bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Tensile strain in Ge membranes induced by SiGe nanostressors
Authors: Barget Michael R. , Lodari Mario , Borriello Mauro , Mondiali Valeria , Chrastina Daniel , Bollani Monica , Bonera Emiliano
Published: September 2016

The monolithic integration of photonic functionality into silicon microtechnology is widely advanced. Yet, there is no final solution for the realization of a light source compatible with the prevailing complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. A lot of research effort focuses on germanium (Ge) on silicon (Si) heterostructures and tensile strain application to Ge is accepted as one feasible route to make Ge an efficient light emitter. Prior work has documented the special suitability of Ge membranes to reach the high tensile strain. We present a top-down approach for the creation of SiGe stressors on Ge micro-bridges and compare the obtained strain to the case of an attached bulk-like Ge layer. We could show that the Ge influenced by a SiGe stressor is under tensile strain; absolute strain values are of the order of 0.7% for both micro-bridge and bulk. The relative strain induced by the nanostructures in the micro-bridge is 1.3% due to the high sharing of elastic energy between nanostructures and bridges.
The mechanical and acoustic properties of two-dimensional pentamode metamaterials with different structural parameters
Authors: Cai Xuan , Wang Lei , Zhao Zhigao , Zhao Aiguo , Zhang Xiangdong , Wu Tao , Chen Hong
Published: September 2016

The effective mechanical and acoustic properties of two-dimensional pentamode metamaterials (PMs) with different structural parameters are investigated in this paper. It is found that with varying structural parameters, the effective bulk modulus and density remain constant as the same as those of water, while the figure of merit, i.e., the ratio of the bulk modulus to the shear modulus (B/G) gradually increases due to the decrease of the shear modulus. However, full wave simulations reveal that with the increase of B/G, the acoustic scattering becomes more and more intense, which indicates that the acoustic properties of pentamode metamaterials gradually deviate from those of water. These anomalous acoustic behaviors are proposed to arise from the existence of the bending modes in pentamode microstructures. Our results show that for pentamode metamaterials, the mechanical properties cannot be simply translated to their acoustic properties, and the structural parameters affect the mechanical and acoustic properties in much different ways.
Heteroepitaxy of N-type β-Ga2O3 thin films on sapphire substrate by low pressure chemical vapor deposition
Authors: Rafique Subrina , Han Lu , Neal Adam T. , Mou Shin , Tadjer Marko J. , French Roger H. , Zhao Hongping
Published: September 2016

This paper presents the heteroepitaxial growth of ultrawide bandgap β-Ga2O3 thin films on c-plane sapphire substrates by low pressure chemical vapor deposition. N-type conductivity in silicon (Si)-doped β-Ga2O3 films grown on sapphire substrate is demonstrated. The thin films were synthesized using high purity metallic gallium (Ga) and oxygen (O2) as precursors. The morphology, crystal quality, and properties of the as-grown thin films were characterized and analyzed by field emission scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, electron backscatter diffraction, photoluminescence and optical, photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy, and temperature dependent van der Pauw/Hall measurement. The optical bandgap is ∼4.76 eV, and room temperature electron mobility of 42.35 cm2/V s was measured for a Si-doped heteroepitaxial β-Ga2O3 film with a doping concentration of 1.32 × 1018 cm−3.
Parametric sum envelope instability of periodically focused intense beams
Authors: Boine-Frankenheim Oliver , Hofmann Ingo , Struckmeier Jürgen
Published: September 2016

The envelope instability is a second order parametric resonance with the periodic focusing and known to appear in space charge dominated beams near 90° phase advance per focusing period. We show in 2d approximation that space charge may also induce parametric “sum envelope instabilities” leading to simultaneous growth of envelopes or skew angles as well as emittances. This can happen by two-plane envelope coupling or by exciting a skew (“odd”) mode in an otherwise fully uncoupled linear lattice. At resonance, the two individual phase advances are split more or less symmetrically away from 90°, and exponential growth occurs. Results from perturbation theory are compared with full envelope models, particle-in-cell simulations, and smooth approximation stopband calculations, all showing very good agreement for realistic space charge parameters.
Room temperature excitonic dynamics of non-polar a-plane ZnO epifilms
Authors: Lin Ja-Hon , Liu Wei-Rein , Lin Yi-Chin , Su Hsing-Jung , Chen Hou-Ren , Tsai Chih-Ya , Chen Yao-Hui , Hsieh Wen-Feng
Published: September 2016

Pump polarization dependent carrier dynamics, particularly excitonic dynamics, of non-polar a-plane zinc oxide (ZnO) epifilms with two different thicknesses were investigated using time resolved measurements. Unlike the electron and hole dynamics through the above-bandgap excitation, transient differential reflectance (TDR) traces revealed similar trends under two orthogonal pump polarization conditions relative to the c-axis (Epu⊥c and Epu∥c) of a-ZnO around near-exciton-resonance excitation. By means of a band diagram, the bandgap renormalization (BGR) effect can be reasonably explained by the screening of the Coulomb potential energy due to the accumulation of relaxed free carriers that were initially excited through the absorption of two cascaded pump photons via the excitonic level, a process known as two photon absorption (TPA). Thus, the modulation depths of the TPA around zero time delay, due to simultaneous absorption of one pump and one probe photon via the excitonic level, increased linearly with the pump fluence, proportional to the modulation depth resulting from the BGR effects.
New three-phase polymer-ceramic composite materials for miniaturized microwave antennas
Authors: Zhang Li , Zhang Jie , Yue Zhenxing , Li Longtu
Published: September 2016

Unique polymer-ceramic composites for microwave antenna applications were prepared via melt extrusion using high-density polyethylene (HDPE) as the matrix and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) coated BaO–Nd2O3–TiO2 (BNT) ceramic-powders as the filler. By incorporating LDPE into the composites via a coating route, high ceramic-powder volume content (up to 50 vol%) could be achieved. The composites exhibited good microwave dielectric and thermomechanical behaviors. As BNT ceramic content increased from 10 vol% to 50 vol%, the permittivity of the composites increased from 3.45 (9 GHz) to 11.87 (7 GHz), while the dielectric loss remained lower than 0.0016. Microstrip antennas for applications in global positioning systems (GPS) were designed and fabricated from the composites containing 50 vol% BNT ceramics. The results indicate that the composites that have suitable permittivity and low dielectric loss are promising candidates for applications in miniaturized microwave devices, such as antennas.
Targeted deletion of the Kv6.4 subunit causes male sterility due to disturbed spermiogenesis
Authors: Regnier Glenn , Bocksteins Elke , Marei Waleed F. , Pintelon Isabel , Timmermans Jean-Pierre , Leroy Jo L. M. R. , Snyders Dirk J.
Published: September 2016

Electrically silent voltage-gated potassium (KvS) channel subunits (i.e. Kv5–Kv6 and Kv8–Kv9) do not form functional homotetrameric Kv channels, but co-assemble with Kv2 subunits, generating functional heterotetrameric Kv2­–KvS channel complexes in which the KvS subunits modulate the Kv2 channel properties. Several KvS subunits are expressed in testis tissue but knowledge about their contribution to testis physiology is lacking. Here, we report that the targeted deletion of Kv6.4 in a transgenic mouse model (Kcng4–/–) causes male sterility as offspring from homozygous females were only obtained after mating with wild-type (WT) or heterozygous males. Semen quality analysis revealed that the sterility of the homozygous males was caused by a severe reduction in total sperm-cell count and the absence of motile spermatozoa in the semen. Furthermore, spermatozoa of homozygous mice showed an abnormal morphology characterised by a smaller head and a shorter tail compared with WT spermatozoa. Comparison of WT and Kcng4–/– testicular tissue indicated that this inability to produce (normal) spermatozoa was due to disturbed spermiogenesis. These results suggest that Kv6.4 subunits are involved in the regulation of the late stages of spermatogenesis, which makes them a potentially interesting pharmacological target for the development of non-hormonal male contraceptives.
Testicular parameters and spermatogenesis in different birthweight boars
Authors: Auler P. A. , Moreira G. H. F. A. , Hogg C. O. , Ashworth C. J. , Bortolozzo F. P. , Chiarini-Garcia H. , Almeida F. R. C. L.
Published: September 2016

The present study investigated the effect of birthweight on testicular development and spermatogenesis in boars. Twenty-four pairs of littermate boars were selected: one piglet with the highest birthweight (HW) and the other with the lowest birthweight (LW) within the litter. Two subsets of 12 pairs of male littermates from each birthweight group were obtained after selection: one subset was orchiectomised at 8 days and the other at 8 months of age. HW boars had higher body and testicular weights at both ages (P < 0.05). Testosterone concentrations and the relative expression of 17α-hydroxylase in the testis were similar between birthweight groups. Birthweight affected somatic and germ cell numbers in the neonatal testis, which were higher in HW boars (P < 0.05). Moreover, a significant reduction in the number of pachytene spermatocytes and round spermatids was observed in LW boars (P < 0.05) at 8 months of age, which caused a decrease in the total number of elongated spermatids and daily sperm production (P < 0.05). Hence, HW boars have the potential to produce more spermatozoa and consequently more semen doses per ejaculate, and would be very valuable to an industry that relies on AI.
Metal halide perovskite light emitters
Authors: Kim Young-Hoon , Cho Himchan , Lee Tae-Woo
Published: September 2016

Twenty years after layer-type metal halide perovskites were successfully developed, 3D metal halide perovskites (shortly, perovskites) were recently rediscovered and are attracting multidisciplinary interest from physicists, chemists, and material engineers. Perovskites have a crystal structure composed of five atoms per unit cell (ABX
3
) with cation A positioned at a corner, metal cation B at the center, and halide anion X at the center of six planes and unique optoelectronic properties determined by the crystal structure. Because of very narrow spectra (full width at half-maximum ≤20 nm), which are insensitive to the crystallite/grain/particle dimension and wide wavelength range (400 nm ≤ λ ≤ 780 nm), perovskites are expected to be promising high-color purity light emitters that overcome inherent problems of conventional organic and inorganic quantum dot emitters. Within the last 2 y, perovskites have already demonstrated their great potential in light-emitting diodes by showing high electroluminescence efficiency comparable to those of organic and quantum dot light-emitting diodes. This article reviews the progress of perovskite emitters in two directions of bulk perovskite polycrystalline films and perovskite nanoparticles, describes current challenges, and suggests future research directions for researchers to encourage them to collaborate and to make a synergetic effect in this rapidly emerging multidisciplinary field.
Invariant random subgroups of groups acting on hyperbolic spaces
Authors: Osin D.
Published: September 2016

Suppose that a group

G
G

acts non-elementarily on a hyperbolic space

S
S

and does not fix any point of

∂
S

\partial S

. A subgroup

H
≤
G

H\le G

is geometrically dense in

G
G

if the limit sets of

H
H

and

G
G

on

∂
S

\partial S

coincide and

H
H

does not fix any point of

∂
S

\partial S

. We prove that every invariant random subgroup of

G
G

is either geometrically dense or contained in the elliptic radical (i.e., the maximal normal elliptic subgroup of

G
G

). In particular, every ergodic measure preserving action of an acylindrically hyperbolic group on a Borel probability space

(
X
,
μ
)

(X,\mu )

either has finite stabilizers

μ
\mu

-almost surely or otherwise the stabilizers are very large (in particular, acylindrically hyperbolic)

μ
\mu

-almost surely.
Effects of TV and Cable News Viewing on Climate Change Opinion, Knowledge, and Behavior
Authors: Feldman Lauren
Published: September 2016

For the general public, the news media are an important source of information about climate change. They have significant potential to influence public understanding and perceptions of the issue. Television news, because of its visual immediacy and authoritative presentation, is likely to be particularly influential. Numerous studies have shown that television news can affect public opinion directly and indirectly through processes such as agenda setting and framing. Moreover, even in a fragmented media environment largely dominated by online communication, television remains a prominent medium through which citizens follow news about science issues. Given this, scholars over the last several decades have endeavored to map the content of television news reporting on climate change and its effects on public opinion and knowledge. Results from this research suggest that journalists’ adherence to professional norms such as balance, novelty, dramatization, and personalization, along with economic pressures and sociopolitical influences, have produced inaccuracies and distortions in television news coverage of climate change. For example, content analyses have found that U.S. network television news stories tend to over-emphasize dramatic impacts and imagery, conflicts between political groups and personalities, and the uncertainty surrounding climate science and policy. At the same time, those skeptical of climate change have been able to exploit journalists’ norms of balance and objectivity to amplify their voices in television coverage of climate change. In particular, the increasingly opinionated 24-hour cable news networks have become a megaphone for ideological viewpoints on climate change. In the United States, a coordinated climate denial movement has used Fox News to effectively spread its message discrediting climate science. Coverage on Fox News is overwhelmingly dismissive of climate change and disparaging toward climate science and scientists. Coverage on CNN and MSNBC is more accepting of climate change; however, while MSNBC tends to vilify the conservative opposition to climate science and policy, and occasionally exaggerates the impacts of climate change, CNN sends more mixed signals. Survey and experimental analyses indicate that these trends in television news coverage of climate change have important effects on public opinion and may, in particular, fuel confusion and apathy among the general U.S. public and foster opinion extremity among strong partisans.
How Public Relations and Advertising Have Shaped Public Debate Over Climate Change
Authors: Ahern Lee
Published: September 2016

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article.

The persuasive industries of advertising and public relations are inextricably intertwined with the cultures of the industrial revolution and neoliberal market economics—the very forces that are primarily responsible for bringing us to a warming world. Is it possible they can evolve from being part of the problem to forming part of the solution? Historically, advertising and public relations professionals operate in the service of paying clients. There are a number of governmental and non-governmental entities promoting carbon reduction and other climate change mitigation and adaptation policy positions and individual behaviors. Although significant, the “share of voice” for these communication campaigns remains negligible in the context of hyper-mediated modern social life. It is unrealistic, therefore, to expect that the advertising and public relations industries could have a significant impact on climate change attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and behaviors by directing their collective creative energies and resources to traditional public information campaigns. Reflecting on the nature and operation of these persuasive industries, however, it may be possible for the advertising and public relations industries to have significant—and perhaps critical—indirect impacts. Many science and policy communicators think in terms of informational message strategies. However, as the history of advertising and public relations has shown, persuasion happens in more emotional and indirect ways. In rhetorical terms, the most persuasive messages often communicate through enthymemes—non-explicit or unstated assumptions and conclusions that audiences accept as “given” and without scrutiny or counter-arguing. This reality provides an opening for strategic communicators to contribute to pro-science public attitudes in the service of all clients. With close and transparent consideration of the ethical implications, the indirect client of strategic communications can be client earth.
Multiculturalism and Political Philosophy
Authors: Vitikainen Annamari
Published: September 2016

Multiculturalism has been used both as a descriptive and a normative term, as well as a term referring to particular types of state policies. As a descriptive term, multiculturalism refers to the state of affairs present in contemporary societies: that of cultural diversity. As a normative term, multiculturalism affirms cultural diversity as an acceptable state of affairs, and provides normative grounds for accommodating this diversity. As a policy-oriented term, multiculturalism refers to a variety of state policies that aim to accommodate people’s cultural differences—most notably, different types of culturally differentiated rights.

The main focus of the debates on multiculturalism within political philosophy has been on normative multiculturalism, and the broader normative questions relating to the appropriate grounds for responding to people’s cultural differences. The debates on descriptive multiculturalism and on particular multicultural policies, however, feed into the debates on normative multiculturalism. One’s views on the nature of culture, the value of culture, and the appropriate means of demarcating group boundaries have implications on the ways in which one understands the proper objects of cultural accommodation, as well as the extent to which such accommodation should be applied. The different types of multicultural policies—including rights of indigenous groups, immigrants, and national minorities—incorporate slightly different sets of normative considerations that must be independently assessed and that also feed into the more general debates on the normative foundations for cultural accommodation.

Equality-based and identity-based arguments for cultural concern provide strong grounds for the state to be concerned about people’s cultural differences and to aim to alleviate culturally induced disadvantages. The case for (or against) culturally differentiated rights as a means for responding to these disadvantages may, however, come from several sources, including approaches to cultural diversity based on equality, autonomy, toleration, and state neutrality. While there is relative (albeit not full) agreement among normative theorists of multiculturalism that differentiated rights may be acceptable, though not always required or even desired, responses to cultural diversity, disagreements about the normative bases, and extents of application, remain.
Referendums in the European Union
Authors: Beach Derek
Published: September 2016

Referendums are frequently used to ratify European Union (EU)–related propositions. Since 1972 there have been in total 46 EU-related referendums, excluding third-country referendums on EU-related matters. While referendums are constitutionally mandated in some countries in order to ratify new treaties, other referendums are held for either normative or for political reasons.

Referendums deal with topics that are less familiar to voters, where key issues typically do not map onto domestic political cleavages. This means that we should expect that campaigns and the information they provide about the issues and the positions of political actors might matter more in framing issues than in first-order national elections. While there is by no means a scholarly consensus, recent research has shown, for instance, that an issue that dominates media coverage can impact how voters evaluate a proposition.

Finally, what do we know about voter behavior? While referendums on EU affairs have been criticized as being decided by “second-order” factors such as government popularity, there is evidence that when a proposition matters for voters, voting behavior is more dominated by issue-voting. Recent research has drawn on advances in cognitive psychology to investigate the impact of attitude strength and personality characteristics for voter behavior.
What Helps Protect Human Rights: Human Rights Theory and Evidence
Authors: Anderson Jessica , Murdie Amanda
Published: September 2016

Empirical international relations (IR) theory developed three generalized statements regarding why human rights abuses occur. First, human rights abuses are a way for an unrestrained state, especially the executive branch and its agents, to try to control individuals and hold on to power. Second, respect for human rights is an international norm, and international socialization and pressure about this norm can, in certain situations, affect behavior. Third, the codification of human rights norms into international treaties may influence behavior but, similar to our understanding of the effect of other treaties on state behavior, states only bind themselves weakly, and certain conditions are necessary for treaties to affect human rights.
Stomatopod Vision
Authors: Cronin Thomas W. , Marshall N. Justin , Caldwell Roy L.
Published: September 2016

The predatory stomatopod crustaceans, or mantis shrimp, are among the most attractive and dynamic creatures living in the sea. Their special features include their powerful raptorial appendages, used to kill, stun, or disable other animals (whether predators, prey, or competitors), and their highly specialized compound eyes. Mantis shrimp vision is unlike that of any other animal and has several unique features. Their compound eyes are optically triple, each having three separate regions that produce overlapping visual fields viewing certain regions of space. They have the most diverse set of spectral classes of receptors ever described in animals, with as many as 16 types in a single compound eye. These receptors are based on a highly duplicated set of opsin molecules paired with strongly absorbing photostable filters in some photoreceptor types. The receptor set includes six ultraviolet types, all spectrally distinct, many themselves tuned by photostable filters. There are as many as eight types of polarization receptors of up to three spectral classes (including an ultraviolet class). In some species, two sets of these receptors analyze circularly polarized light, another unique capability. Stomatopod eyes move independently, each capable of visual field stabilization, image foveation and tracking, or scanning of image features. Stomatopods are known to recognize colors and polarization features and evidently use these in predation and communication. Altogether, mantis shrimps have perhaps the most unusual vision of any animal.
Cephalopod Olfaction
Authors: Di Cosmo Anna , Polese Gianluca
Published: September 2016

Within the Phylum Mollusca, cephalopods encompass a small and complex group of exclusively marine animals that live in all the oceans of the world with the exception of the Black and Caspian seas. They are distributed from shallow waters down into the deep sea, occupying a wide range of ecological niches. They are dominant predators and themselves prey with high visual capability and well-developed vestibular, auditory, and tactile systems. Nevertheless, their perceptions are chemically facilitated, so that water-soluble and volatile odorants are the key mediators of many physiological and behavioral events.

For cephalopods as well as the other aquatic animals, chemical cues convey a remarkable amount of information critical to social interaction, habitat selection, defense, prey localization, courtship and mating, affecting not only individual behavior and population-level processes, but also community organization and ecosystem function. Cephalopods possess chemosensory systems that have anatomical similarities to the olfactory systems of land-based animals, but the molecules perceived from distance are different because their water solubility is of importance. Many insoluble molecules that are detected from distance on land must, in an aquatic system, be perceived by direct contact with the odour source. Most of the studies regarding olfaction in cephalopods have been performed considering only waterborne molecules detected by the “olfactory organs.” However cephalopods are also equipped with “gustatory systems” consisting of receptors distributed on the arm suckers in octopods, buccal lips in decapods, and tentacles in nautiluses.

To date, what is known about the olfactory organ in cephalopods comes from studies on nautiloids and coleoids (decapods and octopods). In the nautiloid’s olfactory system, there is a pair of rhinophores located below each eye and open to the environment with a tiny pore, whereas in coleoids a small pit of ciliated cells is present on either side of the head below the eyes close to the mantle edge.
France-US Relations
Authors: Statler Kathryn C.
Published: September 2016

U.S.-French relations are long-standing, complex, and primarily cooperative in nature. Various crises have punctuated long periods of stability in the alliance, but after each conflict the Franco-American friendship emerged stronger than ever. Official U.S.-French relations began during the early stages of the American Revolution, when Louis XVI’s regime came to America’s aid by providing money, arms, and military advisers. French assistance, best symbolized by the Marquis de Lafayette, was essential in the revolution’s success. The subsequent French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power also benefitted the United States when Napoleon’s woes in Europe and the Caribbean forced him to sell the entire Louisiana territory to the United States, in 1803. Franco-American economic and cultural contacts increased throughout the 19th century, as trade between the two countries prospered and as Americans flocked to France to study art, architecture, music, and medicine. The French gift of the Statue of Liberty in the late 19th century solidified Franco-American bonds, which became even more secure during World War I. Indeed, during the war, the United States provided France with trade, loans, military assistance, and millions of soldiers, viewing such aid as repayment for French help during the American Revolution. World War II once again saw the United States fighting in France to liberate the country from Nazi control. The Cold War complicated the Franco-American relationship in new ways as American power waxed and French power waned. Washington and Paris clashed over military conflict in Vietnam, the Suez Crisis, and European security (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, in particular) during the 1950s and 1960s. Ultimately, after French President Charles de Gaulle’s retirement, the Franco-American alliance stabilized by the mid-1970s and has flourished ever since, despite brief moments of crisis, such as the 2003 Second Gulf War in Iraq.
Women in Religious Art
Authors: Apostolos-Cappadona Diane
Published: September 2016

Like religion, art has been a fundamental component of human experience since the beginning of time. Often working in partnership, occasionally at odds, art and religion form a combination that has been a source of inspiration, pedagogy, contemplation, and celebration of the relationship between the human and the divine. However, each individual religion and its culture have encountered the arts differently; these encounters are reflected in distinctive attitudes toward the human, sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class, as well as configuration of the holy.

The human figure has been a common denominator in the arts envisioning transformations in cultural and societal attitudes, economic and political perceptions, and religious doctrines. Traditional wisdom suggests that the majority of world cultures and religions are established upon a patriarchal structure so that representations of the male body project attitudes of power while the female body projects negative attributes. More recent scholarship by feminist art historians, critics, cultural historians, and religious historians provides new ways of looking at the female figure and the role of women in religious art including the history of women artists, patrons, collectors, and, most recently, as critics and curators.

Further surveying the iconography of specific women, whether deities, historical personages, or legendary beings, in the history of a religion affords the opportunity not simply to analyze variations in artistic styles but also to witness how religion shapes and informs cultural, societal, and even legal definitions of women. While the majority of scholarly investigations have focused on Western religions, the possibilities of both comparative analyses and innovative studies of non-Western iconographies of women in religious art can both inform and expand global recognition of the categories of gender, race, and ethnicity as well as research methodologies. The Western model of iconography may be found wanting and open to enrichment through engagement with new categories and models of analysis.
Digital Resources: Using Facebook to Foster International Conversations about Mexican History
Authors: Dormady Jason
Published: September 2016

Mexican History/Historia Mexicana (MH/HM) is a Facebook page dedicated to bringing together the world’s academic and popular masses in their interest of Mexican history. As of 2016, there are over 1300 members of the page, and posts garner one to three hundred views, though some posts or posted links have reached three to five thousand unique views.

The Facebook page grew out of the frustration of this author with the slow and censored listserv system that serves as the main forum for scholars of Mexican history. In addition, there was a desire to reach private scholars and members of the public who are generally excluded from the listserv systems. In December 2011, the author and another scholar joined together in creating a Facebook page that would, in the words of the page description, serve as “a forum for the free exchange of information on the history and related culture and events of Mexico.” In late 2012 a third scholar joined them as operators, managers, and editors of the page.

Material is selected in Spanish and English (and occasionally indigenous Mexican languages) related to Mexican history or events of historical importance. Generally, the goals of the page are to provide items of interest to the general public, resources to professional researchers that they may not know about, and well-known resources for new researchers. Information is provided on events or presentations related to the preservation of Mexican History, important new research works, and items of curiosity that simply pique theinterest of the operators. There is no systematic approach to content; instead, information is posted as a free-form collective, free of censorship. Members of the community are also welcome to post materials or queries and to comment and discuss topics on history and related items of culture and current events.
The Conquests of Peru
Authors: Heaney Christopher
Published: September 2016

Between 1472 and 1572, the conquests of Peru were many: by the Inca, who in the 15th century spread from their southern Andean heartland in Cusco to build an empire that stretched from what is now southern Colombia to northern Chile and Argentina; by the Spanish conquistadors under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, who reached down from Panama in search of the rumored wealth of the kingdom of “Birú” and fatefully encountered the aspirant Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca in November of 1532; by the Spanish crown, which intervened after the revolt of Atahualpa’s brother Manco Inca in 1536 and the rebellion of the conquistadors in the 1540s; and by the Inca’s former subjects, the Spaniards’ Indian allies, and their mestizo sons, who ended independent Inca resistance by helping to capture Atahualpa’s nephew in the Vilcabamba valley in 1572. This essay sketches the century-long arc of those many conquests, which together yielded a historical entity not quite like any other in the early modern world, let alone Americas: a composite Spanish-Indian kingdom whose incredible wealth lay not just in the gold and silver that its mines and burials produced but in the network of subjects and laborers that drew both the Inca and their Habsburg successors on to further conquests than was wise.
Heavy Rainfall and Flash Flooding
Authors: Schumacher Russ S.
Published: September 2016

Heavy precipitation, which in many contexts is welcomed because it provides the water necessary for agriculture and human use, in other situations is responsible for deadly and destructive flash flooding. Over the 30-year period from 1986 to 2015, floods were responsible for more fatalities in the United States than any other convective weather hazard (www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml), and similar findings are true in other regions of the world. Although scientific understanding of the processes responsible for heavy rainfall continues to advance, there are still many challenges associated with predicting where, when, and how much precipitation will occur. Common ingredients are required for heavy rainfall to occur, but there are vastly different ways in which the atmosphere brings the ingredients together in different parts of the world. Heavy precipitation often occurs on very small spatial scales in association with deep convection (thunderstorms), factors that limit the ability of numerical models to represent or predict the location and intensity of rainfall. Furthermore, because flash floods are dependent not only on precipitation but also on the characteristics of the underlying land surface, there are fundamental difficulties in accurately representing these coupled processes. Areas of active current research on heavy rainfall and flash flooding include investigating the storm-scale atmospheric processes that promote extreme precipitation, analyzing the reasons that some rainfall predictions are very accurate while others fail, improving the understanding and prediction of the flooding response to heavy precipitation, and determining how heavy rainfall and floods have changed and may continue to change in a changing climate.
Ontological Security and Natural Hazards
Authors: Harries Tim
Published: September 2016

People not only want to be safe from natural hazards; they also want to feel they are safe. Sometimes these two desires pull in different directions, and when they do, this slows the journey to greater physical adaptation and resilience.

All people want to feel safe—especially in their own homes. In fact, although not always a place of actual safety, in many cultures “home” is nonetheless idealized as a place of security and repose. The feeling of having a safe home is one part of what is termed ontological security: freedom from existential doubts and the ability to believe that life will continue in much the same way as it always has, without threat to familiar assumptions about time, space, identity, and well-being. By threatening our homes, floods, earthquakes, and similar events disrupt ontological security: they destroy the possessions that support our sense of who we are; they fracture the social structures that provide us with everyday needs such as friendship, play, and affection; they disrupt the routines that give our lives a sense of predictability; and they challenge the myth of our immortality. Such events, therefore, not only cause physical injury and loss; by damaging ontological security, they also cause emotional distress and jeopardize long-term mental health.

However, ontological security is undermined not only by the occurrence of hazard events but also by their anticipation. This affects people’s willingness to take steps that would reduce hazard vulnerability. Those who are confident that they can eliminate their exposure to a hazard will usually do so. More commonly, however, the available options come with uncertainty and social/psychological risks: often, the available options only reduce vulnerability, and sometimes people doubt the effectiveness of these options or their ability to choose and implement appropriate measures. In these circumstances, the risk to ontological security that is implied by action can have greater influence than the potential benefits. For example, although installing a floodgate might reduce a business’s flood vulnerability, the business owner might feel that its presence would act as an everyday reminder that the business, and the income derived from it, are not secure. Similarly, bolting furniture to the walls of a home might reduce injuries in the next earthquake, but householders might also anticipate that it would remind them that there is a continual threat to their home. Both of these circumstances describe situations in which the anticipation of future feelings can tap into less conscious anxieties about ontological security.

The manner in which people anticipate impacts on ontological security has several implications for preparedness. For example, it suggests that hazard warnings will be counterproductive if they are not accompanied by suggestions of easy, reliable ways of eliminating risk. It also suggests that adaptation measures should be designed not to enhance awareness of the hazard.
Resilience
Authors: Folke Carl
Published: September 2016

Resilience thinking in relation to the environment has emerged as a lens of inquiry that serves a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. Resilience is about cultivating the capacity to sustain development in the face of expected and surprising change and diverse pathways of development and potential thresholds between them. The evolution of resilience thinking is coupled to social-ecological systems and a truly intertwined human-environment planet. Resilience as persistence, adaptability and, transformability of complex adaptive social-ecological systems is the focus, clarifying the dynamic and forward-looking nature of the concept. Resilience thinking emphasizes that social-ecological systems, from the individual, to community, to society as a whole, are embedded in the biosphere. The biosphere connection is an essential observation if sustainability is to be taken seriously. In the continuous advancement of resilience thinking there are efforts aimed at capturing resilience of social-ecological systems and finding ways for people and institutions to govern social-ecological dynamics for improved human well-being, at the local, across levels and scales, to the global. Consequently, in resilience thinking, development issues for human well-being, for people and planet, are framed in a context of understanding and governing complex social-ecological dynamics for sustainability as part of a dynamic biosphere.
Embryology in Buddhist Thought
Authors: Andreeva Anna
Published: September 2016

Ideas about the origins of life and the development of the human body in utero have been part of Buddhist discourse since the time of its inception. Inheriting some of the notions seen also in the Jain, Puraṇic, and Āyurvedic sources, Buddhist embryological thought was linked inextricably with the idea of death and rebirth. The questions of how the consciousness emerges and what residues are left over after an individual’s death to continue the cycle of transmigration, or how the human being precisely develops in the mother’s womb, constituted the vital avenues of inquiry for Buddhist thinkers and practitioners. Thus, numerous descriptions of conception and embryological growth appeared in the Buddhist sutras, religious commentaries, and medico-religious manuals, but their perception and use varied according to the cultural and historical contexts. In locations as diverse as India, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet, China, and Japan, the embryological descriptions were linked to the ideas of suffering, karmic debt, and filial piety; in some cases, the schematic models of fetal gestation were used as a template for ritual or spiritual progress or in tantric practices of self-cultivation. Such descriptions appeared also in medical treatises and, to a much lesser degree, vernacular Buddhist rituals related to women’s bodies and women’s health. The general overview below will introduce scholarly writings that have made prominent forays into this topic within specific cultural contexts or those that examine in depth the notions critical for understanding the embryological motifs embedded in Buddhist thought.
Isabella d’Este
Authors: Shemek Deanna
Published: September 2016

Isabella d’Este (b. 1474–d. 1539) was the eldest child of Ercole I d’Este (b. 1431–d. 1505), second duke of Ferrara, and Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona (b. 1450–d. 1493). Raised in luxury and privilege, she was educated by humanists in a city that boasted an exceptionally refined court culture and one of Europe’s greatest universities. In 1490 she married Francesco II Gonzaga (b. 1466–d. 1519), Marchese of Mantua, and entered that city in triumph as its new princess. As Marchesa, she displayed extraordinary skills in management, diplomacy, and Politics, often counseling her husband and at times assuming the reins of government. All of Isabella and Francesco’s six children attained important positions among the European elite (See Family Relations). She is mainly remembered for her achievements not as a ruler, however, but as a collector of art and antiquities and the first woman in Europe to fashion a personalized gallery space in which to display her acquisitions. She called these rooms her studiolo and grotta, or her camerini. Her apartments also housed an impressive book collection, the musical instruments she was adept at playing, and other luxury items she collected (See Patronage, Collecting, Studiolo and Exhibition Catalogues). Her portraitists include Andrea Mantegna, Francesco Francia, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Rubens. A woman of tremendous energies and intelligence, Isabella cultivated relationships with many writers and composers of her time. She also devoted notable attention to fashion, travel, gardening, food production and exchange, and the keeping of animals. Given her wide range of interests, her keen intelligence, and her extraordinarily active public profile, Isabella d’Este has often been regarded as a female version of the period’s “Renaissance men.” Her multifaceted life is recorded most visibly in the archive of her correspondence, now housed in the Archivio di Stato di Mantova (ASMn), where many thousands of her letters survive along with a wealth of official documents related to her court. Isabella d’Este’s art collections now reside in museums around the world, chief among these the Paris Louvre and the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Kate Chopin
Authors: Koloski Bernard
Published: September 2016

In the United States and abroad, Kate Chopin (b. 1850–d. 1904) is recognized as one of America’s essential 19th-century authors. Her fiction is widely taught in universities and secondary schools. It is explored in hundreds of scholarly books, essays, and dissertations—as well as in the popular media. It has been made into plays, films, songs, dances, graphic fiction, and an opera. And it has been translated into twenty-some languages. But it was not always so. Chopin was born Catherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, to a mother of French descent and a father born in Ireland. She grew up speaking both French and English and studied at a Roman Catholic academy with nuns schooled in French intellectual traditions. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, traveled to Europe on her honeymoon, and settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. She bore five sons and a daughter. In 1879, after her husband’s business failed, the family relocated to the Natchitoches area of northern Louisiana, but in 1882 Oscar died, and shortly after Chopin moved with her children back to St. Louis, where she interacted with a group of progressive philosophers, journalists, editors, educators, and others. She began writing fiction in the late 1880s, drawing on her intimate knowledge of the lives of Louisiana Creoles, Acadians, African Americans, Native Americans, and other groups. Her novel At Fault (1890) received little attention, but she had significant success with her short stories, placing nineteen of them in Vogue, twelve in Youth’s Companion, and others in the Atlantic Monthly, the Century, Harper’s Young People, and additional magazines. She published two collections of stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), both of which were praised by book reviewers. About a third of her hundred-some short stories were published in, submitted to, or intended for children’s or family magazines. By the late 1890s, Chopin’s fiction was popular among American readers. But her novel The Awakening (1899) was denounced by reviewers, who called it “unhealthy,” “sordid,” “vulgar,” and “poison”—in part because it dealt with extramarital sex—and Chopin’s work was mostly ignored for half a century, experiencing a remarkable revival beginning only in the 1960s, long after her death. Today, Kate Chopin’s novels and stories are celebrated for their graceful, sensitive treatment of women’s lives and are discussed by scholars exploring gender, race, literary genres, religion and an array of other subjects.