bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TAPESTRY”: ELIZABETH GASKELL'S WIVES AND DAUGHTERS
Authors: Blair Emily
Published: April 2008

ELIZABETH GASKELL'S WIVES AND DAUGHTERS, often considered her finest and most psychologically complex novel, tells its story through narrative indirection–what Gaskell's heroine Molly Gibson identifies in a conversation late in the novel as telling a story with a “mental squint; the surest way to spoil a narration” (623; ch. 58). In this conversation, Molly is conscious of her audience–her admiring and encouraging aunts and her less admiring and less encouraging stepmother. Like Gaskell, Molly is conscious of the presence of a “critical listening.” Thus Molly selects which details of her visit to the Towers, the manor of the largest landowners in her town, she will relate. In examining the use of details, of particulars, in Victorian and Modernist poetry, Carol Christ makes clear that what is at stake is “not whether literature should contain detail but what the significance of the detail should be, and consequently what the criteria for its selection are” (4). Gaskell's realist domestic fiction delights in detail. Yet Gaskell has been taken to task by such critics as Virginia Woolf for an incidental and excessive use of detail, detail that for Woolf represents the mid-Victorian novelist's inability to select what is important in rendering reality. The aesthetic problem with detail, Naomi Schor explains, lies in the way that detail subverts internal hierarchic ordering by blurring the lines between the foreground and the background, the principle and the incidental (20–21). Schor's explanation of this internal subversion is useful for opening up Gaskell's use of detail in Wives and Daughters.
TRAFFICKING IN LITERARY AUTHORITY: MUDIE'S SELECT LIBRARY AND THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
Authors: Roberts Lewis
Published: April 2008

Of all the devices of our complex and complete civilization, I think this huge circulating library system one of the most convenient and agreeable;…to have…volumes of excellent literature for one's exclusive use, seems to me a real privilege, and capital return for one's money.

—Frances Ann Kemble,Further Records 1848–1883
CALCULATIONS AND CONCEALMENTS: INFANTICIDE IN MID–NINETEENTH CENTURY BRITAIN
Authors: Hunt Aeron
Published: April 2008

ON 23 DECEMBER 1858, theTimesreported the proceedings of the trial in Reading of Mary Newell, a servant, for the willful murder of her three-month-old child, whose body had been discovered in the Thames by boys who had gone fishing. Since Newell herself had admitted the crime in a statement to the constables who came to her mother's house to arrest her, the focus of the trial was not so much on establishing the guilt or innocence of the prisoner as it was on determining what could have motivated such an extreme and seemingly unnatural act of violence in order to decide the severity of her punishment. According to the testimony of a fellow inmate in the workhouse where she lived, Newell had been “a kind and affectionate mother” to the infant and had “suckled it to the last”; the prisoner's defense counsel, seeking to reconcile this description with the seriousness of her crime, invited the medical witness to affirm that she might have been “seized by a destructive impulse” that made her “destroy [that] to which [she] was most fondly attached.” While Newell's defense hoped to establish mental instability as the likeliest conceivable explanation for her act, the prisoner's confession to the constables, describing her hopelessness on being turned away by the child's father, pointed to another motivation, that of economic desperation: “I went to the father of it, and he refused to give me anything, and I told him I would swear the baby, or have a summons for him. He said I might do so. He put on his coat and left me in the shop…. I stood there till his sister put up the shutters. She said it was no use to stop any longer, he would not be home till 11 or 12. I walked the town till 12, being destitute of a farthing. I walked down the Forbury to the King's Meadow. I undressed the baby and laid it by the side on the bank, and let the baby roll in. Afterwards I walked up and down to see if I could see him come indoors. After that I went and got over into a field, and sat under a hedge–it was in a turnip field–till morning…. I saw him at Christmas and he said he would pay for the child.” (“Criminal Courts” 23 Dec. 1858)
“THEIR CALLING ME ‘MOTHER’ WAS NOT, I THINK, ALTOGETHER UNMEANING”: MARY SEACOLE'S MATERNAL PERSONAE
Authors: Fluhr Nicole
Published: April 2008

IN AUTUMN OF 1854, Mary Jane Grant Seacole traveled to England from Jamaica and “laid…pertinacious siege” to the official and private residences of Sidney Herbert, Secretary-at-War, hoping to secure a post as hospital nurse in the Crimea. Thwarted in her attempts to see the Secretary, Seacole applied to his wife, Elizabeth Herbert, who informed her “that the full complement of nurses had been secured” (Seacole 78, 79). Seacole made one last effort, meeting this time “with one of Miss Nightingale's companions”; this woman, she reports, “gave me the same reply [as Mrs. Herbert], and I read in her face the fact, that had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it” (79). These interlocutors rejected her, Seacole implies, on account of her colored skin (her mother was Jamaican, her father Scottish), but English prejudice did not keep the “doctress” (as she termed herself) from the front.
REALISM, SPECULATION, AND THE GOLD STANDARD IN HARRIET MARTINEAU'SILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
Authors: Van Annette
Published: April 2008

AT A CRITICAL JUNCTUREin part one of Harriet Martineau'sBerkeley the Banker, the fourteenth novel in herIllustrations of Political Economyseries, there is a run on a country bank. The run is precipitated by a casual exchange in a local shop during which Mrs. Millar, the confectioner, is given a five-pound note to change. Her reply “Oh, I cant changethatnote [sic]” is misunderstood by others in the shop to mean that she is refusing to honor a particular bank's note while, in fact, she is simply not able to make change (169). The panic that ensues ruins Mr. Berkeley, the country bank's proprietor, and serves the novel's aim of demonstrating the precariousness of paper currency unbacked by the gold standard. In describing this incident, as well as through various characters' periodic lectures, the novel argues that only a gold standard could have prevented a calamity such as the bank run. Under a gold standard, citizens of the town of Haleham never could have misinterpreted Mrs. Millar's remarks–they would have known that the note must be honored and that, therefore, the confectioner merely lacked the correct change. Under a gold standard, in other words, the meaning of paper currency is not open to misinterpretation; its value is fully known and stable. Martineau may be convinced of the gold standard's ability to scuttle the dangers of textual ambiguity, but this moment also exposes the challenge of regulating the circulation and proliferation of meaning. The meaning of a speech act and the value of a banknote are both revealed as unstable and difficult, perhaps impossible, to regulate or manage.
“THE LAW'S A BACHELOR”:OLIVER TWIST, BASTARDY, AND THE NEW POOR LAW
Authors: Zlotnick Susan
Published: April 2008

IN THE MELODRAMATIC FINAL MOMENTSof Charles Dickens'sOliver Twist, Bumble the ex-beadle is exposed for helping to obliterate Oliver's patrimony. When he attempts to shift the blame for his unlawful actions onto Mrs. Bumble, Mr. Brownlow will not allow such a move because, as Brownlow declares, “‘in the eye of the law’” the husband is the “‘more guilty of the two…for the law supposes that [his] wife acts under [his] direction’” (335; ch. 51). While a model of oppressive officialdom and petty tyranny in his public life, Bumble is no match for the termagant he has married; and the revelation of his private humiliation leads him to reply: “‘If that's the eye of the law, the law's a bachelor’” (335; ch. 51). It is easy to dismiss Bumble's assertion that the “law's a bachelor” as an instance of Dickensian wit, but this essay contends thatOliver Twistis a serious exploration of the “bachelor law.” Specifically, it explores one aspect of the New Poor Laws that did favor Britain's bachelors– the bastardy clause.
THE ETHIC OF THE GIFT IN GEORGE ELIOT'SDANIEL DERONDA
Authors: Murphy Margueritte
Published: April 2008

In short, this [the exchange of gifts] represents an intermingling. Souls are mixed with things; things with souls. Lives are mingled together, and this is how, among persons and things so intermingled, each emerges from their own sphere and mixes together. This is precisely what contract and exchange are.

—Marcel Mauss,The Gift
SELF AGAINST CHILDHOOD: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALICE MEYNELL TO A PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGY OF MEMORY
Authors: Austin Linda M.
Published: April 2008

THE IDEA OF THE SELFin its various constructions–political, economic, psychological–has always been shadowed by an English tradition of skepticism about the persistence of a conscious and stable identity. Voiced most disconcertingly by David Hume in his section, “Of personal identity” fromA Treatise of Human Nature(1739–40; I.iv.vi), this attitude was significantly advanced during the second half of the nineteenth century by a group of physiological psychologists who argued for the corporeal basis of mental functions, including memory. Henry Maudsley and George Henry Lewes, among others, challenged the metaphysical notion of a mind and drew instead from controversial and often suppressed theories of neuroscience to describe the physiological operation of memory. These theories, which located impressions and sensations in the brain or spinal chord, produced a form of identity that could endure alterations of consciousness. They offered, in addition, a new understanding of an adult's physical connection to the personal past.
THE WOMAN OF LETTERS AT HOME: HARRIET MARTINEAU AND THE LAKE DISTRICT
Authors: Easley Alexis
Published: April 2008

“HOW MANY TRAVELLERSfrom all lands have visited this dwelling among the Westmoreland mountains as a shrine!” (377). So begins Maria Weston Chapman's 1877 homage to The Knoll, Harriet Martineau's Ambleside home. By the 1870s The Knoll had become a regular stop on literary tours of the Lake District. This was of course partly due to the fact that Martineau's literary reputation had established her as a central figure in most major political and social controversies of her day, including industrial relations, women's rights, and abolition. By the time she came to settle in the Lake District, Martineau had already published over a dozen successful works, includingIllustrations of Political Economy,Society in America, andDeerbrook. She had also published numerous articles in literary periodicals such as theWestminster Review,Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, and theMonthly Repository.
THE ENDS OF (THE BRITISH) EMPIRE
Authors: Brantlinger Patrick
Published: April 2008

The Empire of England, on which formerly the sun never set, has become one on which he never rises.

—John Ruskin, “The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century” (1884)
MURDER IN MILE END: AMY LEVY, JEWISHNESS, AND THE CITY
Authors: Goody Alex
Published: April 2008

The work of Amy Levy, as a Jewish, feminist, lesbian writer at thefin de siècle, coincides with what Sally Ledger and Roger Luckhurst describe as a “crucial moment in the formation and transformation of [the] object[s] of study” of “cultural and social historians, urban theorists, literary critics, post-colonial critics, feminist writers, and gay and lesbian theorists” (xiv). The concern of this article, rather than co-opting Levy into a particular critical framework, is to explore her presentation of subjectivity in the urban landscape, particularly in the poems of the posthumously publishedA London Plane-Tree and Other Verse(1889). In these poems and elsewhere the city instigates a disturbing unsettling of binaries and identifications which suggests the possibility of writing (of) divergent or subversive identities, what Cynthia Scheinberg terms Levy's “minority” voices (Women's Poetry191). The irregular, unregulated urban space undermines the closure of heterosexual, national narratives and provides a cartography for Levy's exploration of “the intersection between various minority positions and cultural discourses which construct and judge ‘others’” (ibid.). In the first two sections ofA London Plane-TreeLevy moves towards a complex elaboration of impermanently located self-knowledge that develops beyond the sexual and racial identifications of her earlier work in which she draws on more traditional and intelligible knowledges. Thus, the biblical and classical themes of “Xantippe” or “Magdalen” and the stable persona of the dramatic monologue are increasingly replaced by a lyric voice that occupies an unstable, modern, urban world. With her interest in the poet James Thomson (B. V.) and her 1883 essay on him, Levy can be seen to be identifying with an emergent late-nineteenth-century urban poetic that greatly influences the first section ofA London Plane-Tree. But it is not simply that Levy “discloses how the metropolitan world of high culture was increasingly infiltrated by…feminists, sexual dissidents, Jewish people, and freethinkers” (Bristow 80). The city ofA London Plane-Treeand the intersections, interchanges, and subversions it enables make it impossible to maintain the divisions of self and other, object and subject. It is through the space of the city that Levy is enabled to write the specificity of her own unauthorized, ambiguous, “minor” voice.
A VISUAL FIELD: MICHAEL FIELD AND THE GAZE
Authors: Fraser Hilary
Published: April 2008

In 1892, Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913) published a volume of poetry with the titleSight and Songbased on their response to a series of paintings in British and Continental public galleries. Bradley and Cooper, aunt and niece, devoted lovers, who over the three decades of their writing lives produced numerous volumes of poetry and plays collaboratively under the authorial signature “Michael Field,” had already made their name with a volume published in 1889 entitledLong Ago, comprising translations and elaborations of the Sapphic fragments, which has been read as an intriguing and (for the times) audaciously explicit celebration of love between women. The concept of “translation” was as fundamental to the project ofSight and Songas it had been toLong Ago; however, in the later volume it refers not to the literal translation of poetic fragments written in an ancient and other language (asLong Agoostensibly did) but to the rhetorical act of interpreting visual images. The aim of their new collection of ekphrastic poems was, as they explained in the Preface toSight and Song, “to translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves” (Michael Field,Sight and Songv). The synaesthetic complexity of Michael Field's language here suggests the multidimensional sensory experience of looking at and responding to visual art works, something the women try to capture in the various kinds of writing they undertake around the production of this volume – their journal and their letters, as well as the poems themselves – in their attempt to provide such a translation. In this essay I should like to explore howSight and Songcontinues the project ofLong Agoin the sense both of articulating their lesbian experience and of locating them in a cultural tradition, only that experience is here specifically associated with visual hermeneutics and with the circulation of the verbal and the visual, and the cultural connections they make are not with a classical lesbian heritage but with recent and contemporary aestheticians and writers on art – most notably, I suggest, with two other couples who wrote art criticism in collaboration: Bernard Berenson and Mary Costelloe, and Vernon Lee and Clementina (“Kit”) Anstruther-Thomson.
BENGAL, BRITAIN, FRANCE: THE LOCATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS OF TORU DUTT
Authors: Lootens Tricia
Published: April 2008

To a far greater degree than many of us have yet realized, late-nineteenth-century women's poetry may be a poetry of alien homelands: of cultural spaces, that is, in which the domestic proves alien, even as technically alien territory comes to represent some form of home. And partly for this reasosn, to explore poetry in English may require moving not only beyond Britain, but also beyond English itself. Think, for example, of Christina Rossetti, who composed poems in Italian; of Mathilde Blind, with her German accent and translation of the French edition of theJournal of Marie Bashkirtseff; of Agnes Mary Frances Robinson Darmesteter Duclaux, whose poetry preceded a long, successful career of writing in great part in and for the French; of Louisa S. Bevington Guggenberger, with her German home and husband; or, for that matter, of nineteenth-century India's first influential English-speaking woman poet, Toru Dutt. As generations of Indian critics have stressed, as early anthologizer E. C. Stedman made clear, and as certain editors of recent nineteenth-century poetry collections have also acknowledged, Dutt's writing played a suggestive role within late-century understandings of “British literature.” Indeed, even now, growing attention to her work is helping extend our conception of the geographical origins of “Victorian” poetry from Britain to Bengal. Still, if we are to develop a full exploration of Dutt's cultural presence, we may need to move further as well, connecting Indo-Anglian literature to that of France.
“LADY'S GREEK” (WITH THE ACCENTS): A METRICAL TRANSLATION OF EURIPIDES BY A. MARY F. ROBINSON
Authors: Prins Yopie
Published: April 2008

How to map women's poetry at the end of the nineteenth century was a question already posed by Vita Sackville-West in 1929, in her essay, “The Women Poets of the 'Seventies.” She speculated that the 1870s “perhaps might prove the genesis of the literary woman's emancipation,” as a time of transition when “women with a taste for literature” could follow the lead of Victorian poetesses like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, while also leading women's poetry forward into the future (111). According to Sackville-West, “Mrs. Browning” seemed an exemplary woman of letters to this generation, because “she had been taught Greek; her father had been a man of culture; and she had married a poet” (112). With the formation of women's colleges and the entry of women into higher education, however, another generation of literary women was emerging. What distinguished these new women of letters was a desire for classical education independent of fathers and husbands, demonstrating an independence of mind anxiously parodied byPunchmagazine: The woman of the future! she'll be deeply read, that's certain,With all the education gained at Newnham or at Girton;Or if she turns to classic tomes, a literary roamer,She'll give you bits of Horace or sonorous lines from Homer.Oh pedants of these later days, who go on undiscerningTo overload a woman's brains and cram our girls with learning,You'll make a woman half a man, the souls of parents vexing,To find that all the gentle sex this process is unsexing. As quoted by Sackville-West in her essay (114), this parody is an equivocal tribute to the generation of women just before her own. Although (in her estimation) the women poets of the seventies produced “nothing of any remarkable value,” nevertheless she admired their intellectual ambition: “a general sense of women scribbling, scribbling” was the “most encouraging sign of all” that the woman of the future was about to come into being, as an idea to be fulfilled by the New Woman of thefin de siècle(131).
VICTORIANS LIVE: AUSTRALIA'S VICTORIAN VESTIGES
Authors: Harris Margaret
Published: April 2008

ON 1 JANUARY 1901, at the beginning of a new century, the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed a political entity by the federation of six separate British colonies. Queen Victoria's formal assent to the necessary legislation of the Westminster Parliament was one of her last official acts; she died on 22 January. For all the tyranny of 20,000 kilometres distance, the impress of the monarch on her far-flung colony was evident. Two of the states of the Commonwealth, Victoria and Queensland, had been named for her. When the Port Phillip settlement separated from New South Wales in 1851, it became Victoria; in 1859, when the Moreton Bay settlement also hived off, its first governor announced “a fact which I know you will all hear with delight–Queensland, the name selected for this new Colony, was entirely the happy thought and inspiration of Her Majesty herself!” (Cilento and Lack 161)
VICTORIANS LIVE: WILLIAM MORRIS: “THE BEAUTY OF LIFE”
Authors: Sussman Herbert
Published: April 2008

“THE BEAUTY OF LIFE” : William Morris & the Art of Design was a visual delight. Curated by Dianne Waggoner, the exhibition originated at the Huntington Library and was first shown at the Yale Center for British Art, enriched by additions from the Yale Center for British Art, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Yale University Library. For those who missed this Victorianists' treat at New Haven and San Marino, the fine catalog edited by Waggoner provides illustrations and detailed accounts of the items as well as perceptive critical essays.
Multilingual pronunciation by analogy
Authors: SOONKLANG TASANAWAN , DAMPER ROBERT I. , MARCHAND YANNICK
Published: April 2008

Automatic pronunciation of unknown words (i.e., those not in the system dictionary) is a difficult problem in text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. Currently, many data-driven approaches have been applied to the problem, as a backup strategy for those cases where dictionary matching fails. The difficulty of the problem depends on the complexity of spelling-to-sound mappings according to the particular writing system of the language. Hence, the degree of success achieved varies widely across languages but also across dictionaries, even for the same language with the same method. Further, the sizes of the training and test sets are an important consideration in data-driven approaches. In this paper, we study the variation of letter-to-phoneme transcription accuracy across seven European languages with twelve different lexicons. We also study the relationship between the size of dictionary and the accuracy obtained. The largest dictionaries of each language have been partitioned into ten approximately equal-sized subsets and combined to give ten different-sized test sets. In view of its superior performance in previous work, the transcription method used is pronunciation by analogy (PbA). Best results are obtained for Spanish, generally believed to have a very regular (‘shallow’) orthography, and poorest results for English, a language whose irregular spelling system is legendary. For those languages for which multiple dictionaries were available (i.e., French and English), results were found to vary across dictionaries. For the relationship between dictionary size and transcription accuracy, we find that as dictionary size grows, so performance grows monotonically. However, the performance gain decelerates (tends to saturate) as the dictionary increases in size; the relation can simply be described by a logarithmic regression, one parameter of which (α) can be taken as quantifying the depth of orthography of a language. We find that α for a language is significantly correlated with transcription performance on a small dictionary (approximately 10,000 words) for that language, but less so for asymptotic performance. This may be because our measure of asymptotic performance is unreliable, being extrapolated from the fitted logarithmic regression.
Arithmetic skills and their cognitive correlates in children with
acquired and congenital brain disorder
Authors: AYR LAUREN K. , YEATES KEITH OWEN , ENRILE BENEDICTA G.
Published: April 2008

Arithmetic skills and their cognitive correlates were studied in 24
children with myelomeningocele and shunted hydrocephalus (MM), 27 children
with severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and 26 children with
orthopedic injuries (OI). Their average age was 11.56 years (SD =
2.36). They completed the WRAT–3 Arithmetic subtest and a
subtraction task consisting of 20 problems of varying difficulty, as well
as measures of working memory, declarative memory, processing speed,
planning skills, and visuospatial abilities. The MM group performed more
poorly on the WRAT–3 Arithmetic subtest and the subtraction task
than the other two groups, which did not differ from each other on either
measure. The groups did not differ in the number of math fact errors or
visual-spatial errors on the subtraction task, but the MM group made more
procedural errors than the OI group. The five cognitive abilities
explained substantial variance in performance on both arithmetic tests;
processing speed, working memory, declarative memory, and planning
accounted for unique variance. Exploratory analyses showed that the
cognitive correlates of arithmetic skills varied across groups and ages.
Congenital and acquired brain disorders are associated with distinct
patterns of arithmetic skills, which are related to specific cognitive
abilities. (JINS, 2005, 11, 249–262.)
Not Just Another Pretty Picture
Authors: Stebbins Glenn T.
Published: April 2008

Neurology of Cognitive and Behavioral Disorders. Orrin
Devinsky and Mark D'Esposito. 2004. New York: Oxford University
Press. 451 pp., $99.95 (HB).

A problem with many behavioral neurology texts is the tendency to
minimize the connection between behavior and integrated neuroscience
theory. Often the illustrative neurological principles are not grounded in
behavioral neuroscience, but, instead, present unusual conditions in a
type of “Gee whiz” display. The relationship of these
conditions to neuroscience is often lost. In Neurology of Cognitive
and Behavioral Disorders, the relationship of neurologic condition to
neuroscientific principles is clearly explicated. This is perhaps the
greatest strength of this addition to the Oxford University Press
Contemporary Neurology Series.
NONLINEAR ERROR CORRECTION: THE CASE OF MONEY DEMAND IN THE UNITED KINGDOM (1878–2000)
Authors: ESCRIBANO ALVARO
Published: April 2008

This paper explores single-equation nonlinear error correction (NEC) models with linear and nonlinear cointegrated variables. Within the class of semiparametric NEC models, we use smoothing splines. Within the class of parametric models, we discuss the interesting properties of cubic polynomial NEC models and we show how they can be used to identify unknown threshold points in asymmetric models and to check the stability properties of the long-run equilibrium. A new class of rational polynomial NEC models is also introduced. We found multiple long-run money demand equilibria. The stability observed in the money-demand parameter estimates during more than a century, 1878 to 2000, is remarkable.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ASSAR LINDBECK
Authors: Gylfason Thorvaldur
Published: April 2008

Sweden has a long and distinguished tradition in economics, beginning with Knut Wicksell and continuing with Gustav Cassel, Eli Heckscher, Erik Lindahl, Gunnar Myrdal, Bertil Ohlin, and Erik Lundberg, all of whom are now gone. Yet, for several of these men, economics was not enough: Wicksell spoke out on moral issues and served time in jail, and Myrdal was for many years a high official at the United Nations and, briefly, a cabinet minister, as was Ohlin, who made his mark at home primarily as leader of the opposition in a country governed mostly by Social Democrats, serving in parliament for 32 years. For Assar Lindbeck, however, economics has been broad enough: he has devoted a long and distinguished career to economics, and to economics alone, with unfailing enthusiasm and energy over half a century. Not that he was not wanted elsewhere: over the years, he has declined challenging job offers from an international organization and a Swedish daily newspaper, to name but two examples, as well as from universities outside Sweden. Assar has managed to harness his varied and wide-ranging talents within the many mansions of economics. He is one of the most versatile economists of his generation. Indeed, he is one of the few who, for clarity, need to divide their bibliography into categories by subject: Macroeconomics and monetary economics, Public economics, Labor economics, International economics, Economic systems and economic structures, Methodology and history of economic thought, and Swedish economy. His work on these different subjects has ranged from pure theory to applied policy-oriented and empirical studies. In addition to the numerous scientific publications listed at the end of this interview, his bibliography includes nearly 200 articles for magazines and newspapers. His ivory tower has always been equipped with a high-speed elevator. But, as he points out in the conversation to follow, all his research work, as well as his journalism, is driven by an overarching interest in bettering economic policy and organization—in other words, boosting economic and social efficiency for the purpose of lifting ordinary people's standard of life. This has been, and remains, a guiding principle—a Leitmotiv, if you prefer—from which he has never swerved. Assar Lindbeck is a towering figure in Swedish economics and in Swedish national life.
ARE EXCHANGE RATES REALLY RANDOM WALKS? SOME EVIDENCE ROBUST TO PARAMETER INSTABILITY
Authors: ROSSI BARBARA
Published: April 2008

Many authors have documented that it is challenging to explain exchange rate fluctuations with macroeconomic fundamentals: a random walk forecasts future exchange rates better than existing macroeconomic models. This paper applies newly developed tests for nested models that are robust to the presence of parameter instability. The empirical evidence shows that for some countries we can reject the hypothesis that exchange rates are random walks. This raises the possibility that economic models were previously rejected not because the fundamentals are completely unrelated to exchange rate fluctuations, but because the relationship is unstable over time and, thus, difficult to capture by Granger causality tests or by forecast comparisons. We also analyze forecasts that exploit the time variation in the parameters and find that, in some cases, they can improve over the random walk.
DISCOUNT WINDOW POLICY, BANKING CRISES, AND INDETERMINACY OF EQUILIBRIUM
Authors: ANTINOLFI GAETANO , KEISTER TODD
Published: April 2008

We study how discount window policy affects the frequency of banking crises, the level of investment, and the scope for indeterminacy of equilibrium. Previous work has shown that providing costless liquidity through a discount window has mixed effects in terms of these criteria: It prevents episodes of high liquidity demand from causing crises but can lead to indeterminacy of stationary equilibrium and to inefficiently low levels of investment. We show how offering discount window loans at an above-market interest rate can be unambiguously beneficial. Such a policy generates a unique stationary equilibrium. Banking crises occur with positive probability in this equilibrium and the level of investment is suboptimal, but a proper combination of discount window and monetary policies can make the welfare effects of these inefficiencies arbitrarily small. The near-optimal policies can be viewed as approximately implementing the Friedman rule.
MONETARY POLICY OVER TIME
Authors: GASPAR VITOR , SMETS FRANK , VESTIN DAVID
Published: April 2008

Progress in stochastic macroeconomic modeling justifies revisiting Milton Friedman's program on the relation between macroeconomic stability and active stabilization policies. In the lecture, we use a standard new Keynesian model but depart from rational expectations by assuming that agents behave in line with adaptive learning, which increase the potential for instability in the economy.

Optimal policy under adaptive learning displays some similarity with optimal policy under commitment in the rational expectations setting. Specifically, we find that optimal policy responds in a persistent manner when expectations threaten to become unhinged. Finally, we illustrate the dynamics associated with the change from a simple regime that ignores the expectation formation, to the optimal policy that does. The results are not unlike the behavior of the U.S. economy around the Volcker transition (October 1979).
THE MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS OF DEMOGRAPHIC SHOCKS
Authors: HEIJDRA BEN J. , LIGTHART JENNY E.
Published: April 2008

The paper employs an extended Yaari-Blanchard model of overlapping generations to study how the macroeconomy is affected over time by various demographic changes. It is shown that a proportional decline in fertility and death rates has qualitatively similar effects to capital income subsidies; both per capita savings and per capita consumption increase in the new steady state. A drop in the birth rate, although keeping the death rate constant, reduces per capita savings, but increases per capita consumption if the generational turnover effect is dominated by the intertemporal labor supply effect. If the generational turnover effect is sufficiently strong, however, a decline in the birth rate may, contrary to standard results, give rise to an increase in per capita savings. Finally, a fertility rate reduction that leaves unaffected the rate of generational turnover is shown to have effects qualitatively similar to those of a fall in public consumption. Both per capita savings and per capita output decline, but per capita private consumption rises.
DOES MONETARY POLICY GENERATE RECESSIONS?
Authors: SIMS CHRISTOPHER A. , ZHA TAO
Published: April 2008

We consider two kinds of answers to the title question: Do random shifts in monetary policy account for historical recessions, and would changes in the systematic component of monetary policy have allowed reductions in inflation or output variance without substantial costs. The answer to both questions is no. We use weak identifying assumptions and include extensive discussion of these assumptions, including a completely specified dynamic stochastic equilibrium model in which our identifying assumptions can be shown to be approximately satisfied.
ENDOGENOUS SHORT-SALE CONSTRAINT, STOCK PRICES
AND OUTPUT CYCLES
Authors: ZHANG HAROLD H.
Published: April 2008

This study examines the effect of short-sale constraints on a stock
market, in particular, on stock prices, trading volume, and the
relationship between stock price movements and output cycles. The
economic model features incomplete markets and heterogeneous agents.
The short-sale constraint is endogenously determined in the economy
and is a function of agents' risk aversion, time preference, and
exogenous driving forces. The dynamic model is solved using a policy
function iteration algorithm. We find that, for an array of
reasonable time-preference parameters and risk-aversion coefficients,
the short sale limits range from 27 to 45% of total outstanding
shares. Imposing short-sale constraints causes stock prices to move
upward. Trading volume is high when some agents have a large amount of
stock holdings but incur a negative shock on their nonfinancial
income and is low when some agents have few stock holdings and also
incur a negative shock to their nonfinancial income. Stock prices are
found to be countercyclical and the expected stock returns are
procyclical. These countercyclical stock-price movements are shown
to be related to the imposition of a short-sale constraint.
Sickness behavior, its mechanisms and significance
Authors: Tizard Ian
Published: April 2008

Recent studies have begun to clarify the pathogenesis of sickness behavior. Cytokines released by macrophages, dendritic cells and mast cells act on the brain to trigger behavioral changes in infected animals. The major cytokines, interleukin-1, tumor necrosis factor alpha, and others, all act on the hypothalamus to provoke alterations in the normal homeostatic condition. These include elevated body temperature, increased sleep, and loss of appetite as well as major alterations in lipid and protein metabolism leading to significant weight loss. Some of these changes are clearly directed towards enhancing the normal immune responses. The benefits of others such as appetite loss are unclear. It is also important to recognize that other animals may recognize sickness behavior as a sign of weakness and mark the victim out for targeting by predators. As a result, some prey species may work very hard to mask their sickness, a response that serves to complicate veterinary diagnosis.
Hopelessness and terminal illness: The construct of hopelessness in patients with advanced AIDS
Authors: ROSENFELD BARRY , GIBSON CHRISTOPHER , KRAMER MICHAEL , BREITBART WILLIAM
Published: April 2008

Objective: Understanding the construct of hopelessness in the context of a life-threatening or terminal illness is a complex and challenging undertaking. The objective of this study was to examine the construct of hopelessness in patients with advanced AIDS by examining the structure of the Beck Hopelessness Scale in this specific population.

Methods: For the past three decades, the primary measure used to study hopelessness in a variety of populations has been the Beck Hopelessness Scale. Several factor analytic studies have been published using this scale, with studies of nonclinical samples typically describing a two-factor model (optimism and pessimism), whereas clinical samples have consistently generated a third factor (lack of motivation to make changes). We used confirmatory factor analysis to analyze two data sets in patients with AIDS.

Results:Confirmatory factor analysis of the Beck Hopelessness Scale in two samples of patients with far advanced AIDS revealed a clear superiority for a three-factor model.

Significance of results:The Beck Hopelessness Scale has unique characteristics when applied to a terminally ill population. The implications of these results for studies of terminal illness are discussed.
Spouse caregivers of terminally-ill cancer patients as cancer
patients: A pilot study in a palliative care unit
Authors: ONISHI HIDEKI , ONOSE MASANARI , OKUNO SHIGEKO , YAE SUZU , MIZUNO YASUHIRO , ITO MIZUHO , SAITO HIDEYUKI , KAWANISHI CHIAKI
Published: April 2008

Objective: It is known that families of terminally-ill cancer
patients show levels of emotional and functional disruption and are called
“second order patients,” however, little is actually known
about the health problems of family members, especially in terms of
cancer.

Methods: This study reviewed the family histories of
terminally-ill cancer patients in a palliative care unit and investigated
cancer related health problems of the spouses of terminally-ill cancer
patients.

Results: We investigated the past medical history of 125
spouses of terminally-ill cancer patients and found that five spouses had
a past medical history of cancer. In these five spouses, the duration of
illness, present status of treatment and physical condition were reviewed
from the database. Of these five spouses, three patients continued to
attend an outpatient clinic regularly for checkup and one patient was
hospitalized for nephrectomy. Two spouses did not have physical symptoms
that made them unable to provide direct care for the terminally-ill
spouses, while three could not provide care because of their own physical
symptoms derived from cancer.

Significance of results: Our findings indicated that some of
the spouses of terminally-ill cancer patients are not only “second
order patients” but also “cancer patients.” Our findings
also suggest that some spouses of terminally-ill cancer patients might
experience distress both as a cancer patient and as a spouse and may need
care both as a cancer patient and as a spouse.
A specialist nurse-function in neurooncology: A qualitative study of possibilities, limitations, and pitfalls
Authors: SPETZ AGNETA , HENRIKSSON ROGER , BERGENHEIM A. TOMMY , SALANDER PÄR
Published: April 2008

Objective:Brain tumors, a cancer that affects the cortical processes, have a substantial social impact. Typically, malignant glioma is a brain tumor with a poor prognosis; few patients survive more than two years after diagnosis. In the last several years, different groups have documented how this disease affects a patient's quality of life. These findings have resulted in new ways for nurses to improve the care for these patients and their spouses. However, these initiatives have not been studied in a systematic way. This study investigates how patients with malignant glioma and their families respond to a special nurse, a nurse specifically instructed to address the needs of the patient and the patient's family.

Methods: Sixteen patients and their next-of kin were included. At the time of diagnosis, the special nurse offered to serve as a resource to the patient and the patient's family. During the whole course of the disease, the nurse recorded her interactions with the patients and the patients' family. In addition, the spouses were interviewed after the patient's death. Data was analysed qualitatively with focus on tasks and relationships.

Results:Four relationships between the special nurse and the family were detected: 1) a resource for the whole family; 2) a parallel resource within the family; 3) a resource for the next-of kin; and 4) a resource for the patient. Most of the patients and their families found this program beneficial. The nurse provided the patient and family with several functions. In some cases the family and nurse interaction developed into a closer relationship, a relationship based on the nurse's availability and concern for the patient's and family's welfare.

Significance of Results:This close relationship underlines the importance of the nurse's professionalism and a systemic perspective for understanding the nurse's function within the milieu of a cancer patient's family.
Professionalization of hospice volunteer practices: What are the
implications?
Authors: GUIRGUIS-YOUNGER MANAL , KELLEY MARY-LOU , MCKEE MARGARET
Published: April 2008

Volunteers are increasingly considered as core members of
interdisciplinary palliative care teams, and thus no longer
“informal providers.” The definitive trend towards formalizing
the role of hospice volunteers is indicated not only by national work to
develop best practices (Ferris et al., 2002),
but also by efforts of the Canadian Council on Health Services
Accreditation to develop quality indicators for accrediting volunteer
agencies. This movement emerged from a need to coordinate, define and
standardize the role of volunteers in palliative care settings, as well as
to manage organizational resources and maintain standards of excellence.
The purpose of this forum is to highlight the possible impact of this
development on the nature of volunteer contribution to end-of-life
care.
Meaning In Madness
Authors: Granet Roger B.
Published: April 2008

Meaning In Madness.
Reducing the risk of burnout in end-of-life care settings: The role of daily spiritual experiences and training
Authors: HOLLAND JASON M. , NEIMEYER ROBERT A.
Published: April 2008

Objective:Individuals in the helping professions are subject to unique stressors that may lead to burnout, and research has shown that those who work with dying or bereaved individuals might be particularly at-risk. This study explores how factors such as spirituality and level of training might buffer the stress of working with terminally ill clients and their families.

Method:A total of 80 medical and mental health practitioners attending palliative care seminars were surveyed, with each completing validated measures of daily spiritual experiences and caregiver burnout, as well as assessments of demographic factors, their general education and training experiences specific to working in end-of-life care and bereavement settings.

Results:Findings indicate that daily spiritual experiences might mitigate physical, cognitive, and emotional forms of burnout in the workplace. In addition, a negative correlation was found between the amount of end-of-life training received and burnout in the physical and cognitive domains. However, training was not related to professionals' level of emotional exhaustion.

Significance of the research:Results reinforce a growing literature on the salutary effects of spirituality, and underscore its relevance as one possible form of constructive coping for professionals attending to the needs of the dying and bereaved. The study carries further implications for how the stresses of such work might be ameliorated by enhanced training efforts, as well as creative facilitation of diverse spiritual expressions (e.g., inclusive forms of ritual recognition of loss) in the workplace.
The impact of a multidimensional exercise program on self-reported anxiety and depression in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy: A phase II study
Authors: MIDTGAARD JULIE , RØRTH MIKAEL , STELTER REINHARD , TVETERÅS ANDERS , ANDERSEN CHRISTINA , QUIST MORTEN , MØLLER TOM , ADAMSEN LIS
Published: April 2008

Little is known about the role of exercise in improving cancer patients' mood while undergoing chemotherapy. In this phase II study changes in self-reported anxiety and depression and fitness (VO2max) are reported in relation to a 6-week, 9 h weekly, multidimensional exercise program. A total of 91 patients receiving chemotherapy, between 18 and 65 years old, completed a Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale Questionnaire (HADS; response rate 91%, adherence rate 78%). Anxiety (p< 0.001) and depression (p= 0.042) was significantly reduced. The mean ±SDof the change was −1.14 ± 2.91 for anxiety and −0.44 ± 2.77 for depression. Improvements in fitness were correlated with improvements in depression, χ2(1) = 3.966,p= 0.046, but not with improvements in anxiety, χ2(1) = 0.540,p= 0.462. The research suggests that exercise intervention may have a beneficial impact on psychological distress for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy with low to moderate levels of baseline psychomorbidity. The study furthermore indicates that changes in distress may be associated with disease status and levels of physical activity undertaken during disease. The study is followed up by an ongoing randomized clinical controlled trial to evaluate potential causal effects of exercise intervention on psychological distress and fitness in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
Attitudes of oncologists toward euthanasia in Turkey
Authors: MAYDA ATILLA SENIH , ÖZKARA ERDEM , ÇORAPÇIOĞLU FUNDA
Published: April 2008

There have been intensive debates about euthanasia and attempts to change laws on euthanasia in all countries. What doctors and particularly oncologists think about euthanasia must be taken into consideration, as their voices are crucial in this dialogue. The aim of this study was to find out how Turkish doctors approach euthanasia in the context of cancer. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 85 oncologists out of a total 800 in active oncology practice.

Of the oncologists surveyed, 43.8% did not object to euthanasia. Some 33.7% had been asked to perform euthanasia and 41.5% believed that euthanasia was performed secretly although it is against the law in Turkey. Forty-two doctors (50.6%) noted that they had withdrawn treatment in patients.

Doctors who encounter terminally ill patients with cancer should update their knowledge about patients' rights and euthanasia. Doctors, who are often asked to perform euthanasia, especially in the cancer setting, can help to illuminate the debates about euthanasia.