bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sacubitril/valsartan reduces indications for arrhythmic primary prevention in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction: insights from DISCOVER-ARNI, a multicenter Italian register
Authors: Pastore Maria Concetta , Mandoli Giulia Elena , Giannoni Alberto , Benfari Giovanni , Dini Frank Lloyd , Pugliese Nicola Riccardo , Taddei Claudia , Correale Michele , Brunetti Natale Daniele , Carluccio Erberto , Mengoni Anna , Guaricci Andrea Igoren , Piscitelli Laura , Citro Rodolfo , Ciccarelli Michele , Novo Giuseppina , Corrado Egle , Pasquini Annalisa , Loria Valentina , Degiovanni Anna , Patti Giuseppe , Santoro Ciro , Moderato Luca , Malagoli Alessandro , Emdin Michele , Cameli Matteo ,   Collaborators: DISCOVER-ARNI Collaborators, Rosa Gianmarco , Magnesa Michele , Mazzeo Pietro , De Carli Giuseppe , Bellino Michele , Iuliano Giuseppe , Casciano Ofelia , Binno Simone , Canepa Marco , Tondi Stefano , Cicoira Mariantonietta , Mega Simona
Published: December 2021

Aims

This sub-study deriving from a multicentre Italian register [Deformation Imaging by Strain in Chronic Heart Failure Over Sacubitril-Valsartan: A Multicenter Echocardiographic Registry (DISCOVER)-ARNI] investigated whether sacubitril/valsartan in addition to optimal medical therapy (OMT) could reduce the rate of implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) indications for primary prevention in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) according to European guidelines indications, and its potential predictors.

Methods and results

In this observational study, consecutive patients with HFrEF eligible for sacubitril/valsartan from 13 Italian centres were included. Lack of follow-up or speckle tracking data represented exclusion criteria. Demographic, clinical, biochemical, and echocardiographic data were collected at baseline and after 6 months from sacubitril/valsartan initiation. Of 351 patients, 225 (64%) were ICD carriers and 126 (36%) were not ICD carriers (of whom 13 had no indication) at baseline. After 6 months of sacubitril/valsartan, among 113 non-ICD carriers despite having baseline left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) ≤ 35% and New York Heart Association (NYHA) class = II–III, 69 (60%) did not show ICD indications; 44 (40%) still fulfilled ICD criteria. Age, atrial fibrillation, mitral regurgitation > moderate, left atrial volume index (LAVi), and LV global longitudinal strain (GLS) significantly varied between the groups. With receiver operating characteristic curves, age ≥ 75 years, LAVi ≥ 42 mL/m2 and LV GLS ≥−8.3% were associated with ICD indications persistence (area under the curve = 0.65, 0.68, 0.68, respectively). With univariate and multivariate analysis, only LV GLS emerged as significant predictor of ICD indications at follow-up in different predictive models.

Conclusions

Sacubitril/valsartan may provide early improvement of NYHA class and LVEF, reducing the possible number of implanted ICD for primary prevention in HFrEF. Baseline reduced LV GLS was a strong marker of ICD indication despite OMT. Early therapy with sacubitril/valsartan may save infective/haemorrhagic risks and unnecessary costs deriving from ICDs.
Modern Lawfare: Exploring the Relationship between Military First-Person Shooter Video Games and the “War is Hell” Myth
Authors: Renic Neil C , Kaempf Sebastian
Published: December 2021

The changing character of armed conflict, combined with the transformation of the global media landscape, has fundamentally altered the experience of war for Western audiences. Although physically distanced from its cost to a historically unprecedented degree, the virtual proximity of the average citizen to war has never been closer. Military first-person shooter (FPS) gaming is a critical component of this dynamic, functioning as the principle means through which to consume and interact with war for a large and growing segment of the population. This influence is problematic. Although exceptions exist, military FPSs typically both reflect and sustain the “war is hell” myth: a conviction, reinforced through interactive gameplay, that the rules of war cannot, and indeed should not, apply to the battlefield. We argue that a more complete and nuanced integration of the laws of war into this medium would help shift popular understandings of armed conflict, and the legal restraints imposed on it, in a more positive direction and, at the same time, allow game designers to better fulfil their commitment to a “realistic” depiction of the battlefield.
BSAC Vanguard Series: The future of healthcare workers and antimicrobial stewardship—educate, innovate, or pay the price
Authors: Nathwani Dilip
Published: December 2021

In delivering global healthcare, and in the context of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) where information and knowledge is rapidly evolving, it is universally accepted that education and training of the healthcare workforce underpins the implementation of AMS and the effective use of existing and new health care technologies, therapies and informatics. Despite this, resourcing healthcare workforce education and training is often seen as a low priority, particularly in the resource-limited settings where the burden of AMR is greatest and healthcare resources are the most stretched. Therefore, it is disappointing to observe that, when funding the multi-dimensional AMR and AMS response, specific funding earmarked to support the development and implementation of both traditional and, increasingly, innovative education (particularly in the form of digital learning) is insufficient or lacking. In this article, I propose several novel strategies for addressing this deficit and to steer us to learn from the significant developments and support for education during the COVID-19 pandemic. If we do not invest in both traditional and innovative forms of education, our ability to create a well-trained healthcare workforce to deliver high-quality care and treatment, with better patient outcomes against AMR, will evaporate—and we will likely pay a far higher price as a consequence.
Assessment of pain associated with bovine respiratory disease and its mitigation with flunixin meglumine in cattle with induced bacterial pneumonia
Authors: Martin Miriam S , Kleinhenz Michael D , White Brad J , Johnson Blaine T , Montgomery Shawnee R , Curtis Andrew K , Weeder Mikaela M , Blasi Dale A , Almes Kelli M , Amachawadi Raghu G , Salih Harith M , Miesner Matt D , Baysinger Angela K , Nickell Jason S , Coetzee Johann F
Published: December 2021

Pleuritic chest pain from bacterial pneumonia is often reported in human medicine. However, studies investigating pain associated with bovine respiratory disease (BRD) are lacking. The objectives of this study were to assess if bacterial pneumonia elicits a pain response in calves with experimentally induced BRD and to determine the analgesic effects of transdermally administered flunixin. A total of 26 calves, 6–7 mo of age, with no history of BRD were enrolled into one of three treatment groups: 1) experimentally induced BRD + transdermal flunixin at 3.3 mg/kg twice, 24 h apart (BRD + FTD); 2) experimentally induced BRD + placebo (BRD + PLBO); and 3) sham induction + placebo (CNTL + PLBO). Calves induced with BRD were inoculated with Mannheimia haemolytica via bronchoalveolar lavage. Outcomes were collected from −48 to 192 h post-treatment and included serum cortisol, infrared thermography, mechanical nociceptive threshold, substance P, kinematic gait analysis, visual analog scale (VAS), clinical illness score, computerized lung score, average activity and rumination level, prostaglandin E2 metabolite, plasma serum amyloid A, and rectal temperature. Outcomes were evaluated using either a generalized logistic mixed model for categorical variables or a generalized linear mixed model for continuous variables. Right front force differed by treatment (P = 0.01). The BRD + PLBO had lower mean force applied to the right front limb (85.5 kg) compared with BRD + FTD (96.5 kg; P < 0.01). Average VAS differed by a treatment by time interaction (P = 0.01). The VAS scores differed for BRD + PLBO at −48 (3.49 mm) compared with 168 and 192 h (13.49 and 13.64 mm, respectively) (P < 0.01). Activity for BRD + PLBO was higher at −48 h (27 min/h) compared with 48, 72, 120, and 168 h (≤ 22.24 min/h; P < 0.01). Activity differed by a treatment by time interaction (P = 0.01). Activity for BRD + FTD was higher at −48 and 0 h (28.2 and 28.2 min/h, respectively) compared to 48, 72, 96, and 168 h (≤23.7 min/h; P < 0.01). Results show a combination of reduced activity levels, decreased force on the right front limb, and increased VAS pain scores all support that bacterial pneumonia in cattle is painful. Differences in right front force indicate that flunixin transdermal may attenuate certain pain biomarkers in cattle with BRD. These findings suggest that BRD is painful and analgesic drugs may improve the humane aspects of care for cattle with BRD.
Interspecific Variation in Susceptibility to Insecticides by Lepidopteran Pests of Soybean, Cotton, and Maize Crops From Brazil
Authors: Machado Eduardo P , Garlet Cínthia G , Weschenfelder Marlon A G , Führ Fábio M , Godoy Daniela N , Pretto Venicius E , Contini Rafael E , Franco Cláudio R , Omoto Celso , Bernardi Oderlei
Published: December 2021

The interspecific variation in susceptibility to insecticides by lepidopteran species of soybean [Glycine max L. (Merr.)], cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.), and maize (Zea mays L.) crops from Brazil were evaluated. Populations of Anticarsia gemmatalis (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae), Chrysodeixis includens (Walker), Helicoverpa armigera (Hübner), Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith), Spodoptera eridania (Stoll), Spodoptera cosmioides (Walker), and Spodoptera albula (Walker) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) were collected from 2019 to 2021. Early L3 larvae (F2 generation) were exposed to the formulated insecticides methoxyfenozide, indoxacarb, spinetoram, flubendiamide, and chlorfenapyr in diet-overlay bioassays. The median lethal concentrations (LC50) were used to calculate tolerance ratios (TR) of each species in relation to the most susceptible species to each insecticide. The lowest LC50 values were verified for A. gemmatalis to all insecticides tested. Chrysodeixis includens and most of the Spodoptera species were moderately tolerant to methoxyfenozide (TR < 8.0-fold) and indoxacarb (TR < 39.4-fold), whereas H. armigera was the most tolerant species to methoxyfenozide (TR = 21.5-fold), and indoxacarb (TR = 106.4-fold). Spodoptera cosmioides, S. eridania, and S. albula showed highest tolerance to spinetoram (TR > 1270-fold), S. eridania, S. frugiperda, and S. albula to flubendiamide (TR from 38- to 547-fold), and S. albula to indoxacarb (TR = 138.6-fold). A small variation in susceptibility to chlorfenapyr (TR < 4.4-fold) was found among the lepidopteran evaluated. Our findings indicate a large variation in susceptibility to indoxacarb, spinetoram, and flubendiamide and a relatively low variation in susceptibility to methoxyfenozide and chlorfenapyr by lepidopteran species of soybean, cotton, and maize from Brazil.
Observation of the density dependence of the closed-channel fraction of a 6Li superfluid
Authors: Liu Xiang-Pei , Yao Xing-Can , Chen Hao-Ze , Wang Xiao-Qiong , Wang Yu-Xuan , Chen Yu-Ao , Chen Qijin , Levin Kathryn , Pan Jian-Wei
Published: December 2021

Atomic Fermi gases provide an ideal platform for studying pairing and superfluid physics, using a Feshbach resonance between closed-channel molecular states and open-channel scattering states. Of particular interest is the strongly interacting regime. We show that the closed-channel fraction ${Z_{{\rm{cc}}}}$ provides an effective probe for important many-body interacting effects, especially through its density dependence, which is absent from two-body theoretical predictions. Here we measure ${Z_{{\rm{cc}}}}$ as a function of interaction strength and the Fermi temperature ${T_{\rm{F}}}$ in a trapped 6Li superfluid throughout the entire Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer–Bose-Einstein-condensate crossover, in quantitative agreement with theory when important thermal contributions outside the superfluid core are taken into account. Away from the deep-BEC regime, the fraction ${Z_{\rm cc}}$ is sensitive to ${{{T}}_F}$. In particular, our data show ${Z_{{\rm{cc}}}} \propto T_{\rm{F}}^\alpha $ with $\alpha = {\rm{1/2}}$ at unitarity, in quantitative agreement with calculations of a two-channel pairing fluctuation theory, and $\alpha $ increases rapidly into the BCS regime, reflecting many-body interaction effects as predicted.
What Is Political about Asylum?
Authors: Ferracioli Luara
Published: December 2021

This chapter defends a new account of who counts as a refugee. It argues that a refugee is not only someone who cannot lead a minimally decent life in her state of citizenship but also someone who lacks the prospect of leading a minimally decent life because her state of citizenship denies her the means for protecting and promoting her interests and makes the kind of political engagement required for bringing about change unduly costly. This new definition is in line with the spirit of the original Refugee Convention. On the one hand, it explains why citizens in liberal democratic states do not count as refugees despite being currently unable to promote and protect all the interests required for a minimally decent life. On the other hand, it explains why citizens of failed persecutory states should count as refugees even before their government has directly targeted them.
Nurturing Sports Talent
Authors: Dhar Pulasta
Published: December 2021

Pulasta Dhar’s essay offers a case study of sports academies, visualized through interactions with sportspersons, mentors and coaches as a possible alternative to the disappearing community-based clubs. These centres of nurturing talent, with coaches, resources, and competitions, turn popularity into success and then turns success right back into its reach among more aspirants. This happens alongside a critical perspective on state run federations, in this case, of boxing, wrestling, and badminton. While the academies do nurture sport, they also require a lot of investment and support for sustainability.
Who Watches Cricket?
Authors: Subramanian Vidya
Published: December 2021

Vidya Subramaniam explores the spectacle of sports in all its dimensions. She interrogates the role of media, technology and market in recent times, through the continuing transformation of cricket into its current form as a hugely marketable, visible entertainment entity, or in other words, a spectacle. While the popular opinion is that this new version of cricket on television and the use of technology in so many aspects of the sport is in fact making for a larger knowledgeable spectators, the author argues the opposite. It may well be that the emphasis on the ‘entertainment quotient’ of the sport is attracting audiences that had started moving away from the sport and may not be knowledgeable about the game. More importantly, in keeping with the dominant thread in sports sociology that a sport can whip up a frenzy much like war, new formats of cricket such as the Indian Premier League are structured to showcase nationalism. The main motivation of large sections of those who follow IPL, the author argues, is country above all else and not a passion for the sport.
Colonial Legacies and Maternal Health in South Asia
Authors: Sehrawat Samiksha
Published: December 2021

This chapter provides important insights into why culturalist, technocratic, and neoliberal approaches to maternal and neonatal health have persisted in South Asia despite critiques by bringing together a historical analysis of the ‘problem of childbirth’ under colonialism with the interdisciplinary literature on the medicalization of childbirth. This chapter establishes the central role of British women doctors who fashioned themselves as colonial experts on maternal health in shaping developmental discourses regionally and internationally. British women doctors’ professional project drove their participation in a wider international epistemic community and the creation of infrastructure to improve maternal health in South Asia which emulated British maternalist discourses. Their interventions influenced anti-colonial nationalist attempts to reform reproduction and initiatives by middle-class South Asian women. These reformist discourses, which braided eugenicist concerns with communal polarization and marginalized subaltern medical auxiliaries, continue to pervade post-colonial interventions. The chapter also explores the emergence of international health organizations in the interwar period which produced a discourse linking health and governance to which critiques of conditions of maternity in South Asia responded.
‘Since It’s a Pleasure to Save Somebody’s Life, I Do This’
Authors: Vallianatos Helen
Published: December 2021

Health development efforts to decrease maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in South Asia have included a role for trained and/or traditional birth attendants since the late 20th century. Birth attendants are typically older women, who assist not only during birth but who also can provide counsel during pregnancy and lactation. Based on an ethnographic case study, focused on a jhuggi-jhopri (squatter) settlement in New Delhi, this chapter differentiates between two types of birth attendants. Traditional birth attendants are women who have learned their skills and knowledge, typically from elder women relatives, through apprenticeship. Their tools of practice include herbal knowledge as well as ‘modern’ medical kits they may have received through health education efforts (for example, scissors to cut the umbilical cord). In contrast, trained birth attendants are older women who were recruited through local health organizations (both governmental and non-governmental) and trained by biomedical practitioners to provide frontline care. This chapter examines both traditional and trained birth attendants’ perspectives on assisting local mothers, examining how local mothers view traditional versus trained birth attendants and, in turn, how this may affect their birth experiences
Hearing the Scriptures
Authors: Pentiuc Eugen J.
Published: December 2021

This book explores a specific area of “reception history”: Byzantine hymnography’s use and interpretation of Scriptures, primarily the Old Testament (Septuagint), as part of Orthodox tradition. Lexical-biblical-theological analyses of selected Holy Week hymns show the distinctiveness of “liturgical exegesis” (hymnographic biblical interpretation) and its complementarity to “patristic exegesis.” Even though patristic exegesis and liturgical exegesis are closely interrelated in terms of authorship and basic methodology, this volume seeks to show the main dissimilarities between patristic (i.e., discursive) and liturgical (i.e., imagistic or intuitive) modes of biblical interpretation. The book aims to demonstrate the creativeness of “pre-critical” interpreters of the Bible, i.e., the Byzantine hymnographers. The volume’s introduction sums up the most important moments in the emergence of Byzantine Orthodox Holy Week, as well as the current structure of this liturgical cycle, with an emphasis on Byzantine hymnography. Part I of the book is a collection of lexical-biblical-theological analyses of selected Holy Week hymns spread over six days (and six chapters). The Holy Week hymnography was chosen as a case study for the rich and vast Byzantine hymnography. The analyses show different ways the Byzantine liturgists (i.e., hymnographers) incorporated and interpreted scriptural material, primarily Old Testament, in their hymns. Part II deals with liturgical exegesis and its key features and hermeneutical procedures. It also seeks to underline the differences between patristic biblical commentaries and Byzantine hymns, while advancing an analogy between liturgical exegesis and cubist art.
Offering
Authors: Pentiuc Eugen J.
Published: December 2021

This chapter analyzes the Scriptures in several hymns prescribed for Holy Thursday, whose central theme is Wisdom’s offering and freely sharing a life-sustaining banquet with those searching for her (Prov 9:1–6). God’s begotten Wisdom (Prov 8:22–31) mixes a bowl of ambrosia (i.e., Eucharist, Matt 26:26–29). But prior to Wisdom’s banquet (i.e., Last Supper), Jesus, the incarnate Wisdom, the one who bows the heavens and controls the terrestrial and upper waters (Ps 114 [113]), bows himself before the servants and washes his disciples’ feet as an example of serving leadership (John 13:3–17). However, Jesus’s foot washing is also the expression of divine synkatabasis (condescension), which was possible due to the “mighty love of his [God’s] strength” proclaimed by Habakkuk (3:4 [LXX]). Wisdom’s banquet provides her followers with a “new,” “spiritual drink” (1 Cor 10:4) and makes Jesus be with his disciples forever as “God among gods” (Ps 82 [81]:1–2, 6).
Constructing Economic Science
Authors: Tribe Keith
Published: December 2021

Constructing Economic Science demonstrates how an existing public discourse, political economy, was transformed in the early twentieth century into a new university discipline: economics. This change in location brought about a restructuring of economic knowledge. Finance, student numbers, curricula, teaching, new media, and the demands of employment all played their part in shaping economics as it is known today. It was broadly accepted in the later nineteenth century that industrialising economies required the skilled and specialised workforce that universities could provide. Advocacy for the teaching of commercial subjects was widespread and international. In Cambridge, Alfred Marshall was alone in arguing that economics, not commerce, provided the most suitable training for the administration and business of the future; and in 1903 he founded the first three-year undergraduate economics programme. This was by no means the end of the story, however. What economics was, how Marshall thought it should be taught, had by the 1920s become contested, and in Britain the London School of Economics gained dominance in defining the new science. By the 1930s, American universities had already moved on from undergraduate to graduate teaching, whereas in Britain university education remained focussed upon undergraduate education. At the same time, public policy was reformulated in terms of economic means and ends—relating to postwar reconstruction, employment, and social welfare—and international economics became American economics. This study charts the conditions that initially shaped the “science” of economics, providing in turn a foundation for an understanding of the way in which this new language itself subsequently transformed public policy.
The Unrealised Prospect of Historical Economics
Authors: Tribe Keith
Published: December 2021

During the 1880s a number of Oxford students took an interest in political economy, many of whom as students of history developed what has come to be seen as a ‘historical economics’ distinct from the kind of economics fostered in Cambridge by Alfred Marshall. Prominent among these was William Ashley, and also Arnold Toynbee, whose posthumous Lectures on the Industrial Revolution for the first time linked early nineteenth-century political economy directly to the idea of an ‘industrial revolution’, and interpreting British historical experience in these terms. Ashley had attended Toynbee’s lectures in Oxford and then co-edited them into the book; this chapter examines the kind of arguments that Toynbee put forward in the light of Ashley’s own early writings, and his teaching in Toronto and Harvard, where he was founding Professor of Economic History. Detailed examination of Toynbee’s text suggests that Ashley had a larger role in shaping it than hitherto realised, and this insight is then employed to make sense of Ashley’s subsequent ambivalence about contemporary economics, and his occasional disparagement of any economic reasoning that moved beyond the work of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848).
Marabel Morgan Defines “The Total Woman”
Authors: Johnson Emily Suzanne
Published: December 2021

In 1973, Marabel Morgan published the phenomenally successful evangelical marriage manual Total Woman. Morgan has always insisted that she had no political intention in publishing this book, but its traditionalist vision of marital roles meant that she was very quickly drawn into contemporary arguments about gender, family, and feminism. The boundaries of the political realm were shifting in the 1970s, as Morgan’s experience demonstrates. This chapter traces the mid-twentieth-century development of a national evangelical women’s subculture that produced figures like Morgan and disseminated conservative ideas about gender and family in the purportedly apolitical venues of marital advice, women’s magazines, and inspirational conferences.
Jerome Robbins on Broadway: 1944–1951
Authors: Gennaro Liza
Published: December 2021

Jerome Robbins’ surpassing of de Mille as the primary and most influential choreographer of his period is acknowledged. His training with Gluck Sandor and actors from the Group Theatre exposed him to Constantin Stanislavski’s early acting methods and his creative years at Camp Tamiment honed a brand of humor that he would use throughout his Broadway career. I consider Robbins first musical, On the Town (1944), developed from his ballet Fancy Free (1944), in the context of de Mille’s Broadway success and argue that he was at first imitative of her but ultimately found his voice and surpassed her in terms of success and output. The chapter includes analysis of selected Robbins’ choreography in what I consider the first phase of his Broadway career: On the Town (1944), Billion Dollar Baby (1945), High Button Shoes (1947), Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’! (1948), Miss Liberty (1949), Call Me Madam (1950), and The King and I (1951). I explore how Robbins developed a system for creating dance in musicals that employed the early acting techniques of Constantin Stanislavski as well as Lee Strasberg’s Method Acting. Both techniques embraced theatrical realism and informed Robbins’ creation of dances that were seamlessly embedded into musical theater librettos. His meticulous attention to the where, when, and why of his dance creations and his comic sensibility established a model for the generations of choreographers that followed him.
Taking the Reins
Authors: Gennaro Liza
Published: December 2021

The genesis of the present-day director-choreographer, starting with de Mille’s role as director-choreographer on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ill-fated Allegro (1947), is explored. How she employed dance as a narrative and metaphorical device in support of the allegorical structure of the libretto, and how her artistic vision conflicted with her collaborators is investigated. De Mille’s directorial oeuvre is considered in the context of the male-dominated world of Broadway. Robbins’ ascendance as the most influential director-choreographer of twentieth-century musical theater is examined in a close analysis of his choreography for and direction of Pajama Game (1954 [co-directed with George Abbott, co-choreographer Bob Fosse]), Peter Pan (1954), Bells Are Ringing (1956 [in which he collaborated with Bob Fosse]), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). West Side Story (1957) will be discussed here as an anomaly in Robbins’ musical theater career. I argue that Robbins’ interest in movement innovation in relation to his choreography for the “Jets” in West Side Story (1957) differs from his previous musical theater works. In addition, I will examine Robbins’ West Side Story collaboration with co-choreographer Peter Gennaro.
Corn Crusade
Authors: Hale-Dorrell Aaron T.
Published: December 2021

Almost everyone has long misinterpreted Nikita Khrushchev’s ten-year crusade to propagate the cultivation of corn, a crop important across the globe but previously rare across the vast, environmentally diverse Soviet Union. Launched in 1953, this campaign comprised a large part of the new leadership’s efforts to remedy agrarian crises inherited from Iosif Stalin. Khrushchev pressured collective and state farms to increase plantings of corn from an insignificant proportion of their crops to a peak of nearly 20 percent. Expected to feed livestock that were to yield meat and dairy products, corn promised to enrich citizens’ meager, monotonous diets and thereby make good on Khrushchev’s infamous pledges that the Soviet Union was soon to “catch up to and surpass America” in the Cold War “peaceful competition” between communism and capitalism. Echoing Khrushchev’s former comrades, who denounced corn as “harebrained scheming” when ousting him in 1964, scholars have ridiculed it as “an irrational obsession.” Newly available archival documents reveal a more complex and interesting story of how Khrushchev borrowed industrial-farming methods from the United States. Following experts’ advice, he believed that hybrid seeds, machines, agronomy, and other technologies constituting the global trends in farming technology promised even greater increases in productivity under conditions found in the Soviet Union. Yet Khrushchev’s programs achieved only partial success because they could not overcome the entrenched interests, bureaucratic inertia, and competing priorities that encouraged government officials, local authorities, and farmworkers to disregard methods required to grow even modest harvests, let alone the bumper crops that Khrushchev envisioned.
Introduction
Authors: Hale-Dorrell Aaron T.
Published: December 2021

As the source of the Soviet Union’s unreliable food supply, the country’s farms have received little attention from scholars, who depend on old interpretations steeped in Cold War–inspired misconceptions. Nikita Khrushchev’s crusade to spread the planting of corn to feed livestock comprised part of an attempt to resuscitate the failing agricultural economy inherited from Stalin in 1953 by adopting technologies from foreign sources, especially the United States. Giving substance to long-established but atrophied connections abroad, Khrushchev’s initiative brings to light how the Soviet Union experienced processes of rural modernization and technological innovation similar to those found in other industrial societies. These commonalities challenge the views of scholars portraying the Soviet Union as an unchanging mirror image of its capitalist Cold War rivals. These insights into Khrushchev’s reforms reinvigorate study of the post-Stalin countryside by overturning misinterpretations of how the Soviet Union’s farm economy really worked.
Industrial Agriculture, the Logic of Corn
Authors: Hale-Dorrell Aaron T.
Published: December 2021

Under Khrushchev, advances in farming technology were inspired by processes observed in other industrial countries, especially the United States. Soviet leaders’ ideals led them to adapt to domestic circumstances practices developed under capitalism and to seek to export their more egalitarian version of those practices to newly independent postcolonial countries, examples of what scholars call the transfer mentality. As high modernists, Soviet leaders considered technologies value neutral and therefore applicable under any social and economic system. Reimagining the Cold War as an economic competition he expected to win, Khrushchev often vowed that his country was soon to use corn and modern farming to “catch up to and surpass America” in output of meat and milk. Given that mid-century farmers in the United States, Western Europe, and beyond raised productivity rapidly, Khrushchev’s belief in a similar revolution in productivity at home seems more rational than critics, contemporaries, and scholars have previously imagined.
Growing Corn, Raising Citizens
Authors: Hale-Dorrell Aaron T.
Published: December 2021

Like all groups, collective farmers responded to a varying combination of incentives. Khrushchev’s policies began to moderate the economic and labor conditions inherited from Stalin’s time, when collective farmers were threatened with violent repression. Farm work remained difficult and earned a limited—albeit growing—income, but coercion abated in favor of appeals to youthful enthusiasm, socialism, and patriotism, appeals that economists term moral incentives. Propaganda equated the corn crusade with heroic industrial projects of the 1930s and Khrushchev’s famed Virgin Lands program to settle isolated agricultural regions. The Young Communist League, moreover, established annual competitions awarding prices to youth growing the largest harvests of corn. In some locales, participating work teams planted, cultivated, and harvested as much as 50 percent of the corn. These programs contributed to Khrushchev’s initiatives to include manual labor in formal education, which he hoped would prepare citizens for a future of collectivism and communism.
Conclusion
Authors: Hale-Dorrell Aaron T.
Published: December 2021

The corn crusade constituted part of Khrushchev’s legacy, which his former comrades established by labeling the program part of his “harebrained scheming” when ousting him in 1964. Even outside the Soviet Union, contemporaries and scholars have largely agreed. Although overly sanguine about his programs’ potential, Khrushchev initiated an endeavor that derived its rationale from practices successful elsewhere, a grounding in global trends largely ignored by scholars. Even though corn fell short of Khrushchev’s expectations, it was an essential part of his vision of industrial agriculture and new practices based on the ideal. Even after 1964, farms, especially those in southern regions, planted much more corn than they had before 1953. Khrushchev’s industrial farming revolution ensured that the Soviet Union shared in global histories of rural modernization, farming technology, and the transformation of agriculture into an endeavor powered by petroleum, meaning that its agricultural systems belong in the growing scholarly conversation about the Soviet Union’s place in global history.
Beckett and the Cognitive Method
Authors: Bernini Marco
Published: December 2021

How can literature enhance, parallel or reassess the scientific study of the mind? Or is literature instead limited to the ancillary role of representing cognitive processes? Beckett and the Cognitive Method argues that Beckett’s narrative work, rather than just expressing or rendering cognition and mental states, inaugurates an exploratory use of narrative as an introspective modeling technology (defined as “introspection by simulation”). Through a detailed analysis of Beckett’s entire corpus and published volumes of letters, the book argues that Beckett pioneered a new method of writing to construct (in a mode analogous to scientific inquiry) “models” for the exploration of core laws, processes, and dynamics in the human mind. Marco Bernini integrates models, problems, and interpretive frameworks from contemporary narrative theory, cognitive sciences, phenomenology, and philosophy of mind to make a case for Beckett’s modeling practice of a vast array of processes including: the (narrative) illusion of a sense of self, the hallucinatory quality of inner speech, the dialogic interaction with memories and felt presences, the synesthetic nature of inner experience and mental imagery, the developmental cooperation of language and locomotion, the role of moods and emotions as cognitive drives, the layered complexity of the mind, and the emergent quality of consciousness. Beckett and the Cognitive Method also reflects on how Beckett’s “fictional cognitive models” are transformed into reading, auditory, or spectatorial experiences generating through narrative devices insights on which the sciences can only discursively or descriptively report. As such, the study advocates for their relevance to the contemporary scientific debate toward an interdisciplinary co-modeling of cognition.
Cognitive Liminalism
Authors: Bernini Marco
Published: December 2021

Beckett’s fictional minds are pensive and tensive cognitive agents. If rumination feels to many of them a task to be performed or a “pensum to discharge” (U, 304), it is the way they think, however, that sparks a sustained and unsolvable cognitive differential or tension: a state of liminality due to the fact that they are not yet, or not anymore, endowed with what it takes to navigate the world effortlessly and meaningfully. The twilight atmosphere of Beckett’s boundary storyworlds or innerscapes therefore exponentially resonates with the wavering cognitive processes of what this chapter will define as liminal minds. After an overture section reinforcing how liminality is a structural principle that applies to many of Beckett’s storyworlds on several domains, the chapter heads on to the cognitive functioning of Beckett’s fictional minds. The second section focuses on Beckett’s alteration of the enactive scaffolding co-operation of language, narrative, and motility in human development. The third section analyzes his lesioning of human teleological dispositions on the motivational and emotional level, as well as the malfunctioning of predictive processes. In the final section, it addresses what kind of readerly experience results from engaging with cognitive liminalism, where liminal minds are constantly occupied by the activity of sense-making without the functional possibility of making sense.
Voices
Authors: James Elaine T.
Published: December 2021

Chapter 1 foregrounds the diverse ways that biblical poems are voiced, that is, how they seem to be speaking. It considers the frequent shifts in the texture and tone of voice within individual poems, as well as the significance of address—to whom the poems appear to be directed (or not to be directed, as the case may be). Issues discussed include the presentation of emotion and interiority; how voice relates to traditions of ascription and authorship; dialogue as a generative technique; the unique qualities of prophetic voices; and the relationship of voice and gender. The chapter closes with a reading of Psalm 55 that attends to its shifts in voicing. A theme throughout is the quality of first-person voicing (the use of “I” and “we”) as words that implicate readers.
Introduction
Authors: Belnap Nuel , MÜller Thomas , Placek Tomasz
Published: December 2021

This introductory chapter explains the aim of the book: the analysis of real possibilities as anchored in a spatio-temporal world that is rudimentarily relativistic. It contrasts real possibilities to other possibilities discussed in the philosophical literature. It explains how branching is related to the possible worlds framework made popular, e.g., by David Lewis’s works. It offers philosophical comments on crucial notions and assumptions of BST, such as events, histories, and temporal directedness. It ends up with some hints about how the BST project is situated in modal metaphysics, touching themes such as the concept of actuality or the distinction between possibilities as “alternatives to” vs. “alternatives for”.
Modal Funny Business
Authors: Belnap Nuel , MÜller Thomas , Placek Tomasz
Published: December 2021

The focus of this chapter is modal correlations, rigorously analysed in terms of BST transitions. In the simplest case, two transitions are modally correlated if each is possible, but their joint occurrence is not possible. The chapter singles out a class of “interesting” modal correlations, called modal funny business, and offers two approaches to them. On the first analysis, a set of basic transition exhibits modal funny business if it is combinatorially consistent but not consistent as a whole. The other approach draws on explanation: in a set of transitions harboring modal funny business there is no pair of blatantly inconsistent transitions that could explain why the whole set is inconsistent. These two analyses yield precise definitions of combinatorial and explanatory funny business. The main result consists of theorems showing that the two concepts are co-extensive, which stresses the stability of the notion of modal funny business.
Probabilities
Authors: Belnap Nuel , MÜller Thomas , Placek Tomasz
Published: December 2021

This chapter offers a BST theory of propensities (i.e., of objective single-case probabilities), which builds on the account of indeterministic causation developed in Chapter 6. Propensities are shown to deliver classical (Kolmogorovian) probability spaces. The chapter draws a distinction between propensities and probability measures. The former are assigned to sets of BST transitions, in particular to sets of causae causantes of transitions, and are interpreted as degrees of possibility of these transitions. The latter are defined in terms of propensities and are measures of Komogorovian probability spaces. Features of propensities are derived from a logico-causal analysis. Finally, the chapter discusses how the theory developed here handles well-known objections to propensities due to Humphreys and to Salmon, especially Humphreys’s paradox.
The Broad Structure of Buddhist Ethics
Authors: Garfield Jay L.
Published: December 2021

This chapter argues that Buddhist ethics does not fit into any of the standard Western metaethical theories. It is neither an instance of a virtue theory, nor of a deontological theory, nor of a consequentialist theory. It is closer to a sentimentalist theory, but different from those as well. Instead, it defends a reading of Buddhist ethics as a moral phenomenology and as particularist, utilizing casuistic reasoning. That is, Buddhist ethics is concerned primarily with the transformation of experience, of the way we perceive ourselves and other moral agents and patients. This chapter also argues that the metaphor of path structures Buddhist ethical thought.
Poetry asTechnēand the Use of Poetry
Authors: McOsker Michael
Published: December 2021

This chapter treats the question of whether poētikē, the art of poetry, is a technē, something more than an art or skill. The exact definition of technē and whether various skills qualified as technai were philosophical issues from Plato onwards, and Philodemus had opinions about them. In short, poetry is a technē, but what that means is not certain. It is clear that for Epicureans a technē had to be methodical, consistently successful, and teachable, but it is not clear if it had to be useful. Philodemus explicitly denies that poētikē is useful, but other evidence suggests that the Epicureans thought that technai were generally useful. The problem is not solvable on current evidence.
Individuals
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: December 2021

This chapter argues against constraining education by considering society’s needs for particular types of workers. Ever since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, individual development has been confined (and distorted) by the demands of the labor market. Although standard economic defenses of liberal education fail, contemporary shifts in that market offer opportunities for attuning education to individual needs. Specifically, with increasing automation, a revaluation of service work can offer young people far greater chances for leading fulfilling lives. This theme is developed by arguing for widespread involvement of adults in the education of younger generations.
Citizens
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: December 2021

Contemporary democracies are frequently seen as endangered. This chapter begins by reviewing the concerns. It then distinguishes three levels of democracy: the superficial level of votes and elections, a deeper level that requires free and open discussion of issues, and the deepest level at which citizens interact to work through controversial questions. The existence of that deepest level is taken to be critical for the health of democracy. It should be embodied in a particular style of deliberation, one that involves representatives of all those affected by the issue, in which the participants rely on the best available information, and in which the deliberators strive for an outcome acceptable to all. These conditions point toward a form of citizenship, for which young people can and should be trained. The chapter culminates with concrete suggestions about how this type of citizenship might be fostered.
The Arts
Authors: Kitcher Philip
Published: December 2021

This chapter defends the importance of education in the arts, and offers specific proposals for how this part of the curriculum should be expanded. For many people, encounters with the arts have a special vitality—they are episodes in which people are most vividly alive. Moreover, the effects of our engagement with the artworks we love are not transitory; they affect, sometimes profoundly, the course of our subsequent experience. The arts can also teach us. These valuable contributions are elaborated through considering a range of examples, and, on this basis, the chapter proposes an extensive program of art education. The envisaged curriculum is aimed at making valuable engagements with the arts as widely available as possible, attending to the different individual predilections and tastes people develop.
The LORD Kills and Brings to Life
Authors: Gilmour Rachelle
Published: December 2021

Through the example of David’s census in 2 Sam 24, key issues related to divine violence in the book of Samuel are introduced: the occurrence of inexplicable divine violence; the interplay of divine and human sovereignty; God’s emotion; and the relationship between forgiveness and punishment. The parameters for the use of the term ‘divine violence’ in this study are defined, taking into account the distinction between subjective and objective violence and Walter Benjamin’s technical use of the term. The methodology of this study is outlined. Debate regarding a proposed ‘dark side’ of God will be addressed through contemporary thinkers who challenge the dominance of retributive frameworks in ethical evaluation. An account of the characterisation of God will be given that acknowledges a diversity of traditions in the text and focuses minimally on narrative gaps. Political contexts for the divine violence will be proposed, both monarchic and exilic.
The LORD will Exalt the Power of his Anointed
Authors: Gilmour Rachelle
Published: December 2021

To conclude, the limits of Kantian retribution for ethics are reviewed and the diversity of approaches to ethical reasoning that may be applied to divine violence in the book of Samuel are emphasised. Three ethical, literary, and political considerations of this study are highlighted. Firstly, the study is organised around instances of subjective violence, but attention to systemic, objective violence has raised alternative evaluations of the ethics of the violence. Secondly, different kinds of emotions/cognitions of God are correlated with the formulations of divine violence. For each emotion/cognition resulting in violence, a corresponding example is given where the same emotion/cognition results in blessing. The contiguity of different formulations of divine violence in 2 Sam 24 suggests a coherence to God’s characterisation despite the diverse traditions, not a ‘light’ and a ‘dark’ side to God. Finally, the political visions of divine violence in the book of Samuel are oriented towards an ideology of the Davidic kings. Although human monarchic sovereignty is expansive, it is also limited by divine violence.
Conclusion
Authors: Hansen Kai Arne
Published: December 2021

Making additional connections between the case studies, the conclusion reasserts the effort to denaturalize gender and further highlights the tendency of pop masculinities to operate in contradictory, unpredictable, and open-ended ways. The following themes are discussed: the co-construction of musical and masculine authenticity; corporeality and bodily display; elements of danger and violence; the subordination of femininity; the transgression of norms; and the flexibility of gender hegemony in adapting to new aesthetic and cultural paradigms. Final reflections on the sociopolitical implications of interpretation serve as an invitation to readers to further contemplate their own subjective positioning in relation to pop artists’ representations of gender.