bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Oneself as a Female Deity: Representations of Empress Dowager Cixi as Guanyin
Authors: Yuhang Li
Published: November 2012

This paper discusses the practice of Empress Dowager Cixi’s embodiment of Guanyin, the most influential female deity in China. Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908), the ruling monarch of Qing China, embodied this deity via different media such as painting, fashion, and photographs. This study demonstrates both the religious and historical consequences of Cixi’s particular vision of herself as Guanyin. It explains how Cixi combined theatricality with religiosity in different media and how she fashioned herself in both roles simultaneously as Guanyin and ruling empress Cixi.
Loop-mediated isothermal amplification for rapid and precise detection of the burrowing nematode, Radopholus similis, directly from diseased plant tissues
Authors: Peng Huan , Peng Deliang , Hu Xianqi , He Xufeng , Wang Qiong , Huang WenKun , He Wenting
Published: November 2012

A novel, simple, rapid and highly sensitive assay and diagnostic tool for the burrowing nematode, Radopholus similis, was developed using a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). The LAMP assay was targeted on the specific fragments of rRNA gene D2-D3 regions of R. similis. The detection limitation of the LAMP assay was as low as ten copies of plasmid DNA containing the target DNA, 10 fg of genomic DNA and 5 × 10−5 nematodes. The detection sensitivity of the LAMP method for R. similis DNA was 10-100 times higher than normal PCR-based detection methods. The LAMP amplifications could be observed directly by eye by adding SYBR Green I and the lateral flow dipstick (LFD). LAMP assay for R. similis is a practical and useful diagnostic tool for early diagnosis of plant tissues infested by R. similis. The LAMP assay developed in this study is highly effective, easy to perform and readily adaptable for diagnostic and monitoring of the R. similis-diseased seedling in the field.
Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory, Gail Day, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010
Authors: Noys Benjamin
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Gail Day’s Dialectical Passions not only traces the trajectories of leading New Left critics of art and architecture – T.J. Clark, Manfredo Tafuri, Massimo Cacciari, Craig Owens, Fredric Jameson and Hal Foster – it also provides a meditation on the problem of negation and the experience of defeat. This review retraces Day’s arguments, reflecting on her recovery and re-interrogation of negation and dialectics in postwar art theory. In particular, it aims to critically assess her stress on the ‘negative thought’ of Tafuri and Cacciari and the possibilities of reactivating a thought of negativity in the contemporary moment.
‘From Political Economy to Economics’ and Beyond
Authors: Fleetwood Steve
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis have done political economy a great service by drawing attention to the insights lost in the twists, turns and reductions in the transition from political economy to economics. These two volumes constitute a solid foundation upon which a new generation can build a political economy for the future. This review presses some of their meta-theoretical arguments a little further than they actually do in an attempt to ‘toughen-up’ the new political economy and make it more able to carry the fight to economics.
Pseudo-Ṯaʿālibī’s Book of Youths
Authors: Talib Adam
Published: November 2012

Abstract

This article presents a critical edition and study of a 17th/18th-century poetry collection that had previously been mistaken for al-Ṯaʿālibī’s lost Kitāb al-Ġilmān. It provides a codicological analysis of Berlin MS Wetzstein II 1786 in which the poetry collection is contained and also explains and corrects long-held misconceptions regarding al-Ṯaʿālibī’s connection with the text. Finally, the article situates this poetry collection in the context of Mamluk- and Ottoman-era epigram anthologies and the critical apparatus to the edition demonstrates the key features of intertextuality and popularity that characterised these poetry collections.
Men in the Remaking: Conversion Narratives and Born-Again Masculinity in Zambia
Authors: Van Klinken Adriaan S.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

The born-again discourse is a central characteristic of Pentecostal Christianity in Africa. In the study of African Christianities, this discourse and the way it (re)shapes people’s moral, religious, and social identities has received much attention. However, hardly any attention has been paid to its effects on men as gendered beings. In the study of men and masculinities in Africa, on the other hand, neither religion in general nor born-again Christianity in particular are taken into account as relevant factors in the construction of masculinities. On the basis of a detailed analysis of interviews with men who are members of a Pentecostal church in Lusaka, Zambia, this article investigates how men’s gender identities are reshaped by becoming and being born-again and how born-again conversion produces new forms of masculinity. The observed Pentecostal transformation of masculinity is interpreted in relation to men’s social vulnerability, particularly in the context of the HIV epidemic in Zambia.
The Essence of Essentializing: A Critical Discourse on “Critical Discourse in the Study of Islam”
Authors: Berg Herbert
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Many scholars have called for more critical discourse in the study of Islam, particularly in response to post-9/11 scholarly and popular depictions of a normative, spiritual Islam in contrast to the aberrant, violent Islam. In objecting to these new representations of what Islam ought to be, these scholars promote what they believe the study of Islam ought to be. This disagreement about how to study and write about Islam is a reflection of a much more fundamental debate about the nature of the study of religion.
Transcendental Empiricism and the Transcendental Blues: A Response to More than Belief
Authors: Harvey Paul
Published: November 2012

Abstract

This article examines how scholars who study the least likely subjects to be the targets of Manuel Vasquez’s call in More than Belief may nonetheless apply the arguments in the book. Harvey focuses especially on applying the concepts in More than Belief to studies of Protestants in the American South who historically have insisted that religion is defined by belief. These are people who conceived of religion in precisely the way Vásquez tells us not to; “religion” for them was a matter of the private conscience, was disembodied, full of doctrine and ratiocination, and as deeply individualistic (at least in theory) as one could possibly conceive. If Vásquez’s rich account of religious theory can be used to understand my subjects in some way, then they can apply to anyone. Even in a Protestant, text-centric, doctrinal region as the American South historically has been may be seen, religious expression has been at once locative, translocative (because of the huge numbers of people imported from other lands, voluntarily or involuntarily), and supralocative (because of the diasporic spread of varied religious traditions).
De Beneficentia: A Homily on Social Action attributed to Basil of Caesarea
Authors: Holman Susan R. , Macé Caroline , Matz Brian J.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

This paper introduces an anonymous work attributed to Basil of Caesarea entitled, De beneficentia, or “On beneficence.” The text is known from one manuscript dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Phillipps 1467 (gr. 63), a collection of genuine and pseudonymous Basilian homilies. Although pseudonymous and extant (as far as we can determine) only in this sole manuscript, in some quoted fragments from the ninth and twelfth centuries, and in a sixteenth-century Latin translation, De beneficentia, shares a number of characteristics common to social homilies preached in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. This paper discusses the Berlin manuscript text in the context of the known fragments, other spurious, dubious, or pseudonymous homilies attributed to Basil, and its attributed relationship to social preaching in Christian late antiquity, and offers a new edition of the Greek text with its first English translation.
Pietism and Pentecostalism: Spiritual Cousins or Competitors?
Authors: Olson Roger E.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Scholars of Pentecostalism typically trace the movement’s roots to the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and the healing revivals of the nineteenth century. Often overlooked is the influence of Pietism on early Pentecostalism. Pietism began as a spiritual renewal movement among Lutherans in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Germany, but its ethos of unmediated spiritual experience of God filtered into the stream of European and North American evangelical Christianity. Outbreaks of speaking in tongues and other ecstatic experiences happened among Scandinavian Pietist immigrants in Chicago and the upper Midwest of North America several years before the birth of Pentecostalism in Topeka and at Azusa Street in the first decade of the twentieth century. Pietists and Pentecostals are spiritual cousins who can learn from each other.
Egg protein bound amino acid content and embryo/larva success in common dentex (Dentex dentex), a marine pelagophil teleost
Authors: Samaee Seyed-Mohammadreza , Mente Eleni , Estévez Alicia
Published: November 2012

This study represents the initial attempt to evaluate the effect of egg protein-bound amino acid (i.e., vitellogenin-derived PAAs) content on embryo/larva success in Dentex dentex. Viable eggs were obtained from a single female (i.e., intra-individual analysis) in captivity. Selected embryo/larva viability parameters (the egg floating rate, the hatching rate, and the larval survival rate at days 0 to 5 post-hatch) were determined. The egg batches were categorised in three groups (high-, medium-, and low-quality batches) based on the magnitude of their hatching rates. The protein-bound amino acid content of biometrically similar egg batches of varying quality was analysed. The content values for 12 protein-bound amino acids (i.e., essential PAAs: Thr, Met, Arg, Ile, Val, Phe, His; non-essential PAAs: Ala, Glu, Gly, Asp, and Ser) were significantly correlated with the embryo/larva viability parameters in an analysis performed in terms of their ratios. The egg protein-bound amino acid content was significantly correlated with the dentex larval survival rate at 3 and 5 days post-hatch, a critical period of survival that is problematic during the propagation of this species in captivity. The results of this study also offer statistical evidence for the effects of the interrelationships of the egg protein-bound amino acids on the relationships between the quantitative composition of the protein-bound amino acids and the viability parameters.
Species ecological preferences predict extinction risk in urban tenebrionid beetle guilds
Authors: Fattorini Simone
Published: November 2012

A number of studies have attempted to investigate which species traits influence species proneness to extinction in vertebrates. By contrast, studies involving insects are scarce, because of difficulties in obtaining complex assessments of species extinction risk and measures of species traits. In this paper, a simple (binary) codification based on literature data and field observations was used to determine the importance of various traits (notably ecological preferences) in determining species vulnerability of the tenebrionid beetles inhabiting urban Rome (Italy). Vulnerability scores were calculated from measures of geographical, habitat and population rarity. Vulnerable species were distributed with similar proportions among different tenebrionid guilds, which suggests that conservation programs in urban ecosystems should be more addressed to the development of species-oriented actions than to the identification of priority ‘habitats’. Species traits accurately predicted species assignment to vulnerability classes, with some traits being particularly important in determining species vulnerability. Species associated with ruins and cellars, and which are typically fairly common in Rome, tend to be moderately or middle vulnerable. The identification of important sites for these species and definition of measures for population management would be useful strategies to preserve them.
The World Bank Administrative Tribunal’s External Sources of Law: The Next Chapter (2006–2010) (Part II)
Authors: Hansen Peter C.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

The World Bank Administrative Tribunal has begun its second quarter-century with a jurisprudential flowering of extraordinary proportions. Mr. Hansen’s study, which builds on his earlier 25-year retrospective, comprehensively surveys the Tribunal’s numerous doctrinal developments during this time. In this article, which is part two of two, Mr. Hansen revisits two of the four subjects explored in his retrospective: (i) the role of general legal principles as a source of Tribunal law, particularly with respect to the Tribunal’s recent and extensive due process jurisprudence; and (ii) the role of external case law as a source of Tribunal law, including decisions from international courts, international administrative tribunals, international arbitral tribunals and national courts. Extensively footnoted, Mr. Hansen’s study is intended for both academics and practitioners specializing in international administrative law and comparative international jurisprudence.
Return of the Natives: Explaining the Development and Non-Development of Political Action by Indigenous Peoples in Democratic Political Systems
Authors: Dutter Lee E.
Published: November 2012

Studies of individuals or groups who might use violence or terrorism in pursuit of political goals often focus on the specific actions which these individuals or groups have taken and on the policies which defenders (that is, governments of states) against such actions may adopt in response. Typically, less attention is devoted to identifying the relevant preconditions of political action and possible escalation to violence and how or why potential actions may be obviated before they occur. In the context of democratic political systems, the present analysis addresses these issues via examination of indigenous peoples, who typically constitute tiny fractions of the population of the states or regions in which they reside, in terms of their past and present treatment by governments and the political actions, whether non-violent or violent, which individuals from these peoples have engaged or may engage. The specific peoples examined are Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of Australia, Haudenosaunee of North America, Inuit of Canada, Maori of New Zealand, and Saami of Scandinavia.
Beyond Christendom: Lesslie Newbigin as a Post-Christendom Theologian
Authors: Nikolajsen Jeppe Bach
Published: November 2012

Abstract

In recent decades an increasing number of theologians have asserted that the Western world has moved from a Christendom era to a post-Christendom era, as evidenced by the magnitude of which it has been discussed in theological texts. This article analyzes the writings of Lesslie Newbigin with the aim of understanding the relationship between Christendom and his theological project, particularly how he evaluated the rise of Christendom and, finally, proposes how Newbigin envisioned the role of the church in a post-Christendom society.
Mission and Discipleship in a Digital Culture
Authors: Meadows Philip R.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

Digital culture technology has opened up a whole new realm of virtual life, relationships and community that seem to exist above and beyond the banalities of ‘real life’. It seems that more and more people are spending more and more time jacked into ‘cyberspace’, and some even get lost there. This compartmentalized view of virtual life has prompted various cross-cultural approaches to mission, exploring how we might become immersed in the online world as a witness to unreached virtual peoples. On the one hand, there is an ever-growing literature on how incarnational mission in this context can be accomplished through various approaches to internet evangelism, web ministry, and planting virtual churches. On the other hand, there is a good deal of theological reflection that warns us that enthusiasm for virtual life and mission must be tempered by a concern for the disembodying and dehumanizing power of digital technology on Christian life and communities.

Recent studies have shown that digital culture does not merely lead to the compartmentalization of embodied and virtual realms, however, but to an ever greater convergence between them. In particular, the development of mobile computing devices and wireless network connectivity has woven our online activities and virtual relationships into the routine flow of everyday life. From the perspective of convergence, this essay argues that the future of mission will necessitate a reorientation from planting churches in virtual worlds to living as mission-shaped disciples at the interface of embodied and virtual life. The promise and pitfalls of digital culture are explored, along with a critical survey of various theological and missional stances towards it. In conclusion, some practical-theological reflections are offered towards developing a ‘rule of life’ for mission-shaped discipleship in a culture of convergence.
Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Contemporary Iran
Authors: Choksy Jamsheed K.
Published: November 2012

A little over three decades ago, during the reign of the last Pahlavi monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, non-Muslim religious minorities in Iran experienced life within a relatively tolerant society. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s native Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Mandaeans, and Baha’is have experienced increasing discrimination, isolation, and intimidation. Those non-Muslim religious minorities provide Iranian society with confessional pluralism and cultural diversity, thereby serving also as a moderating population sliver against Shi‘ite fundamentalism. But now the non-Muslim communities collectively have diminished to less than 2 percent of Iran’s 75,2 million residents. Yet, these minorities have attracted very limited domestic and international attention or concern because their situation is poorly understood. This article, based on extensive fieldwork in Iran during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, examines the situations of those Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, and Baha’is. While Sunnis also are a religious minority in Iran and do experience prejudices too, intra-Muslim tension with its origins in seventh century religious disputes and its geopolitical reverberations to the present day go beyond the scope of this article.
Semantics of Hawrami Body Part Terms
Authors: Abasi Bistoon , Gheitury Amer
Published: November 2012

Human body as a universal possession of human beings constitutes an interesting domain where questions regarding semantic categorisations might be sought crosslinguistically. In the following, we will attempt to describe the terms used to refer to the body in Hawrami, an Iranian language spoken in Paveh, a small township in the western province of Kermanshah near Iraqi borders. Due to the scarcity of written material, the inventory of 202 terms referring to external and internal body parts were obtained through a field work, which took a long time, and techniques, such as the “colouring task”, observation and recording the terms as used in ordinary conversations and informal interviews with native speakers. The semantic properties of the terms and the way they are related in a partonymy or locative relationship were also investigated. As far as universals of body part terms are concerned, while conforming to ‘depth principle’ concerning the number of levels each partonomy may consist of, Hawrami violates an important feature of this principle by not allowing transitive relations between different levels of partonomic hierarchies. In addition, Hawrami lacks a term for labelling the ‘whole’.
And the Streams of Rome Will Be Turned into Pitch Attitudes towards Rome in European Versions of Targum Jonathan
Authors: van Nes Hans
Published: November 2012

This study focuses on the appropriation of Biblical doom saying to the city of Rome in Targum Jonathan. After discussing the phenomenon of anti-Roman utterances within Jewish exegesis, we will examine seven Targum verses that mention Rome. The appearance, modifications and disappearance of references to Rome are shown in Medieval manuscripts representing Targum Jonathan’s various textual branches and in early modern printed editions of the Rabbinic Bibles and the Polyglot Bibles. When transmitting such anti-Roman Targum verses, Christian Hebraists faced tension, as will be demonstrated, between loyalty to the Church’s capital city and academic integrity, which demanded compliance with the Aramaic consonantal text. We will therefore also show their, at times, creative solutions.
‘Spiritual Warfare’: A Dead Metaphor?
Authors: Warren E. Janet
Published: November 2012

The term ‘spiritual warfare’, referring to the Christian’s battle with evil spirits, was popularized by the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and is the predominant language used in contemporary Christianity to describe encounters with evil spirits. This paper reviews the prevalence of military metaphors in popular and scholarly writings, and examines the problems associated with warfare language from linguistic, biblical, theological and psycho-social perspectives. I suggest that ‘spiritual warfare’ has become a dead metaphor: its metaphorical insights have been lost and other metaphors are neglected. Therefore renewed attention to metaphor theory is needed along with alternative language with which to discuss demonology and deliverance. I conclude with suggestions for supplementary metaphors/models, including cleansing, setting boundaries on evil, appropriating divine authority, and using light/dark imagery.
Jewish-Christian Communion and its Ecclesiological Implications
Authors: Flanagan Brian P.
Published: November 2012

This article addresses the ecclesiological significance of Jewish-Christian relations. Given the development of a non-supersessionist theology of God’s relation to the Jewish people, it asks whether the language of communion might complement the more common language of covenant in developing a Christian theology of the current relations between Jews and Christian. Drawing upon the theology of Jean-Marie Roger Tillard, communion in shared faith, shared hope, and shared mission are raised as possible foundations for this imperfect or incomplete communion. Such a move has implications for both Jewish-Christian relations and dialogue, as well as for method in ecclesiology.
God’s Gift? Sacred Relics, Gift Giving, and Luisa de Carvajal’s Preparation of the Holy During the Long Reformation
Authors: Redworth Glyn
Published: November 2012

Regardless of the Reformation’s attack on the allegedly superstitious practices of later medieval Catholicism, during the Counter Reformation the reverence of holy relics became ever more pronounced. This article looks at the theology behind relic making and the scientific processes by which body parts were preserved, making special reference to Luisa de Carvajal’s activities in Jacobean London. It places the traffic in relics in the anthropological context of gift-exchange, and especially recent discussions of “the free gift”.
Nineteenth-Century French Collections of Skulls and the Cult of Bones
Authors: Dias Nélia
Published: November 2012

This paper attempts to examine nineteenth-century French skull collections and to shed light on how, why, and when they came to play such a significant intellectual role in physical anthropology. It also seeks to analyze the notion of series of skulls and the sequential arrangement of skulls. It argues that this sort of collection gained particular relevance in Republican France, where the cult of dead bodies was replaced by the secular cult of bones.
Forum Internum and Forum Externum in Canon Law and Public International Law with a Particular Reference to the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
Authors: Petkoff Peter
Published: November 2012

Abstract

The canon law distinction of two forums emphasizes the importance of a dialogical relationship between two spheres of jurisdiction for the development of co-responsibility and solidarity in the context of what could be described as a pursuit of a relational justice. In the context of international law the same terminology expresses an approach which balances between interests in what is defined as the public and private sphere but also defines the scope of these spheres by overemphasizing their distinctiveness and their different levels of autonomy from the point of view of duties of the State and the potential of state interference. This article explores the possibility of a more relational understanding of the two forums in international law.
Boundaries without Judah, Boundaries within Judah: Hybridity and Identity in Nahum
Authors: Timmer Daniel C.
Published: November 2012

Abstract

This article examines the use of boundaries and the related phenomenon of hybridity in the book of Nahum through a variety of postcolonial optics. Moving beyond the essentialist/interactivist dichotomy, it explores the various kinds of difference between Judah and Neo-Assyria that Nahum articulates, their reuse as a means of critiquing Assyria, and the intriguing similarity between Judah and all nations but Assyria. The article also suggests that an inner-Judahite distinction coexists alongside the book’s response to empire, and that Nahum’s stereotypes are crucial to its varied uses of hybridity.
A Persecution was Decreed:Persecution as a Rhetorical Device in the Literature of the Ge’onim and Rishonim Part 1
Authors: Ringer Albert
Published: November 2012

Abstract

It is a common misconception that the haftarah started as a replacement for the reading of the Torah. This idea has its modern source in an influential article published in 1927 by Jacob Mann.1 Going back to rabbinical and medieval sources shows that we should read them as topological texts. They give a pseudo-historical basis to well known and loved features of the service, like the haftarah, thereby missing a straightforward Talmudic source. Furthermore, they seem to be in dialog with other medieval texts that speak about martyrdom as a reaction to repression.
Mavi Marmara on the News: Convergence and Divergence in Religious Conservative Newspapers in Turkey
Authors: Durna Tezcan , Özçetin Burak
Published: November 2012

This article presents a discursive analysis of religious conservative daily newspapers’ response to Israeli commandos’ attack on a flotilla of aid ships that were attempting to break an embargo on traffic to Gaza on 31 May 2010. The event not only caused a serious rupture in Israeli-Turkish relations but also resulted in the rise of (already present) anti-Israeli sentiment in the conservative religious sectors of society. Conservative religious media, more specifically the Islamic newspapers, led the anti-Israeli campaign within this process. The authors emphasize that news does not simply represent reality, but, as an active process, works on it. The institutional dependence on regular and reliable institutional sources and the ideological character of language are two major dynamics of this process. The journalistic routine imposes the statements of the institutional sources, or the voice of the powerful, as the only reliable and viable definition of events. The language used in the news enhances this partiality through use of stereotypical, bitter and discriminatory expressions. This article discusses the way news texts influence reality by focusing on the primary and secondary definers in the news, newspapers’ oscillation between humanitarian and Islamic concerns, and between anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic positions.
The Anti-Yugoslavist Narrative on Croatian Ethnolinguistic and Racial Identity, 1900-1941
Authors: Bartulin Nevenko
Published: November 2012

This article examines the work of leading anti-Yugoslavist Croat intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century in relation to the question of race. These scholars used the discipline of racial anthropology in order to attempt to disprove the tenets of the racial supranational ideology of Yugoslavism by highlighting the ethnolinguistic-racial differences between Croats and Serbs. According to these intellectuals, the Croats were, racially speaking, purer Indo-Europeans and Slavs than the Serbs, who were in turn defined as possessing a strong Balkan Vlach racial component. Interestingly, these anti-Yugoslavist thinkers adopted the anthropological theory of Aryan-Slavic origins, as previously espoused by pan-Slavist Croat ideologists in the nineteenth century, in order to debunk the very idea of South Slav ‘national unity’ between Croats and Serbs.
On Sovereignties in Islamic Legal History
Authors: Emon Anver M.
Published: November 2012

The concept of sovereignty has posed important challenges in the ongoing debates and discourses on Islam and international law. This essay illustrates how sovereignty reflects competing ideas about legitimate authority by examining and exploring distinct debates in Islamic thought, all of which share a concern about the nature, scope, and contours of legitimacy and authority. This article does not offer a prescriptive argument for a robust notion of sovereignty in Islam, nor does it attempt to judge the Islamic past pursuant to contemporary strands of political theory. Rather, it explores various strands of historical Islamic intellectual debate that traverse the realms of theology, law and politics in order to reflect on the conditions of different sovereignties and their relationship to one another.
Theoretical Pragmatics: An Introduction
Authors: Benz Anton , Jasinskaja Katja , Sauerland Uli
Published: November 2012

The last decade witnessed a surge of new research in pragmatics, fuelled by the emergence of new theoretical frameworks, an increased interest in the semantics-pragmatics interface, and the establishment of experimental pragmatics as a new research paradigm. Many of these developments concern the line of pragmatics which originated with the work of H. Paul Grice. Of new theoretical frameworks, we may mention different variants of optimality and game theoretic approaches, localist semantic theories of embedded implicatures, logical globalist formalisations of Gricean pragmatics, and multi-layered semantics for conventional implicatures. At the same time, research in older frameworks such as Neo-Gricean and Post-Gricean pragmatics continued, and new investigations of speech act and presupposition theory emerged. This development led to a diversification of theoretical approaches, a synthesis of which is desirable but not to be expected in the near future. This issue is intended as a contribution to the enhancement of mutual awareness and the discussion of each other’s results.
John H. McWhorter. 2011. Linguistic simplicity and complexity: Why do languages undress? Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 338 pp.
Authors: Frajzyngier Zygmunt
Published: November 2012

This review article consists of three parts: a presentation of McWhorter’s book, an evaluation of the book, and a proposal for a systematic metric for one version of the notions of simplicity and complexity in languages. McWhorter’s basic thesis, that creoles have simpler grammars than their lexifier languages and simpler grammars than languages transmitted through acquisition in childhood, must begin with rigorous definitions of the terms ‘simplicity’ and ‘complexity’. The paper proposes a way to measure simplicity and complexity. Whether the notions of simplicity or complexity have a heuristic value remains an open question.
Reconnoitering Dooyeweerd’s Theory of Man
Authors: Blosser Philip
Published: November 2012

The legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd, that colossus of reformational thinking, presents us not only with the gifts of his systematic genius, but also with the riddles of his unperfected work, which now have become a part of our own unfinished work. Not the least of these riddles and not the least of our unfinished work confront us in the legacy of Dooyeweerd’s anthropological reflections. As he indicates in the conclusion of his monumental New Critique, all of his previous investigations are nothing but preliminaries that implicitly converge upon the ultimate problems of philosophical anthropology. The question of man, in effect, constitutes the fundamental implicit theme of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy.
Supratemporality in the Transcendental Anthropology of Herman Dooyeweerd
Authors: Ouweneel Willem J.
Published: November 2012

At the time when Scheler, Plessner, and Gehlen are credited with having founded anthropology as a separate branch of philosophy, Herman Dooyeweerd deserves the merit of having created a total view (Gesamtanschauung) of the human person on the basis not of a humanistic but a Christian cosmology.2 He was deeply conscious of the fact that philosophy as such is not capable of fathoming the essence of humankind. Philosophy, in his opinion, is bound to the temporal horizon, while the human ego transcends this horizon. The philosopher acquires a view of this ego only in its relation to God. Since this relation is religious in nature, the knowledge of self is also religious in nature. This true self-knowledge is effected by the revelation of God’s Word in the heart, the religious centre of human existence, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Dooyeweerd’s anthropology is therefore a transcendental anthropology, founded as it is on this transcendental critique of theoretical thought. In this transcendental critique the point of synthesis of theoretical thought is not found in some transcendental logical ego, in the sense of Immanuel Kant, but in the transcendent-religious ego of the human person.
Is Being Human Being Rational? Otto Duintjer’s Critique of A Philosophical Tradition
Authors: van Woudenberg René
Published: November 2012

Throughout the history of Western philosophy there has been a remarkable consensus that the unique and distinctive feature of human nature lies in the human capacity to think — that is, to think rationally. Being rational is conceived of as being an essential property of human beings. The Amsterdam philosopher Otto Dirk Duintjer2 has made an impressive attempt to analyze this dominant intellectual tradition for the purpose of furnishing hints for an alternative conception of what goes into the essence of being human. This alternative is presented not as another, more promising route within, but as a way out of our Western intellectual cul-de-sac, as Duintjer sees it. In this essay I first want to give a brief exposition of Duintjer’s analysis of our philosophical tradition because, I think, it is worth our serious consideration. Secondly, I will review his alternative for the traditional conception of what it means to be a human being. And thirdly I will discuss the viability of his alternative by comparing it with Dooyeweerd’s transcendental philosophy.
Johannes Duns Scotus (1266–1308) In Het Middelpunt
Authors: Groenewoud G.
Published: November 2012

Het is alom bekend in de vaderlandse wereld van theologie en wijsbegeerte dat tussen de twee namen die op dit boek prijken een hechte band bestaat. Niet alleen hoort de auteur van dit boek tot het selecte gezelschap van geleerden die het werk van de in de titel genoemde denker grondig kennen, hij verenigt die kennis ook met een diepe eerbied. Antonie Vos steekt zijn hoogachting voor Johannes Duns Scotus niet onder stoelen of banken. In het woord vooraf zegt hij vol pathos: Tevens druk ik ... mijn persoonlijke bewondering en liefde uit voor de jong gestorven John Duns zelf, de Schotse en Oxfordse broeder, eenzaam genie bij de gratie Gods in Christus.” Het boek is opgenomen in de serie Kerkhistorische Monografieën, een serie die figuren en thema’s uit de kerkgeschiedenis van de begintijd tot heden behandelt. In deze reeks worden monografieën opgenomen “die wetenschappelijk verantwoord zijn en leesbaar voor een brede kring van geïnteresseerden.” Dit boek, zo kan men uit de titel afleiden, wil de lezer informeren over deze denker en, zo blijkt reeds uit het voorwoord, het belang van zijn denken onderstrepen voor de gehele geschiedenis van de theologie en filosofie. Vos is namelijk van oordeel: “Zowel in katholiek als in reformatorisch opzicht vormt het denken van Duns Scotus de spil van de theologiegeschiedenis” (v).
Schepping, Transcendentie, Religie
Authors: Dengerink J.D.
Published: November 2012

Het ligt in de bedoeling in deze bijdrage enkele dieptepeilingen te doen terzake van de in de titel aangegeven noties, welke alle, zij het niet steeds onder deze benaming, een rol hebben gespeeld in het westerse denken sinds de Griekse oudheid. Onder schepping verstaan we een niet te door-gronden oorsprong en fundament van alles wat bestaat. We stuiten daarbij op een ‘laatste’ of een ‘eerste’, waarachter we niet kunnen terugvragen en dat niet nader analyseerbaar is, zij het dat wij daarvan ook wijsgerig wel weet mogen en kunnen hebben en wel in de vorm van een verwijzende idee. Transcendentie en transcenderen zijn het beste te vertalen als te buiten of te boven gaan. Daarin gaat het nog om een zeer formele aanduiding van standen van zaken. De kernvraag die ons in haar beantwoording moet verder helpen is: Wie/wat transcendeert wie/wat?
Comments on Anticipations
Authors: Stafleu M.D.
Published: November 2012

Anticipating a future theory of change, this paper comments on the phenomenon of anticipations in Dooyeweerd’s systematic philosophy. The idea that reality itself or human experience of reality has some kind of a layered structure is put forward by several philosophers, but the insight that each aspect refers intimately to the others is uniquely Dooyeweerdian. It concerns an essential property of the structure of the modal aspects, each of which displays a ‘meaning nucleus’, expressive of its original meaning, besides retrocipations and anticipations, referring to the other aspects. Dooyeweerd assigns the aspects a linear temporal order, hence the distinction between retroand anticipations. In fact, each aspect is considered to be an aspect of time as well as an aspect of being, a mode of human experience, and a principle of scientific explanation.
Filosofie of Theologie?
Authors: van Tongeren Paul
Published: November 2012

Is er een verschil tussen theologie en filosofie, en zo ja, waarin ligt dat verschil? Dat lijkt me de kern te zijn van de punten die Johan van der Hoeven als commentaar naar voren brengt in zijn zeer sympathieke bespreking van mijn bijdrage aan het cursusboek van de Open Universiteit. Ik zal proberen duidelijk te maken waarom ik denk dat dit de kern is, hoewel hij zelf een andere “hoofdvraag” lijkt te formuleren. Maar eerst twee opmerkingen vooraf.
Can the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice Enforce the African Charter Replicas of the Non-Justiciable Chapter II Human Rights Provisions of the Nigerian Constitution against Nigeria?
Authors: Enabulele Amos O. , Osaro Ewere Anthony
Published: November 2012

This article highlights a major source of tension between the Supplementary Protocol of the Economic Community of West Africa States Community Court of Justice (ECOWAS CCJ) and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (CFRN), in relation to the enforcement of economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights against Nigeria, as manifested in a recent decision of the ECOWAS CCJ in Registered Trustees of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) v Federal Republic of Nigeria and Universal Basic Education Commission. The focus of this article on the tension is both from the perspective of Nigerian law and of the ECOWAS CCJ. It argues that while the CFRN cannot deprive the ECOWAS CCJ of the jurisdiction expressly given to it by its Protocols, the CFRN does have implications for the enforcement of any decision of the ECOWAS CCJ that offends its provisions within the CFRN sphere of superiority.
Grand Princess Olga of Rus’ Shows the Bird: Her ‘Christian Falcon’ Emblem
Authors: Kovalev Roman K.
Published: November 2012

This study attempts to interpret the symbols (a falcon “crowned” with a cross, a key, and a Riurikid bident) found on a newly discovered tenth-century trapezoidal pendant from Pskov. Aside from a handful of imitation dirham coins that carry identical images of the falcon, no other parallels of these symbols or their combination have yet been discovered. Based on various sources, it is argued that the pendant was jointly issued to a Rus’ administrator-revenue collector by Grand Princess Olga and her son Sviatoslav at the time of his minority but not prior to Olga’s administrative reforms in the late 940s, i.e., ca. 950. While the bident was Sviatoslav’s dynastic emblem (reserved for reigning male Riurikids), Olga’s authority over the realm and her minor son was represented by way of a key (latchlifter) and a falcon. The key carried legal and possibly religious symbolism of right over the domain, while the falcon represented religious as well as royal authority. But, both emblems can be connected with the goddess Freyja – the chief female divinity in the Nordic pantheon – and Olga adopted them as her symbols in ca. 950. Based on her choice of these symbols and other circumstantial evidence, it is contended that Olga was a devotee of the goddess and practiced her cult prior to her conversion to Christianity (i.e., she was a vǫlva). Indeed, it is possible that Olga was the supreme priestess of Freyja, or her close equivalent Slavic goddess Mokosh, for the Rus’ state prior to her stepping down from the position as regent and her official conversion to Christianity.
When Trying Hard Isn’t Natural
Authors: Smith Jessi L. , Lewis Karyn L. , Hawthorne Lauren , Hodges Sara D.
Published: November 2012

Feeling like one exerts more effort than others may influence women’s feelings of belonging with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and impede their motivation. In Study 1, women STEM graduate students perceived they exerted more effort than peers to succeed. For women, but not men, this effort expenditure perception predicted a decreased sense of belonging, which in turn decreased motivation. Study 2 tested whether the male-dominated status of a field triggers such effort expectations. We created a fictional “eco-psychology” graduate program, which when depicted as male-dominated resulted in women expecting to exert relatively more effort and decreased their interest in pursuing the field. Study 3 found emphasizing effort as expected (and normal) to achieve success elevated women’s feelings of belonging and future motivation. Results suggest effort expenditure perceptions are an indicator women use to assess their fit in STEM. Implications for enhancing women’s participation in STEM are discussed.
Structure of the type IV secretion system in different strains of Anaplasma phagocytophilum
Authors: Al-Khedery Basima , Lundgren Anna M , Stuen Snorre , Granquist Erik G , Munderloh Ulrike G , Nelson Curtis M , Alleman A Rick , Mahan Suman M , Barbet Anthony F
Published: November 2012

Background

Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an intracellular organism in the Order Rickettsiales that infects diverse animal species and is causing an emerging disease in humans, dogs and horses. Different strains have very different cell tropisms and virulence. For example, in the U.S., strains have been described that infect ruminants but not dogs or rodents. An intriguing question is how the strains of A. phagocytophilum differ and what different genome loci are involved in cell tropisms and/or virulence. Type IV secretion systems (T4SS) are responsible for translocation of substrates across the cell membrane by mechanisms that require contact with the recipient cell. They are especially important in organisms such as the Rickettsiales which require T4SS to aid colonization and survival within both mammalian and tick vector cells. We determined the structure of the T4SS in 7 strains from the U.S. and Europe and revised the sequence of the repetitive virB6 locus of the human HZ strain.

Results

Although in all strains the T4SS conforms to the previously described split loci for vir genes, there is great diversity within these loci among strains. This is particularly evident in the virB2 and virB6 which are postulated to encode the secretion channel and proteins exposed on the bacterial surface. VirB6-4 has an unusual highly repetitive structure and can have a molecular weight greater than 500,000. For many of the virs, phylogenetic trees position A. phagocytophilum strains infecting ruminants in the U.S. and Europe distant from strains infecting humans and dogs in the U.S.

Conclusions

Our study reveals evidence of gene duplication and considerable diversity of T4SS components in strains infecting different animals. The diversity in virB2 is in both the total number of copies, which varied from 8 to 15 in the herein characterized strains, and in the sequence of each copy. The diversity in virB6 is in the sequence of each of the 4 copies in the single locus and the presence of varying numbers of repetitive units in virB6-3 and virB6-4. These data suggest that the T4SS should be investigated further for a potential role in strain virulence of A. phagocytophilum.
Comparative genome analysis of 19 Ureaplasma urealyticum and Ureaplasma parvumstrains
Authors: Paralanov Vanya , Lu Jin , Duffy Lynn B , Crabb Donna M , Shrivastava Susmita , Methé Barbara A , Inman Jason , Yooseph Shibu , Xiao Li , Cassell Gail H , Waites Ken B , Glass John I
Published: November 2012

Background

Ureaplasma urealyticum (UUR) and Ureaplasma parvum (UPA) are sexually transmitted bacteria among humans implicated in a variety of disease states including but not limited to: nongonococcal urethritis, infertility, adverse pregnancy outcomes, chorioamnionitis, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia in neonates. There are 10 distinct serotypes of UUR and 4 of UPA. Efforts to determine whether difference in pathogenic potential exists at the ureaplasma serovar level have been hampered by limitations of antibody-based typing methods, multiple cross-reactions and poor discriminating capacity in clinical samples containing two or more serovars.

Results

We determined the genome sequences of the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) type strains of all UUR and UPA serovars as well as four clinical isolates of UUR for which we were not able to determine serovar designation. UPA serovars had 0.75−0.78 Mbp genomes and UUR serovars were 0.84−0.95 Mbp. The original classification of ureaplasma isolates into distinct serovars was largely based on differences in the major ureaplasma surface antigen called the multiple banded antigen (MBA) and reactions of human and animal sera to the organisms. Whole genome analysis of the 14 serovars and the 4 clinical isolates showed the mba gene was part of a large superfamily, which is a phase variable gene system, and that some serovars have identical sets of mba genes. Most of the differences among serovars are hypothetical genes, and in general the two species and 14 serovars are extremely similar at the genome level.

Conclusions

Comparative genome analysis suggests UUR is more capable of acquiring genes horizontally, which may contribute to its greater virulence for some conditions. The overwhelming evidence of extensive horizontal gene transfer among these organisms from our previous studies combined with our comparative analysis indicates that ureaplasmas exist as quasi-species rather than as stable serovars in their native environment. Therefore, differential pathogenicity and clinical outcome of a ureaplasmal infection is most likely not on the serovar level, but rather may be due to the presence or absence of potential pathogenicity factors in an individual ureaplasma clinical isolate and/or patient to patient differences in terms of autoimmunity and microbiome.