bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Topological Quantum
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

At the intersection of physics, mathematics, and computer science, an exciting new field of study has formed, known as “topological quantum.” This research field examines the deep connections between the theory of knots, special types of subatomic particles known as anyons, certain phases of matter, and quantum computation. This book elucidates this nexus, drawing in topics ranging from quantum gravity to topology to experimental condensed matter physics. Requiring only an elementary background in quantum mechanics, this book is appropriate for all readers, from advanced undergraduates to the professional practitioner. The material in presented in a down-to-earth and entertaining way that is far less abstract than most of what is in the literature. While introducing the crucial concepts and placing them in context, the subject is presented without resort to the highly mathematical category theory that underlies the field. This book will be of interest to mathematicians and computer scientists as well as physicists working on a wide range of topics. “Topological quantum” has increasingly been a focus point in the fields of condensed matter physics and quantum information over the last few decades, and the forefront of research now builds on the basic ideas presented in this book. Those interested in working in these field will find this book to be an invaluable introduction as well as a crucial reference.
Kauffman Bracket Invariant and Relation to Physics
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

We introduce the idea of a knot invariant using the Kauffman bracket as an example and explore a few key ideas of knot theory. We then make the relationship to physical topological quantum systems whose dynamics are determined by knot invariants. We show the relationship to quantum mechanics and briefly argue that quantum computation can be done with such topological quantum systems. We mention some of the experimental systems that are topological, particularly including fractional quantum Hall effect.
Chern–Simons Theory Basics
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

We give a brief introduction to Chern-Simons theory starting with Abelian Chern-Simons theory and making the connection to the charge-flux model. We discuss the vacuum partition function and the idea of a manifold invariant. We then move on to discuss Nonabelian Chern-Simons theory and the idea of Wilson loop operations, and Witten’s famous connection between knot invariants and Chern-Simons theory. The Chern-Simons theory is a paradigm for topological quantum field theories or TQFTs.
Exchanging Identical Particles
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

Having established the structure of the Hilbert space of multiple anyons, we now discuss the effects of braiding the anyons around each other. We introduce the idea of an R-matrix and emphasize the importance of locality. Using R and F together we can fully describe any braiding of identical particles. We again use Fibonacci and Ising anyons as simple examples.
Planar Diagrams
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

We return to study planar diagram algebras as in chapters 8 and 9, but now more formally. We define diagrams as being operators that can be "stacked" on top of each other. We pay particular attention to properties of diagrams such as completeness of states and orthonormality of basis vectors, and we again review the use of F-matrices for change of basis. We discuss the implications of causality for these diagrams, and to what extent diagrams can be deformed in the plane. We give explicit detailed rules for evaluating planar diagrams.
Temperly–Lieb Algebra and Jones–Kauffman Anyons
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

Ideas similar to that of the Kauffman bracket introduced in chapter 2 can be used to generate valid anyon theories. We begin with a planar diagram algebra defined only by the value of a loop (the loop weight). One wants to build new particle types by grouping together multiple strands of loops. However, to do so one needs so-called Jones-Wenzl projectors to orthogonalize between species resulting in the so-called Temperly-Lieb Algebra. We demonstrate this construction by building a planar diagram algebra corresponding to the Z2 loop gas (bosons, fermions, semions), and then Ising Anyons. We show how this generalizes to a much bigger set of possible theories. We show how these theories can be made unitary, and how the F-matrices may be calculated. Finally we discuss how the R-matrices can be simply obtained by returning to the Kauffman bracket rules.
Abstracting the Toric Code: Introducing the Tube Algebra
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

The arguments about the toric code relied on diagrammatic reasoning about loops around handles of the torus, but the underlying lattice was not crucial to any of the arguments. We now decsribe the same model more abstractly, with diagrams in the continuum, with no reference to the underlying lattice at all. We find that we are using a planar diagram algebra (in this case a d=1, Z2 loop gas) and the toric code ground states arise as a sum over all possible such diagrams. We introduce the notion of the tube algebra. We build so-called “idempotent” states on an annulus (or “tube”) and from these we can extract quasiparticle types, the S-matrix, the T-matrix, braiding, and fusion properties. We then generalize the construction to the ZN toric code.
Kitaev Quantum Double Model
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

One generalization of the toric code is the so-called Kitaev Quantum Double model which realizes the Drinfeld double of a group. In this model edges of a lattice are directed and labeled with elements of a group G which then give us a planar diagram algebra. We consider mainly the “untwisted” case where the F-matrices (or equivalently 3-cocyles) are trivial. This generalizes the toric code where the group is Z2. Again we have vertex and plaquette operators, and a code space which satisfies both. As with the toric code, the ground state is topological although here (depending on the group G) the quasiparticles may be nonabelian. We turn to a continuum model for a more detailed analysis of the ground state space and the quasiparticles using the tube algebra, which, using some amount of group theory, is easily tractable. We discuss the so-called quasiparticle “ribbon operators” which generalize the error strings of the toric code. We relate the Kitaev quantum double model to lattice gauge theory and briefly discuss its generalization to higher dimensions.
Symmetry-Protected Topological Phases of Matter
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

We refine our notion of a topoogical phase of matter to account for symmetry protection. We describe SPT (symmetry protected topological or trivial) phases and give some history of this idea. We focus on the case of on-site symmetries. The case of one-dimensional SPTs with on-site symmetry is discussed. For understanding two-dimensional SPTs we focus on the case of Z2 symmetry and argue that there are two possible Z2 paramagnetic phases, i.e., gapped phases where the Z2 symmetry is unbroken. These two phases are in one-to-one correspondence with the two possible Z2 loop gases. We argue that with any discrete group symmetry, we generally classify SPT phases with the possible 3-cocyles. We briefly discuss the idea of symmetry defects and explain that such particles are the excitations of the corresponding twisted Kitaev quantum double model of the same cocyle. We briefly discuss the edge modes of SPT phases. Finally we argue that the SPT phases can be considered as the “ungauging” of the corresponding Dijkgraaf-Witten model.
Experiments (In Brief!)
Authors: Simon Steven H.
Published: December 2023

We give a brief account of some of the experimental systems believed to harbor anyons (or that might someday be coaxed to harbor anyons). We discuss Fractional Quantum Hall Effects — abelian and nonabelian — in some detail. We mention Fractional Chern Insulators, and Bosonic Fractional Quantum Hall Effects. We discuss gapped spin liquids — particular the Kitaev Honeycomb model and frustrated antiferromagents. We briefly discuss conventional superconductors before turning to so-called Majorana materials. Finally we discuss the recent advances in quantum simulation of matter.
Latin, Literacy, and the Roman Economy
Authors: Wilson Andrew
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines economic structures and activities that helped spread the use of Latin, and of literacy, across the Roman West. Latin was spread to the provinces by the movement of people—settlers and colonists; the army; some kinds of mobile craftsmen (principally miners and potters); traders; and slaves—and also by the movement of documents, inscribed objects, and the practice of inscribing things in Latin. Slaves, if they were not brought up speaking Latin, had to learn it to survive. Traders learned it for commercial advantage, in preference to using interpreters. The evidence for professional interpreters is largely limited to military contexts or to the imperial court. Language learning lowered transaction costs when trading across different linguistic spheres—which long-distance trade in the Empire was bound to do. Craftsmen migrating from core provinces towards the periphery in search of economic opportunity brought their Latin with them. These processes occurred alongside, and sometimes independently of, any impetus from the army or the administrative apparatus of the state to use or learn Latin. But the spread of Latin, and literacy, arguably also helped the growth of the Roman economy: the development of a lingua franca lowered transaction costs in all areas of commerce and trade, while a larger-scale and more complex economy functioned better with written records, and with the investment in human capital that even basic education represented.
The Role of the Non-Elite in Spreading Latin in Roman Britain
Authors: Cooley Alison E.
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines the sociocultural environments in which the spread of Latin can be traced in Londinium during the first century ce, following the Claudian conquest. The first section explores what evidence we have for the use of Latin in pre-Roman Britain, as context for discussion of the extent to which the sociocultural contexts in which Latin spread may have changed after the conquest. The rest of the chapter then explores the social factors that encouraged the spread of Latin in Londinium. Focusing on the evidence of writing equipment (styluses, writing tablets, inkwells) as well as on inscriptions on a variety of media (writing tablets, pottery, oculists’ stamps, leather, wood), it evaluates alternatives to the hypothesis that military personnel acted as the main agents for the processes of Latinization. It explores the roles both of incoming traders from the Continent in introducing Latin literate practices and of Roman officialdom in encouraging the extension of Latin writing into new contexts. This is not to discount the potential impact of the military as one factor stimulating the adoption of Latin, given that it is likely that some of the activities of traders were inspired by the needs of supplying the army in Britain, but to refocus attention upon writing that was produced by civilians.
Social Factors in Latinization
Authors: Horster Marietta
Published: December 2023

This chapter takes up essential issues discussed in the volume and focuses on three topics that seem to offer particularly attractive potential for further research into social factors in Latinization. These are (1) the different roles of an individual in society, which are also linked to different language levels and lexicons; (2) the many social microcosms, which contain language and behavioural codes that are visible to the outside world but are self-contained; (3) the openness of the language aspect of Roman identity: the language of the Romans is ‘foreign’, it is Latin, not ‘Roman’.
Comparing Legislative Assemblies
Authors: Martin Shane , Strøm Kaare W.
Published: December 2023

This chapter sets out the authors’ strategy to explore the design and functioning of legislative assemblies in the democratic world. The chapter reviews the existing literature on legislative typologies and reflects on the authors’ ambition to identify the memberships, powers, and processes of real-world legislative assemblies and the extent to which the ideal types set out in Chapter 1 help us understand them. It provides the rationale for focusing on particular assembly structures and processes. The dataset includes over 300 variables on 10 general themes concerning the membership, structures, processes, and powers of legislative assemblies in 68 democratic countries. In addition to helping determine the empirical usefulness of the book’s ideal types, these data may serve as a basic infrastructure for many scholars interested in comparative legislative organization and design. The chapter presents the methods used to collect and create the data that it examines empirically and outlines the ways in which these data will be discussed and analyzed in subsequent chapters. For this purpose, the chapter addresses a number of research design challenges, beginning with its selection of cases.
Electing the Legislative Assembly
Authors: Martin Shane , Strøm Kaare W.
Published: December 2023

To help us understand better the challenges of legislative capacity and accountability within the three ideal-typical models of legislative assemblies developed in Chapter 1 (the members’ assembly, the leaders’ assembly, and the voters’ assembly), this chapter focuses on how legislative assemblies are elected and specifically on four sets of electoral system and candidate selection rules: (1) rules that govern who can become a legislator, (2) rules which determine how legislators are elected, (3) the rule specifying the maximum inter-electoral period, and (4) rules shaping the degree to which individual legislators are secure in office between elections. The specific design of these rules, we will suggest, can privilege or constrain citizens in their capacity to select and control who represents them. These rules also privilege or constrain leaders in their capacity to control an incumbent’s ability to remain in office, and ultimately the degree to which a legislator is accountable to, or relatively independent from, leaders and voters.
The Budgetary Process
Authors: Martin Shane , Strøm Kaare W.
Published: December 2023

To help us understand better the challenges of legislative capacity and accountability within the three ideal-typical models of legislative assemblies developed in Chapter 1 (the members’ assembly, the leaders’ assembly, and the voters’ assembly), this chapter focuses on the role of legislative assemblies in the budgetary process. The primary objective is to explore current-day cross-national variation in legislative assemblies’ power of the purse. We expect an assembly’s budgetary capacity to be related to its purposes. A members’ assembly may use the budgetary process to seek rents or win personal votes for incumbent members (or at least the more influential ones), to the detriment of fiscal discipline. In contrast, a voters’ assembly and a leaders’ assembly will in different ways seek to overcome the collective action problems of budgeting for a large number of discrete local constituencies. Leaders’ assemblies will tend to pursue budgetary policies with broader sets of beneficiaries and preferably diffuse costs, falling mainly on the supporters of the political “outs.”
Conclusion
Authors: Bourne Angela K.
Published: December 2023

Conclusion: A ‘Bottom-Up’ Theory of Effective Opposition to Populist Parties summarizes the book’s approach for evaluating the effectiveness of initiatives opposing populist parties (IoPPs) in multi-level Europe. It is argued that effective IoPPs achieve at least one goal of opposition without producing perverse effects. Goals of opposition are curbing implementation of illiberal and anti-democratic policies, reducing support for populist parties, diminishing party resources, and inducing moderation. Perverse effects are increasing support for populist parties, boosting party resources, and radicalization. Goals and perverse effects are produced by the manipulation of strategic choice, enforcement of the law, leverage, and persuasion. The approach is ‘bottom-up’ because it starts with specific IoPPs undertaken in a country or against a particular populist party and then theorizes the broader consequences of these initiatives for the achievement of goals. The chapter also addresses avenues for future research and practical applications.
Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake
Authors: Baines Robert
Published: December 2023

Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is the first study to offer complete and comprehensive explanations of the most significant philosophical references in Joyce’s avant-garde masterpiece. Philosophy is important in all of Joyce’s works, but it is his final novel which most fully engages with that field. Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake shows the broad range of philosophers Joyce wove into his last work, from Aristotle to Confucius, Bergson to Kant. For each major philosophical allusion in the Wake, this book explains the original idea and reveals how Joyce first encountered it. Drawing upon extensive research into Joyce’s notebooks and drafts, the book then shows how Joyce developed and adapted that idea through repeated revisions. From here, the final form of the idea as it appears in the Wake is explored. In carefully and precisely explaining the Wake’s key philosophical allusions, this book clarifies essential themes within the novel including history, time, language, being, and perception. It also demonstrates how those allusions combine to create a network of ideas, thinkers, and texts which has a logic and an integrity. In doing so, Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake shows that the more one knows of the Wake’s philosophical allusions, the more one can find meaning and reason in this famously perplexing book of the night.
Irish Materialisms
Authors: Taylor Colleen
Published: December 2023

Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690–1830 is the first book to apply recent trends in new materialist criticism to Ireland. It radically shifts familiar colonial stereotypes of the feminized, racialized cottier according to the Irish peasantry’s subversive entanglement with nonhuman materiality. Each of the chapters engages a focused case study of an everyday object in colonial Ireland (coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, and pigs) to examine how each object’s unique materiality contributed to the colonial ideology of British paternalism and afforded creative Irish expression. Coins helped to reformulate post-Union nationalist subjectivity around the endurance of material memory. Flax facilitated a paternalistic model of an Irish character that was feminine and capable of whitening. Spinning wheels engineered the idea of an active, turning, resistant mind inside an ostensibly compliant Irish tenant. Mud cabins articulate an Irish creative response to a destroyed, deforested landscape. Pigs afforded Irish writers a nonhuman language of national loss and colonial resistance. The main argument of Irish Materialisms is its methodology: of reading literature through the agency of materiality and nonhuman narrative in order to gain a more egalitarian and varied understanding of colonial experience. Irish Materialisms proves that new materialism holds powerful postcolonial potential. Through an intimate understanding of the materiality Irish peasants handled on a daily basis, this book presents a new portrait of Irish character that reflects greater empowerment, resistance, and expression in the oppressed Irish than has previously been recognized.
The US Army
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

Western forces, starting with the US military, systematically circumvented Afghan law. In carrying out their operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, including through a campaign of targeted killings that sharpened local rivalries, they exempted themselves from any Afghan legal framework. Moreover, the Western military set up so-called ‘customary’ or ‘traditional’ councils that issued conflicting verdicts. With their uncertain legal status, these further undermined the regime’s judicial institutions. Finally, in forming their own militias, the Western militaries handed various potentates the means to oppose the central state and eliminate their local rivals. Through its tribal and ethnic vision in Afghanistan, the US military contributed to a polarization of private conflicts along identity lines, making their resolution more intractable. The primordialist interpretations by American soldiers promoted strategies of ethnic or tribal instrumentalization. They allowed entrepreneurs of violence presenting themselves as community representatives to obtain weapons, occupy positions of power, and insinuate themselves as indispensable intermediaries, at the expense of official institutions. The alleged allergy of Afghans to the state became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It caused the US military to boost strongmen they regarded as local when these in fact derived their power largely from international support.
The dual membership of judges
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

The recruitment of judges in the Deobandi madrasas allowed the Taliban to set up a particularly economical system because of not having to train specialized staff or draft a legal code. In this way, the movement benefited from the education and ideological indoctrination performed by madrasas on young Afghans from rural areas and refugee camps. After ten years in religious schools, far from their families and villages, the ulama shared a range of theological and legal skills, a bureaucratic habitus, and a worldview that set them apart from their home environment. The education acquired in the Deobandi madrasas underpinned the coherence as well as the Islamic character of their verdicts, which were based mainly on the Hanafite case law that the judges were trained in. This socialization also engendered individual inclinations that reinforced the effectiveness of the institutional arrangements into which the movement inserted them as judges. The Deobandi ideology, which accommodates a role for clerics in social regulation while denying the political character of their actions, fed into a particularly effective claim of judicial objectivity.
The trials
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

Unlike most contemporary armed movements, the Taliban discarded the usual modes of objectivizing the judicial system through space (buildings, courtroom configuration) or attributes (specific dress, symbols, objects), because doing so would have increased the risks of Western troops honing in on the judges. They instead adopted the devices and rituals of rural social life, blending into the population while remaining accessible to their users. The formalization of the Taliban judicial system relied on rudimentary but regular and therefore predictable procedures. In this, it contrasted sharply with that of the regime which, while conspicuously mobilizing the visible attributes of state justice, fostered legal uncertainty by frequently breaking its own rules. In the context of war and given the movement’s limited resources, adherence to a procedural organization—from complaint to verdict and sentencing—conditioned the production of the Taliban judges’ utterances as ‘acts of naming or of instituting’. Respect for procedures allowed the individualizing of disputes and defining the parties as litigants, as persons with rights, able to present evidence in support of their claims and bound to abide by the judge’s ruling. From this perspective, the use of conspicuous but predictable violence, to the extent that it could be justified as an outcome of a judicial process, played a determinative role in the legal nature of the decision.
Conclusion
Authors: Baczko Adam
Published: December 2023

The role of the courts in the 2021 Taliban victory attests to the force of law in civil wars. Even more than in peaceful contexts, the objectivization of social relations in juridical institutions is essential to having judges recognized as such. Through recruiting, erecting an institutional architecture, instituting procedures, and employing coercion, the Taliban insurgency established mechanisms for maintaining the impartiality of its judges and conditioning the acceptance of their verdicts. Contemporary civil wars such as in Afghanistan are a laboratory for law and politics: a space and a time when norms are tested and reinvented. In this sui generis environment, legal categories and institutions are born of interactions between governments, the armed movements that challenge them, transnational operators, international institutions, and customary bodies. Contrary to the idea that international norms do not apply in civil wars, they in fact constrain the action of the warring parties. The Taliban, a movement ostracized by the international system for hosting Al Qaeda, adapted their practices to international law and engaged with organizations that implement it (ICRC, United Nations). Afghanistan illustrates how civil wars are the theatre of a radical form of internationalizing the law, for the disordered entanglement of norms and jurisdictions due to armed competition between different belligerents claiming a legal monopoly. Afghanistan, where modern forms of both Western humanitarianism and political Islam developed in the 1980s and 1990s, occupies a defining place in the tangled history of these antagonistic transnationalisms.
Psychological Covariates of Politicians’ Trust Perceptions
Authors: Weinberg James
Published: December 2023

Chapter 4 picks apart the psychological covariates of the felt trust concepts. The first half of the chapter focuses on individual differences and the extent to which these predict variation in the type of trustee that a politician will become. Matching theory with empirics, the chapter draws on politicians’ responses to one holistic measure of personality (i.e. the Big Five personality traits) and another narrow measure of ‘dark’ personality (i.e. narcissism). The second half of the chapter explores the attitudinal covariates of politicians’ trust perceptions and, in particular, their agreement with populist and authoritarian notions of sovereignty, power, leadership, and the sanctity of the law.
The Distrust Stressor in Political Office
Authors: Weinberg James
Published: December 2023

Chapter 6 focuses on the personal micro-level consequences of governing in an age of distrust. It starts with a nine-part framework of political stressors, including distrust, and uses interview data to provide a qualitative exposition of the framework’s subjective manifestation in the lives of sitting politicians. Turning to quantitative data collected through surveys with politicians, the chapter then examines the link between politicians’ trust perceptions and self-reported measures of mental health and well-being, including occupational satisfaction, efficacy, and depression (measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire 9). Participants’ scores on these measures are broken down according to their professional and personal characteristics as well as their trust perception scores.
The Origins of Terror
Authors: Gill Graeme
Published: December 2023

The aim of this chapter is to explain why each of the types of terror occurred when they did in each of the revolutions. The means of doing this is to undertake a detailed analysis of each revolution, showing why the terror broke out. This builds on the explanation of what happened outlined in Chapters 2–4, explaining why that happened. The conclusion is that revolutionary terror and transformational terror both grew out of the revolutionary process itself—the need to consolidate power once seized and to transform the society—while inverted terror was largely a result of the human agency of Robespierre, Stalin, and Mao. The chapter also suggests possible linkages between the revolutionary seizure of power and inverted terror, but argues these needed that human agency to function.
Poharir Mel! The Mahila Samitis in Assam
Authors: Medhi Hemjyoti
Published: December 2023

Chapter 3, ‘Poharir Mel! The Mahila Samitis in Assam’, maps the contours of the disparate histories of the mahila samitis by contextualizing two significant events or landmarks in the lives of the samitis in the 1930s and the 1940s. These are—(i) The Assam Mahila Samiti’s notice to a groom opposing a child marriage citing the Sarda Act in 1934, and (ii) The Tezpur Mahila Samiti’s attempt to redefine domesticity by claiming ‘leisure’ in a resolution on ‘fixed meal times’ in 1948. The chapter cross-references these events with a spectrum of responses from contemporary Asamiya print as well as other sabhas, samitis, and associations. The discussion of the chequered history of the mahila samitis’ connections with parallel organizations such as the Assam Sahitya Sabha (1917 cont.) and the All India Women’s Conference (1927 cont.) allows us to visualize how these women’s associations functioned in a matrix of overlapping constituencies and were never insulated from the immediate as well broader political cross-currents. The chapter argues that while the mahila samitis largely remained ideologically embedded in the Asamiya middle-class milieu, the members did selectively challenge contemporary ideology of domesticity and framed dominant modes of defining womanhood to create new ways of being a gendered citizen subject in late colonial Assam.
Conclusion
Authors: Medhi Hemjyoti
Published: December 2023

The conclusion sums up how the provincial Assam Mahila Samiti, a host of local samitis along with the feminist figure Chandraprava Saikiani, mobilized a gendered public in the Brahmaputra valley in colonial Assam. When compared to other major women’s associations in contemporary South Asia, such as the AIWC which was led by upper caste, upper-class women, Chandraprava Saikiani’s leadership of the AMS for more than five decades despite her socially compromised position as a mother outside matrimony and a lower caste woman is an exception, not just in the colonial times but even today. The mahila samitis created a space for women to express themselves through public speaking, picketing, protest marches, literary pursuits, performance of plays, and weaving cooperatives among others, thereby inflecting the tenor of the nascent public sphere. The conclusion also raises methodological questions such as the need for an interdisciplinary mode of enquiry while dealing with historiographical issues in recovering and rewriting a women’s association’s trajectory in colonial Brahmaputra valley. Finally, the book calls for a reviewing of the successful discursive production of Northeast as outside of the rubric of development, which is as much a legacy of colonization as a product of the sustainable political economy that Sanjib Baruah critiques as ‘durable disorder’ of our contemporary times. If individuals and sometimes collectives imagined these locales as having other futures, how are we to acknowledge and understand those alternative visions from our contested location?
Dialogues for Discovery: What? Why? When?
Authors: Padesky Christine A. , Kennerley Helen
Published: December 2023

Chapter 1, ‘Dialogues for Discovery: What? Why? When?’, asserts that discovery is the heartbeat of psychotherapy. Therapists who learn to use Socratic dialogue effectively will be able to promote higher quality and more frequent discoveries by their clients. This chapter offers a succinct summary of how Socratic dialogue and other guided discovery methods evolved, an evidence base for Socratic questioning, and guidance for when Socratic dialogue is likely or unlikely to be helpful in therapy. Padesky’s 4-Stage Model of Socratic Dialogue (informational questions, empathic listening, summaries, analytical and synthesizing questions) is briefly illustrated with an emphasis on the collaborative and empirical aspects of those processes as well as the importance of therapist curiosity and empathy. Socratic dialogue is often used to extract client learning and consolidate discoveries that come from action therapy methods such as imagery exercises, role plays, and behavioral experiments. It also helps therapists avoid or navigate common traps that interfere with therapy progress, summarized at the end of the chapter.
Guided Discovery with Anxiety
Authors: Butler Gillian , McManus Freda
Published: December 2023

Chapter 4, “Guided Discovery with Anxiety,” identifies a number of common traps that therapists can easily fall into when working with clients suffering from anxiety (e.g., social anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and phobias) and related disorders in which anxiety is often a predominant feature (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder). Common traps addressed include colluding with client avoidance, providing reassurance, and succumbing to therapist’s beliefs about client vulnerabilities. Use of guided discovery methods such as Socratic dialogue and behavioral experiments are illustrated via case examples with extended therapist–client dialogues. “Keep in Mind” principles are summarized throughout to remind readers of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) guiding principles that can help therapy stay on track when clients “need to be sure,” experience endless worry, hesitate to take risks, or struggle with letting go of attempts to be “in control.” At the end of the chapter, questions to promote reader learning are offered as a guide for individual therapists or instructors in classroom settings. These questions are designed to help consolidate and individualize therapists’ application of the skills taught.
Chasing Janus: Socratic Dialogue with Children and Adolescents
Authors: Friedberg Robert D.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 9, “Chasing Janus: Socratic Dialogue with Children and Adolescents,” shows how to understand and modify Socratic dialogue and other guided discovery methods to account for developmental differences between these young people and adults. Three common traps that can interfere with therapy are addressed: (1) when children and adolescents see Socratic questioning as interrogation and/or attempts at control/coercion, (2) when therapists err and express Socratic dialogue in abstract or intellectual ways that turn off younger people, and (3) when young clients have low tolerance for ambiguity, abstraction, and frustration and therapists struggle to handle this. Socratic use of games, puppet play, role-play, humor, and experiential exercises demonstrate ways to make therapy fun and engaging in cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) with children and with adolescents. Methods for matching the informational processing level of the child/adolescent are illustrated in therapist–client dialogues. The importance of dosing Socratic dialogue with empathy and optimal levels of doubt is emphasized.
Socratic Dialogue in Group Therapy
Authors: Shenk James L.
Published: December 2023

Chapter 10, “Socratic Dialogue in Group Therapy,” highlights three strategic levels of using Socratic dialogue in group therapy as well as guidelines for when each is preferable: use with a focal individual or the entire group, or inviting group members to take the lead in using Socratic questioning with each other. Special attention is given to applications of Socratic dialogue in groups during: (1) the early, skill building stages of therapy, (2) debriefings of experiential exercises and homework assignments, and (3) interpersonal issues that emerge in group. A variety of participant-driven and therapist-driven clinical traps are addressed, including working with group members who dominate group therapy time, managing discrepancies in group members’ participation or skill acquisition, transforming hostile group interactions into learning opportunities, and therapist errors that result from being either too didactic or not providing enough guidance to the group.
Libertas and the Duty of Oversight
Authors: Krostenko Brian A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter probes the meaning of libertas in LA 2. Libertas implied procedural oversight, a mark of sovereignty. That oversight, according to Cicero, was bypassed in three provisions of the law: its proposed sales of state property outside of Rome (LA 1.7, 2.55–56); certain exemptions from its tax provisions (LA 1.10–11, 2.57–59); and the sale of certain acquisitions, which Cicero claims could include all of Egypt (LA 1.1, 2.41–44). The alleged lack of oversight becomes a prompt to skepticism and responsible governance—the latter extended to include cooperation with responsible magistrates. Libertas, the watchword of populist politics, is thus narrowed and coopted into an illustration of Cicero’s view of the proper use of sovereignty. The passages are each anchored by memorable images that exploit the physical environs and imply a popular audience with a rich and deep institutional and cultural memory (not mere ignorant masses).
Eudaimonia, External Results, and Choosing Virtuous Actions for Themselves
Authors: Whiting Jennifer
Published: December 2023

Aristotle’s “eudaimonism” is formally egocentric: each agent is supposed to choose everything for the sake of her own eudaimonia (broadly construed as involving that of significant others). Many commentators think this objectionably egoistic. Aristotle’s identification of eudaimonia largely with activity in accordance with ethical virtue may soften the blow. But some still object: seeking to actualize one’s own virtue because such actualization constitutes eudaimonia involves moral self-indulgence. The chapter responds by interpreting Aristotle’s requirement that virtuous agents choose virtuous actions “for themselves” as employing technical language common throughout his work. Choosing a virtuous action “for itself” is choosing it on account of those features that make it the kind of action it is: e.g., its tendency to benefit others or to establish just distributions of the benefits and burdens of living together. An agent who chooses such actions “for themselves” chooses them because she values these things. This is not moral self-indulgence but the essence of virtue.
The Nicomachean Account of Philia
Authors: Whiting Jennifer
Published: December 2023

Many commentators read Aristotle’s eudaimonism aswe a form of rational egoism and then read his account of philia (typically “friendship”) in that light. Some even read Aristotle’s conception of the friend as an “other self” as showing that actions chosen for the sake of one’s friend are ultimately chosen for the sake of one’s own eudaimonia. This chapter reverses the order, reading the Nicomachean account of philia on its own terms and then asking whether it supports a rational egoist reading of Aristotle’s eudaimonism. The answer is “no.” When Aristotle speaks of loving another “for herself,” he uses technical language to identify love that flows from the agent’s appreciation of who (or what) her friend is, in himself, and apart from any benefits or pleasures he happens to provide to the agent. More importantly, the ideal friend takes pleasure in her friend’s activities simply as such, not as extensions of her own.
The Gnostic Trilogy in Context
Authors: Young Robin Darling , Kalvesmaki Joel , Stewart Columba , Stang Charles , Dysinger Luke
Published: December 2023

The introduction summarizes the work, sets it among the entire collection of Evagrius’ writings, identifies the literary form of the kephalaion, discusses Evagrius’ education and biography, and presents his mode of exegesis. In addition, it discusses why these three works, his most important, form a trilogy, and how each of its parts was received, and preserved in Greek and Syriac manuscript traditions, offering profiles of the different translations. Reference tables provide an index to the Syriac manuscripts and a summary of the Syriac translators. Explanations are provided concerning the methodology of the translation, the choices on cross-references to ancient literature, and the scope of the commentary.
Kephalaia gnostika
Authors: Young Robin Darling , Kalvesmaki Joel , Stewart Columba , Stang Charles , Dysinger Luke
Published: December 2023

Composed of six groups, “centuries,” of one hundred (minus ten) kephalaia, 540 in all, this work, the largest by far in the trilogy, was probably composed well before the first two, but was circulated as the summit of the trilogy. Almost entirely destroyed in its Greek original after it was condemned in the mid-sixth century, the work has survived in two Syriac translations—a later revision more accurate and less periphrastic than the earlier—and about one-fourth of it in various Greek anthologies. Lacking any discussion of demons or monks, it is arranged in interlinked statements of biblical interpretation, description of angelic natures and activities, the nature of the mind, teaching about knowledge and observation (theōria), and the role of the gnostikos as true High Priest.
Introduction
Authors: Quraishi Humra
Published: December 2023

This diary is written from the perspective of a young 14-year-old teenage Kashmiri Muslim boy? Because I want to focus on the conditions in which Kashmiris are surviving in the Valley and also those who travel out of the Valley, to study/work in various towns and cities in the country. News reports plus People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi (PUDR) findings suggest that communal biases do persist. Also, the general perception coupled with the poisonous propaganda that Kashmiri Muslims are potential terrorists, if not full-fledged ones. Right from 1990, I have been witnessing the helplessness of the Kashmiris. Compounding to the situation is the political climate of the day. Offshoots writ large. The worst affected are the young Kashmiris surviving in a state of siege.
Reaching New Delhi
Authors: Quraishi Humra
Published: December 2023

Shock awaits Gull Mohammad when he reaches the madrasa situated in New Delhi. There is daal–roti to eat. He and the other madrasa children have to follow restrictions and tight routine. In contrast, there’s that modern paced New Delhi’s glitter around, but these children live with bare basics. Not just that, the feel of insecurity when cops barge in, for questioning, or Right-Wing goons stopping them in the local market place, forcing them to chant Hindutva slogans! No, he didn’t want to stay at this madrasa, but he was too scared to even think of running away. Where to? All that he had was a hundred rupee note, a bag full of clothes, and a diary tucked in between his clothes.
Around the Plains of North India
Authors: Quraishi Humra
Published: December 2023

Gull Mohammad is shifted to a madrasa in Muzaffarnagar, as the maulvis all are too nervous of being accused of keeping a Kashmiri ‘terrorist’ boy in their madrasa in New Delhi. In Muzaffarnagar, he witnessed rioting and the torching of Muslim homes and bastis. The survivors were surviving in the most difficult situations. He starts dishwashing in a roadside dhaba but was kicked out because of his ‘Kashmiri’ name and features! A local Muslim, erstwhile zamindar, sees his plight and of several other children, stuffs them in his jeep, undertakes a long road journey and shifts them to Lucknow . . . He tells these boys that the Babri Masjid demolition and the subsequent rioting impacted him to a great extent.
Backpack-mediated anti-inflammatory macrophage cell therapy for the treatment of traumatic brain injury
Authors: Kapate Neha , Liao Rick , Sodemann Ryan Luke , Stinson Tawny , Prakash Supriya , Kumbhojkar Ninad , Suja Vineeth Chandran , Wang Lily Li-Wen , Flanz Mikayla , Rajeev Rohan , Villafuerte Dania , Shaha Suyog , Janes Morgan , Park Kyung Soo , Dunne Michael , Golemb Bryan , Hone Alexander , Adebowale Kolade , Clegg John , Slate Andrea , McGuone Declan , Costine-Bartell Beth , Mitragotri Samir
Published: December 2023

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a debilitating disease with no current therapies outside of acute clinical management. While acute, controlled inflammation is important for debris clearance and regeneration after injury, chronic, rampant inflammation plays a significant adverse role in the pathophysiology of secondary brain injury. Immune cell therapies hold unique therapeutic potential for inflammation modulation, due to their active sensing and migration abilities. Macrophages are particularly suited for this task, given the role of macrophages and microglia in the dysregulated inflammatory response after TBI. However, maintaining adoptively transferred macrophages in an anti-inflammatory, wound-healing phenotype against the proinflammatory TBI milieu is essential. To achieve this, we developed discoidal microparticles, termed backpacks, encapsulating anti-inflammatory interleukin-4, and dexamethasone for ex vivo macrophage attachment. Backpacks durably adhered to the surface of macrophages without internalization and maintained an anti-inflammatory phenotype of the carrier macrophage through 7 days in vitro. Backpack–macrophage therapy was scaled up and safely infused into piglets in a cortical impact TBI model. Backpack–macrophages migrated to the brain lesion site and reduced proinflammatory activation of microglia in the lesion penumbra of the rostral gyrus of the cortex and decreased serum concentrations of proinflammatory biomarkers. These immunomodulatory effects elicited a 56% decrease in lesion volume. The results reported here demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, a potential use of a cell therapy intervention for a large animal model of TBI and highlight the potential of macrophage-based therapy. Further investigation is required to elucidate the neuroprotection mechanisms associated with anti-inflammatory macrophage therapy.
Thioredoxin‐1 and its mimetic peptide improve systolic cardiac function and remodeling after myocardial infarction
Authors: Medali Tania , Couchie Dominique , Mougenot Nathalie , Mihoc Maria , Bergmann Olaf , Derks Wouter , Szweda Luke I. , Yacoub Magdi , Soliman Saif , Aguib Yasmine , Wagdy Kerolos , Ibrahim Ayman M. , Friguet Bertrand , Rouis Mustapha
Published: December 2023

Myocardial infarction (MI) is characterized by a significant loss of cardiomyocytes (CMs), and it is suggested that reactive oxygen species (ROS) are involved in cell cycle arrest, leading to impaired CM renewal. Thioredoxin‐1 (Trx‐1) scavenges ROS and may play a role in restoring CM renewal. However, the truncated form of Trx‐1, Trx‐80, can compromise its efficacy by exerting antagonistic effects. Therefore, a Trx‐1 mimetic peptide called CB3 was tested as an alternative way to restore CMs. This study aimed to investigate the effects of Trx‐1, Trx‐80, and CB3 on mice with experimental MI and study the underlying mechanism of CB3 on CMs. Mouse cardiac parameters were quantified by echocardiography, and infarction size and fibrosis determined using Trichrome and Picro‐Sirius Red staining. The study found that Trx‐1 and CB3 improved mouse cardiac function, reduced the size of cardiac infarct and fibrosis, and decreased the expression of cardiac inflammatory markers. Furthermore, CB3 polarized macrophages into M2 phenotype, reduced apoptosis and oxidative stress after MI, and increased CM proliferation in cell culture and in vivo. CB3 effectively protected against myocardial infarction and could represent a new class of compounds for treating MI.