bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
What Skills Really Improve After a Flipped Educational Intervention to Train Medical Students and Residents to Break Bad News?
Authors: Burg Luciana B. , Daetwyler Christof J. , Filho Getúlio R. de Oliveira , Castanhel Flávia Del , Grosseman Suely
Published: March 2019

Breaking bad news (BBN) is necessary in medical practice and requires training. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and mainly explore the components involved in medical students’ and residents’ performance after a flipped educational intervention to train them to break bad news. A randomized controlled before-after study was conducted with 43 medical students and residents in the intervention group and 41 in the control group. The intervention combined an online multimedia program (DocCom) with a two-hour workshop. BBN performance was assessed at two clinical stations using Objective Structured Clinical Examination and analyzed using a mixed between-within subject analysis of variance. A factor analysis was conducted to analyze the performance by checklist components. The intervention group improved its overall performance in BBN over time (p = 0.000; Eta2 = 0.38) and when compared to the control group (p = 0.01; Eta2 = 0.12). The factor analysis revealed two main components: Factor 1—“giving bad news and responding with empathy”—and Factor 2—“using general communication skills”. Performance analysis by these components revealed that the improvement occurred mainly in Factor 1 (over time, p = 0.000; Eta2 = 0.48, group x time, p = 0.000; Eta2 = 0.38). The intervention combining DocCom Module 33 and a workshop had a moderate effect on the improvement of medical students’ and medical residents’ BBN overall performance in standardized encounters. This improvement was mainly related to communication skills for giving bad news and responding with empathy, in which the intervention effect was large over time and between groups.
Post-Legislative Scrutiny in a Non-Westminster Parliament
Authors: Murphy Jonathan , Mishura Svitlana
Published: March 2019

Post-Legislative Scrutiny in a Non-Westminster Parliament: Opportunities, Challenges and Considerations

Post-legislative scrutiny (PLS) has generated growing interest as a means both for strengthening the legislative process and for permitting parliament to more effectively integrate its legislative and oversight functions. Engagement throughout the cycle of legislative development, adoption and implementation enables parliament to assure laws are properly implemented and to rectify weaknesses either in original legislative conceptualization or in executive implementation. Carried out properly, PLS should improve governance and increase its democratic accountability. Recent attention to PLS has however focused mainly on its role and use in Westminster-type parliaments. This article explores PLS from the perspective of non-Westminster parliaments. It seeks to understand why PLS in non-Westminster parliaments has received comparatively less scholarly and parliamentary development practitioner attention. The article uses a case study of Ukraine to explore the context and challenges for effective PLS, a non-Westminster emerging democracy. It concludes by proposing rebalancing discussion of PLS to take better account of diverse parliamentary models and suggests approaches to supporting PLS development in parliaments where it has not previously been consistently used
Post-Legislative Scrutiny in New Zealand
Authors: Chauvel Charles
Published: March 2019

Post-Legislative Scrutiny in New Zealand: A Focus on Delegated Legislation

In New Zealand, a scheme for the political post-legislative scrutiny of delegated legislation has operated since 1989. The Regulations Review Committee of the House of Representatives systematically considers delegated legislation and may inquire into matters relating to it. By convention the Committee is chaired by a member of an opposition party and is supported by a dedicated secretariat. It may, on grounds that go beyond vires, draw the attention of the House to any provision of any regulation. If one of its members moves to disallow a statutory instrument, and if debate on the member’s motion is not brought on within a specified period, the instrument ceases to have legal effect. The note considers aspects of the Committee’s jurisdiction, and whether the successful operation of the Committee may have led to excess focus on the scrutiny of delegated legislation at the expense of the systemic post-enactment scrutiny of primary legislation.
De Rijdende Rechter als rolmodel
Authors: Smolders Annerie
Published: March 2019

The Itinerant Judge as role model. The influence of reality television on the image of the judiciary

The tremendously popular television programme De Rijdende Rechter (The Itinerant Judge) has an uncomfortable relationship with official legal practice. Many people indeed think that the itinerant judge who arrives in their street to personally check neighbourly grievances has come as a representative of the Law with a capital L. It is not clear where reality TV stops and current legal practice begins. Things have become more complicated because the itinerant judge has become a symbol of the ‘close-to-the-people’ judge that is embraced by legal practice today. In this article the murky boundary between TV judges and official judiciary is investigated, taking into account the cult status of the itinerant judge, the effect of imagination on reality, similar phenomena in the United States and the current situation in the Netherlands.
Drawing as transcription: how do graphical techniques inform interaction analysis?
Authors: Albert Saul , Heath Claude , Skach Sophie , Harris Matthew Tobias , Miller Madeline , Healey Patrick G. T.
Published: March 2019

Drawing as a form of analytical inscription can provide researchers with highly flexible methods for exploring embodied interaction. Graphical techniques can combine spatial layouts, trajectories of action and anatomical detail, as well as rich descriptions of movement and temporal effects. This paper introduces some of the possibilities and challenges of adapting graphical techniques from life drawing and still life for interaction research. We demonstrate how many of these techniques are used in interaction research by illustrating the postural configurations and movements of participants in a ballet class. We then discuss a prototype software tool that is being developed to support interaction analysis specifically in the context of a collaborative data analysis session.
Treatments of Advanced Non‑Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) in an Italian Center: Drug Utilization and the Treatment Costs of Innovative Drugs
Authors: Piantedosi Francovito , Cerisoli Raffaela , Battiloro Ciro , Andreozzi Francesca , Vitiello Fabiana , Gilli Marina , De Marino Valeria , Letizia Antonietta , Bianco Antonella , Caprice Ivana , Savoia Adele , Cristinziano Adriano , Smeraglio Giorgia , Rocco Danilo
Published: March 2019

AIM: To provide an updated picture of the therapies most commonly used in the advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) setting, together with the relevant costs.METHODS: This study considered the clinical records of patients affected by stage IIIb and IV NSCLC treated in the AORN dei Colli - Plesso Monaldi in Naples during the period January 2016-July 2017 and diagnosed since 2014, as well as the pathology lab database. Multivariate analyses were performed in order to identify the main predictors of time to next treatment and the main cost drivers.RESULTS: Data were collected on 575 patients, who were mainly affected by adenocarcinoma (62%) and squamous cell carcinoma (34%). 64% of patients were reported having been tested for molecular biomarkers (among the patients tested, 13% were EGFR+, 4% Alk t, and 1% ROS1 t). In accordance with the international guidelines, chemotherapy – as single agent or platinum-based doublets – was the prevalent first-line treatment, except among EGFR+ and ROS1 t patients, for whom the target therapy was authorized as first-line therapy. As second-line treatment, the target therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors (nivolumab) were the most commonly used treatments. Drug expenditure per patient was remarkably higher in mutated patients (€ 29,053) versus wild-type patients, or patients with unknown mutational status (€ 11,854), who received just chemotherapy. The costs sustained in 2017 are proportionally higher than those sustained in 2016, mainlydue to the increasing eligibility to target therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors and the wider biomarker analysis performed. From multivariate analyses, among the predictors of a longer time to next treatment (TTNT) were a better performance status and target therapy both in first and second line. The therapy for squamous cell carcinoma and other nonadeno histotypes turned out to be less expensive in patients treated just in the first line than that for adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous carcinoma. The use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the second line results in increased costs compared to the use of chemotherapy. Also the target therapy in the first line results in an increase in the total costs with respect to chemotherapy in patients who received just a first-line therapy.CONCLUSIONS: Generally, in this study population, the treatments administered are in accordance with the international guidelines. The costs borne by the Health Systems are higher for the target therapy and the immune checkpoint inhibitors.
TRANSFORMING GRADUATE STUDIES THROUGH DECOLONIZATION: SHARING THE LEARNING JOURNEY OF A SPECIALIZED COHORT
Authors: Kearns Laura-Lee , Tompkins Joanne , Lunney Borden Lisa
Published: March 2019

This study traces the learning journey of primarily non-Indigenous educators who challenged the legacy of colonization in schools, and worked to decolonize their practice, through their participation in a specialized graduate cohort. Drawing upon sharing circle conversations, we highlight themes that emerged from our research. Educators reported their sense of agency to transform and change their practice increased with the support of a critical and caring learning community. In nourishing their learning spirits, educators were able to begin to decolonize education, an ongoing challenge that requires valuing Indigenous people, languages, and land, and building inter-cultural understanding. This study is an example of how graduate programming can begin to address the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
TEACHING HISTORY FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION: THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES OF NARRATIVITY, TEMPORALITY, AND IDENTITY
Authors: Miles James
Published: March 2019

This paper argues that history educators and teachers are uniquely implicated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action through their responsibility to teach Indigenous and Canadian history, including the injustices of settler colonialism. After examining the politics of Canada’s ongoing truth and reconciliation process, this paper articulates three conceptual challenges for history education in pursuit of reconciliation: narrativity, temporality, and identity. This paper concludes by suggesting possible pedagogical opportunities for each of these challenges, taking into consideration a historical thinking approach to teaching and learning now embedded in most provincial and territorial curricula.
PROCESSUS D’ENGAGEMENT DES PREMIÈRES NATIONS, MÉTIS ET INUITS DANS LA RÉVISION DU CURRICULUM ONTARIEN
Authors: St-Pierre Joannie
Published: March 2019

Ces notes de terrain décrivent le processus de révision du curriculum ontarien qui s’arrime avec les appels à l’action de la Commission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada. En résumant un entretien avec une agente d’éducation du Ministère de l’éducation de l’Ontario, ce texte dresse le portrait du plan d’action mis en place pour répondre aux appels à l’action et dans lequel les Premières Nations, Métis et Inuits sont engagés.
L’ENGAGEMENT COGNITIF EN CONTEXTE POSTSECONDAIRE : TRADUCTION, ADAPTATION ET VALIDATION D’UNE ÉCHELLE DE MESURE
Authors: Leduc Diane , Kozanitis Anastassis , Lepage Isabelle
Published: March 2019

Déterminant pour l’apprentissage, l’engagement cognitif des étudiants se définit par le déploiement de stratégies d’étude et d’apprentissage qui visent une maitrise plus ou moins élevée des notions abordées durant les cours. Il peut être étudié à l’aide du questionnaire Cognitive Engagement Scale qui n’est disponible qu’en anglais. Le but de notre étude est de le traduire en français, de l’adapter et de valider la traduction auprès de 647 étudiants québécois de collège et d’université avec une méthode de contre-traduction. Nos résultats offrent une version en français de l’instrument, présentant des qualités métrologiques satisfaisantes, utile pour d’autres recherches portant sur différents contextes académiques postsecondaires.
KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS’ NOTIONS OF PARENT INVOLVEMENT AND PERCEIVED CHALLENGES
Authors: Preston Jane P. , MacPhee Mary M. , Roach O’Keefe Alaina
Published: March 2019

We examine how kindergarten teachers on Prince Edward Island depict both parent involvement in school and its perceived challenges. Data consisted of written responses to two open-ended survey questions completed by 62 participants or 94% of the kindergarten teachers on PEI. Results showed that teachers recognized parent involvement in traditional forms. Barriers included lack of educator time and unproductive school policies. Extending from Epstein’s parent involvement model, if increasingly rich forms of parent involvement are to actualize, educators must be attuned to family vibrancy — the diverse gifts each family possesses; family vibrancy includes the belief that every parent, regardless of socioeconomic status, language abilities, ethnicity, religion, etc., can and does support his/her child’s education to the best of his/her ability.
A simplified logistics model for integrating BIMAT and IBSAL to estimate harvest costs, energy input and emissions
Authors: Sokhansanj Shahab , Ebadian Mahmood , Townley-Smith Lawrence , Lee David
Published: March 2019

The Agriculture and Agri-Food’s Biomass Inventory Mapping and Analysis Tool (BIMAT) provides internet-based GIS functionality to query and visualize biomass inventory data in Canada. The Integrated Biomass Supply Analysis and Logistics (IBSAL) model is a modularized simulation of biomass supply chain. In this study, IBSAL modules are assembled to simulate harvesting of straw, stover, and switchgrass yields. The operations in this study started from combining for grain crop residues and ended in stacking bales on the field side. The equation C=aR^b Y^c was fitted to the simulated data to estimate constants a, b, and c for cost in $/dry tonne, energy input in MJ/dry tonne, and carbon emissions in kg CO2/dry tonne. Variable R is the fraction of above ground biomass removed during harvest and Y is the yield defined as biomass above ground (dry tonne/ha). These functions are supplied to the BIMAT portal and developed specific values for costs, energy input, and emissions on the map. The farm gate cost cost for the stacked bales ranged from $20 per dry tonne for high yielding regions of southwest Edmonton and Ontario to $27 per dry tonne for the eastern Ottawa region, and $31 per dry tonne for low yielding regions of central Saskatchewan. The costs are validated with published custom rates. It is recommended that the next step is to integrate IBSAL and BIMAT codes so the logistics values are generated and shown automatically on the map.
Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities
Authors: Suhr H. Cecilia
Published: March 2019

An examination of the use of digital badges as a reward for both casual online music evaluators and professional musicians.

Professional and amateur musicians alike use social media as a platform for showcasing and promoting their music. Social media evaluation practices—rating, ranking, voting, “liking,” and “friending” by ordinary users, peers, and critics—have become essential promotional tools for musicians. In this report, H. Cecilia Suhr examines one recent development in online music evaluation: the use of digital badges to aid in assessment and evaluation. Digital badges have emerged in recent years as a potential credentialing method in informal learning environments. Suhr explores online music communities' use of digital badges as a reward for both casual music evaluators and musicians.

Suhr examines the intersection of evaluation and gamification in Spotify's “Hit or Not” game, in which players assess a song's hit potential and receive digital badges as rewards, and considers the implications of turning music evaluation into a game. She then explores in detail the development of peer and professional critics on Indaba Music, a cloud-based collaboration platform where musicians earn badges through participating in contests. Suhr considers the emerging challenges and shortcomings of contest-based virtual communities and the value of badges, as perceived by Indaba musicians. She investigates to what extent digital badges can effectively represent and credit musicians' accomplishments and merits; describes the challenges, benefits, and shortcomings of digital badges as an evaluation mechanism; and compares the use of digital badges in assessing creativity to their use in learning and credentialing institutions.
Unmanned Systems of World Wars I and II
Authors: Everett H. R.
Published: March 2019

The first comprehensive technical history of air, land, sea, and underwater unmanned systems, by a distinguished U.S. Navy roboticist.

Military drones have recently been hailed as a revolutionary new technology that will forever change the conduct of war. And yet the United States and other countries have been deploying such unmanned military systems for more than a century. Written by a renowned authority in the field, this book documents the forgotten legacy of these pioneering efforts, offering the first comprehensive historical and technical accounting of unmanned air, land, sea, and underwater systems. Focusing on examples introduced during the two world wars, H. R. Everett meticulously traces their development from the mid-nineteenth century to the early Cold War. A pioneering Navy roboticist, Everett not only describes these systems in detail but also reverse-engineers the designs in order to explain how they operated in real-world conditions of the time. More than 500 illustrations—photographs, drawings, and plans, many of them never before published—accompany the text.

Everett covers the evolution of early wire-guided submersibles, tracing the development of power, propulsion, communication, and control; radio-controlled surface craft, deployed by both Germany and Great Britain in World War I; radio-controlled submersibles; radio-controlled aircraft, including the TDR-1 assault drone project in World War II—which laid the groundwork for subsequent highly classified drone programs; and remote-controlled ground vehicles, including the Wehrmacht's Goliath and Borgward demolition carriers.
Digital Youth with Disabilities
Authors: Alper Meryl
Published: March 2019

An examination of media and technology use by school-aged youth with disabilities, with an emphasis on media use at home.

Most research on media use by young people with disabilities focuses on the therapeutic and rehabilitative uses of technology; less attention has been paid to their day-to-day encounters with media and technology—the mundane, sometimes pleasurable and sometimes frustrating experiences of “hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.” In this report, Meryl Alper attempts to repair this omission, examining how school-aged children with disabilities use media for social and recreational purposes, with a focus on media use at home. In doing so, she reframes common assumptions about the relationship between young people with disabilities and technology, and she points to areas for further study into the role of new media in the lives of these young people, their parents, and their caregivers.

Alper considers the notion of “screen time” and its inapplicability in certain cases—when, for example, an iPad is a child's primary mode of communication. She looks at how young people with various disabilities use media to socialize with caregivers, siblings, and friends, looking more closely at the stereotype of the socially isolated young person with disabilities. And she examines issues encountered by parents in selecting, purchasing, and managing media for youth with such specific disabilities as ADHD and autism. She considers not only children's individual preferences and needs but also external factors, including the limits of existing platforms, content, and age standards.
Gaming the Iron Curtain
Authors: Švelch Jaroslav
Published: March 2019

How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.

Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc.

Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.
The Body Populace
Authors: Hartmann Heinrich
Published: March 2019

How data gathered from national conscriptions in pre–World War I Europe influenced understandings of population fitness and redefined society as a collective body.

In pre–World War I Europe, individual fitness was increasingly related to building and preserving collective society. Army recruitment offered the most important opportunity to screen male citizens' fitness, raising questions of how to define fitness for soldiers and how to translate this criteria outside the military context. In this book, Heinrich Hartmann explores the historical circumstances that shaped collective understandings of fitness in Europe before World War I and how these were intertwined with a fear of demographic decline and degeneration. This dynamic gained momentum through the circulation of knowledge among European nations, but also through the scenarios of military confrontations.

Hartmann provides a science history of military statistics in Germany, France, and Switzerland in the decades preceding World War I, considering how information gathered during national conscriptions generated data about the health and fitness of the population. Defined by masculine concepts, conscription examinations went far beyond the individuals they tested and measured. Scholars of the time aspired to pin down the “nation” in concrete numerical terms, drawing on data from examinations to redefine society as a “collective body” that could be counted, measured, and examined. The Body Populace explores the historical specificity and contingency of data-gathering techniques, recounts their uses and abuses, and provides a timely contribution to the growing historiography of Big Data. It sheds light on a crucial moment in nineteenth and early twentieth century European history—when statistical data and demographical knowledge shaped new notions of masculinity, fostered fears of degeneration, and gave rise to eugenic thinking.
The Age of Electroacoustics
Authors: Wittje Roland
Published: March 2019

The transformation of acoustics into electro-acoustics, a field at the intersection of science and technology, guided by electrical engineering, industry, and the military.

At the end of the nineteenth century, acoustics was a science of musical sounds; the musically trained ear was the ultimate reference. Just a few decades into the twentieth century, acoustics had undergone a transformation from a scientific field based on the understanding of classical music to one guided by electrical engineering, with industrial and military applications. In this book, Roland Wittje traces this transition, from the late nineteenth-century work of Hermann Helmholtz to the militarized research of World War I and media technology in the 1930s.

Wittje shows that physics in the early twentieth century was not only about relativity and atomic structure but encompassed a range of experimental, applied, and industrial research fields. The emergence of technical acoustics and electroacoustics illustrates a scientific field at the intersection of science and technology. Wittje starts with Helmholtz's and Rayleigh's work and its intersection with telegraphy and early wireless, and continues with the industrialization of acoustics during World War I, when sound measurement was automated and electrical engineering and radio took over the concept of noise. Researchers no longer appealed to the musically trained ear to understand sound but to the thinking and practices of electrical engineering. Finally, Wittje covers the demilitarization of acoustics during the Weimar Republic and its remilitarization at the beginning of the Third Reich. He shows how technical acoustics fit well with the Nazi dismissal of pure science, representing everything that “German Physics” under National Socialism should be: experimental, applied, and relevant to the military.
You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late
Authors: Wolff Josephine
Published: March 2019

What we can learn from the aftermath of cybersecurity breaches and how we can do a better job protecting online data.

Cybersecurity incidents make the news with startling regularity. Each breach—the theft of 145.5 million Americans' information from Equifax, for example, or the Russian government's theft of National Security Agency documents, or the Sony Pictures data dump—makes headlines, inspires panic, instigates lawsuits, and is then forgotten. The cycle of alarm and amnesia continues with the next attack, and the one after that. In this book, cybersecurity expert Josephine Wolff argues that we shouldn't forget about these incidents, we should investigate their trajectory, from technology flaws to reparations for harm done to their impact on future security measures. We can learn valuable lessons in the aftermath of cybersecurity breaches.

Wolff describes a series of significant cybersecurity incidents between 2005 and 2015, mapping the entire life cycle of each breach in order to identify opportunities for defensive intervention. She outlines three types of motives underlying these attacks—financial gain, espionage, and public humiliation of the victims—that have remained consistent through a decade of cyberattacks, offers examples of each, and analyzes the emergence of different attack patterns. The enormous TJX breach in 2006, for instance, set the pattern for a series of payment card fraud incidents that led to identity fraud and extortion; the Chinese army conducted cyberespionage campaigns directed at U.S.-based companies from 2006 to 2014, sparking debate about the distinction between economic and political espionage; and the 2014 breach of the Ashley Madison website was aimed at reputations rather than bank accounts.
Altered States of Consciousness
Authors: Wittmann Marc
Published: March 2019

What altered states of consciousness—the dissolution of feelings of time and self—can tell us about the mystery of consciousness.

During extraordinary moments of consciousness—shock, meditative states and sudden mystical revelations, out-of-body experiences, or drug intoxication—our senses of time and self are altered; we may even feel time and self dissolving. These experiences have long been ignored by mainstream science, or considered crazy fantasies. Recent research, however, has located the neural underpinnings of these altered states of mind. In this book, neuropsychologist Marc Wittmann shows how experiences that disturb or widen our everyday understanding of the self can help solve the mystery of consciousness.

Wittmann explains that the relationship between consciousness of time and consciousness of self is close; in extreme circumstances, the experiences of space and self intensify and weaken together. He considers the emergence of the self in waking life and dreams; how our sense of time is distorted by extreme situations ranging from terror to mystical enlightenment; the experience of the moment; and the loss of time and self in such disorders as depression, schizophrenia, and epilepsy. Dostoyevsky reported godly bliss during epileptic seizures; neurologists are now investigating the phenomenon of the epileptic aura. Wittmann describes new studies of psychedelics that show how the brain builds consciousness of self and time, and discusses pilot programs that use hallucinogens to treat severe depression, anxiety, and addiction.

If we want to understand our consciousness, our subjectivity, Wittmann argues, we must not be afraid to break new ground. Studying altered states of consciousness leads us directly to the heart of the matter: time and self, the foundations of consciousness.
What's Left of Human Nature?
Authors: Kronfeldner Maria
Published: March 2019

A philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against dehumanization, Darwinian, and developmentalist challenges.

Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What's Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development result from nurture and nature.

After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether.
Remarks on the Phonological Evolution of Russian in Comparison with the Other Slavic Languages
Authors: Jakobson Roman
Published: March 2019

The first English translation of a classic and groundbreaking work in historical phonology.

This is the first English translation of a groundbreaking 1929 work in historical phonology by the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson, considered the founder of modern structural linguistics. A revolutionary treatment of Russian and Slavic linguistics, the book introduced a new type of historical linguistics that focused on the systematic reasons behind phonological change. Rather than treating such changes as haphazard, Jakobson here presents a “teleological,” purposeful approach to language evolution. He concludes by placing his book in the context of the exciting structural developments of the era, including Einstein's theories, Cezanne's art, and Lev Berg's nomogenesis.

The original Russian version of the book was lost during the 1939 German invasion of Brno, Czechoslovakia, and the only edition available until now has been the French translation by Louis Brun. Thus this first English translation offers many linguists their first opportunity to read a major early work of Jakobson. Ronald Feldstein, a leading Slavicist and phonologist in his own right, has not only translated the text from French to English, he has also worked to reconstruct something as close to the missing original as possible. Feldstein's end-of-chapter annotations provide explanatory context for particularly difficult passages.
The Jean Freeman Gallery Does Not Exist
Authors: Howard Christopher
Published: March 2019

An examination of a 1970s Conceptual art project—advertisements for fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery—that hoodwinked the New York art world.

From the summer of 1970 to March 1971, advertisements appeared in four leading art magazines—Artforum, Art in America, Arts Magazine, and ARTnews—for a group show and six solo exhibitions at the Jean Freeman Gallery at 26 West Fifty-Seventh Street, in the heart of Manhattan's gallery district. As gallery goers soon discovered, this address did not exist—the street numbers went from 16 to 20 to 24 to 28—and neither did the art supposedly exhibited there. The ads were promoting fictional shows by fictional artists in a fictional gallery. The scheme, eventually exposed by a New York Times reporter, was concocted by the artist Terry Fugate-Wilcox as both work of art and critique of the art world. In this book, Christopher Howard brings this forgotten Conceptual art project back into view.

Howard demonstrates that Fugate-Wilcox's project was an exceptionally clever embodiment of many important aspects of Conceptualism, incisively synthesizing the major aesthetic issues of its time—documentation and dematerialization, serialism and process, text and image, publishing and publicity. He puts the Jean Freeman Gallery in the context of other magazine-based work by Mel Bochner, Judy Chicago, Yoko Ono, and Ed Ruscha, and compares the fictional artists' projects with actual Earthworks by Walter De Maria, Peter Hutchinson, Dennis Oppenheim, and more. Despite the deadpan perfection of the Jean Freeman Gallery project, the art establishment marginalized its creator, and the project itself was virtually erased from art history. Howard corrects these omissions, drawing on deep archival research, personal interviews, and investigation of fine-printed clues to shed new light on a New York art world mystery.
Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists
Authors: Pierce Benjamin C.
Published: March 2019

Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists provides a straightforward presentation of the basic constructions and terminology of category theory, including limits, functors, natural transformations, adjoints, and cartesian closed categories.

Category theory is a branch of pure mathematics that is becoming an increasingly important tool in theoretical computer science, especially in programming language semantics, domain theory, and concurrency, where it is already a standard language of discourse. Assuming a minimum of mathematical preparation, Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists provides a straightforward presentation of the basic constructions and terminology of category theory, including limits, functors, natural transformations, adjoints, and cartesian closed categories. Four case studies illustrate applications of category theory to programming language design, semantics, and the solution of recursive domain equations. A brief literature survey offers suggestions for further study in more advanced texts.

Contents Tutorial • Applications • Further Reading
Contracts in Trade and Transition
Authors: Marin Dalia , Schnitzer Monika
Published: March 2019

An institutional approach to explaining countertrade and barter in international trade and domestic trade in transition economies.

Difficulties in contract enforcement impede international transactions in the world economy and domestic transactions in transition economies. In Contracts in Trade and Transition, Dalia Marin and Monika Schnitzer explain how barter as an economic institution can facilitate contract enforcement across national borders in international trade and within borders in transition countries.

The authors show that international countertrade—tying an export to an import—emerged in the 1980s in response to the international debt crisis when Western creditors refused to finance imports to developing countries and Eastern Europe. Barter—the exchange of goods without the use of money—reemerged in transition economies in the 1990s in response to a domestic debt crisis when banks in transition countries were reluctant to provide finance to firms. Countertrade and barter introduce a deal-specific form of collateral that addresses the lack of creditworthiness of countries and firms.

Drawing on contract theory, the authors argue that parties might want to pay in goods rather than cash or link an export with an import as in countertrade to solve incentive problems that otherwise would prevent any trade from taking place. The incentive problems they discuss are the technology transfer problem to developing countries and the "lack of trust" problem in the former Soviet Union.
The Interpretation of Visual Motion
Authors: Ullman Shimon
Published: March 2019

This book uses the methodology of artificial intelligence to investigate the phenomena of visual motion perception: how the visual system constructs descriptions of the environment in terms of objects, their three-dimensional shape, and their motion through space, on the basis of the changing image that reaches the eye. The author has analyzed the computations performed in the course of visual motion analysis. Workable schemes able to perform certain tasks performed by the visual system have been constructed and used as vehicles for investigating the problems faced by the visual system and its methods for solving them. Two major problems are treated: first, the correspondence problem, which concerns the identification of image elements that represent the same object at different times, thereby maintaining the perceptual identity of the object in motion or in change. The second problem is the three-dimensional interpretation of the changing image once a correspondence has been established.The author's computational approach to visual theory makes the work unique, and it should be of interest to psychologists working in visual perception and readers interested in cognitive studies in general, as well as computer scientists interested in machine vision, theoretical neurophysiologists, and philosophers of science.
Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition
Authors: Nigrin Albert
Published: March 2019

In a simple and accessible way it extends embedding field theory into areas of machine intelligence that have not been clearly dealt with before.

Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition takes the pioneering work in artificial neural networks by Stephen Grossberg and his colleagues to a new level. In a simple and accessible way it extends embedding field theory into areas of machine intelligence that have not been clearly dealt with before. Following a tutorial of existing neural networks for pattern classification, Nigrin expands on these networks to present fundamentally new architectures that perform realtime pattern classification of embedded and synonymous patterns and that will aid in tasks such as vision, speech recognition, sensor fusion, and constraint satisfaction. Nigrin presents the new architectures in two stages. First he presents a network called Sonnet 1 that already achieves important properties such as the ability to learn and segment continuously varied input patterns in real time, to process patterns in a context sensitive fashion, and to learn new patterns without degrading existing categories. He then removes simplifications inherent in Sonnet 1 and introduces radically new architectures. These architectures have the power to classify patterns that may have similar meanings but that have different external appearances (synonyms). They also have been designed to represent patterns in a distributed fashion, both in short-term and long-term memory.

Bradford Books imprint
Visual Reconstruction
Authors: Blake Andrew , Zisserman Andrew
Published: March 2019

Visual Reconstruction presents a unified and highly original approach to the treatment of continuity in vision. It introduces, analyzes, and illustrates two new concepts. The first—the weak continuity constraint—is a concise, computational formalization of piecewise continuity. It is a mechanism for expressing the expectation that visual quantities such as intensity, surface color, and surface depth vary continuously almost everywhere, but with occasional abrupt changes. The second concept—the graduated nonconvexity algorithm—arises naturally from the first. It is an efficient, deterministic (nonrandom) algorithm for fitting piecewise continuous functions to visual data. The book first illustrates the breadth of application of reconstruction processes in vision with results that the authors' theory and program yield for a variety of problems. The mathematics of weak continuity and the graduated nonconvexity (GNC) algorithm are then developed carefully and progressively.

Contents Modeling Piecewise Continuity • Applications of Piecewise Continuous Reconstruction • Introducing Weak Continuity Constraints • Properties of the Weak String and Membrane • Properties of Weak Rod and Plate • The Discrete Problem • The Graduated Nonconvexity (GNC) Algorithm • Appendixes: Energy Calculations for the String and Membrane • Noise Performance of the Weak Elastic String • Energy Calculations for the Rod and Plate • Establishing Convexity • Analysis of the GNC Algorithm

Visual Reconstruction is included in the Artificial Intelligence series, edited by Michael Brady and Patrick Winston.
Where the Action Is
Authors: Dourish Paul
Published: March 2019

Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action. In this book, Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls "embodied interaction"—an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality—reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers. The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.
Waves and Forms
Authors: Zimmermann Basile
Published: March 2019

An examination of the relationship between technical objects and culture in contemporary China, drawing on concepts from science and technology studies.

Technical objects constrain what users do with them. They are not neutral entities but embody information, choices, values, assumptions, or even mistakes embedded by designers. What happens when a technology is designed in one culture and used in another? What happens, for example, when a Chinese user is confronted by Roman-alphabet-embedded interfaces? In this book, Basile Zimmermann examines the relationship between technical objects and culture in contemporary China, drawing on concepts from science and technology studies (STS). He presents a new theoretical framework for “culture” based on the notions of waves and forms, which provides a powerful descriptive toolkit for technology and culture.

The materials Zimmermann uses to develop and illustrate his theoretical arguments come from three groups of case studies about the use of technical devices in today's China. The first and most extensive group consists of observations of electronic music devices in Beijing; the second is a study of a Chinese networking site, “Happy Network”; and the third is a collection of personal, small-scale observations on the way Chinese characters behave when located in alphabet-encoded devices such as mobile phones, web pages, or printed documents. Zimmermann discusses well-known frameworks from STS and combines them with propositions and topics from Chinese studies. Each of the case studies advances his theoretical argument. Zimmermann's account shows how cultural differences can be integrated into STS research, and how sinologists can turn their attention from ancient texts and traditional art to everyday things in present-day China.
Information and Intrigue
Authors: Burke Colin B.
Published: March 2019

An account of Herbert Field's quest for a new way of organizing information and how information systems are produced by ideology as well as technology.

In Information and Intrigue Colin Burke tells the story of one man's plan to revolutionize the world's science information systems and how science itself became enmeshed with ideology and the institutions of modern liberalism. In the 1890s, the idealistic American Herbert Haviland Field established the Concilium Bibliographicum, a Switzerland-based science information service that sent millions of index cards to American and European scientists. Field's radical new idea was to index major ideas rather than books or documents. In his struggle to create and maintain his system, Field became entangled with nationalistic struggles over the control of science information, the new system of American philanthropy (powered by millionaires), the politics of an emerging American professional science, and in the efforts of another information visionary, Paul Otlet, to create a pre-digital worldwide database for all subjects.

World War I shuttered the Concilium, and postwar efforts to revive it failed. Field himself died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. Burke carries the story into the next generation, however, describing the astonishingly varied career of Field's son, Noel, who became a diplomat, an information source for Soviet intelligence (as was his friend Alger Hiss), a secret World War II informant for Allen Dulles, and a prisoner of Stalin. Along the way, Burke touches on a range of topics, including the new entrepreneurial university, Soviet espionage in America, and further efforts to classify knowledge.