bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conclusion
Authors: Sarra Janis
Published: December 2020

Chapter 10 concludes with some final observations on charting a path forward from ideas to action in the transition to net zero carbon emissions. It draws attention once again to the need for a just and equitable transition to a sustainable economy. It briefly reflects on the coronavirus pandemic lockdown that has commenced. The Appendix offers a governance checklist for directors, officers, pension fiduciaries, and asset managers as they begin to embed effective climate governance in their management and oversight. The Appendix can also be used by employees, investors, community members, and regulators to ask questions that help hold companies and institutional investors accountable for their actions to combat climate change and move towards a sustainable planet.
Introduction
Authors: Louchet Francois
Published: December 2020

The chapter gives the etymology of the word “avalanche”. It defines the various types of snow avalanches, as slab, full-depth or loose snow, dense or airborne-powder, spontaneous or artificial ones. It also mentions the fact that other materials, such as sand, rock-falls, and landslides, may behave in a similar way, as developed in chapter 4. It also aims at making clear a number of idioms often used in this field. The content of each of the book chapters is also summarized.
Deformation, Fracture, and Friction Processes
Authors: Louchet Francois
Published: December 2020

The main mechanical and physical quantities and concepts ruling deformation, fracture, and friction processes are recalled, with particular attention paid to the simplicity of the analysis, but without betraying the scientific validity of the arguments. We particularly discuss the difference between between elastic and plastic deformation, and quasistatic and dynamic loadings, essential in avalanche triggering mechanisms. The physical origin of Griffith’s rupture criterion that rules both fracture nucleation and propagation, and the transition between brittle and ductile failure processes, is thoroughly discussed. We also explain the physical meaning of the classical Coulomb’s friction law, showing why it can hardly apply to a non-conventional porous, brittle, and healable solid like snow.
Slab Avalanche Release: Data and Field Experiments
Authors: Louchet Francois
Published: December 2020

Starting zone sizes are shown to obey statistical laws, named “power laws”, stating that the recurrence time of an event of a given size increases in a precise proportion with its size. Extrapolation of such laws fitted on small-sized events allows a determination of recurrence times for big and uncommon events. The key role of the weak layer (WL) failure is illustrated by “Propagation Saw Tests” (PST), showing that the collapse of a WL zone of a few decimeters may act as a switch, triggering a very large scale spontaneous WL failure. However, the consequences of such a collapse may be damped down by sintering of broken WL grains. We analyze bridging indexes, often used to estimate WL resistance to collapse under loading. We define a new bridging index, extending the usual one to the case of elastic bending, and we discuss the validity domains of both of them.
Slab Avalanche Modeling
Authors: Louchet Francois
Published: December 2020

The chapter starts with a review of a few unfounded arguments sometimes used to account for snow slab instability, and often resulting from the application of mechanical laws that are invalid in a granular, brittle, and healable material like snow. Statistical aspects are investigated using a two-threshold cellular automaton, one for basal instability, and the second one for crown crack opening. The results reproduce the power-law size distribution of starting zone sizes mentioned in chapter 4, and validate a “4-step” triggering scheme made of successive initiation and expansion events for both the basal crack and the crown crack. The possible sintering of collapsed weak layers is then analyzed. It is shown to flow as a slurry for shear strain rates less than a predetermined threshold, or to sinter in the opposite case, which provides a “joker” to any successful “4-step” scheme, turning an incipient avalanche into a simple “whumpf”.
The Private Equity Market
Authors: Gilligan John , Wright Mike
Published: December 2020

This chapter defines private equity, describes the origins of the private equity market, and examines the data on the size and growth of the private equity industry. Private equity is risk capital provided outside the public markets. The businesses invested in by private equity range from early stage ventures, usually termed venture capital investments, through businesses requiring growth or development capital to the purchase of an established business in a management buyout or buy-in. Much, but not all, of the investing done in the private equity market is by private equity funds. The objective of a private equity fund is to invest equity or risk capital in a portfolio of private companies which are identified and researched by the private equity fund managers. The chapter then considers what private equity fund managers do. It also provides a brief history of private equity before assessing how big the private equity market is.
Navigating the New Retail Landscape
Authors: Treadgold Alan , Reynolds Jonathan
Published: December 2020

The retail industry globally is in an era of profound, perhaps unprecedented, change, change which has been further accelerated for many by the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its attendant health and economic crises. This book is intended to serve as a wide-ranging, robust, practical guide to leaders of enterprises tasked with understanding and delivering success in the new landscape of retailing. Part 1 describes the major directions and drivers of change that define the new global landscape of retailing. Accelerating changes in technology, the rise to prominence globally of internet enabled shoppers and the rapid emergence of entirely new retail enterprises and business models are combining to re-shape the very fundamentals of the retail industry. The new landscape of retailing is unforgiving: success can be achieved more quickly than ever before but failure is equally rapid. Opportunities in the new landscape of retailing are profound, but so too are the challenges. Part 2 discusses the structures, skills and capabilities that retail enterprises will need to be successful in this new landscape and the skills and capabilities required of the leaders of retail enterprises. More than 25 detailed case studies of innovative, successful enterprises internationally and more than one hundred smaller examples, all updated and many new since the first edition, are used to illustrate the themes discussed. Frameworks are presented to provide practical guidance for enterprise leaders to understand and contextualize the nature of change re-shaping retail landscapes globally. Clear guidance is given of the capabilities, skills and perspectives needed at both an enterprise and personal leadership level to deliver success in the new landscape of retailing.
Strikes, Ballots, Law, and Democracy
Authors: Creighton Breen , Denvir Catrina , Johnstone Richard , McCrystal Shae , Orchiston Alice
Published: December 2020

This chapter examines the nature and purposes of strike action. It suggests that strikes are a means of protecting and promoting the social and economic interests of workers—especially in the context of collective bargaining. It provides an historical outline of the relationship between strikes and the law by tracing the transition from repression of union organization, and more specifically the capacity to take strike action, through toleration to recognition, and recently back to reluctant toleration. The chapter also notes that the capacity to take strike action is almost always limited in one or more ways, including restrictions on the organizations and/or individuals that can lawfully take strike action, the forms of strike action that can legitimately be taken, the matters in relation to which strike action may be taken, and the procedural requirements for lawful strike action. A very common procedural constraint is a requirement that proposed strike action be authorized by a pre-strike ballot. Chapter 1 introduces the usual ostensible rationale for pre-strike ballots—the need to protect the democratic rights of individuals: the so-called ‘democratic imperative’. It also uses two case studies to introduce important theoretical and practical issues raised by the use of pre-strike ballots.
The Right to Strike and Pre-Strike Ballot Requirements in International Law
Authors: Creighton Breen , Denvir Catrina , Johnstone Richard , McCrystal Shae , Orchiston Alice
Published: December 2020

The book is underpinned by the assumption that the right to strike to promote or to protect the individual’s economic and social interests is a universally recognized human right, either standing on its own, or as part of the principle of freedom of association. This is reflected in the fact that the right to strike is, directly or indirectly, afforded protection by major international standard-setting instruments, and in the constitutions of many nation states. This chapter outlines the international recognition of the right to strike, with particular reference to the jurisprudence of the supervisory bodies of the International Labour Organisation. This includes consideration of the extent to which access to the right to strike can properly be conditioned by pre-requisites such as pre-strike ballot requirements.
Praeterita
Authors: Ruskin John
Published: December 2020

‘For as I look deeper into the mirror, I find myself a more curious person than I had thought.’ John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a towering figure of the nineteenth century: an art critic who spoke up for J. M. W. Turner and for the art of the Italian Middle Ages; a social critic whose aspiration for, and disappointment in, the future of Great Britain was expressed in some of the most vibrant prose in the language. Ruskin’s incomplete autobiography was written between periods of serious mental illness at the end of his career, and is an eloquent analysis of the guiding powers of his life, both public and private. An elegy for lost places and people, Praeterita recounts Ruskin’s intense childhood, his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, and, most of all, his journeys across France, the Alps, and northern Italy. Attentive to the human or divine meaning of everything around him, Praeterita is an astonishing account of revelation.
Which Shall It Be?
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

Paul Montague reached London on his return from Suffolk early on the Monday morning, and on the following day he wrote to Mrs Hurtle. As he sat in his lodgings, thinking of his condition, he almost wished that he had taken Melmotte’s offer and...
Vanity Fair
Authors: Thackeray William Makepeace
Published: December 2020

‘I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.’ Becky Sharp is sharp, calculating, and determined to succeed. Craving wealth and a position in society, she charms, hoodwinks, manipulates everyone she meets, rising in the world as she attaches herself to a succession of rich men. Becky’s fortunes are contrasted with those of her best friend Amelia, who has none of Becky’s wit and vitality but whose gentle-heartedness attracts the devotion of the loyal Dobbin. Set during the Napoleonic wars, Vanity Fair follows Becky as she cuts a swathe through Regency society. Thackeray paints a panoramic portrait of the age, with war, money and national identity his great subjects. The battle for social success is as fierce as the battle of Waterloo, and its casualties as stricken. The satire is at once biting and profound, sparing none in a clear-eyed exposure of a world on the make. Thackeray’s scepticism of human motives borders on cynicism yet Vanity Fair is among the funniest novels of the Victorian age. This new edition includes all Thackeray’s original illustrations.
34
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

When he was departing from Petersburg, Vronsky had left his large apartment on Morskaya Street* to his friend and favourite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly distinguished, and not only not rich but mired in debt, always drunk by evening, frequently...
11
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

That which had been the single supreme desire of Vronsky’s life for almost a whole year, replacing all his previous desires, and that which for Anna had been an impossible, frightful, and hence all the more alluring dream of happiness—that desire had now been...
20
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Vronsky was billeted in a spacious and clean Finnish log cabin, divided into two. Petritsky also lived with him in camp. Petritsky was asleep when Vronsky and Yashvin came into the cabin.

‘Get up, that’s enough sleep,’ said Yashvin, going behind the partition
20
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

VRONSKY’S life was particularly fortunate in that he had a code of rules which unequivocally defined everything that should and should not be done. This code of rules encompassed a very small set of conditions, but the rules were unequivocal, and since Vronsky never...
6
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Alexey
Alexandrovich had won a brilliant victory at the meeting of the Commission of 17th of August, but the consequences of this victory proved to be his undoing. The new commission for a root-and-branch investigation into the lives of the ethnic minorities had been...
12
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

Anna and Vronsky had long been exchanging glances by this stage, regretting their friend’s loquacity, and finally Vronsky went over to another small painting without waiting for their host.

‘Oh, how charming, how charming! It’s wonderful! How charming!’ they began saying with one voice....
6
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

During the children’s tea, the grown-ups sat on the balcony and chatted as if nothing had happened, although all of them, especially Sergey Ivanovich and Varenka, knew very well that something very important, albeit negative, had taken place. They were both experiencing the same...
29
Authors: Tolstoy Leo
Published: December 2020

The narrow hall in which people were smoking and taking refreshments was full of noblemen. The excitement kept mounting, and tension was discernible in every face. The leaders, who knew all the details and the total number of votes, were particularly tense. They were...
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas
Authors: Verne Jules
Published: December 2020

‘I am going to sink it.’ ‘You are not!’ ‘I am,’ he coldly replied. ‘Do not take it on yourself to judge me, monsieur.’ French naturalist Dr Aronnax embarks on an expedition to hunt down a sea monster, but discovers instead the Nautilus, a self-contained world built by its enigmatic captain. Together Nemo and Aronnax explore the underwater realms of the globe, undergo a transcendental experience amongst the ruins of Atlantis, and plant a black flag at the South Pole. Nemo';s mission is finally revealed to be a violent one-and his methods coldly efficient. Verne's classic novel has left a profound mark on subsequent centuries. Its themes are universal, its style alternately humorous and grandiose, its construction masterly. This new and unabridged translation brilliantly conveys the range of this seminal work. The volume also contains unpublished information about the novel's inception.
Adam Bede
Authors: Eliot George
Published: December 2020

Our deeds carry their terrible consequences…consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.' Pretty Hetty Sorrel is loved by the village carpenter Adam Bede, but her head is turned by the attentions of the fickle young squire, Arthur Donnithorne. His dalliance with the dairymaid has unforeseen consequences that affect the lives of many in their small rural community. First published in 1859, Adam Bede carried its readers back sixty years to the lush countryside of Eliot's native Warwickshire, and a time of impending change for England and the wider world. Eliot's powerful portrayal of the interaction of ordinary people brought a new social realism to the novel, in which humour and tragedy co-exist, and fellow-feeling is the mainstay of human relationships. Faith, in the figure of Methodist preacher Dinah Morris, offers redemption to all who are willing to embrace it. This new edition is based on the definitive Clarendon edition and Eliot's corrected text of 1861.
Chapter X
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Putting Miss Havisham’s note in my pocket, that it might serve as my credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis house, in case her waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I went down again by the coach next day....
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
Authors: Wilde Oscar
Published: December 2020

I

I had been dining with Erskine in his pretty little house in Birdcage Walk, and we were sitting in the library over our coffee and cigarettes, when the question of literary forgeries happened to turn up in conversation. I cannot at present...
Selected Tales
Authors: Poe Edgar Allan
Published: December 2020

Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction and have also created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Yet, as well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Abandoning the criteria of characterization and plotting in favour of blurred boundaries between self and other, will and morality, identity and memory, Poe uses the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence. Indeed, Poe is less interested in solving puzzles or in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem ‘mysterious’ in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular - ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, The Murders in the Rue Morgue; and ‘The Purloined Letter’ - alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays and political satires.
Congratulatory
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood...
Nine Days
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church: the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross—to whom the event, through a...
Drawn To The Loadstone Rock
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

In such risings of fire and risings of sea—the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore—three...
The Grindstone
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Tellson’s
Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris,* was in a wing of a large house, approached by a court-yard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a...
A Hand At Cards
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf,* reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases she had to make. Mr. Cruncher,...
Chapter VIII: Mr. Boffin in Consultation
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Whosoever had gone out of Fleet Street into the Temple at the date of this history, and had wandered disconsolate about the Temple until he stumbled on a dismal churchyard, and had looked up at the dismal windows commanding that churchyard until at the...
Chapter XVI I Am a New Boy In More Senses Than One
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went, accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies—a grave building in a court-yard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and...
Chapter XIX I Look About Me, and Make A Discovery
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

I Am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I...
Chapter XXII Some Old Scenes, and Some New People
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but...
Chapter XL The Wanderer
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night, about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. My aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the room with her arms folded, for more than two...
Chapter XLV Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt’s Prediction
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the...
Chapter Thirty-Two The Appointed Time
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

It is night in Lincoln’s Inn—perplexed and troublous valley of the shadow of the law,* where suitors generally find but little day—and fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down the crazy wooden stairs, and dispersed. The bell...
Chapter Forty-Six Stop Him!
Authors: Dickens Charles
Published: December 2020

Darkness rests upon Tom-all-alone’s. Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of Life burns in Tom-all-alone’s, heavily,...
Chapter XXX M. Paul
Authors: Brontë Charlotte
Published: December 2020

Yet the reader is advised not to be in any hurry with his kindly conclusions, or to suppose, with an over-hasty charity, that from that day M. Paul became a changed character—easy to live with, and no longer apt to flash danger and discomfort round...
Tom Brown's Schooldays
Authors: Hughes Thomas
Published: December 2020

abstract

A classic of Victorian literature, and one of the earliest books written specifically for boys, Tom Brown’s Schooldays has long had an influence well beyond the middle-class, public school world that it describes. An active social reformer, Hughes wrote with a freshness, a lack of cant, and a kind, relaxed tolerance which keeps this novel refreshingly distinct from other schoolboy adventures. This edition is the only one available, and comes with the outstanding 1869 illustrations by Arthur Hughes.
Flatland
Authors: Abbott Edwin A.
Published: December 2020

Upward, yet not Northward.’ How would a creature limited to two dimensions be able to grasp the possibility of a third? Edwin A. Abbott's droll and delightful ‘romance of many dimensions’ explores this conundrum in the experiences of his protagonist, A Square, whose linear world is invaded by an emissary Sphere bringing the gospel of the third dimension on the eve of the new millennium. Part geometry lesson, part social satire, this classic work of science fiction brilliantly succeeds in enlarging all readers‘ imaginations beyond the limits of our ‘respective dimensional prejudices’. In a world where class is determined by how many sides you possess, and women are straight lines, the prospects for enlightenment are boundless, and Abbott's hypotheses about a fourth and higher dimensions seem startlingly relevant today. This new edition of Flatland illuminates the social and intellectual context that produced the work as well as the timeless questions that it raises about the limits of our perception and knowledge.
The Scarlet Letter
Authors: Hawthorne Nathaniel , Weinstein Cindy
Published: December 2020

Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me.' With these chilling words a husband claims his wife after a two-year absence. But the child she clutches is not his, and Hester must wear a scarlet 'A' upon her breast, the sin of adultery visible to all. Under an assumed name her husband begins his search for her lover, determined to expose what Hester is equally determined to protect. Defiant and proud, Hester witnesses the degradation of two very different men, as moral codes and legal imperatives painfully collide. Set in the Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, The Scarlet Letter also sheds light on the nineteenth-century in which it was written, as Hawthorne explores his ambivalent relations with his Puritan forebears. The text of this edition is taken from the Centenary Edition of Hawthorne's works, the most authoritative critical edition.
The Story of an African Farm
Authors: Schreiner Olive
Published: December 2020

Lyndall, Schreiner's articulate young feminist, marks the entry of the controversial New Woman into nineteenth-century fiction. Raised as an orphan amid a makeshift family, she witnesses an intolerable world of colonial exploitation. Desiring a formal education, she leaves the isolated farm for boarding school in her early teens, only to return four years later from an unhappy relationship. Unable to meet the demands of her mysterious lover, Lyndall retires to a house in Bloemfontein, where, delirious with exhaustion, she is unknowingly tended by an English farmer disguised as her female nurse. This is the devoted Gregory Rose, Schreiner's daring embodiment of the sensitive New Man. A cause célèbre when it appeared in London, The Story of an African Farm transformed the shape and course of the late-Victorian novel. From the haunting plains of South Africa's high Karoo, Schreiner boldly addresses her society's greatest fears - the loss of faith, the dissolution of marriage, and women's social and political independence.
Experiments
Authors: May Alcott Louisa
Published: December 2020

‘The first of June; the Kings are off to the seashore to-morrow, and I’m free! Three months’ vacation! how I shall enjoy it!’ exclaimed Meg, coming home one warm day to find Jo laid upon the sofa in an unusual state of exhaustion, while Beth...
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Authors: Douglass Frederick
Published: December 2020

‘I was born in Tuckahoe. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.’ Thus begins the autobiography of Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) who was born into slavery in Maryland and after his escape to Massachusetts in 1838 became an ardent abolitionist and campaigner for womenߣs rights. His Narrative, which became an instant bestseller on publication in 1845, describes his life as a slave, the cruelty he suffered at the hands of his masters, his struggle to educate himself and his fight for freedom. Passionately written, often using striking biblical imagery, the Narrative came to assume epic proportions as a founding anti-slavery text in which Douglass carefully crafted both his life story and his persona. This new edition examines Douglass, the man and the myth, his complex relationship with women and the enduring power of his book. It includes extracts from Douglassߣs primary sources and examples of his writing on women's rights.
Rob Roy
Authors: Scott Walter
Published: December 2020

For the most popular of his Scottish romances, published at the end of 1817, Scott drew on the legends and historical anecdotes about Rob Roy MacGregor he had collected in his youth. The famous outlaw is only one of a series of vivid characters who cast their spell of the novel's hero, Frank Osbaldistone, on his journey through the wild northern territories of the new United Kingdom. Banished from his father's house, falling hopelessly in love with the spirited Diana Vernon, Frank becomes involved in he conspiracy surrounding the disastrous Jacobite rising of 1715. His adventures take him to `MacGregor's country', across the Highland Line, where he finds cruelty, heartbreak, and some unlikely friends. By turns thrilling and comic, Rob Roy contains Scott's most sophisticated treatment of the Scottish Highlands as an imaginary space where the modern and the primitive come together. Newly edited from the `Magnum Opus' text of 1830, this edition includes full explanatory notes and a critical introduction exploring the originality and complexity of Scott's achievement.
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
Authors: Hume David
Published: December 2020

Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.' Thus ends David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the 'sophistry and illusion' of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded scepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the 'superstition' of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and this edition places it in its historical and philosophical context.
The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre
Authors: Polidori John
Published: December 2020

‘Upon her neck and breast was blood, and upon her throat were the marks of teeth having opened the vein: – to this the men pointed, crying, simultaneously struck with horror, “a Vampyre, a Vampyre!”’ John Polidori’s classic tale of the vampyre was a product of the same ghost-story competition that produced Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Set in Italy, Greece, and London, Polidori’s tales is a reaction to the dominating presence of his employer Lord Byron, and transformed the figure of the vampire from the bestial ghoul of earlier mythologies into the glamorous aristocrat whose violence and sexual allure make him literally a ‘lady-killer’. Polidori’s tale introduced the vampire into English fiction, and launched a vampire craze that has never subsided. ‘The Vampyre’ was first published in 1819 in the London New Monthly Magazine. The present volume selects thirteen other tales of the macabre first published in the leading London and Dublin magazines between 1819 and 1838, including Edward Bulwer’s chilling account of the doppelganger, Letitia Landon’s elegant reworking of the Gothic romance, William Carleton’s terrifying description of an actual lynching, and James Hogg’s ghoulish exploitation of the cholera epidemic of 1831–2.
The Bride of Lammermoor
Authors: Scott Walter
Published: December 2020

The plans of Edgar, Master of Ravenswood to regain his ancient family estate from the corrupt Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland are frustrated by the complexities of the legal and political situations following the 1707 Act of Union, and by his passion for his enemy's beautiful daughter Lucy. First published in 1819, this intricate and searching romantic tragedy offers challenging insights into emotional and sexual politics, and demonstrates the shrewd way in which Scott presented his work as historical document, entertainment, and work of art.
Robinson Crusoe
Authors: Defoe Daniel , Kelly James
Published: December 2020

‘I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav'd his Life...I likewise taught him to say Master’ Robinson Crusoe's seafaring adventures are abruptly ended when he is shipwrecked, the solitary survivor on a deserted island. He gradually creates a life for himself, building a house, cultivating the land, and making a companion from the native whose life he saves. Daniel Defoe's enthralling story-telling and imaginatively detailed descriptions have ensured that his fiction masquerading as fact remains one of the most famous stories in English literature. On one level a simple adventure story, the novel also raises profound questions about moral and spiritual values, society, and man's abiding acquisitiveness. This new edition includes a scintillating Introduction and notes that illuminate the historical context. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Dracula
Authors: Stoker Bram
Published: December 2020

‘It was butcher work...the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam.’ Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and his legions. As the horrifying story unfolds in the diaries and letters of young Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Mina, and Dr Seward, Dracula will be victorious unless his nemesis Professor Van Helsing can persuade them that monsters still lurk in the era of electric light. The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. A compelling read, rattling along at break-neck speed, it is a modern classic. This new edition includes Stoker's companion piece, ‘Dracula's Guest’.
Doctor Thorne
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

‘Frank has but one duty before him. He must marry money.’ The squire of Greshamsbury has fallen on hard times, and it is incumbent on his son Frank to make a good marriage. But Frank loves the doctor's niece, Mary Thorne, a girl with no money and mysterious parentage. He faces a terrible dilemma: should he save the estate, or marry the girl he loves? Mary, too, has to battle her feelings, knowing that marrying Frank would ruin his family and fly in the face of his mother's opposition. Her pride is matched by that of her uncle, Dr Thorne, who has to decide whether to reveal a secret that would resolve Frank's difficulty, or to uphold the innate merits of his own family heritage. The character of Dr Thorne reflects Trollope's own contradictory feelings about the value of tradition and the need for change. His subtle portrayal, and the comic skill and gentle satire with which the story is developed, are among the many pleasures of this delightful novel.
The Warden
Authors: Trollope Anthony
Published: December 2020

‘You might pass Eleanor Harding in the street without notice, but you could hardly pass an evening with her and not lose your heart.’ John Bold has lost his heart to Eleanor Harding but he is a political radical who has launched a campaign against the management of the charity of which her father is the Warden. How can this tangle be resolved? In the novel which is Trollope's first acknowledged masterpiece, the emotional drama is staged against the background of two major contemporary social issues: the inappropriate use of charitable funds and the irresponsible exercise of the power of the press. A witty love story, in the Jane Austen tradition, this is also an unusually subtle example of ‘Condition of England’ fiction, combining its charming portrayal of life in an English cathedral close with a serious engagement in larger social and political issues. The Warden is the first of the six books which form Trollope's Barsetshire series of novels. This edition also includes ‘The Two Heroines of Plumplington’ - the short story which Trollope added, just before his death, to provide a final episode in the annals of Barsetshire.
Effi Briest
Authors: Fontane Theodor , Robertson Ritchie
Published: December 2020

‘I loathe what I did, but what I loathe even more is your virtue.’ Seventeen-year-old Effi Briest is steered by her parents into marriage with an ambitious bureaucrat, twenty years her senior. He takes her from her home to a remote provincial town on the Baltic coast of Prussia where she is isolated, bored, and prey to superstitious fears. She drifts into a half-hearted affair with a manipulative, womanizing officer, which ends when her husband is transferred to Berlin. Years later, events are triggered that will have profound consequences for Effi and her family. Effi Briest (1895) is recognized as one of the masterpieces by Theodor Fontane, Germany's premier realist novelist, and one of the great novels of marital relations together with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. It presents life among the conservative Prussian aristocracy with irony and gentle humour, and opposes the rigid and antiquated morality of the time by treating its heroine with sympathy and keen psychological insight.
Scenes of Clerical Life
Authors: Eliot George , Billington Josie
Published: December 2020

The only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him.' George Eliot's first published work consisted of three short novellas: 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', 'Mr Gilfil's Love-Story', and 'Janet's Repentance'. Their depiction of the lives of ordinary men and women in a provincial Midlands town initiated a new era of nineteenth-century literary realism. The tales concern rural members of the clergy and the gossip and factions that a small town generates around them. Amos Barton only realizes how much he depends upon his wife's selfless love when she dies prematurely; Mr Gilfil's devotion to a girl who loves another is only fleetingly rewarded; and Janet Dempster suffers years of domestic abuse before the influence of an Evangelical minister turns her life around. These stories are remarkable for the tenderness with which Eliot portrays a bygone time of religious belief in a newly secular age, giving literary fiction an alternative language to religion and philosophy for the observation and understanding of human experience.
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Authors: James William
Published: December 2020

‘By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots.’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) is William James’s classic survey of religious belief in its most personal, and often its most heterodox, aspects. Asking questions such as how we define evil to ourselves, the difference between a healthy and a divided mind, the value of saintly behaviour, and what animates and characterizes the mental landscape of sudden conversion, James’s masterpiece stands at a unique moment in the relationship between belief and culture. Faith in institutional religion and dogmatic theology was fading away, and the search for an authentic religion rooted in personality and subjectivity was a project conducted as an urgent necessity. With psychological insight, philosophical rigour, and a determination not to jump to the conclusion that in tracing religion’s mental causes we necessarily diminish its truth or value, in the Varieties James wrote a truly foundational text for modern belief. Matthew Bradley’s wide-ranging new edition examines the ideas that continue to fuel modern debates on atheism and faith.
Progressive Resistance Training for Improving Health-Related Outcomes in People at Risk of Fracture: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Authors: Ponzano Matteo , Rodrigues Isabel B , Hosseini Zeinab , Ashe Maureen C , Butt Debra A , Chilibeck Philip D , Stapleton Jackie , Thabane Lehana , Wark John D , Giangregorio Lora M
Published: December 2020

Objective

Osteoporosis clinical practice guidelines recommend exercise to prevent fractures, but the efficacy of exercise depends on the exercise types, population studied, or outcomes of interest. The purpose of this systematic review was to assess the effects of progressive resistance training (PRT) on health-related outcomes in people at risk of fracture.

Methods

Multiple databases were searched in October 2019. Eligible articles were randomized controlled trials of PRT interventions in men and women ≥50 years with low bone mineral density (BMD) or fracture history. Descriptive information and mean difference (MD) and SD were directly extracted for included trials. A total of 53 studies were included.

Results

The effects of PRT on the total number of falls (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.05; 95% CI = 0.91 − 1.21; 7 studies) and on the risk of falling (risk ratio [RR] = 1.23; 95% CI = 1.00 − 1.51; 5 studies) are uncertain. PRT improved performance on the Timed “Up and Go” test (MD = −0.89 seconds; 95% CI = −1.01 to −0.78; 13 studies) and health-related quality of life (standardized MD = 0.32; 95% CI = 0.22–0.42; 20 studies). PRT may increase femoral neck (MD = 0.02 g/cm2; 95% CI = 0.01–0.03; 521 participants, 5 studies) but not lumbar spine BMD (MD = 0.02 g/cm2; 95% CI = −0.01–0.05; 4 studies), whereas the effects on total hip BMD are uncertain (MD = 0.00 g/cm2; 95% CI = 0.00–0.01; 435 participants, 4 studies). PRT reduced pain (standardized MD = −0.26; 95% CI = −0.37 to −0.16; 17 studies). Sensitivity analyses, including PRT-only studies, confirmed these findings.

Conclusion

Individuals at risk of fractures should be encouraged to perform PRT, as it may improve femoral neck BMD, health-related quality of life, and physical functioning. PRT also reduced pain; however, whether PRT increases or decreases the risk of falls, the number of people experiencing a fall, or the risk of fall-related injuries is uncertain.

Impact

Individuals at risk of fractures should be encouraged to perform PRT, as it may have positive effects on femoral neck BMD, health-related quality of life, physical functioning, and pain, and adverse events are rare.

Lay Summary

Exercise is recommended for people at risk of osteoporotic fractures. Our study showed that progressive resistance training improves physical functioning, quality of life, and reduces pain. The effects of progressive resistance training on the risk of falling are unclear. Adverse events are rare, and often minor (eg, soreness, pain, musculoskeletal injury). Considering the benefits and safety, people at risk of fractures should engage in progressive resistance training interventions.
Subconvexity Bounds for TwistedL-Functions
Authors: Khan Rizwanur
Published: December 2020

We prove hybrid subconvexity bounds for a wide class of twisted L-functions L(s, f × χ) at the central point, including a new instance of the Weyl subconvexity bound.
What Does it Take to Get Ahead? Individual Characteristics, Community Contexts, and Stratification Beliefs among Youth in China
Authors: Lei Lei , Yu Wei-hsin
Published: December 2020

Research on youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods suggests that community contexts can affect youth’s beliefs about what it takes to get ahead. Nevertheless, a systematic analysis of such beliefs across a variety of communities remains rare. Using data from the China Family Panel Study from 2010 to 2014, we examine how individual characteristics, community socioeconomic status (SES), and their interplay are linked to young adolescents’ views on the importance of meritocratic, structural, and fatalistic contributors to future success. Results show that being in school for more years, having better-educated parents, having a higher family income, and being in communities with elevated SES generally lead youth to place greater importance on meritocratic elements and less emphasis on structural and fatalistic elements. Parental education is more strongly associated with the dismissal of a fatalistic view about who gets ahead in higher-SES communities. Meanwhile, the positive influence of community SES on meritocratic beliefs is stronger for poorer youth. Finally, we find that meritocratic beliefs are conducive to greater future progress in verbal and math skills, suggesting that such beliefs have important consequences for youth.
Quantifying the clonality and dynamics of the within-host HIV-1 latent reservoir
Authors: Ferreira Roux-Cil , Prodger Jessica L , Redd Andrew D , Poon Art F Y
Published: December 2020

Among people living with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the long-term persistence of a population of cells carrying transcriptionally silent integrated viral DNA (provirus) remains the primary barrier to developing an effective cure. Ongoing cell division via proliferation is generally considered to be the driving force behind the persistence of this latent HIV-1 reservoir. The contribution of this mechanism (clonal expansion) is supported by the observation that proviral sequences sampled from the reservoir are often identical. This outcome is quantified as the ‘clonality’ of the sample population, e.g. the fraction of provirus sequences observed more than once. However, clonality as a quantitative measure is inconsistently defined and its statistical properties are not well understood. In this Reflections article, we use mathematical and phylogenetic frameworks to formally examine the inherent problems of using clonality to characterize the dynamics and proviral composition of the reservoir. We describe how clonality is not adequate for this task due to the inherent complexity of how infected cells are ‘labeled’ by proviral sequences—the outcome of a sampling process from the evolutionary history of active viral replication before treatment—as well as variation in cell birth and death rates among lineages and over time. Lastly, we outline potential directions in statistical and phylogenetic research to address these issues.
New causes of immunologic occupational asthma 2014–2020
Authors: Cartier André
Published: December 2020

Purpose of review

The purpose of this review was to list all new confirmed cases of immunological occupational asthma (IOA) described between mid-2014 and April 2020.

Recent findings

Several new agents, both of high and low molecular weight, have been identified in the last 6 years as potential respiratory sensitizers being able to induce immunological occupational asthma. This review confirms that new causes of IOA are still identified regularly, particularly in subjects exposed to high molecular agents, in the food industry (farming, pest control, food processing), pharmaceutical industry (antibiotics, various drugs) and cosmetic environment (dyes, powders).

It stressed the need for clinicians to stay alert and suspect occupational asthma in any adult with new onset asthma or newly uncontrolled asthma.