bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Corporate Tax Haven Index
Authors: Ates Leyla , Cobham Alex , Harari Moran , Janský Petr , Meinzer Markus , Millán Lucas , Palanský Miroslav
Published: February 2021

In this chapter, we set out a new approach to the geography of profit shifting, based on a range of objectively verifiable criteria. These are combined in the Corporate Tax Haven Index, published for the first time in 2019. We present the technical argument for the index as a meaningful representation of the global distribution of the risks of corporate tax abuse and explore the new geography that emerges. Our findings show the UK’s dominant responsibility for corporate tax avoidance risks and the colonial roots of many exploitative double tax treaties. We discuss the index’s political implications for the immediate process of international tax reform, and for the longer-term prospects for global governance in this area. Greater clarity about the geography of profit shifting is likely to support growing demands for redistribution not only of taxing rights but also of decision-making power in the global architecture for tax governance.
The Emergence of New Corporations
Authors: Helgadóttir Oddný
Published: February 2021

This chapter centres on ‘Luxury Freeports’, which are specialized storage sites where art and other high-end goods can be kept indefinitely without tax and duty-payments being made. The chapter makes the case that Luxury Freeports are best understood as new entrants in the ‘offshore world’, and shows how these sites have, over the course of the last ten years, taken up a new niche role in the evolving global ecosystem of tax avoidance. Further, it examines the rapid spread of this new form of offshore and traces it back to the combination of spillover effects within the offshore world itself. More specifically, Luxury Freeports stem from the juncture of a competitive ‘push’ from the rapid spread of Open Customs Warehouses at the turn of the century and the investment ‘pull’ of large pools of money needing new investment outlets in the wake of the recent multilateral effort to clamp down on banking secrecy.
After the Black Death
Authors: Bailey Mark
Published: February 2021

The Black Death of 1348–9 is the most catastrophic event in recorded history, and this study—the Ford Lectures of 2019 at Oxford University—offers a major re-evaluation of its immediate impact and longer-term consequences in England. It draws upon recent inter-disciplinary research into climate and disease; renewed interest among econometricians in the origins of the Little Divergence, whereby economic performance in parts of north-western Europe began to move decisively ahead of the rest of the continent on the pathway to modernity; a close re-reading of case studies of fourteenth-century England; and original new research into manorial and governmental sources. The Black Death is placed within the wider contexts of extreme weather and epidemiological events, the institutional framework of markets and serfdom, and the role of the law in reducing risk and shaping behaviour. The government’s response to the crisis is re-considered to suggest an innovative re-interpretation of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. By 1400 the main effects of plague had worked through the economy and society, and their implications for England’s future precocity are analysed. This study rescues the third quarter of the fourteenth century from a little-understood paradox between plague and revolt, and elevates it to a critical period of profound and irreversible change in English and global history.
Other Worlds
Authors: Kolb Laura
Published: February 2021

Chapter 4 turns from social fictions to fictive renderings of the wide and variegated world of trade. Early modern merchandise mirrored—and fueled—the poetic imagination. In turn, poets conjured fantastic visions of the world structured by trade. Ben Jonson’s Volpone exemplifies the period association of circulating commodities with poetic creativity: between world and word. Yet the play, remarkably, lacks debt relations. Decades later, Jonson revisits the relationship between word and world in his late, strange The Magnetic Lady, where credit takes center stage. The play’s figure of commerce, Moth Interest, is a moneylender whose verbal and imaginative capacity marks him as an heir of Jonson’s Volpone but renders him out of place in an economy increasingly oriented towards abstract capital and away from tangible wealth. Reading this play alongside tables of compound interest and tables of logarithms, the chapter argues that the play represents a world turning toward the abstract and numerical, and away from the verbal and material. It thus signals an end to the fictions of credit that had animated the Shakespearean stage: fictions that were fundamentally local and dialogic, developed in the interplay of artifice and interpretation.
The European Rescue of the Franco Regime, 1950-1975
Authors: Guirao Fernando
Published: February 2021

This book explores how the governments of the founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community, acting collectively via the European Communities, assisted in the consolidation of the Franco regime. The Six (the Nine after 1973) provided the Spanish economy with a stable supply of raw materials and capital goods and with outlet markets for Spain’s main export commodities. Through both mechanisms, the European Communities assisted Spain’s development and supported the stabilization of its non-democratic régime. From 1950 to the mid-1960s, the Six avoided every sign of discrimination against Spain. By the mid-1960s, they became conscious of the need to promote Spanish exports in order to expand their own exports on the Spanish market. By 1970, Madrid obtained an arrangement with the EEC that, free of any political conditionality, provided ample access to the Common Market while keeping the Spanish market essentially closed. After 1972, the Nine negotiated Franco Spain’s integration into a pan-European industrial free-trade area, in exchange for access to the Spanish market. It was the Spanish cabinet, at the last minute, for protection reasons, who decided to derail the offer. The Franco regime was never threatened by European integration and the Six/Nine managed to isolate negotiations with Spain from mounting political disturbance. In sum, without unremitting material assistance from Western Europe, it would have been considerably more challenging for the Franco regime to attain the stability that enabled the dictator to maintain his rule until dying peacefully at 82 years old.
Franco Spain at the Origins of the European Agricultural Community
Authors: Guirao Fernando
Published: February 2021

Chapter 2 shows that Madrid faced serious risks when integration threatened agriculture. A West-European agricultural trade bloc threatened Spain’s economy and political system. Fortunately for Franco Spain, the governments promoting agricultural integration soon deserted supranational features and moved into trade talks to offer other west European countries the surpluses they had generated after 1947. Spain concluded a purchasing contract for wheat with France. This and the prospects of wheat from the International Wheat Agreement and the United States, allowed Madrid to avoid bread rationing after the spring of 1952. By the end of the Green Pool episode, Spain had been granted de facto OEEC treatment in agricultural trade. Thus, the proposed European Agricultural Community provided the Franco regime with the opportunity to improve food consumption and overcome a critical threat to its survival.
Mainland Greece and the Diadochoi
Authors: de Lisle Christopher
Published: February 2021

This chapter deals with Agathokles’ relations with the cities of mainland Greece and the Macedonian warlords. Ties with mainland Greece were already deep at the start of Agathokles’ reign; relationships with Corinth and Sparta were of key importance during his original seizure of power. These ongoing relationships played a significant role in the construction of identity on both sides of the Adriatic. The Macedonian warlords loomed large in Sicily, partly because their activities seriously disrupted these relationships. Agathokles strove to keep them as far away from himself as possible while watching for opportunities to take advantage of their strife. The Diadochoi were quick to seize any ideology, resource, tactic, or alliance to gain the advantage over their foes. It is no surprise, therefore, that several strove to forge links with Agathokles, often employing the old links between Sicily and the poleis of Greece to do so.
Macho Man
Authors: Olguín B. V.
Published: February 2021

Chapter 2 is devoted to the WWII-Soldado Razo archetype that anchors Latina/o civic and cultural citizenship models, transnational mestizaje and hybridity paradigms, and hypermasculinist warrior hero discourses. Through a reassessment of familiar, as well as neglected and undertheorized literary and performative texts, the chapter examines the conservative—specifically heteronormative, capitalist, and protoimperialist—nature of prevailing triumphalist historiographies of the WWII Soldado Razo as a member of the proverbial “Greatest Generation.” Both familiar and new permutations of WWII-Soldado Razo archetypes, as well as related civilian archetypes such as Pachucas and Pachucos, reveal this figure’s varied negotiations of ideology. In the process they also complicate our understanding of the racialized, gendered, and sexualized texture of this epochal milieu and its Latina/o protagonists. This chapter’s case studies reveal that the Soldado Razo actually anchors a wide variety of WWII-era supra-Latina/o violentologies. These range from hyperlocal cultural nationalisms, protofascist imperialisms, frequently ignored WWII-era Marxist internationalisms, and protoqueer warrior heroes, all of whom are intertwined with homosocial and simultaneously homoerotic Pachucos!
Epilogue
Authors: Myrvold Wayne C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the contents of earlier chapters and ties them in with other currents in the philosophy of science. These involve concepts that go beyond the familiar dichotomy of subjective and objective. A complete description of the world need not invoke concepts of this sort. They are, however, significant for agents such as ourselves, situated in a world to which we have limited epistemic access.
Practical Expressivism, Expression, and Quasi-Realism
Authors: Sinclair Neil
Published: February 2021

According to practical expressivism, moral judgements express moral attitude types insofar as they advertise a claim of objective authority for them, where this involves a preparedness to defend them and to insist upon their acceptance by others. Such insistence is sincere when it coheres with one’s higher-order views about the proper ways of forming moral attitudes. Practical expressivism also embraces the quasi-realist programme of seeking to show how the forms and assumptions of moral practice can be vindicated on these expressivist grounds—a project best described as ‘weaving the propositional clothing’ for moral discourse.
Practical Expressivist Strategies and Presumptive Arguments for Realism
Authors: Sinclair Neil
Published: February 2021

There are several general ‘domesticating’ strategies that quasi-realists can employ to vindicate the important features of moral practice. These include the ancestral strategy (which subsumes an expressivist account of the feature in question under a more general account that also applies to non-expressive discourses), the immanent strategy (which elucidates a role for the relevant feature within the first-order debates of the discourse), and the standards strategy (which understands the relevant feature in terms of standards governing the correct application of predicates). Furthermore, common objections to the quasi-realist project can be rebutted: it is not committed to vindicating ‘second-rate’ versions of the important features of moral practice, nor to a problematic revision of our philosophical understanding, nor to an unhappily disjunctive account of our discursive practices. These points also suffice to undermine many ‘presumptive’ arguments for moral realism (and descriptivism).
The outlook for long-run economic growth
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

The chapter discusses theory and empirics regarding long-run economic growth. After reviewing the historical facts, the chapter discusses likely scenarios for long-run growth. The chapter also presents the arguments in a heated discussion where one side argues that growth will be tremendously high going forward, but the other argues future growth will be low. The chapter concludes that it does not seem likely that growth will be superhigh going forward. Will it be very low, then? In Advanced Economies, growth will probably be lower than the historical average, but in other parts of the world, growth will most likely be just fine.
Building and maintaining investment portfolios
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This last chapter in the book provides research-based perspectives on a number of challenges investors face when building and maintaining investment portfolios. The paper discusses portfolio diversification, the active vs. passive debate, the asset allocation decision, i.e. what determines the fraction of a portfolio that should be invested in stocks, practical advice on how the economic environment should affect your asset allocation, and other topics.
Profit, Choice, and Competition
Authors: Blix Mårten , Jordahl Henrik
Published: February 2021

This chapter draws on recent empirical work and summarizes the quantitative research on the effects of privatization, for-profit firms, choice, and competition in the Swedish welfare sector. By treating the effect studies together, the chapter presents a coherent picture of the lessons learned across the major welfare areas of education, health care, and elderly care. Overall, private providers appear on average to be a bit better in terms of quality and are also more productive. Choice and competition have improved several services, most notably compulsory education and elderly care. The evidence is more mixed for education at the upper-secondary level, where students at independent schools are more likely to finish on time and continue to tertiary education, but also perform worse on externally graded tests and benefit from lenient grading. A key takeaway is that the design of regulation and quality control matters greatly for outcomes. Each welfare service brings its lessons and mechanisms for quality control of both private and public providers should be strengthened. A general observation is that the playing field is often tilted against private providers since local governments are both arbiters of quality for private providers and a competing service provider. Widespread loss-making among municipal providers suggests that municipalities often treat their own in-house providers more leniently than private providers. In education, attempts at cream-skimming have been more evident at independent schools than at municipal schools. In other services, there is no systematic evidence that private providers practice cream-skimming to the detriment of weak groups, which is also illegal.
Introduction
Authors: Ghiselli Andrea
Published: February 2021

This Introduction presents China’s nascent strategy to protect its overseas interests, eventually via military means, as a major change in the country’s international orientation. As is the case for other great powers in history, it is a fundamental test for the sustainability of China’s rise. In order to shed light on this issue, this chapter brings securitization theory in, introducing its origin and latest developments, in order to avoid some of the problems that the plague the literature on China’s foreign and security policy. In particular, it is explains why it is important to focus on the role of non-traditional security threats to Chinese interests in North Africa and the Middle East. Against this background, the Introduction concludes with an outline of each chapter, providing an overview of their main content and findings.
What Is Epistêmê?
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: February 2021

I have argued that Plato conceives epistêmê first and foremost as cognition of Being. What sense can we make of this notion, however? This chapter considers precedents in others’ interpretations of Plato, and historical counterparts from Parmenides’ nous to early modern Science. Considering these counterparts helps yield an intuitive characterization of the notion of cognition of Being: the idea is that of a deep grasp of ultimate reality. Then I return to the question of epistêmê’s relation to knowledge as nowadays conceived. The differences are clear: most fundamentally, knowledge is thought of as a relation to true propositions rather than to metaphysically privileged objects. I speculate however that we can think of modern knowledge and Plato’s epistêmê as two developments of a common, basic idea, the idea of an especially good cognitive relation to reality.
Doxa Is of What Seems
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: February 2021

What kind of thing is Plato’s doxa? This is a question nowadays rarely asked. It is widely assumed that Plato had in mind something perfectly familiar to us from commonsense contemporary epistemology: belief. I will argue that Plato’s doxa is instead essentially to be understood as the cognition of a special kind of object, what seems. Plato chooses ‘doxa’ rather than some more general or neutral term to name the inferior cognitive condition because of the etymological link with seeming (to dokein), which we find actively exploited in the Presocratics. Plato inflates this link into a substantive theory: what seems is something ontologically distinct from what Is, and when we attend to what seems we have doxa rather than epistêmê. This is particularly evident in Plato’s discussions of rhetoric. Thus the defining object of doxa is what seems.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the Ethical Life of Modern Society
Authors: Mauldin Joshua
Published: February 2021

Turning to the 1930s and 1940s, this chapter explicates how Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected on modern society amid the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Bonhoeffer’s insights are relevant beyond the confines of theological studies, as Nazism has become a central motif in reflections on the legitimacy of the modern age. Whether National Socialism is seen as modernity’s culmination, or conversely as a warning against any temptation toward backsliding from the progress of modern society, the historical events in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s are a focal point in any narrative of modernity. Bonhoeffer thought about these matters in real time, even while being held in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer’s reflections on ethics in the modern world have implications for the viability of modern democratic societies.
Karl Barth on the Rise of National Socialism
Authors: Mauldin Joshua
Published: February 2021

Karl Barth’s political theology was concretized by his involvement in the German Church struggle early in the 1930s as well as his political engagement in Switzerland after 1935. During the Second World War, and from the relative safety of Basel, Barth addressed public letters to several countries, thereby developing a rich political theology applied to the distinctive cultural and historical contexts of his readers. This chapter focuses on Barth’s wartime letters to France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States, exploring how in these public documents Barth interprets the meaning of National Socialism in light of modern political aspirations. In so doing, Barth provides an enduring defense of modern democratic politics.
Introduction
Authors: Barclay Katie
Published: February 2021

An ‘emotional ethic’ is a system of feelings and embodied actions informed by a set of moral principles. This chapter introduces this concept and explains why caritas, a form of grace that ensured that neighbourly love was moral and ethical, operated as an emotional ethic in early modern Europe. This Introduction to the monograph introduces the concept of caritas and how it underpinned several significant ideas of the period, and explores why we might think of it as an embodied ethic. It details the methodological underpinnings of an emotional ethic, noting its foundation in performance theory and association with other emotional norms, such as ‘emotional communities’ and ‘emotional regimes’. The remainder of the chapter introduces the case study of the lower-order Scottish community in the eighteenth century, the source material through which they are accessed (mainly legal records), and the broader historical context for the book.
Promoting Harmony
Authors: Barclay Katie
Published: February 2021

The practice of caritas enjoined Christians to keep the peace with their neighbour whilst also looking out to admonish them for their sin, necessary to ensure their salvation. Unsurprisingly, these ideas could come into conflict. This chapter explores how lower-order Scots, who often lived in small houses with many people, produced ‘privacy’ by deciding when to see, hear, or feel sin. It deploys the distinction made by the Church between secret, private, and public worship as a framework of knowing and publicity used by Scots to help them live harmoniously with their neighbours. Focusing on infanticide, rape, and domestic violence cases, this chapter highlights both the contexts in which people chose to keep secrets and the rituals used—such as processioning or calling witnesses—designed to make things public. It particularly attends to the importance of physical space and material conditions in shaping the experience of caritas in this context.
Conclusion
Authors: Barclay Katie
Published: February 2021

Caritas was an emotional ethic that underpinned many of the ideals and behaviours of early modern peoples. Like the felt judgements of contemporary emotions theory, it guided decision-making through bodily feeling and was manifested in actions performed in and by bodies. This Conclusion draws together the threads of this book to highlight the utility of the concept of an ‘emotional ethic’ in helping us understand the social, economic, and cultural life of the Scottish poor, and suggests its possibilities for interpreting other contexts and future feeling. It concludes by reflecting on the possibilities of love as an ethic for the future.
Modal Nothingism
Authors: Balaguer Mark
Published: February 2021

Chapter 6 is concerned with the following question: What makes modal sentences like ‘There could have been flying saucers’ true?; in particular, what is it about the world, or about Being, that makes them true? This chapter develops and motivates a theory—modal nothingism—that provides a novel answer to this question. Roughly speaking, modal nothingism is the view that (a) modal sentences like the above are true (or substantively true), and (b) there’s nothing about the world (or about Being) that makes them true. Modal nothingism is an important part of the neo-positivist view because it gives neo-positivists a view of modality that’s simultaneously (a) a realist view (i.e. it entails that there are substantive, objective modal truths), and (b) a metaphysically innocent view (i.e. it doesn’t commit to any controversial metaphysical claims—indeed, it doesn’t commit to any claims about the nature of reality at all).
Induction and Natural Kinds Revisited
Authors: Sankey Howard
Published: February 2021

Howard Sankey reconsiders a special issue closely connected with causal powers—the problem of induction. He addresses a deep version of problem of circularity originally raised by Psillos, and argues that the circularity can be avoided. The key is recognizing certain epistemically externalist results of the Megaric consequences of the commitment to dispositional essentialism. Circularity can be avoided, Sankey argues, because it is the way the world is, rather than the inductive inference itself, that grounds the reliability of the inductive inference in his previous account. What are doing the work for Sankey here are the Megaric consequences of his adoption of Ellis’s dispositional essentialism. The uniformity in question is one that stretches across possible worlds: nature is uniform in the precise sense that there are natural kinds whose members all possess a shared set of essential properties. The significance of this commitment lies in how the possible and the temporal intersect through restrictions placed on the accessibility relation between the actual and the possible. Ipso facto, when considering questions about the future behaviours of objects, which is how Sankey understands the problem of induction to be, the uniformity of nature can ground the reliability of beliefs about those future behaviours precisely because the domain of possibility is restricted to those worlds accessible to the actual world, which is fixed by the commitments of dispositional essentialism.
Due Diligence in the International Legal Order
Authors: Peters Anne , Krieger Heike , Kreuzer Leonhard
Published: February 2021

The introductory chapter sets the scene for this book and establishes an analytical framework for the sector-specific chapters. It traces the etymological roots of the notion of due diligence and discusses its scope of application, normative functions, and contents in various areas of international law. It furthermore highlights recurring issues which the sector-specific contributions of the book address, including the key question from which legal source due diligence obligations can be derived and to what extent these obligations are binding. The introductory chapter also maps the commonplace diligence requirements in international legal texts and briefly outlines the book chapters.
Books for use and books for show
Authors: Pearson David
Published: February 2021

We may believe that books should be bought to be read and studied, but there is plentiful evidence, through human history, of people being mocked for owning books more for display and self-image. This chapter looks seriously and systematically at motivations for book ownership in the seventeenth century, recognizing that there is a range of attitudes between textual utility and the valuing of books for their aesthetic or luxurious qualities. Bookbindings, bookplates, heraldic markings, wills, and other kinds of evidence are drawn on, through various case studies, to show that for most people a mixture of approaches was probably involved—that we should think more in terms of a matrix than a linear spectrum. Book historians may define the history of reading as the key interface to be explored between books and people, but this is too narrow a focus if we really want to understand why people owned books.
Śrīkaṇṭha and the Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya
Authors: Duquette Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Appaya’s main source of exegesis, Śrīkaṇṭha’s Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya, and assesses the current evidence about Śrīkaṇṭha’s date of activity. It explores Śrīkaṇṭha’s intellectual background and influences, and draws attention in particular to conceptual and linguistic affinities between Śrīkaṇṭha’s work and Rāmānuja’s theology. It also provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between Śrīkaṇṭha’s theology and the theology deployed in the work of Vīraśaiva scholars writing in Sanskrit. The chapter also complicates the relationship between Śrīkaṇṭha and Nīlakaṇṭha, a figure central to the Vīraśaiva Vedānta tradition.
Early Śaiva Works
Authors: Duquette Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter is a thorough study of Appaya’s ‘early’ Śaiva works, and lays the groundwork for the discussion of Appaya’s Śivādvaita Vedānta works in the following chapters. The chapter discusses four key works, all of which are polemical in style: the Śivatattvaviveka, the Śivakarṇāmṛta, the Brahmatarkastava and the Bhāratasārasaṃgrahastotra. It offers a detailed account of their respective content, genre, intellectual register and presumed audience. The chapter draws attention to two key points: (1) the fact that these early works feature core theological concepts that prefigure the fully fledged theology of Śivādvaita Vedānta; and (2) the fact that they reveal that Appaya was engaged with Vaiṣṇava opponents early on in his career.
The ventral visual system
Authors: Rolls Edmund T.
Published: February 2021

The brain processes involved in visual object recognition are described. Evidence is presented that what is computed are sparse distributed representations of objects that are invariant with respect to transforms including position, size, and even view in the ventral stream towards the inferior temporal visual cortex. Then biologically plausible unsupervised learning mechanisms that can perform this computation are described that use a synaptic modification rule what utilises a memory trace. These are compared with deep learning and other machine learning approaches that require supervision.
The temporal cortex
Authors: Rolls Edmund T.
Published: February 2021

The inferior and middle temporal gyri are involved visual object recognition, with the more dorsal areas involved in face expression, gesture, and motion representation that is useful in social behaviour. The superior temporal cortex is involved in auditory processing. The anterior temporal lobe is involved in semantic representations, for example information about objects, people, and places. Network mechanisms involved in semantic representations are described. The output of this system reaches the inferior frontal gyrus, which on the left is Broca’s area, involved in language production. The concept that the semantics for language are computed in the anterior temporal lobe, and communicates with Broca’s area for speech production, is introduced.
Language and syntax in the brain
Authors: Rolls Edmund T.
Published: February 2021

What is computed in brain systems involved in language is assessed based on the neuropsychology and neuroimaging of language. This is complemented by a computational neuroscience approach in which some of the key principles of the operation of the cerebral cortex are used as a foundation for hypotheses about how syntax and semantics may be implemented in attractor networks, and how syntax might be implemented by a trajectory through a state space of coupled attractor networks in a biologically relevant model.
Functors, Transformations, and Modifications
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses functors, transformations, and modifications that are bicategorical analogs of functors and natural transformations. The main concepts covered are lax functors, lax transformations, modifications, and icons. A section is devoted to representable pseudofunctors, representable transformations, and representable modifications, which will be used in the Bicategorical Yoneda Lemma.
The Whitehead Theorem for Bicategories
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

In this chapter, the Whitehead Theorem for bicategories is proved in detail. The Whitehead Theorem states that a pseudofunctor between bicategories is a biequivalence if and only if it is surjective up to adjoint equivalences on objects, surjective up to isomorphisms on 1-cells, and bijective on 2-cells. The chapter covers the lax slice bicategory, lax terminal objects, and the Quillen Theorem A for bicategories. A 2-categorical version of the Whitehead Theorem is also discussed.
The Yoneda Lemma and Coherence
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

In this chapter, the Yoneda Lemma and the Coherence Theorem for bicategories are stated and proved. The chapter discusses the bicategorical Yoneda pseudofunctor, a bicategorical version of the Yoneda embedding for a bicategory, which is a local equivalence, and the Bicategorical Yoneda Lemma. A consequence of the Bicategorical Whitehead Theorem and the Bicategorical Yoneda Embedding is the Bicategorical Coherence Theorem, which states that every bicategory is biequivalent to a 2-category.
The Grothendieck Construction
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

This chapter defines the Grothendieck construction for a lax functor into the category of small categories. It then proves that, for such a pseudofunctor, its Grothendieck construction is its lax colimit. Most of the rest of the chapter contains a detailed proof of the Grothendieck Construction Theorem, which states that the Grothendieck construction is part of a 2-equivalence. A generalization of the Grothendieck construction that applies to an indexed bicategory is also discussed.
Further 2-Dimensional Categorical Structures
Authors: Johnson Niles , Yau Donald
Published: February 2021

In this chapter, further 2-dimensional categorical structures are presented and discussed. These include monoidal bicategories, as one-object tricategories, along with braided monoidal bicategories, sylleptic monoidal bicategories, and symmetric monoidal bicategories. The rest of the chapter discusses the Gray tensor product on 2-categories, Gray monoids, double categories, and monoidal double categories.
GARY CARPENTER (b. 1951)Love’s Eternity: Five Songs of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2006)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies Gary Carpenter’s Love’s Eternity (2006). Carpenter admits that this work is quite different from anything else in his output. It was first conceived as part of a radio programme about Robert Browning’s final days, and the knowledge of Browning’s affection for Schumann’s music had a subliminal influence on the style. Carpenter’s sensitivity to sound quality is exceptional: timings and tessitura ensure the complete audibility of the texts. The singer stays comfortably on the stave for the bulk of the piece, and the voice is allowed to cruise evenly through limpid lines that feel entirely natural from the outset. The music rises and falls in logical patterns, often repeated, in an unaffected, tonal idiom. Deep feeling is conveyed simply and directly without bombast or over-dramatization. Moreover, piano parts throughout have a strong stylistic unity. Their rich textures, often covering a wide range, contribute strongly to the expressive impact, providing warm sonorities and added colour to the plainer vocal lines.
THOMAS HYDE (b. 1978)Three Larkin Songs (2003)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Thomas Hyde’s Three Larkin Songs (2003). These three short, contrasting songs to richly-layered Philip Larkin texts constitute a cycle that is a boon for young singers seeking a piece of modest demands and unobtrusive craftsmanship which lies easily in the voice. A touching slow movement is framed by two fast-moving numbers, distinct in character. Even a baritone should not be taxed by the tessitura—the range is highly practical for all except basses and altos. Obligingly, the composer even offers to transpose the songs to suit individual singers. This is a return to an earlier practice, when vocal sheet music was issued in different keys: Low, Medium, or High. Piano parts, economically structured and relatively undemanding, are tailored sensitively to the voice part in perfect balance.
COLIN MATTHEWS (b. 1946)Out in the Dark (2008)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses British composer Colin Matthews’s Out in the Dark (2008). This little song is but a modest sample of Matthews’s work, which covers virtually all genres. The piece’s tessitura means it can be tackled by most voices, since extremes of register and dynamic are avoided. In view of the buoyancy of timbre required, and the crucial instruction semplice, a soprano is most suitable, able to float a sweet ‘silvered’ sound with a distinctively bright sheen such as often found in singers of French songs. The tone can be ‘pure’ in the widest sense, but definitely not devoid of expression or vibrato or affectedly naïve. Apart from the initial pianissimo, no dynamics are marked, and this represents a challenge to the poise and powers of concentration of both performers. The voice part moves steadily through the work in unadorned lines, with a natural, lilting one-in-a bar feel, made more flexible by the interplay of two against three.
LLOYD MOORE (b. 1966)Charms to Music (2010)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at British composer Lloyd Moore’s Charms to Music (2010). In this piece, Moore’s musical language is immediately engaging, open, and spontaneous, yet with meticulous attention to detail, especially to the nuances of words, their natural dynamics and accents. The choice of texts is felicitous: each movement has an individual character, yet there is a cohesion in style, which bears strong resonances of European late romanticism, combined with a more modern chromaticism. The vocal writing is clear and fluent, with a pleasing directness. Moore has succeeded in finding an apt, well-balanced voice–piano relationship for each song. The piano writing is full of interest: repetitive figures feature frequently and sonorities veer from darkly sensuous harmonies to moments of glittering brightness. The vocal part avoids extremes of range; everything is practical and precisely imagined.
ANDREW NORMAN (b. 1979)Lullaby (2007)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on American composer Andrew Norman’s Lullaby (2007). This early example of Norman’s writing for voice and piano is immediately engrossing and never loosens its hold on the listener. Norman manages to achieve a successful blend of the often-opposing twin virtues of highly disciplined structure and free-wheeling expressiveness. The volatile piano part carries a great deal of the action, but the singer, too, has ample opportunity to produce a full array of colours and to scale a broad range. A good number of long-spun phrases will test breath control. Intervals, occasionally angular, at other times close together, necessitate meticulous attention to tuning, especially when voice and piano clash chromatically. Starting peacefully, the song unfolds and builds with dazzling panache to a central climax, then gradually slows and calms, coming to a close with a succinct and memorable coda. Ultimately, this fascinating and highly individual setting of a well-known poem by W. H. Auden extends it considerably, thereby unpeeling new layers of meaning.
EDWIN ROXBURGH (b. 1937)Reflections (2010)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights British composer Edwin Roxburgh’s Reflections (2010). This exciting diptych set to Richard Cutler’s galvanizing poems offers a challenging but ultimately beneficial workout for both singer and pianist. The baritone gets directly into his stride in a bold, relatively short opening song, priming him to tackle the more substantial demands of the second, much longer movement. As a wind player, Roxburgh is aware of the desirability of using air as economically as possible, making full use of lung capacity when spanning lengthy phrases. The singer is frequently stretched to the limit of breath, with just enough time to refuel between phrases, before relaunching a firm, carrying tone for long-drawn lines, against a piano part packed with flurries of repetitive figurations. Freely atonal, the musical idiom is tightly knit and consistent, with pitch centres and chromatic intervals often recurring, and the singer’s rhythms are mainly straightforward.
ROBERT SAXTON (b. 1953)The Beach in Winter: Scratby (for Tess) (2007)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Robert Saxton’s The Beach in Winter: Scratby (for Tess) (2007). This piece, originally commissioned for the NMC Songbook, is now to be found as the last song of a major seven-movement baritone cycle Time and the Seasons. Its idiom is a far cry from Saxton’s earlier modernist works. The music is mellifluous, basically tonal, and beautifully turned, with voluptuously expressive vocal phrases that cover a wide range. The composer gives the baritone plenty of scope to span spacious phrases and articulate contrasting emotions, amid continual changes of key signature. Lines dart around the registers a good deal and the singer will need to control dynamics and vary timbre throughout his range. The pianist propels the music along with a continuous, ever-shifting texture of wave patterns—first rippling, then surging and pounding, or quite suddenly scattering in spray. Rhythms are pliable and there are many instances of irregular divisions, pitting fours against threes in the piano part.
DMITRI SMIRNOV (1948–2020)Wonderful Stories (2001)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Russian composer Dmitri Smirnov’s Wonderful Stories (2001). Smirnov’s prolific output reveals a special enthusiasm for the work of William Blake and includes settings of his poetry. This set of twelve droll, breezily concise miniatures represents the composer in lighter vein. Vocal tessitura is deftly judged and piano writing is wittily apt. Sly humour in music is not at all easy to pull off, but Smirnov is more than equal to the task. Wonderful Stories is an ideal choice for young singers, especially beginners. Although there is ample opportunity for characterization, a poker-faced manner is often more effective than an arch, knowing air. Wide stylistic contrasts and variations in length create a pleasing balance. In addition, the score has charming drawings by the composer’s son Philip Firsov.
MICHAEL ZEV GORDON (b. 1963)Into the Dark (2014)
Authors: Manning Jane
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at Michael Zev Gordon’s Into the Dark (2014). Michael Zev Gordon is a composer of consistency, rigour, and broad sympathies, now rightfully gaining wide recognition for his exceptional gifts. This unique and important work is packed with invention and sustains its length admirably. It typifies the polish, clarity, and fastidiousness of his writing. The piece celebrates a groundbreaking collaboration between the worlds of science, medicine, and music, in the form of a research study into consciousness under anaesthesia. There is no avoiding the fact that an exceptional singer is needed, but the challenge is surely a rewarding one. The flexible mezzo/contralto is frequently called upon to display security at both extremes of the range. The deepest notes, well below the stave, are used to especially telling effect. The higher tessitura, too, has to be well focused through some blazing high points, especially during the piece’s latter stages, where the singer can give rein to vocal opulence, once liberated from the tight controls and microscopic details that predominate earlier.
Philip Roth
Authors: Nadel Ira
Published: February 2021

This account of Philip Roth traces the psychological and artistic origins of his creative life. It examines the major events of his career, while identifying a series of personal themes in his writing, from his relationship with Judaism to family, marriage, Eastern Europe, and America. It addresses his private challenges, from romance and health to surviving as a writer burdened with success. The book also reflects how living outside the United States, initially in Italy and then England, plus his visits to Eastern Europe and exposure to their oppressed writers, affected his writing. In particular, it primed him for a new engagement with American political and social history, resulting in a renewed determination to rewrite America through his American trilogy and The Plot Against America. Although chronology is the framework, this is a thematic reading of Roth’s life and career with attention to family, self-identity, and success. A set of contrasting angles form this approach, beginning with his prolonged sense of discontent yet public image of success, his search for sustained relationships but then decision to end them, his idealization of his parents but persistent undercurrent of criticism. Three overlapping issues provide the impetus for this reading: the aesthetic, the emotional, and the historical. The lasting importance of such themes as anger, betrayal, and failure has a vital role in understanding Roth’s character and work. So, too, does his sense of performance on and off the page.
Declaration of Independence
Authors: Nadel Ira
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Roth’s struggles with his father, his decision to go to college at Bucknell University after a year at Rutgers Newark, and his early girlfriends; the influence of his early professors at Bucknell and his editing the campus literary magazine where some of his earliest writing appeared. Graduate study at the University of Chicago and early publications followed, as well as his meeting influential novelists like Saul Bellow and Richard Stern. New friendships also emerged, notably with Theodore Solotaroff, critic and later editor of the New American Review, and Arthur Geffen and Barry Targan. “Bibliography by day, women by night” was their motto.
The mitochondrial AAA protease FTSH3 regulates Complex I abundance by promoting its disassembly
Authors: Ivanova Aneta , Ghifari Abi S , Berkowitz Oliver , Whelan James , Murcha Monika W
Published: February 2021

ATP is generated in mitochondria by oxidative phosphorylation. Complex I (NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase or NADH dehydrogenase) is the first multisubunit protein complex of this pathway, oxidizing NADH and transferring electrons to the ubiquinone pool. Typically, Complex I mutants display a slow growth rate compared to wild-type plants. Here, using a forward genetic screen approach for restored growth of a Complex I mutant, we have identified the mitochondrial ATP-dependent metalloprotease, Filamentous Temperature Sensitive H 3 (FTSH3), as a factor that is required for the disassembly of Complex I. An ethyl methanesulfonate-induced mutation in FTSH3, named as rmb1 (restoration of mitochondrial biogenesis 1), restored Complex I abundance and plant growth. Complementation could be achieved with FTSH3 lacking proteolytic activity, suggesting the unfoldase function of FTSH3 has a role in Complex I disassembly. The introduction of the rmb1 to an additional, independent, and extensively characterized Complex I mutant, ndufs4, resulted in similar increases to Complex I abundance and a partial restoration of growth. These results show that disassembly or degradation of Complex I plays a role in determining its steady-state abundance and thus turnover may vary under different conditions.
Impact of an unannounced standardized veteran program on access to community-based services for veterans experiencing homelessness
Authors: Weiner Saul J , Schwartz Alan , Binns-Calvey Amy , Kass Benjamin , Underwood Timothy D , Kane Vincent
Published: February 2021

Background

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs established a program in which actors incognito portray veterans experiencing homelessness with pre-determined needs to identify barriers to access and services at community-based organizations.

Methods

From 2017 to 2019, actors who varied in gender, skin color and age portrayed one of three scripts at all VA Community-Based Resource and Referral Centers (CRRCs) serving veterans experiencing homelessness in 30 cities and completed an evaluative survey. They carried authentic VA identification and were registered in a VA patient database for each identity. CRRCs were provided with reports annually and asked to implement corrective plans. Data from the survey were analysed for change over time.

Results

Access to food, counselling, PTSD treatment, and hypertension/prediabetes care services increased significantly from 68–77% in year 2 to 83–97% in year 3 (each P < 0.05 adjusted for script present). A significant disparity in access for African American actors resolved following more uniform adherence to pre-existing policies.

Conclusions

The ‘unannounced standardized veteran’ (USV) can identify previously unrecognized barriers to needed services and care. Audit and feedback programs based on direct covert observation with systematic data collection and rapid feedback may be an effective strategy for improving services to highly vulnerable populations.