bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Psychology as Mental Health Practice in the United States, 1945–1980
Authors: Pickren Wade E. , Farreras Ingrid G.
Published: July 2020

In a relatively brief period of time, the discipline of psychology in the United States changed from being mostly concerned with its status as a legitimate science, qua physics or biology, to a rapidly growing field caught up in the tensions between academic science and the practice of psychology as a mental health profession. The numerical growth of the field’s members was heavily concentrated in the professional areas of mental health application. This was due primarily to the changed conditions of postwar life and the concerns of policymakers about the mental health of citizens in a dynamic, fast-changing, and fast-paced society. Government funding for psychology dramatically increased, especially funds for training clinical psychologists and for conducting research on mental health problems. It was not long before many of the clinical psychologists moved away from solely academic work and into the private practice of providing psychotherapy to clients. The discipline’s main organizational body of the time was the American Psychological Association, which came under pressure to allocate intellectual, organizational, and financial resources to the support of its practitioner members. One of the most intense battles of this period was that of creating different training models for clinical psychology. The early postwar model placed priority on training clinical psychology students to be scientists first, but by the 1960s, the demand for greater emphasis on training for practice had to be addressed for the field to remain coherent. Along with the internal tensions, psychology had to come to terms with external pressures as well. Among its challenges were those from competing professions, such as medicine, to its legal and cultural authority to provide professional services. Psychology eventually won those battles, but only after a state-by-state fight. Psychology was also presented with the challenges of a society wrestling with social problems, such as the demands for equal civil rights and opportunities. By the late 1960s, there were increasing demands for inclusion of students and faculty of color in graduate training and while there were some successes, there remained challenges that endured into the 21st century.
Selling Sex in a Global Context
Authors: Wodda Aimee , Bhat Meghna
Published: July 2020

Commercial sex continues to be an object of debate in the realm of criminological and criminal justice. The regulation of commercial sex in a global context varies due to local law, culture, and custom. Global criminolegal responses to selling sex include criminalization, decriminalization, abolition, neo-abolition, and legalization. In recent decades, global public policymakers have become increasingly concerned with the public health aspects associated with negative outcomes related to the criminalization of the purchase, facilitation, and/or sale of sex. These concerns include violence against those who sell sex, stigma when attempting to access healthcare and social services, increased risk of sexually transmitted infections or diseases (STIs or STDs) including HIV/AIDS, and economic vulnerability that leaves many who sell sex unable to negotiate the use of condoms and at risk of police arrest for carrying condoms. Those most at risk of harm tend to be young people, LGBTQ populations, and people who are racial or ethnic minorities within their communities—these are often intersecting identities. Organizations such as Amnesty International, the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, Human Rights Watch, UN AIDS, and the World Health Organization recommend decriminalization of commercial sex in order to reduce stigma and increase positive health outcomes. Scholars have also examined the challenges faced by migrant sex workers and the problematic effects of being labeled a victim of trafficking. Contemporary strategies geared toward reducing harm for those who sell sex tend to focus on rights issues and how they affect the well-being of those who sell sex.
Role of Puberty on Adult Behaviors
Authors: Delevich Kristen , Wilbrecht Linda
Published: July 2020

Puberty onset marks the beginning of adolescence and an organism’s transition to adulthood. Across species, adolescence is a dynamic period of maturation for brain and behavior. Pubertal processes, including the increase in gonadal hormone production, or gonadarche, can influence a broad array of neural processes and circuits to ultimately shape adult behavior. Decades of research in rodent models have shown that gonadal hormones at puberty promote adult-typical patterns of behavior across social, affective, and cognitive realms. Importantly, hormonal activation of sex-specific patterns of adult behavior relies on sexual differentiation of the brain around the time of birth, mediated by testicular hormones in males – and lack thereof in females. While it was originally believed that gonadal hormones play a purely activational role at puberty, studies in the early 21st century provide examples where the timing and relative levels of gonadal hormones exert long-lasting, or organizational effects on brain and behavior. In this way, adolescent exposure to gonadal hormones can orchestrate brain and body changes in unison and in some cases tune how the brain responds to gonadal hormones in adulthood. Notably, many of the effects of puberty on behavior may occur indirectly by altering sensitivity to environmental events and an organism’s ability to respond to or learn from experience. These insights from the animal literature provide a framework for understanding how puberty may influence the maturation of complex behaviors and modify risk or resilience to mental health disorders during human adolescence. In sum, puberty interacts with genetics, early life organizational effects of gonadal hormones, experience, and learning processes to shape behavior in adulthood.
Public Pedagogy Theories, Methodologies, and Ethics
Authors: O'Malley Michael P. , Sandlin Jennifer A. , Burdick Jake
Published: July 2020

Public pedagogy is a theoretical concept focusing on forms, processes, and sites of education and learning occurring beyond formal schooling and practices. Scholars have drawn from the theoretical arenas of cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and artistic/aesthetic approaches to learning in the public sphere. Focusing on both the hegemonic and the resistant aspects of public educational sites, educational scholars employing the term typically explicate its feminist, critical, cultural, performative, and/or activist pedagogical dimensions. Other scholars studying public pedagogy take up the challenge of redefining education in order to deinstitutionalize its conceptualization and uncouple it from its automatic associations with schools; and yet others take these criticisms further to explore posthuman reconceptualizations of pedagogy.

Public pedagogy scholarship between 2011-2019 deploys various imaginings of the nature of the public, bringing divergent yet needed specificity to inquiry. Conceptualizations of public pedagogues and intellectualism in this time period focus less on a heroic figure advocating for marginalized groups and more on educative interruptions of public space, on popular yet disqualified knowledges, and on communal engagement that organizes around shared dissent from marginalization and alliances across difference. Theoretical and methodological investments in the study of public pedagogies have expanded to highlight poststructural and postcolonial radical critiques of the subject and nationalized legacies of colonialism. There is greater attention to the processes of becoming publics, with an emergent turn to decolonial, queer of color, posthumanist, and similar frameworks. Understandings of the pedagogical processes of public pedagogy have emphasized Marxist critical perspectives on ideological transfer; embodied, performative, and aesthetic relational dimensions; and posthumanist efforts to complicate ordained and boundaried familiar narratives, inclusive of viewing the public as a plurality of relations constituted by the human and other than human. Two productive tensions that call for further exploration in public scholarship involve the need to problematize and exceed its colonialist and humanist origins, and amplifying a relationship between scholarship and activism so that public pedagogies outside and inside institutional spaces foster an ethical vocation of the public sphere.
Educational Policy for Postcolonial Africa
Authors: Bifuh-Ambe Elizabeth
Published: July 2020

Postcolonialism emerged after World War II as a broad school of thought covering a variety of disciplines, such as politics, sociology, history, and culture; however, postcolonial educational perspectives have risen to prominence as one of the main themes in postcolonialist theory because of the important role that education played as the vehicle through which western cultural hegemony and assumptions about knowledge were promoted, protected, and maintained in Africa. Although independence may have granted more groups access to education and deepened human resource capital, education policies were still heavily steeped in Western traditions and dismissive of indigenous cultural, linguistic, ideological, and philosophical ethos. Postcolonial orthodoxy maintains that African education systems must be understood within the broader political, cultural, economic, and social institutional contexts of Africa. Afrocentric scholars, who form part of the larger postcolonial discourse, call for contextually relevant education, and a return to “the African experience,” as the source and foundation of all forms of knowledge. Comparative and international education scholars advocate for globalized education policy perspectives that take into consideration the actions of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO, and UNICEF, since these organs determine the economic life sources of many countries and increasingly shape policy debates and agendas in Africa. Africa must also contend with global forces such as the spread of information and communication technologies, the inescapable spread of capitalism from western European countries, the economic expansion of Eastern countries like China, Japan, and India, and the migration of Africans into the metropole. These factors forge shared ecological spaces among nationals in a global village, dramatically shaping lives and changing the purpose of education. If the goal of education is the full development of human personality to live successfully and peaceably with others in a world that is interconnected, then a hybrid education paradigm could be the solution to the education policy conundrum for postcolonial Africa. Hybridity is the combination of Western education ethos and indigenous African philosophies; a dynamic process of strategic integration and the adaptation of a variety of cultural patterns and understandings from both worlds.
Activism and Social Movement Building in Curriculum
Authors: Gorlewski Julie , Nuñez Isabel
Published: July 2020

Curriculum, while often conceived as a static entity delivered as a neutral set of facts arranged in disciplinary categories, is, in reality, a pedagogical artifact—a product generated as a result of decisions made by a range of stakeholders who represent different cultural imperatives linked to contested perspectives about the purposes of school. Students’ and teachers’ experiences of school, then, are dialogic performances of a curriculum that promotes various levels of power and privilege, as well as understandings of equity and diversity. Therefore, whether or not it is recognized, the curriculum delivered in schools serves to either maintain or interrupt the status quo. Given the number of students who participate in public education, curriculum contributes a great deal to shaping the national narrative. Curriculum contributes to social movements, and the nature of the curriculum determines the direction of the movement.

Since curriculum development and implementation involves myriad decisions, influence is wielded by those with decision-making power. Social status and cultural capital, both of which are historically linked with political power, largely determine who makes curricular decisions, as well as how decisions are made. These conditions pose challenges for those who have been historically marginalized within educational institutions. Despite obstacles related to systemic inequities, different forms of curriculum can and do contribute to the creation and perpetuation of social movements. Moreover, educators who understand how educational institutions function, how curricular changes occur, and how curriculum can be a source of and vehicle for change can create conditions for transformative activist curricular movements.
Educational Innovation in Higher Education
Authors: Kintu Mugenyi Justice , Aydin Aslan , Zhu Chang
Published: July 2020

Education systems are required to train human capital on skills befitting knowledge-based economies. This calls for innovative systems in education to meet the ever-increasing demand for skilled workforces in these economies. Education systems should enhance quality in teaching and learning processes and prepare future citizens for life and work through innovative policies. In education systems, higher education may be more innovative than primary and secondary education levels as higher education is at the center of education and research focusing on innovation and creativity. In this regard, institutions of higher education encounter innovation trends and challenges in the era of the knowledge-based economy. Innovation trends are currently climbing upward and are mainly driven by factors such as the need for automation, globalization, and competitive waves of change. Economic development with regard to these innovation trends is closely associated with countries’ ability to produce, acquire, and apply technical and socioeconomic development. The main challenges lie in the rate at which countries are advancing vis-à-vis social development trends. The Social development trends do not seem to match up with the speedy onset of global acceleration, the processes in developing and developed countries, and economic imbalances that occur within the developed world itself. There are implementation difficulties regarding innovations as well as selecting the relevant innovation to apply in some contexts. Adoption of innovation is another challenge, especially when it comes to changing mindsets toward innovations like technology in education. This applies to the developing world as well as to infrastructural impediments common in the African and other developing economy contexts, such as Turkey. To overcome these challenges, research-intensive universities could promote research and innovation. Some examples of innovation in education include e-learning, audio-media usage for distance learning, online education, MOOCs, blended learning, and information communication technology utilization. Teachers should be trained as competent users of these innovative technologies to initiate and sustain innovation in education. Once harnessed, educational innovation could catch on rapidly and improve service delivery in educational institutions. Developed and developing countries should work together to foster and mass produce these technologies in higher education institutions.
Parent-School-Community Partnerships in Mental Health
Authors: Low Sew Kim , Kok Jin Kuan
Published: July 2020

There is a global push for a comprehensive school mental health system to meet the mental health needs of children and youths in school. To respond effectively to these needs, parents, schools, and communities must recognize the value of collaborating as partners. The term parent-school-community partnership refers to the genuine collaboration among families, schools, communities, individuals, organizations, businesses, and government and nongovernment agencies to assist students’ emotional, social, physical, intellectual, and psychological development. To realize the goals of effective partnership in promoting school mental health of children and youths, ongoing assessment of the schools’ needs, and the available resources of local, state, and national communities, agencies, and organizations is necessary for the provision of effective partnership interventions. In partnership, parents, educators, and community members work together and share responsibilities for the development of the “whole child.” A multitier system of partnership support could be beneficial in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of school mental health interventions and evidence-based programs.
Women in Fashion and Textiles in Africa
Authors: Ryan MacKenzie Moon
Published: July 2020

Women have long played a large role in the production and consumption of fashion and textiles in Africa. Women spin, weave, dye, embroider, and otherwise create textiles using specific technologies. They also adorn themselves in jewelry, beadwork, and headwear; some also choose to veil. Women serve as designers and seamstresses to tailor clothing from textiles, and the dominant buyers and sellers of textiles are women. As such, textiles and clothing play a defining role in women’s wealth. Textiles often feature prominently at momentous occasions throughout the lives of women, for example at adolescent rites, engagement and marriage, births of children, and as burial shrouds. Women use dress practices—including wrapped textiles, tailored clothing, and personal adornment—to display aspects of their identities.

Research has explored women’s varied roles related to textiles and fashion in Africa since the late 19th century. Women in the colonial era used their clothing choices to take advantage of new opportunities and contest long-standing and newly introduced strictures. During the independence era, struggles for freedom and nationalism informed clothing practices. A rise of women fashion designers in the mid-20th century paved the way for contemporary proliferations in both everyday and high fashion apparel. From accessible secondhand clothing to exclusive runway collections, African women in the 21st century continue to innovate in dress practices, which demonstrates African women’s creativity and dedication to style at all social strata. Therefore, how women in Africa have dressed themselves in fashion and textiles illuminate women’s agency.
Origins of Writing in Northeastern Africa
Authors: Darnell John Coleman
Published: July 2020

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script is one of the longest attested continuous uses of a writing system in world history. Between the late fourth century CE and the early nineteenth century, knowledge of the hieroglyphic script was lost, and the complexities of its mixed system of phonetic and ideographic signs delayed decipherment until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the work of Jean-François Champollion and other pioneers. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing originated between 3300 and 3100 bce, on the basis of evidence attested in funerary and petroglyphic contexts; the early date of phonetic hieroglyphic writing in Upper Egypt confirms the independent development of the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing systems. Rather than emerging abruptly and fully formed during the reign of a Dynasty 0 ruler c. 3250 bce, hieroglyphs appear to have a millennium-long “proto-history.” Decorated ceramics, small inscribed objects, and a large corpus of Upper Egyptian and Nubian rock art indicate that visual communication prior to true writing in Upper Egypt could express key early political and religious concepts, developing a form of “iconographic syntax.” Careful examination of predynastic iconography thus provides the conceptual missing link in the origins of writing in Northeastern Africa. The marginal environments of ancient Egypt—the Western Desert and Sinai Peninsula—also preserve evidence for the development of the world’s first alphabetic script, a writing system that emerged c. 1800 bce from contact between ancient Egyptian scribes and Semitic speakers who participated in Egyptian expeditions, with signs deriving from Egyptian scripts. During the 2nd century bce, the Meroitic script, with signs also originating in both cursive and hieroglyphic Egyptian scripts, developed in the ancient Nubian kingdom of Meroe and remained in use for as many as 700 years.
Algerian Civil War
Authors: Daoudi Anissa
Published: July 2020

While the literature on the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) is extensive, studies on the armed conflict between the Algerian military and the armed Islamic groups, which cost the lives of more than 200,000 remain insignificant. The complex intersections between the political, social, and economic factors leading to the war in the 1990s show that the critical junctures began after independence in 1962. These junctures continued through the 1970s (Arabization movement) and 1980s (1988 Berber Spring), which together can help in contextualizing the Algerian Civil War. These different periods reveal the history of the National Liberation Front (FLN) as a one-party rule and contextualize its historical strong relationship with the Algerian National Army, revealing the power dynamics between the two and the roots of the struggle over the country’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the 1980s were marked by the youth riots in 1988 (Berber Spring) and their crucial role in what president Chadli Benjedid presented as a political reform program, including a new constitution, which ended the political monopoly of the FLN and saw the emergence of more than thirty new political parties. In January 1992, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) overwhelmingly won the municipal elections, with a much larger number of votes than the ruling FLN in the first round. However, instead of accepting the Islamists’ victory, the military promptly stepped in and cancelled parliamentary elections, banned the FIS, and arrested its leaders. After President Mohamed Boudiaf’s assassination, the government imposed a national state of emergency and used a combination of strategies including economic reforms as well tough laws to repress the Islamic armed groups and control the situation. The idea that the armed Islamic groups started after the official ban of the FIS has been contested. Two parallel strategies were adopted by the successive governments of the 1990s: one was based on the repression of the FIS, who in turn retaliated with car bombs and assassinations of women, intellectuals, police, and military forces; and the other was based on the introduction of social and economic reforms. The country went into cycles of extreme violence for more than a decade, in which the negotiations between the Islamists and the military were not interrupted. President Liamine Zaroual’s amnesty initiative, Rahma, was unsuccessful, yet it was the basis upon which his successor, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, proposed his project of amnesty, known as the Civil Concord, in 1999, later replaced by the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in 2005. Bouteflika resigned on April 2, 2019, after months of mass protest called the Revolution of Smiles, which started on February 22, 2019, against his candidacy to the presidency for a fifth mandate.
The Economics of International Wage Differentials and Migration
Authors: Pritchett Lant , Hani Farah
Published: July 2020

The key question for the economics of international migration is whether observed real wage differentials across countries for workers with identical intrinsic productivity represent an economic inefficiency sustained by legal barriers to labor mobility between geographies. A simple comparison of the real wages of workers with the same level of formal schooling or performing similar occupations across countries shows massive gaps between rich and poorer countries. These gaps persist after adjusting for observed and unobserved human capital characteristics, suggesting a “place premium”—or space-specific wage differentials that are not due to intrinsic worker productivity but rather are due to a misallocation of labor. If wage gaps are not due to intrinsic worker productivity, then the incentive for workers to move to richer countries is high. The idea of a place premium is corroborated by macroeconomic evidence. National accounts data show large cross-country output per worker differences, driven by the divergence of total factor productivity. The lack of convergence in total factor productivity and corresponding spatial productivity differentials create differences in the marginal product of factors, and hence persistent gaps in the wages of equal productivity workers. These differentials can equalize with factor flows; however their persistence and large magnitude in the case of labor, suggest legal barriers to migration restricting labor flows are in fact constraining significant return on human capital, and leaving billions in unrealized gains to the world’s workers and global economy. A relaxation of these barriers would generate worker welfare gains that dwarf gold-standard poverty reduction programs.
Well-Being and Mental Wellness
Authors: Bodeker Gerard , Pecorelli Sergio , Choy Lawrence , Guerra Ranieri , Kariippanon Kishan
Published: July 2020

The scientific landscape of wellbeing and mental wellness has developed significantly through interdisciplinary cross-pollination by researchers in molecular genetics, neuroscience, sociology, economics, including traditional and complementary medicine. The public health challenge lies in using this diverse body of scientific evidence to reframe wellbeing and mental wellness within a 21st-century global public health framework that incorporates evidence-based modalities alongside Western biomedical practice. Evidence on modalities, case studies, policy examples, and emerging directions in societal objectives in wellbeing and mental wellness are discussed in the context of a way forward that focuses on individual self-care, development of resilience, lifespan pathways for wellbeing, and a different economic calculus in framing public health priorities and policies.
Street Science: Community Knowledge for Global Health Equity
Authors: Corburn Jason
Published: July 2020

Street science is the processes used by community residents to understand, document, and take action to address the environmental health issues they are experiencing. Street science is an increasingly essential process in global urban health, as more and more people live in complex environments where physical and social inequalities create cumulative disease burdens. Street science builds on a long tradition of critical public health that values local knowledge, participatory action research, and community-driven science, sometimes referred to as “citizen science.” Street scientists often partner with professional scientists, but science from the street does not necessarily fit into professional models, variables or other standards of positivist data. Street science is not one method, but rather an approach where residents are equally expert as professional scientists, and together they co-produce evidence for action. In this way, street science challenges conventional notions in global health and urban planning, which tend to divorce technical issues from their social setting and discourage a plurality of participants from engaging in everything from problem setting to decision-making. Street science does not romanticize local or community knowledge as always more accurate or superior to other ways of knowing and doing, but it also recognizes that local knowledge acts as an oppositional discourse that gives voice to the often silent suffering of disadvantaged people. At its best, street science can offer a framework for a new urban health science that incorporates community knowledge and expertise to ensure our cities and communities promote what is already working, confront the inequities experienced by the poor and vulnerable, and use this evidence to transform the physical and social conditions where people live, learn, work, and play.
Levallois
Authors: Chazan Michael
Published: July 2020

Levallois refers to a way of making stone tools that is a significant component of the technological adaptations of both Neanderthals and early modern humans. Although distinctive Levallois artifacts were identified already in the 19th century, a consensus on the definition of the Levallois and clear criteria for distinguishing Levallois from non-Levallois artifacts remain elusive. At a general level, Levallois is one variant on prepared core technology. In a prepared core approach to stone tool manufacture, the worked material (the core) is configured and maintained to allow for the production of detached pieces (flakes) whose morphology is constrained by the production process. The difficulty for archaeologists is that Levallois refers to a particular process of manufacture rather than a discrete finality. The study of Levallois exposes limitations of typological approaches to artifact analysis and forces a consideration of the challenges in creating a solid empirical basis for characterizing technological processes.
Popular Music since 1945 and the Growth of the Brazilian Culture Industries since 1945
Authors: Goldschmitt K. E. , Vicente Eduardo
Published: July 2020

The period following the end of Getúlio Vargas’s second government (1951–1954) saw a massive expansion of the media industries, with popular music in particular becoming an important cultural touchstone. A major feature of the postwar period was the politicization of music and other media such as radio, television, and social media. Other salient trends include the incorporation of international musical influences (especially jazz, rock, and countercultural postures) into Brazilian musical production starting in the late-1950s, and the rise and prominence of regional genres in the national discourse. Along with the fluctuations in the national economy, the recording industry expanded and contracted. Brazilian media industry infrastructures have taken part in artistic expression, including both major multinational record labels as well as independent record companies. Popular music production has regularly responded to the social and economic upheavals that have characterized Brazil since the end of World War II, including the military dictatorship (1964–1985). While much of the international reputation of Brazilian music in this period relies on the popularity of bossa nova, the history of the country’s media industries shows how other genres such as música popular brasileira, rock, brega, and sertanejo adapted to public tastes. Even during the height of the military regime’s repression, the efforts of record companies and recording artists saw the expansion of Brazilian popular music into still more diverse sounds, a trend that continued through the first decades of the 21st century. Interdisciplinary perspectives, including communication studies, history, anthropology, and ethnomusicology, show some possible new routes for music and cultural industry research in Brazil.
Sex-Denoting Patterns of Word Formation in the Romance Languages
Authors: Rainer Franz
Published: July 2020

Since sex distinctions are a basic fact of nature and society, any natural language must make available means to refer separately to males and females of humans as well as animals, to the extent that sex is salient or relevant with reference to animals. In each language, these means comprise a peculiar mix of the patterns used in enriching the lexicon, ranging from syntax to compounding, affixation, conversion, and sometimes devices that are even more exotic. In a minority of the languages of the world, such as Latin and its daughters, the distinction between the sexes has even been built into the grammar in the form of gender systems whose rules of gender assignment rely heavily on it for animate nouns. In these languages, the gender system itself can also be put to use in the creation of designations for males and females.

As is well known, the Indo-European gender system in origin reflected the animate/inanimate distinction, while the classification of animates along the feminine/masculine axis was a later development whose gradual expansion can still be observed in Latin and Romance. The demise, in spoken Latin, of one central pillar of feminization, namely, the suffix -trix, as well as other disruptive factors such as sound change and language contact, brought instability into the system. Each Latin and later Romance variety therefore had to adapt its system in order to cope with communicative needs concerning the expression of the male/female distinction. Different varieties did so in different ways, creating a large array of systems of sex-denoting patterns. In principle, it would be desirable to deal with each variety’s system on its own terms, describing as exactly as possible the domain of each pattern at the different stages of development as well as the mutual relationships among competing patterns and the mechanisms behind the changes. However, such an approach is unrealistic in the absence of detailed descriptions for many varieties, most notably the dialects.
Biochar: An Emerging Carbon Abatement and Soil Management Strategy
Authors: Morgan Holly , Sohi Saran , Shackley Simon
Published: July 2020

Biochar is a charcoal that is used to improve land rather than as a fuel. Biochar is produced from biomass, usually through the process of pyrolysis. Due to the molecular structure and strength of the chemical bonds, the carbon in biochar is in a stable form and not readily mineralized to CO2 (as is the fate of most of the carbon in biomass). Because the carbon in biochar derives (via photosynthesis) from atmospheric CO2, biochar has the potential to be a net negative carbon technology/carbon dioxide removal option. Biochar is not a single homogeneous material. Its composition and properties (including longevity) differ according to feedstock (source biomass), pyrolysis (production) conditions, and its intended application. This variety and heterogeneity have so far eluded an agreed methodology for calculating biochar’s carbon abatement.

Meta-analyses increasingly summarize the effects of biochar in pot and field trials. These results illuminate that biochar may have important agronomic benefits in poorer acidic tropical and subtropical soils, with one study indicating an average 25% yield increase across all trials. In temperate soils the impact is modest to trivial and the same study found no significant impact on crop yield arising from biochar amendment. There is much complexity in matching biochar to suitable soil-crop applications and this challenge has defied development of simple heuristics to enable implementation. Biochar has great potential as a carbon management technology and as a soil amendment. The lack of technically rigorous methodologies for measuring recalcitrant carbon limits development of the technology according to this specific purpose.
Legal Regimes for Sharing Transboundary Water
Authors: Tignino Mara
Published: July 2020

The law applicable to transboundary waters is a corpus juris that dates back to the 19th century. It originally focused on regulating the uses of transboundary watercourses for navigation and commercial transport. It was crafted primarily on the European and North American continents, and it has gradually become universally applicable, thereby taking a new shape. The regulation of transboundary waters was rooted in a strict dynamic of coexistence between sovereign entities: each acted as it saw fit with respect to “its” portion of the watercourse, which was treated at the same time as the image of the territory to which it is attached.

The need for regulation only arose when uses affected the riparian states’ exercise of their “sovereign rights.” Since the 1990s, the law has tried to break away from this “classical” logic to make room for more community-based and even “ecosystem” notions based on aspects of joint management, and sometimes even pool of shared resources.

A number of treaties have been negotiated and adopted by states bordering transboundary watercourses in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. They reflect, and sometimes even develop, some of the principles and rules enacted in broader forums, such as the United Nations (UN) or its Economic Commission for Europe, or the European Union. These efforts show the steps taken in the field of transboundary waters management, but they also reveal some of its limits, as they do not always comprehend all facets of water management and protection.
Trauma and Stress-Related Disorders
Authors: Basham Kathryn
Published: July 2020

Traumatic events have permeated our lives throughout history and across the globe, inflicting profound losses on individuals, families, and communities during warfare, armed conflict, natural disasters, and relational violence. Although many survivors of these events harness their resilience and cope without long-term negative mental health effects, others experience a range of physical and mental health conditions, including trauma- and stress-related disorders. With an emphasis placed on adult trauma survivors, the conditions of posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, adjustment disorders, complex trauma, and other stress-related conditions have been explored within a social context. Starting with a historical context, the following topics were addressed. The typologies of trauma were introduced including the definitions of Type I trauma—a single discrete event including natural catastrophes; Type II trauma—chronic and repetitive traumatic physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse; and Type IIII—severe and multiple abusive events with multiple perpetrators. Historical and intergenerational trauma reflect a collective of complex traumatic events throughout generations that resonate in subsequent generations in terms of ungrieved losses and survivor guilt, among other psychosocial issues. Cultural and racial trauma include chronic verbal and/or physical assaults that involve racialized bigotry. Combat trauma involves a combination of deployment stressors that have affected servicemembers in distinct ways with “signature injuries” associated with different wartime conflicts. The next section addresses the current typology of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—V, noting the changes in diagnostic criteria, in particular related to the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mental health responses to trauma vary a great deal based on a balance of risk and protective factors, often revealing noteworthy resilience and the absence of negative aftereffects. The neurobiological effects of trauma are addressed along with mental health conditions or disorders (e.g., acute stress response, PTSD, complex trauma, and anxiety disorders). Specific phase-oriented and multimodality treatment interventions are reviewed that focus specifically on the mental health conditions presented. These approaches are research-informed, culturally responsive, and theoretically grounded Finally, the responses experienced by clinicians who work with traumatized clients are outlined along with recommendations for ways to minimize the effects of secondary, or vicarious, traumatization. Clinical vignettes based on case composites have been utilized to illustrate central points.
Cultural Sensitivity in the Context of Cultural Humility
Authors: Ortega Robert M. , Duntley-Matos Roxanna
Published: July 2020

In social work practice, our ability to demonstrate culturally responsive service delivery has become a perennial challenge. The rapidly changing landscape in the context of cultural and linguistic diversity makes the urgency of establishing culturally inclusive professional practice more necessary. Evidence of its importance can be found in federal directives, state mandates and professional best practice guidelines that are undergirded by a recognition that responsive practice requires an awareness of cultural influences and manifest differences. This is particularly important as efforts to more fully engage with culturally responsive practice coincides with the push for a higher standard for professional caring to be culturally relevant. From a basic social science-informed perspective, culturally based experiences vary in such profound ways, both within and across groups and communities, that limiting practice to common or core sets of cultural meanings or shared practices for practice purposes merely minimizes the complexity of culture. Cultural experiences are experienced and expressed in complex and dynamic ways, and how cultural differences become framed has major implications for how they become recognized and incorporated into socially just practice. Various approaches to cultural sensitivity and institutional attachments appear in the literature although there is a particular need to uncover the many ways that a focus on cultural competence may impair our ability to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty of cultural differences. Cultural humility offers a perspective that invites tolerance, inclusion, and diversity while promoting transformation, facilitation, and collaboration in knowledge development and in the search for cultural relevance in its social work application. It is a perspective that ultimately invites the sharing of both social opportunities and social fate, and is at the core of socially just empowerment
Disability Theory in Context
Authors: Brown Jasmine P. , Suarez-Balcazar Yolanda
Published: July 2020

The condition of disability and disabled persons in society has shifted and transformed throughout time and history with the rise of medical interventions, capitalism, and disability advocacy. This article discusses the different theories and models that have dominated the study of disability and further explains the contributions of disability theory on disability identity, as well as the intersection of disability and race. Also, with the rise of the social model ideals, there has been an increase in advocacy and empowerment within the disability community. This article concludes with an overview of advocacy and empowerment interventions for and with individuals with disabilities and recommendations for future research in sociology.
Humphreys, Nancy A.
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Nancy A. Humphreys (1938–2019) was Dean of the University of Connecticut School of Social Work and founder and director of the Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work. She was a pioneer who served with distinction, and left a rich legacy in advocating for women rights, social justice, and the development of political social work.
White, Barbara W.
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Barbara W. White (1943–2019), Dean Emeritus at University of Texas at Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work, was an accomplished scholar in the areas of cultural diversity, women, and domestic violence. She was actively engaged with social work education for over three decades and was a former president of both the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). White has left a distinguished legacy that spans the national and international communities of social work.
Dinerman, Miriam Goldforb
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Miriam Goldforb Dinerman (1925–2010) served on the faculty of Rutgers University School of Social Work (RUSSW) for 31 years and helped to codify health concentration as a significant area of social work practice. She understood early in her career the interdisciplinary nature of the different health and social work professions and worked to educate students in all disciplines about the value of the others.
Ephross, Paul Hullman
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Paul Hullman Ephross (1935–2017) served as professor for over two decades on the faculty of the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Social Work (UMB SSW). He retired in 2008. He was a popular, creative, and innovative teacher who excelled at experiential-based teaching. Through his research and scholarly publications he made a significant contribution to the knowledge base in the profession.
Siporin, Max
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Max Siporin (1917–2010), professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Albany, made significant contributions to the social work literature with the publication of the widely used textbook entitled Introduction to Social Work Practice, which became the gold standard for teaching social work in many schools of social work. He was also among the first social workers to publish on the topic of social work and marriage and family therapy in psychiatric settings and to testify as an expert in social work in a court of law.
Young, Alma T.
Authors: Logan Sadye L. M.
Published: July 2020

Alma T. Young (1930–2012) was employed in 1960 by Mount Sinai’s Department of Social Work and worked as the director of quality assurance until her retirement in 1998. Her unwavering dedication, vision, commitment, and astute leadership gave rise to programs and services such as New Alternatives for Children (NAC). She was also the founding member of the social work section of the American Public Health Association.
Low Skeletal Muscle Index Adjusted for Body Mass Index Is an Independent Risk Factor for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Surgical Complications
Authors: Berger Matthew , Yamada Akihiro , Komaki Yuga , Komaki Fukiko , Cohen Russell D , Dalal Sushila , Hurst Roger D , Hyman Neil , Pekow Joel , Shogan Benjamin D , Umanskiy Konstantin , Rubin David T , Sakuraba Atsushi , Micic Dejan
Published: July 2020

Background

This study aims to evaluate sarcopenia defined by skeletal muscle index (SMI) with cutoffs adjusted for sex and body mass index as a predictive marker for postoperative outcomes among individuals with inflammatory bowel disease.

Methods

The SMI was measured using the cross-sectional computed tomography images at the lumbar spine. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify independent risk factors of postoperative complications.

Results

Ninety-one patients were included in the study. In multivariate analysis, sarcopenia (odds ratio = 5.37; confidence interval: 1.04–27.6) was predictive of infectious postoperative complications.

Conclusions

Sarcopenia as defined by the SMI is a predictor for 30-day postoperative infection complications in inflammatory bowel disease surgeries.