bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A randomized controlled design reveals barriers to citizenship for low-income immigrants
Authors: Hainmueller Jens , Lawrence Duncan , Gest Justin , Hotard Michael , Koslowski Rey , Laitin David D.
Published: January 2018

Citizenship endows legal protections and is associated with economic and social gains for immigrants and their communities. In the United States, however, naturalization rates are relatively low. Yet we lack reliable knowledge as to what constrains immigrants from applying. Drawing on data from a public/private naturalization program in New York, this research provides a randomized controlled study of policy interventions that address these constraints. The study tested two programmatic interventions among low-income immigrants who are eligible for citizenship. The first randomly assigned a voucher that covers the naturalization application fee among immigrants who otherwise would have to pay the full cost of the fee. The second randomly assigned a set of behavioral nudges, similar to outreach efforts used by service providers, among immigrants whose incomes were low enough to qualify them for a federal waiver that eliminates the application fee. Offering the fee voucher increased naturalization application rates by about 41%, suggesting that application fees act as a barrier for low-income immigrants who want to become US citizens. The nudges to encourage the very poor to apply had no discernible effect, indicating the presence of nonfinancial barriers to naturalization.
Strongly enhanced bacterial bioluminescence with the
ilux
operon for single-cell imaging
Authors: Gregor Carola , Gwosch Klaus C. , Sahl Steffen J. , Hell Stefan W.
Published: January 2018

Significance

The emission of light generated in a process referred to as bioluminescence can be used for imaging of living cells over long timespans without phototoxicity or bleaching. The amounts of light produced in the bioluminescence process are very low, and exogenous substrate molecules are often required. We improved the brightness of bacterial bioluminescence, a system that features the advantage that all of the required molecular components are genetically encoded within a single operon. Consequently, we have engineered an improved operon
ilux
, which enables long-term visualization of single bacterial cells while simultaneously providing information about cellular viability.
Nonenzymatic release of N7-methylguanine channels repair of abasic sites into an AP endonuclease-independent pathway in
Arabidopsis
Authors: Barbado Casimiro , Córdoba-Cañero Dolores , Ariza Rafael R. , Roldán-Arjona Teresa
Published: January 2018

Significance

Abasic (apurinic/apyrimidinic, AP) sites in DNA result from spontaneous and repair-mediated base release. They may be processed by AP endonucleases or AP lyases, but the relative roles of both types of enzymes are poorly understood. Our study reveals that the model plant
Arabidopsis
uses an AP lyase-dependent pathway to repair AP sites generated by spontaneous loss of N7-methylguanine (N7-meG), a major lesion arising from DNA methylation damage. We further show that the main
Arabidopsis
AP endonuclease is active on AP sites generated by enzymatic excision of N7-meG, but not on those arising from N7-meG loss. Our findings identify an important role for AP lyase activity in plants and challenge the assumption that spontaneous and repair-generated AP sites have identical biochemical properties.
Effect of beta-agonists on LAM progression and treatment
Authors: Le Kang , Steagall Wendy K. , Stylianou Mario , Pacheco-Rodriguez Gustavo , Darling Thomas N. , Vaughan Martha , Moss Joel
Published: January 2018

Significance

Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is a destructive lung disease driven by neoplastic LAM cells with a mutated tumor suppressor gene
TSC1
or
TSC2
, leading to increased activity of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), which is inhibited by sirolimus (rapamycin). Beta-agonists may treat asthma-like symptoms due to LAM. We observed stabilization of forced expiratory volume in 1 s in patients receiving sirolimus and long-acting beta-agonists with short-acting rescue inhalers compared with patients receiving only sirolimus. Human
TSC2
+/−
skin fibroblasts and LAM cells from explanted lungs treated with sirolimus and the short-term, but not long-term, beta-agonist isoproterenol showed increased phospho-S6 levels and cell growth due to activation of a cAMP/PKA-dependent pathway. Long-acting beta-agonists affect phospho-S6 content, leading to stabilization of lung function in LAM patients.
De la oscuridad confusa
Authors: Cabanillas Cárdenas Carlos F.
Published: January 2018

Resumen / Summary

In this article, I study the use of Norway as a poetic symbol in Spanish Golden Age poetry. First, exploring the earliest mentions and descriptions of the North in Spanish, I present the origin of Norway’s perception as a marvellous and extraordinary geography. Then, I try to trace and explain how the original symbolic motif (related to the topical characteristics: cold, darkness, falcons), was displaced to more complex poetic uses. In special in the works of Luis de Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo.
Cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) and behavioural measures of auditory function in an adult with a single sided deafness
Authors: Cañete Oscar M. , Purdy Suzanne C. , Neeff Michel , Brown Colin R. S. , Thorne Peter R.
Published: January 2018

Objective:

To examine cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) and behavioural measures of spatial speech in noise recognition, sound localization and self-reported perception of hearing performance before and after surgical removal of an acoustic neuroma, and to monitor changes over time after surgery.

Methods:

CAEPs in noise were recorded and auditory skills were assessed using tests of sound localization, spatial speech perception in noise and self-ratings of auditory abilities (Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing questionnaire, SSQ) in a male adult with single-sided deafness due to acoustic neuroma removal. Measurements took place at 2, 6 and 12 months after surgery.

Results:

The pattern of CAEP responses, behavioural measurements and self-reported perception after surgery differed from the pre-surgery baseline and changed over time after surgery.

Conclusions:

The participant experienced considerable listening fatigue and deficits in auditory skills after losing hearing in one ear. Different patterns of change in CAEPs and other measures over time suggest multiple physiological mechanisms for auditory plasticity after acute onset of single sided deafness.
Cardiac macrophages promote diastolic dysfunction
Authors: Hulsmans Maarten , Sager Hendrik B. , Roh Jason D. , Valero-Muñoz María , Houstis Nicholas E. , Iwamoto Yoshiko , Sun Yuan , Wilson Richard M. , Wojtkiewicz Gregory , Tricot Benoit , Osborne Michael T. , Hung Judy , Vinegoni Claudio , Naxerova Kamila , Sosnovik David E. , Zile Michael R. , Bradshaw Amy D. , Liao Ronglih , Tawakol Ahmed , Weissleder Ralph , Rosenzweig Anthony , Swirski Filip K. , Sam Flora , Nahrendorf Matthias
Published: January 2018

Macrophages populate the healthy myocardium and, depending on their phenotype, may contribute to tissue homeostasis or disease. Their origin and role in diastolic dysfunction, a hallmark of cardiac aging and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, remain unclear. Here we show that cardiac macrophages expand in humans and mice with diastolic dysfunction, which in mice was induced by either hypertension or advanced age. A higher murine myocardial macrophage density results from monocyte recruitment and increased hematopoiesis in bone marrow and spleen. In humans, we observed a parallel constellation of hematopoietic activation: circulating myeloid cells are more frequent, and splenic 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging signal correlates with echocardiographic indices of diastolic dysfunction. While diastolic dysfunction develops, cardiac macrophages produce IL-10, activate fibroblasts, and stimulate collagen deposition, leading to impaired myocardial relaxation and increased myocardial stiffness. Deletion of IL-10 in macrophages improves diastolic function. These data imply expansion and phenotypic changes of cardiac macrophages as therapeutic targets for cardiac fibrosis leading to diastolic dysfunction.
Orthostatic Hypotension and Symptoms in the AASK Trial
Authors: Juraschek Stephen P , Miller Edgar R , Appel Lawrence J
Published: January 2018

BACKGROUND

Multiple definitions are used to characterize orthostatic hypotension (OH), but the degree to which these definitions correspond with orthostatic symptoms is unknown.

METHODS

We analyzed data from African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK), a randomized trial of African Americans with hypertension and kidney disease, to characterize the relationship between OH definitions and self-reported syncope, dizziness, or light-headedness. Orthostatic changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), or heart rate (HR) were determined each visit after standing 2:45 minutes. OH was defined using the consensus definition (a drop in SBP ≥20 mm Hg or DBP ≥10 mm Hg) or an often used clinical substitute based on HR (an increase ≥20 bpm).

RESULTS

Among 1,094 participants (mean age 54.5 ± 10.7 years, 38.9% female), there were 52,636 visits (mean 48/person). Mean resting SBP, DBP, and HR at baseline were 147.7 ± 22.3 mm Hg, 92.2 ± 13.4 mm Hg, and 71.1 ± 11.7 bpm, respectively. While the OH consensus definition was associated with syncope (odds ratio 2.49; 95% confidence interval: 1.13, 5.51), dizziness (1.89; 1.53, 2.33), and light-headedness (1.84; 1.52, 2.23), the clinical HR definition was only associated with dizziness (1.28; 1.07, 1.52). None of the OH components (SBP, DBP, or HR) reflected a natural threshold in the prevalence of symptoms; definitions using each of the 3 components were highly specific (≥96%) with low sensitivity (1–5%).

CONCLUSIONS

While the consensus definition was more strongly associated with symptoms, OH definitions did not reflect natural thresholds in symptoms and were insensitive. This implies that the absence of OH using either consensus or clinical definitions does not exclude orthostatic symptoms, which has implications for evaluating clinical events like falls.

CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION

Trial Number: NCT01206062 (clinicaltrials.gov).
ST Spot Detector: a web-based application for automatic spot and tissue detection for spatial Transcriptomics image datasets
Authors: Wong Kim , Navarro José Fernández , Bergenstråhle Ludvig , Ståhl Patrik L , Lundeberg Joakim
Published: January 2018

Motiviation

Spatial Transcriptomics (ST) is a method which combines high resolution tissue imaging with high troughput transcriptome sequencing data. This data must be aligned with the images for correct visualization, a process that involves several manual steps.

Results

Here we present ST Spot Detector, a web tool that automates and facilitates this alignment through a user friendly interface.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Effect of supplementation with methyl-donor nutrients on neurodevelopment and cognition: considerations for future research
Authors: McKee Sarah E , Reyes Teresa M
Published: January 2018

Pregnancy represents a critical period in fetal development, such that the prenatal environment can, in part, establish a lifelong trajectory of health or disease for the offspring. Poor nutrition (macro- or micronutrient deficiencies) can adversely affect brain development and significantly increase offspring risk for metabolic and neurological disease development. The concentration of dietary methyl-donor nutrients is known to alter DNA methylation in the brain, and alterations in DNA methylation can have long-lasting effects on gene expression and neuronal function. The decreased availability of methyl-donor nutrients to the developing fetus in models of poor maternal nutrition is one mechanism hypothesized to link maternal malnutrition and disease risk in offspring. Animal studies indicate that supplementation of both maternal and postnatal (early- and later-life) diets with methyl-donor nutrients can attenuate disease risk in offspring; however, clinical research is more equivocal. The objective of this review is to summarize how specific methyl-donor nutrient deficiencies and excesses during pre- and postnatal life alter neurodevelopment and cognition. Emphasis is placed on reviewing the current literature, highlighting challenges within nutrient supplementation research, and considering potential strategies to ensure robust findings in future studies.
Pictures from an Institution
Authors: Blaustein George
Published: January 2018

The founding Americanist institution in postwar Europe took place in a baroque, bomb-damaged castle and had only the tenuous approval of the US military government in Austria. Leopoldskron Castle had been owned by the theater impresario Max Reinhardt before the Nazis expropriated it. The Salzburg Seminar in American Civilization, a transnational collaboration of student organizations and Christian relief agencies, repurposed the castle in 1947 to bring American thought and art to occupied Europe. Scholars, novelists, and poets carried the American word abroad and, in turn, were shaped by their encounters in the ruins. This chapter is the story of that institution’s early years, perched between the imaginary geography of Mitteleuropa and the political geography of the Cold War. The Seminar preceded the Marshall Plan, and its previously unexplored archives yield dramas of denazification, displacement, and the bifurcation of Europe.
Tests of Statistical Significance
Authors: Haig Brian D.
Published: January 2018

Chapter 3 provides a brief overview of null hypothesis significance testing and points out its primary defects. It then outlines the neo-Fisherian account of tests of statistical significance, along with a second option contained in the philosophy of statistics known as the error-statistical philosophy, both of which are defensible. Tests of statistical significance are the most widely used means for evaluating hypotheses and theories in psychology. A massive critical literature has developed in psychology, and the behavioral sciences more generally, regarding the worth of these tests. The chapter provides a list of important lessons learned from the ongoing debates about tests of significance.
Bayesianism
Authors: Haig Brian D.
Published: January 2018

Chapter 4 focuses on Bayesian confirmation theory, a formal theory of reasoning based on probability theory. It deals with important, and related, general ideas, such as rationality, confirmation, and inductive inference, including statistical inference. The chapter also provides a selective discussion of Bayesian statistics. The chapter traces some of the broad contours of Bayesian confirmation theory and then presents an evaluation of a philosophy of Bayesian statistical practice. Psychology’s attitudes to Bayesianism are briefly discussed. Considered is the question of whether Bayesianism provides an illuminating account of the approach to theory evaluation known as inference to the best explanation. The chapter offers some broad recommendations for research practice.
Foundations of Yijing
Authors: Fung C. Victor
Published: January 2018

Yijing lays a foundation for classic Confucianism and classic Daoism. It presents the central concepts of yin and yang, an organismic worldview, change, unchanging principles, easy concepts, and simple operations. Humans are at the center in observing the universe, trying to understand it, to avoid adversity, and to promote prosperity. The author presents the phenomena of music and music education as explained by concepts found in Yijing. The yin and yang dyad can be applied to musical and music educational settings to explain musical motions, musical roles of individuals, and the natures of the musical activities and musical events. In music education settings, events are constantly changing due to changes in context, the teacher, and the learner, yet they are connected and synchronized.
Beyond Politics
Authors: Whittier Nancy
Published: January 2018

Chapter 3 shows how ideologically diverse activists and legislators converged around a narrow, single-issue opposition to child sexual abuse and defined it as a politically neutral issue. The chapter shows how three challenges to this consensus emerged and were resolved: a 1981 Republican attempt to kill CAPTA; 1992‒1996 feminist organizing around child custody cases and False Memory Syndrome Foundation attempts to weaken CAPTA; 2000 forward, expansions of sex offender registration and notification requirements. Narrow neutrality facilitated the passage of legislation and pulled policy toward criminal justice and away from feminist challenges to the patriarchal family and conservatives’ emphasis on preserving the traditional family. Federal engagement shifted over time from a focus on violence within the family to a focus on child pornography and the control of sex offenders; although framed in terms of dangerous strangers, the new focus affected the larger number of familial offenders as well. Legislators and advocates downplayed race and gender while constructing an implicitly white victim, producing predominantly white offenders because of the prevalence of familial abuse. Experiential and expert knowledge and shared emotional rituals produced and maintained narrow neutrality in Congress, activist and professional groups, and media representations.
Introduction
Authors: Hyers Lauri L.
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter discusses the history of the diary in popular culture and as a research method in the social sciences Over the last several centuries, diary keeping has evolved into a popular medium through which diarists can bear witness to their experiences and events of the world. The diary is a treasure trove, containing the riches of first-hand testimony on a wealth of subjects: from the adventures of travel to the despairs of prison, from the mundane ruminations of adolescence to the horrors of the battlefield. The embedded and contextualized nature of diary data appeals to those in the humanities and social sciences who are seeking the “thick description” that is the hallmark of qualitative research (Geertz, 2003).
Putting it All Together
Authors: Hyers Lauri L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses the planning and management of a diary study, evaluating a diary study, strengths and weaknesses, and ethical considerations. In order to develop a successful qualitative diary study, researchers will need to (1) have a solid plan for project management, (2) be aware of potential methodological strengths and weaknesses, and (3) pay attention to the special ethical considerations in doing qualitative diary research. The researcher will be invited to review the entire process of a diary study, from the pre-data-collection phase to the post-data collection phase. Next the criteria for evaluating a diary study will be discussed, making connections to the general evaluative criteria applied to qualitative research in general. Special evaluation criteria and ethical considerations will be discussed with regard to the very unique methodological features of qualitative research conducted with diaries.
Introduction
Authors: McRae Elizabeth Gillespie
Published: January 2018

Massive resistance to the civil rights movement has often been presented as sequestered in the South, limited to the decade between the Brown Decision and the Civil Rights Act, and attributed to the most vehement elected officials and the Citizens’ Councils. But that version ignores the long-standing work of white women who sustained racial segregation and nurtured both massive support for the Jim Crow order in the interwar period and who transformed support into massive resistance after World War II. Support for the segregated state existed among everyday people. Maintaining racial segregation was not solely or even primarily the work of elected officials. Its adherents sustained the system with quotidian work, and on the ground, it was often white women who shaped and sustained white supremacist politics.
Partisan Betrayals
Authors: McRae Elizabeth Gillespie
Published: January 2018

During World War II, segregationist women focused their political efforts on the federal betrayal of white supremacist politics rather than black organizing. They began a long campaign against the executive branch and the Democratic Party, initially by attacking Eleanor Roosevelt for her advocacy of African Americans. Segregationist women cataloged the sins of Democrats in the South and nation which includedsupport for federal aid to education, abolishment of the all-white primary, calls for the Soldier Voting Act, campaigns against the poll tax, and establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee. Segregationist women cultivated support for Jim Crow by building distrust in the Democratic Party. Calling themselves States’ Rights Democrats, some encouraged the elections of hardline segregationists and contributed to the rise of the Dixiecrats, the demonization of Henry Wallace, and the defeat of moderate Senators in 1950 and 1952. They waged an early campaign to move the South away from the Democratic Party.
The New National Face of Segregation
Authors: McRae Elizabeth Gillespie
Published: January 2018

The conclusion addresses the urban North, exposing the political similarities between the most committed segregationists and those white women who protested busing in the 1970s. It argues that anti-busing activists should be considered segregationists and that massive resistance should be extended into anti-busing protests. Most Americans, including supporters of Brown, resisted this government intrusion into parental authority, property values, and school choice. As southern segregationists had predicted, when racial integration threatened to reorder the daily lives of northern white communities, they would react much like the South’s segregationists. Women’s organizations in Boston looked south for models of resistance and worked for various iterations of racially separated schools. Boston’s Louise Day Hicks and ROAR reacted much like white mothers in the South. Across the nation, law made busing a reality, while white women’s opposition on the ground eroded the power of its implementation and solidified the rise of the New Right.
Introduction
Authors: Morgan David
Published: January 2018

The introduction explores the definition of enchantment by examining several examples, including images involving mythology and ancient literature and scriptures. Wish fulfillment and delusion are set aside as limited accounts. Enchantment as nonrational practice is situated within the modern ideology of rationality in order to begin to make the case for recognizing the persistence of enchantment and the limitations of modernity’s notion of progress and rationality. The author provides an overview of the book’s six chapters, which explore aspects of enchantment and concludes with a reflection on the scope of enchantment in human experience as the quest for making a home in a universe that can just as easily do without us.
The Ecology of Images
Authors: Morgan David
Published: January 2018

The focal object is a key concept throughout this book, and it has its primary exposition in this chapter, which describes the space in which images function. Building on the idea of an image as a device, this chapter discusses how images operate before viewers and within visual fields that encompass them. The cult image, the relic, the place where Our Lady appeared, the site of the miraculous spring, oracle, or vision—such objects and places are where one meets the supernatural by forgetting the complex ecology and history in which the image or object is embedded. This masking of the manifold aspects of the network enables the ascription of agency to the focal object rather than to the extended assemblage of diverse actors forming the network.
Conclusion
Authors: Morgan David
Published: January 2018

The book closes with reflection the scope and utility of enchantment, focusing on the use of enchantment to construct a sense of belonging in the world, as a way of making an indifferent world into a place to belong. Making reference to examples mentioned earlier in the book, as well as exploring the implications of enchantment in Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz, the author provides a perspective on enchantment that generalizes to all aspects of modern life. The web of images come to life as dreams, act upon us, then fade into the background to become the ordinary world we know and rely on. The result is a sense of belonging, the real work of enchantment.
William Schabas, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and International Human Rights Law
Authors: Cromwell Thomas A. , Gélinas-Faucher Bruno
Published: January 2018

More than thirty years have passed since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect, and nearly twenty-five years since Professor Schabas submitted his initial important study of the use by Canadian courts of international law in their Charter jurisprudence. This chapter marks Professor Schabas’s scholarly contributions by taking stock of where resort to international human rights law in our Charter jurisprudence has brought Canadian courts and by outlining the challenges that lie ahead. It includes discussion of the impact of the Charter in the dawning of a new era of human rights in Canada, and the present situation regarding international law and the Charter, in particular the role of globalisation on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Right to Life and the Progressive Abolition of the Death Penalty
Authors: Heyns Christof , Probert Thomas , Borden Tess
Published: January 2018

This chapter begins with the contention that global norms surrounding the death penalty have evolved considerably over the last fifty years. It reviews the extent to which international human rights treaties, including the United Nations (UN) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and some of the regional human rights treaties, allow for and indeed arguably require the progressive abolition of the death penalty. It then further examines the trends at a global level in terms of the imposition of the death penalty, and some of the potential spaces for advocacy or litigation, in both retentionist and abolitionist states, aimed at reducing and ultimately ending the practice.
Progress and Trend of the Reform of the Death Penalty in China
Authors: Bingzhi Zhao
Published: January 2018

Death penalty reform is one of the most realistic major questions in the field of criminal law or even in the construction of rule of law in China. Basing itself on contemporary social, legal, and international contexts, Chinese death penalty reform pays equal attention to legislative reform and judicial reform, and stresses positive interactions between the change of public attitude and that of the legal system. Consequently, it has progressed quickly and made noticeable achievements. The overall developing trend of death penalty reform in China is to strictly limit and gradually reduce the use of the death penalty, with a view to finally abolishing the ultimate punishment. To achieve this goal, China should continue to impose strict restrictions on the scope of criminals eligible for the death penalty and reduce capital crimes, and use long-term imprisonments as an alternative to the ultimate punishment more actively than before.
Law and Film
Authors: Sandon Emma
Published: January 2018

This chapter reflects on Professor William Schabas’s use of film in teaching human rights from a session he runs entitled: ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Cinematographic Perspective’, at the annual Cinema and Human Rights Summer School. It contextualises Schabas’s approach within legal pedagogy as well as in relation to legal and cultural studies scholarship on law and film. It covers some of the relevant debates on the interdisciplinary encounter of law and film, which point to both its discursive limitations and epistemological insights. The chapter argues that Schabas’s practice of mobilising film to frame legal considerations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be recognised as curatorial. His engagement encourages his students to think about not only law in film, but also about a jurisprudence that uses cinema to engage in the imaginative and utopian dimensions of justice.
Tunnels in Conflict
Authors: Richemond-Barak Daphné
Published: January 2018

This chapter paints a panoramic and multifaceted picture of tunnel warfare across time and geography. It begins with World War I, which has marked history with powerful tunnel mining attacks, face-to-face underground combat, and the demonstration of how tunnel users improve their skills on the go. It proceeds to focus on underground combat through World War II, the Vietnam War, the wars in Afghanistan, the War in Syria, and cross-border tunnels in Egypt and Israel. It shows that underground warfare has evolved into a global phenomenon that is currently benefiting from strategic and technological tailwinds. Asymmetric conflicts, where the aerial and ground superiority of one party stands out, are particularly vulnerable to the spread of underground warfare.
Underground Warfare and the Jus ad Bellum
Authors: Richemond-Barak Daphné
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses situations in which cross-border tunnels may lead to the outbreak of war. Cross-border tunnels violate sovereignty and territorial integrity and demonstrate hostile intent on the part of the neighboring entity. Various factors influence the victim state’s decision to go to war in such situations, such as the number of tunnels, their level of completion, their proximity to civilian-populated neighborhoods, and the relationship with the party that dug the tunnel. Not every cross-border tunnel will trigger the right to self-defense or the strategic urge to go to war: this chapter distinguishes between situations in which cross-border tunnels can lead to war and those in which they do lead to war. Cross-border threats do not significantly differ from other threats in this regard. As with other types of cross-border tensions, states may possess the right to react using military force but not make use of such right.
Black Sheep versus In-Group Favoritism
Authors: van Prooijen Jan-Willem
Published: January 2018

Sometimes people punish offenders from their own group more severely than offenders from a different group (the “black sheep effect”). At other times, however, people punish offenders from a different group more severely than offenders from their own group (the “in-group favorability effect”). Punishment regulates social groups in two complementary ways: (1) punishment stimulates and stabilizes cooperative within-group relations (within-group function); and (2) punishment protects the group from outside threats (between-group function). The chapter then examines the within-group function of punishment. “In-group morality” implies that group members enjoy more procedural protections from the group. Following an unambiguous offense that harms the group, however, in-group morality also implies that in-group offenders are punished more severely than out-group offenders. Betrayal of in-group norms is considered worse when committed by a fellow in-group member.
Punishing Dangerous Outsiders
Authors: van Prooijen Jan-Willem
Published: January 2018

The second, between-group function of punishment asserts that people are motivated to protect their group from dangerous outsiders. Consistently, people assign severe punishment to offenders belonging to societal groups that are stereotypically associated with crime. Moreover, people are particularly punitive when an out-group offender harms an in-group victim. People are parochial altruists who sacrifice their self-interest to protect their own group, sometimes to the detriment of other groups. I then describe how parochial altruism evolved as a consequence of war and inter-group conflict, and that between-group punishment can function to deter out-groups from committing hostilities. These insights have implications for contemporary jihadi terrorism: suicide bombing essentially is an act of parochial altruism where a terrorist imposes collective punishment on an enemy out-group.
Appreciating and Promoting Social Creativity in Youth with Asperger’s Syndrome
Authors: Lerner Matthew D. , Girard Rebecca M.
Published: January 2018

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience characteristic social and communicative challenges while also representing a wide range of abilities. A plurality of children with ASD exhibit average to exceptional intellectual capacity; they are often considered to be twice exceptional inasmuch as they often exhibit deep knowledge of specific topics yet sometimes have difficulty applying this knowledge flexibly, especially in social situations. Such difficulty in processing and flexibly adapting to social information has long been considered a hallmark of ASD. This chapter considers this claim in the presence of evidence that, in fact, many individuals with ASD show normative or even exceptional creativity (including social creativity); that such abilities can act as a source of social connection for many children and adolescents; and that these capacities can be fostered, nurtured, and supported in those with ASD.
Sustaining Gender Parity in College Aid
Authors: Rose Deondra
Published: January 2018

Chapter 4 considers how lawmakers used the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 to further entrench higher education programming in the fabric of US social policy and to amplify individual-level aid for college students. The HEA provides a valuable example of how “targeting within universalism” can help to generate broad political support for a social policy. Moreover, its creation provides a powerful example of the role that path dependency has played in the development of higher education policy. In addition to illustrating the significance of policy design to the political viability of social policy reforms, this case study highlights the pivotal role that executive leadership has played in the development of US higher education policy. Taken together, these forces were central to lawmakers’ ability to reinforce and build upon the gender-egalitarian higher education policy that had emerged during the late 1950s.
“Pure/True” Islam versus “Cultural” Islam
Authors: Ali Muna
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the salient idea of a “pure/true” Islam as compared to a presumably “cultural” Islam. It argues that this narrative frame has multiple stories and meanings woven into it by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Those Muslims drawing on it come from across the ideological spectrum, in groups labeled as “fundamentalists/Islamists,” “modernists,” “traditionalists,” and “secularists.” This chapter explores how this narrative speaks to fundamental questions about the definition of religion in general and to the anthropology of Islam in particular. Are there one or multiples islam(s), and who decides which is pure or true? It shows that younger generations of Muslim Americans, as well as many converts to Islam, invoke this narrative to argue that immigrant Muslim Americans’ understanding and practice of the religion is colored by their “back-home culture,” which privileges certain norms and traditions and relegates anything different, especially Western, to the category of un-Islamic.
Crafting an American Muslim Community
Authors: Ali Muna
Published: January 2018

Drawing on insights from the previous chapters, this chapter details the various rifts in Muslim America that cut across generational, gender, ethno-racial, and immigrant–convert categories. It argues that the narrative that calls for building a community indexes a rapprochement between the constituting groups of Muslim America. This rapprochement is taking place in and through the process of constructing a coalitional sociopolitical identity inspired by models from American society and from the Islamic concept of ummah. The chapter argues that the challenges that Muslims encounter in a post-9/11 America have acted as a catalyst for this process of coalitional community building, but it is a work in progress.
“I Came to Be Went With”
Authors: Laats Adam
Published: January 2018

Even more than most colleges, fundamentalist schools between the 1920s and 1950s tried hard to supervise student behavior. With strict rules against drinking, smoking, and sexual relationships, many institutions found enforcement to be a challenge. This was especially true in the realm of sexuality and dating. Students, families, and the institutions themselves often viewed college as the proper place to meet potential marriage partners. Evangelical institutions of higher education wrestled with challenge of allowing students to search for future spouses without allowing them to take their courtship too far. This chapter looks at the ways administrators hoped to guide and control student behavior, especially in the realm of sex and dating. It also explores the ways students responded to those efforts. Some students appreciated the strict guidelines, while others worked hard to find ways to break the rules.
Billy Graham Was a Transfer Student
Authors: Laats Adam
Published: January 2018

By the 1950s, tensions within the world of fundamentalism led to a new effort at reform. Self-proclaimed neo-evangelical reformers hoped to strip away some of the unnecessary harshness of fundamentalist traditions while remaining truly evangelical Christians. Often these reforms were personified in the revival campaigns of evangelist Billy Graham. The network of fundamentalist schools struggled to figure out its relationship to this new divide in the fundamentalist family. Some schools embraced the reform, while others decried it. At the same time, faculty members at all the schools wrestled with strict supervision of their religious beliefs and teaching. From time to time, schools purged suspect faculty members, as in the 1953 firing of Ted Mercer at Bob Jones University.
Political Liberalism and Religious Exemptions
Authors: Vallier Kevin , Weber Michael
Published: January 2018

Can political liberals recognize exemptions from generally applicable laws on religious grounds? This essay argues that despite some initial grounds for skepticism, political liberals can recognize religious accommodations or exemptions in some cases. However, political liberals cannot single out religion for special treatment; when other commitments function in the same way as religiously based commitments, those commitments should enjoy the same status as grounds for exemptions. Also political liberals cannot recognize exemptions or accommodations on any basis from a law that is needed to secure and protect the equal standing of all persons as free and equal citizens. Of course, some cases are complex, as this chapter will show. The essay will close by considering the objection that its view is not administrable—hence practically unworkable—and offering reasons that this worry is unwarranted.
Religious Accommodation, Social Justice, and Public Education
Authors: Vallier Kevin , Weber Michael
Published: January 2018

The question of what religious practices modern democracies should accommodate is urgent and widely discussed. This essay provides a framework for dealing with accommodation issues in pluralistic societies. It does this in part through examining Kevin Vallier’s Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation, which defends an accommodationist liberalism. His view is more permissive than this chapter’s both in accommodationist policy and on some broad normative questions; for example, this chapter gives a larger role to natural reason as a capacity shared by normal human beings and a basis for reasons not dependent on theology or religion. For secular citizens, identifying and appraising natural reasons for lawmaking is valuable both for clarifying their own thinking and communication; for religious citizens, seeking such reasons is also beneficial and need not be unduly burdensome. The essay concludes with applications of the proposed ethics of citizenship to both politics and public education.
R v NS
Authors: Vallier Kevin , Weber Michael
Published: January 2018

This article critically evaluates a court decision that rejected a request of a witness donning the Islamic full veil known as the niqab to allow her religious exemption from a rule requiring access to witnesses’ demeanor during a court appearance and testimony. Through evaluating the justices’ competing arguments, the article explores the question of religious exemptions in a liberal society. It considers different aspects of the question such as equality, personal choice, religious freedom, and the liberal commitment to public reason. Finally, the article articulates and defends a novel principle for adjudicating requests for religious exemptions. It proposes a “meaningful choice to practice one’s religion” principle.
Crafting an Italian Approach to Colonial Rule
Authors: Ryan Eileen
Published: January 2018

In the years leading up to the Italian invasion of Libya in 1911, a variety of Italian imperialists considered the possibilities of negotiating a positive relationship with Sanusi elites to facilitate Italian expansion. One of the most vocal proponents of an Italo-Sanusi relationship was Enrico Insabato, an eccentric secret agent of the Italian state police stationed in Cairo starting in 1902. Insabato advocated the projection of a traditionalist Catholic identity in Italian expansionism based on the assumption that Sanusi elites would welcome Italian rule as the antithesis of the secularizing reforms of England and Istanbul. Insabato’s pro-Islamic approach faced fierce opposition within the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and among officers in the Italian military, but the idea of celebrating religious traditionalism fit with an interest in encouraging Catholic participation in national politics after decades of acrimonious church-state relations in Italy.
Human Difference and Particular Subjectivity
Authors: Marandiuc Natalia
Published: January 2018

As a receiver and giver of love, the self is both subject to transformation and open to exogenous creative powers. In dialogue with Søren Kierkegaard, the chapter constructs subjectivity as continuous becoming rather than given facticity; while gifted from God in inchoate form, the self is constructed in time, history, and relationships of love and belonging. The chapter conceptualizes the self as containing a double layer of universality and particularity and discusses the interrelation of these layers. Regarding particularity, it explores the medieval notion of haecceity as developed by John Duns Scotus and explicates its contribution to contemporary understandings of human difference and singularity. Using universality as a baseline, it examines how the particular self is bilocated in time and eternity—or history and a transhistorical reality extending from God’s life—and characterized by necessity and freedom, concluding that it is this kind of subjectivity that grows through love attachments.
Etiological Processes for Substance Use Disorders Beginning in Infancy
Authors: Eiden Rina D.
Published: January 2018

The chapter highlights results from the Buffalo Longitudinal Study, which began in infancy and was guided by a developmental cascade model. The chapter discusses the importance of the co-occurrence of parent alcohol problems with depression and antisocial behavior beginning in early childhood, and how these parental risks in infancy may predict the quality of parent–child interactions and infant–parent attachment. These processes in early childhood may set the stage for one of the most salient developmental issues at preschool age—the development of self-regulation. Together, the parent–child relationship and child self-regulation may predict one of the most clearly established pathways to adolescence substance use disorders—continuity of externalizing problems from childhood to adolescence. Finally, this chapter presents results from a developmental cascade model from infancy to adolescence, with implications for development of preventive interventions for adolescent substance use disorders.
Conclusion
Authors: Thompson Douglas I.
Published: January 2018

Montaigne offers what is perhaps the first historical instance of the now-ubiquitous phrase “public reason.” Whereas contemporary use of this phrase refers to activities of moral reason-giving, Montaigne uses it to refer to the health of public institutions, conventions, and activities that allow parties in potential and actual conflict to negotiate civil peace and other public goods, whether through moral reasoning, strategic bargaining, or other forms of interaction. This chapter engages with two recent instances of Montaignian public reason in action: the local negotiation of “civil alliance” between Jews and Arabs in the lands of the Palestinian Mandate in 1947–1948 and the negotiation of conflict resolution during an armed standoff between the Canadian army and Mohawk warriors outside Montréal, Quebec in the summer of 1990.
Introduction National Liberalisms in Illiberal States
Authors: Vail Mark I.
Published: January 2018

This chapter situates the book in theoretical and empirical contexts. It provides a brief overview of competing theoretical approaches to explaining trajectories of economic reform in continental Europe in the era of austerity and transnational neoliberalism since the early 1990s. Since standard analyses of “neoliberal” reform fail to capture these dynamics of economic reform in continental Europe, as do conventional institutionalist and interest-based accounts, it argues for an approach that emphasizes the political power of ideas and highlights the influence of national liberal traditions—French “statist liberalism,” German “corporate liberalism,” and Italian “clientelist liberalism.” It provides a brief overview of the remainder of the book, which uses a study of national liberal traditions to explain trajectories of reform in fiscal, labor-market, and financial policies in France, Germany, and Italy, three countries that have rejected neoliberal approaches to reform in a neoliberal age.
Degrees of Freedom and Constraint
Authors: Vail Mark I.
Published: January 2018

This chapter analyzes how the French tradition of statist liberalism has shaped policy outcomes in fiscal policy, labor-market policy, and financial regulation since the early 1990s. After the demise of dirigisme, French authorities expanded the scope of market forces, privatizing and liberalizing the French political economy. They did so, however, in ways that rejected standard neoliberal prescriptions, using state power to foster economic growth and expanding social protection to support the turn to the market. At the same time, the policy and institutional limitations of the post-dirigiste era, coupled with constraints associated with the Maastricht Treaty and EMU, forced French authorities to seek new means to accomplish these traditional ends. In all three areas, policy outcomes reflected a macroeconomic policy orientation, the continued primacy of an interventionist state, and an emphasis on individual citizens as the principal components of the national economic community and constituents and beneficiaries of state action.