accompanied the transformation from an economic frontier to a staples-based economy and to a modern, industrial economy over 150 years. Although a fundamentally urban society, it has been the continued use of the country’s natural assets, especially its land, that has underpinned these changes. While reliant on protective barriers in the first half of the 20th century, the country’s ongoing development has always depended on the inflow of overseas capital, an openness to international trade, and an eagerness to receive new people. When these elements have fluctuated so too has Australia’s economy. The sources of capital, trade, and people have changed over time, but a willingness to follow ideas from overseas has persisted. Not every member of society has benefited from development, and long-term inequality has followed the rise, fall, and rise evident in many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. Although still a leading nation when measured on the Human Development Index, environmental constraints, increased global tensions, and climate change pose challenges for Australian’s living standards that will again require them to transform their economy.
Prevention of Suicide
Authors: Wasserman Danuta
Published: March 2022

Around 700,000 people take their lives each year worldwide. Suicide accounts for approximately 1.3% of all deaths and therefore represents a major public health problem. The global age-standardized suicide rate is 9 per 100,000 population, yet there are large variations among genders, ages, countries, and world regions. The stress–vulnerability model of suicidal behaviors has been proposed to explain how a diathesis, developed through the influence of genetic and neurodevelopmental factors in relation to perinatal, postnatal, and life experiences, interacts with different risk and protective factors that either decrease or enhance the individual’s level of resilience to stress and suicidal risk. Public health suicide prevention strategies include suicide means restriction, reducing harmful substance use, promoting responsible media reporting, public-awareness campaigns, gatekeeper trainings, school-based interventions, crisis helplines, and postvention. Mental health strategies comprise identification, treatment, and rehabilitation of persons in distress and at risk for suicide. Multicomponent strategies that use a combination of evidence-based methods from public and mental health sectors are recommended. Future work should aim at enhancing the quality of epidemiological data, improving the research on protective and ideation-to-action factors, expanding the quantity and quality of data coming from low- and middle-income countries, and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of different suicide prevention strategies.
Space Law & Policy: The U.K. Approach to the Regulation of Space Activities
Authors: Newman Christopher J.
Published: March 2022

Space activity within the United Kingdom (U.K.) has undergone a significant period of change with successive governments viewing space as a significant source of economic growth. This has seen increasing attention being paid to both space policy and regulation.

As a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty 1967, the U.K. is internationally responsible for the space activity of both its governmental and commercial entities. These obligations were initially discharged through the Outer Space Act 1986 and the licensing framework that emerged from that.

The decision of the government to develop the capability to launch small satellites from within the U.K., coupled with the promise of high-altitude activities and horizontal launch, meant that action was needed to update the law and regulation of space activity within the U.K. The need for investment to fuel the ambition of the U.K. is set out in the National Space Strategy.
Care Beyond Repair
Authors: Drotbohm Heike
Published: March 2022

To care about and for others—that is other people, collectivities, plants, animals, or the climate—is a mundane and ubiquitous act. At some point in life, almost every human being needs to be cared for, encounters care, and eventually provides care. In anthropology, the critical notion of care provides an analytic tool for seriously considering life’s contingencies and for understanding the ways that people ascribe meaning to different kind of acts, attitudes, and values. This chapter argues that the concept’s normative dimension forms part of a cultural binarism that hierarchizes the world according to differently valued spheres of existence. Concentrating on this normativity as inherent to the notion, the chapter distinguishes three complementary empirical fields: care as (globalized) social reproduction, care as institutionalized asymmetry, and care beyond human exceptionalism. It becomes clear that care oscillates between two different perspectives, producing a particular tension. On the one hand, the care concept features a protective and conservative dimension that is congruent with the past. On the other hand, the concept incorporates a transformational dimension through its notions of development, progress, and improvement. To move beyond our own (potentially or inevitably) academic, Eurocentric, or human-centric understanding of the notion, this essay suggests moving “care beyond repair.” We can do so, first, by asking what role research plays in this differentiating ethics and, second, by identifying perspectives and positionalities that, at first glance, appear indistinct or inarticulate and hence do not confirm already-familiar categories of evaluation and distinction. Seen this way, care beyond repair draws attention to the making and unmaking of human existence.
Genericity
Authors: Cohen Ariel
Published: March 2022

Generics are sentences such as Birds fly, which express generalizations. They are prevalent in speech, and as far as is known, no human language lacks generics. Yet, it is very far from clear what they mean. After all, not all birds fly—penguins don’t!

There are two general views about the meaning of generics in the literature, and each view encompasses many specific theories. According to the inductivist view, a generic states that a sufficient number of individuals satisfy a certain property—in the example above, it says that sufficiently many birds fly. This view faces the complicated problem of spelling out exactly how many is “sufficiently many” in a way that correctly captures the intuitive truth conditions of generics.

An alternative, the rules and regulations view, despairs from this project and proposes instead that generics directly express rules in the world. Rules are taken to be abstract objects, which are not related to the properties of specific individuals. This view faces the difficult problem of explaining how people come to know of such rules when judging the truth of falsity of generics, and accounting for the strong intuition that a sentence such as Birds fly talks about birds, not abstract objects.

What seems to be beyond dispute is that generics, even if they do not express rules, are lawlike: they state non-accidental generalizations. Many scholars have taken this fact to indicate that generics are parametric on possible worlds: they refer to worlds other than the actual world. This, again, raises the problem of how people come to know about what happens in these other worlds. However, a rigorous application of standard tests for intensionality shows that generics are not, in fact, parametric on possible worlds, but only on time. This unusual property may explain much of the mystery surrounding generics.

Another mysterious property of generics is that although there is no language without them, there is no linguistic construction that is devoted to the expression of genericity. Rather, generics can be expressed in a variety of ways, each of which can also express nongenerics. Yet, each manifestation of generics differs subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) in its meaning from the others.

Even when these and other puzzles of genericity are solved, one mystery would remain: Why are generics, which are so easy to produce and understand in conversation, so difficult to analyze?
Acquisition of L1 Phonology in the Romance Languages
Authors: Rose Yvan , Almeida Laetitia , Freitas Maria João
Published: March 2022

The field of study on the acquisition of phonological productive abilities by first-language learners in the Romance languages has been largely focused on three main languages: French, Portuguese, and Spanish, including various dialects of these languages spoken in Europe as well as in the Americas. In this article, we provide a comparative survey of this literature, with an emphasis on representational phonology. We also include in our discussion observations from the development of Catalan and Italian, and mention areas where these languages, as well as Romanian, another major Romance language, would provide welcome additions to our cross-linguistic comparisons. Together, the various studies we summarize reveal intricate patterns of development, in particular concerning the acquisition of consonants across different positions within the syllable, the word, and in relation to stress, documented from both monolingual and bilingual first-language learners can be found. The patterns observed across the different languages and dialects can generally be traced to formal properties of phone distributions, as entailed by mainstream theories of phonological representation, with variations also predicted by more functional aspects of speech, including phonetic factors and usage frequency. These results call for further empirical studies of phonological development, in particular concerning Romanian, in addition to Catalan and Italian, whose phonological and phonetic properties offer compelling grounds for the formulation and testing of models of phonology and phonological development.
Arlt, Ilse
Authors: Maiss Maria
Published: March 2022

Ilse Arlt (1876–1960) was an Austrian pioneer of research-based social work. Her investigation of various social causes and the effects of poverty—understood as the absence of the ability to prosper—shaped her life for more than 70 years. Her extensive published work, like all her projects, aimed to prevent poverty to the greatest possible extent by raising awareness and to offer social welfare that promoted all individuals’ ability to prosper.
Radlińska, Helena
Authors: Schmelz Andrea
Published: March 2022

Helena Radlińska’s (1879–1954) pioneering roles in social work education, political and social activism, and her visionary contribution to theory, practice, and research of social work in Poland and beyond its borders are reviewed. Radlińska’s conceptualization of social work aimed at community development and social change, and addressed the social conditions of individuals as well as their potential. According to Radlińska, social workers assisted in overcoming difficulties by empowering individuals and communities. Hence, education and research in social work needed to build on an interdisciplinary approach and the personal development of students as educators, group facilitators, and community mobilizers. Based on the principle of critical reflection with the self and the world, Radlinka’s social work ouvre outlasted the socialist period and underwent an international renaissance in the postsocialist era. Radlińska has inspired social workers to fight for an inclusive and antipopulist future in Poland’s communities.