bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
ADAR activation by inducing a syn conformation at guanosine adjacent to an editing site
Authors: Doherty Erin E , Karki Agya , Wilcox Xander E , Mendoza Herra G , Manjunath Aashrita , Matos Victorio Jauregui , Fisher Andrew J , Beal Peter A
Published: October 2022

ADARs (adenosine deaminases acting on RNA) can be directed to sites in the transcriptome by complementary guide strands allowing for the correction of disease-causing mutations at the RNA level. However, ADARs show bias against editing adenosines with a guanosine 5′ nearest neighbor (5′-GA sites), limiting the scope of this approach. Earlier studies suggested this effect arises from a clash in the RNA minor groove involving the 2-amino group of the guanosine adjacent to an editing site. Here we show that nucleosides capable of pairing with guanosine in a syn conformation enhance editing for 5′-GA sites. We describe the crystal structure of a fragment of human ADAR2 bound to RNA bearing a G:G pair adjacent to an editing site. The two guanosines form a Gsyn:Ganti pair solving the steric problem by flipping the 2-amino group of the guanosine adjacent to the editing site into the major groove. Also, duplexes with 2′-deoxyadenosine and 3-deaza-2′-deoxyadenosine displayed increased editing efficiency, suggesting the formation of a Gsyn:AH+anti pair. This was supported by X-ray crystallography of an ADAR complex with RNA bearing a G:3-deaza dA pair. This study shows how non-Watson–Crick pairing in duplex RNA can facilitate ADAR editing enabling the design of next generation guide strands for therapeutic RNA editing.
Structural basis of three different transcription activation strategies adopted by a single regulator SoxS
Authors: Shi Jing , Wang Lu , Wen Aijia , Wang Fulin , Zhang Yuqiong , Yu Libing , Li Fangfang , Jin Yuanling , Feng Zhenzhen , Li Jiacong , Yang Yujiao , Gao Fei , Zhang Yu , Feng Yu , Wang Shuang , Zhao Wei , Lin Wei
Published: October 2022

Transcription activation is established through extensive protein–protein and protein–DNA interactions that allow an activator to engage and remodel RNA polymerase. SoxS, a global transcription activator, diversely regulates subsets of stress response genes with different promoters, but the detailed SoxS-dependent transcription initiation mechanisms remain obscure. Here, we report cryo-EM structures of three SoxS-dependent transcription activation complexes (SoxS-TACI, SoxS-TACII and SoxS-TACIII) comprising of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase (RNAP), SoxS protein and three representative classes of SoxS-regulated promoters. The structures reveal that SoxS monomer orchestrates transcription initiation through specific interactions with the promoter DNA and different conserved domains of RNAP. In particular, SoxS is positioned in the opposite orientation in SoxS-TACIII to that in SoxS-TACI and SoxS-TACII, unveiling a novel mode of transcription activation. Strikingly, two universally conserved C-terminal domains of alpha subunit (αCTD) of RNAP associate with each other, bridging SoxS and region 4 of σ70. We show that SoxS interacts with RNAP directly and independently from DNA, remodeling the enzyme to activate transcription from cognate SoxS promoters while repressing transcription from UP-element containing promoters. Our data provide a comprehensive summary of SoxS-dependent promoter architectures and offer new insights into the αCTD contribution to transcription control in bacteria.
Self-reported health change in haemodialysis recipients modulates the effect of frailty upon mortality and hospital admissions: outcomes from a large prospective UK cohort
Authors: Anderson Benjamin M , Qasim Muhammad , Correa Gonzalo , Evison Felicity , Gallier Suzy , Ferro Charles J , Jackson Thomas A , Sharif Adnan
Published: October 2022

Background

Frailty among haemodialysis patients is associated with hospitalization and mortality, but high frailty prevalence suggests further discrimination of risk is required. We hypothesized that incorporation of self-reported health with frailty measurement may aid risk stratification.

Methods

Prospective cohort study of 485 prevalent haemodialysis recipients linked to English national datasets. Frailty Phenotype (FP), Frailty Index (FI), Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS), Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and self-reported health change were assessed. Mortality was explored using Fine and Gray regression, and admissions by negative binomial regression.

Results

Over a median 678 (interquartile range 531–812) days, there were 111 deaths, and 1241 hospitalizations. Increasing frailty was associated with mortality on adjusted analyses for FP [subdistribution hazard ratio (SHR) 1.26, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.05–1.53, P = .01], FI (SHR 1.21, 95% CI 1.09–1.35, P = .001) and CFS (SHR 1.32, 95% CI 1.11–1.58, P = .002), but not EFS (HR 1.08, 95% CI 0.99–1.18, P = .1). Health change interacted with frailty tools to modify association with mortality; only those who rated their health as the same or worse experienced increased mortality hazard associated with frailty by FP (Pinteraction = .001 and 0.035, respectively), FI (Pinteraction = .002 and .007, respectively) and CFS (Pinteraction = .009 and 0.02, respectively). CFS was the only frailty tool associated with hospitalization (incidence rate ratio 1.12, 95% CI 1.02–1.23, P = .02).

Conclusions

We confirm the high burden of hospitalization and mortality associated with haemodialysis patients regardless of frailty tool utilized and introduce the discriminatory ability of self-reported health to identify the most at-risk frail individuals.
Association of chronic kidney disease with total and site-specific cancer incidence in participants of the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study
Authors: Miyamoto Yoshihisa , Katagiri Ryoko , Yamaji Taiki , Inoue Manami , Goto Atsushi , Iwasaki Motoki , Noda Mitsuhiko , Tsugane Shoichiro , Sawada Norie
Published: October 2022

Background

Although studies have found an association between chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cancer incidence, the results are inconsistent.

Methods

This study included participants in the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study who had data on serum creatinine measurements. We assessed the association between estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and the risk of total and site-specific cancer incidence using a systematic survey in Japan. We estimated hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) with adjustment for participant demographics and lifestyle factors.

Results

A total of 21 978 participants who met the inclusion criteria were followed up for a mean period of 12.9 years, during which a total of 2997 incident cancer cases were reported. In the multivariable adjusted models, an eGFR of <45 mL/min/1.73 m2 was not significantly associated with total cancer incidence (adjusted HR 1.22, 95% CI 0.94–1.60), compared with an eGFR of 60–89 mL/min/1.73 m2 (reference). The HR among those with eGFRs of ≥90 mL/min/1.73 m2 was 1.10 (95% CI 1.00–1.22).

Conclusions

In this large prospective study, a low eGFR was not significantly associated with an increased risk of total cancer incidence in patients with CKD, which may be partly due to an underpowered sample size. This finding may be due to the many shared risk factors between CKD and cancer.
Probiotic-based nanoparticles for targeted microbiota modulation and immune restoration in bacterial pneumonia
Authors: Fu Jieni , Liu Xiangmei , Cui Zhenduo , Zheng Yufeng , Jiang Hui , Zhang Yu , Li Zhaoyang , Liang Yanqin , Zhu Shengli , Chu Paul K , Yeung Kelvin Wai Kwok , Wu Shuilin
Published: October 2022

While conventional bacterial pneumonia mainly centralizes avoidance of bacterial colonization, it remains unclear how to restore the host immunity for hyperactive immunocompetent primary and immunocompromised secondary bacterial pneumonia. Here, probiotic-based nanoparticles of OASCLR were formed by coating chitosan, hyaluronic acid and ononin on living Lactobacillus rhamnosus. OASCLR nanoparticles could effectively kill various clinic common pathogens and antibacterial efficiency was >99.97%. Importantly, OASCLR could modulate lung microbiota, increasing the overall richness and diversity of microbiota by decreasing pathogens and increasing probiotic and commensal bacteria. Additionally, OASCLR could target inflammatory macrophages by the interaction of OASCLR with the macrophage binding site of CD44 and alleviate overactive immune responses for hyperactive immunocompetent pneumonia. Surprisingly, OASCLR could break the state of the macrophage's poor phagocytic ability by upregulating the expression of the extracellular matrix assembly, immune activation and fibroblast activation in immunocompromised pneumonia. The macrophage's phagocytic ability was increased from 2.61% to 12.3%. Our work provides a potential strategy for hyperactive immunocompetent primary and immunocompromised secondary bacterial pneumonia.
Time-restricted feeding is an intervention against excessive dark-phase sleepiness induced by obesogenic diet
Authors: Wang Xu , Xing Keke , He Mengge , He Ting , Xiang Xinkuan , Chen Tao , Zhang Luoying , Li Haohong
Published: October 2022

High-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity is a growing epidemic and major health concern. While excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is a common symptom of HFD-induced obesity, preliminary findings suggest that reduced wakefulness could be improved with time-restricted feeding (TRF). At present, however, the underlying neural mechanisms remain largely unknown. The paraventricular thalamic nucleus (PVT) plays a role in maintaining wakefulness. We found that chronic HFD impaired the activity of PVT neurons. Notably, inactivation of the PVT was sufficient to reduce and fragment wakefulness during the active phase in lean mice, similar to the sleep–wake alterations observed in obese mice with HFD-induced obesity. On the other hand, enhancing PVT neuronal activity consolidated wakefulness in mice with HFD-induced obesity. We observed that the fragmented wakefulness could be eliminated and reversed by TRF. Furthermore, TRF prevented the HFD-induced disruptions on synaptic transmission in the PVT, in a feeding duration-dependent manner. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that ad libitum access to a HFD results in inactivation of the PVT, which is critical to impaired nocturnal wakefulness and increased sleep, while TRF can prevent and reverse diet-induced PVT dysfunction and excessive sleepiness. We establish a link between TRF and neural activity, through which TRF can potentially serve as a lifestyle intervention against diet/obesity-related EDS.
Multi-scale nest survival analysis suggests new cavities improve nest success for the Green-barred Woodpecker, but not the Campo Flicker, in a threatened woodland of Argentina
Authors: Jauregui Adrián , Gonzalez Exequiel , Segura Luciano N
Published: October 2022

Understanding factors affecting nest survival of woodpeckers in threatened landscapes is a key tool for land managers, particularly when conservation depends on public policies. However, information of Neotropical woodpeckers breeding in southern temperate forests is noticeably sparse despite the worrying conservation status of these ecosystems and woodpeckers’ key role as cavity providers. Our objective was to assess the relationship between tree cavity features, vegetation structure, and landscape configuration on the nest survival of the Green-barred Woodpecker (Colaptes melanochloros) and the Campo Flicker (C. campestris). We monitored nests of these woodpeckers during 3 breeding seasons from 2015 to 2018 in a woodland of east-central Argentina threatened by selective tree logging and soil material extraction. We recorded features that presumably influence nest survival at a micro-scale (cavity, cavity-tree features, and foliage cover around the cavity) and a macro-scale (forest cover and shape index within a 500-m circle around the nest). We did not find support for a relationship between daily nest survival rates (DSR) and cavity features, vegetation structure, or landscape configuration. However, new cavities were more successful than reused ones for the Green-barred Woodpecker. We also found a surprisingly high rate (~33% of nest failures) of nest abandonment for both species. Abandonment may be a factor regulating this population and causes of abandonment warrants further investigation. Given the importance of new cavities to the success of Green-barred Woodpeckers, our results indicate the preservation of medium-size trees (20 cm < diameter at breast height [DBH] < 50 cm) with wood softened by degradation processes (preferred by the species to excavate cavities) would facilitate persistence both of this woodpecker and the cavity nesting community. Effective audit of soil material extraction and controlled selective timber logging practices (including preservation of mature trees) in compliance with existing regulations could contribute to this type of habitat maintenance.
The Rise and Fall of Collective Leadership
Authors: Shirk Susan L.
Published: October 2022

This chapter describes the collective leadership led by Hu Jintao and how it degenerated. During Hu’s first term of office, his administration adopted a series of moderate measures to attempt to modernize CCP rule. He expanded the size of CCP’s top decision-making body to balance power and broaden representation within the Party-state, adopted a lighter and more transparent approach in dealing with the media, and supported more redistributive policies to improve people’s livelihood. However, Hu’s collective leadership model began to show its inherent flaws during his second term in office. Being hamstrung by his predecessor Jiang Zeming, Hu lacked the centralized authority to contain the bureaucratic overreach of the stovepiped interest groups in his control coalition and industrial bureaucracies that log-rolled by supporting one another’s programs. The collective leadership at the top, which is supposed to be the embodiment of intraparty democracy, morphed into an unchecked oligarchic rule that brewed corruption, inequality, and even open leadership splits. The urgency to clean up the mess of the oligarchic rule later leads to the Party acceptance of a strong leader, enabling the rise of Xi.
Conclusion
Authors: Shirk Susan L.
Published: October 2022

This concluding chapter restates the central argument of this book that China’s aggressive posture in international affairs and tight control over domestic society actually began under Hu Jintao’s collective leadership and have intensified under Xi Jinping’s personalistic rule. Understanding how collective leadership and personalistic rule actually operate is important for devising effective policies to testing whether or not China is still influenceable. The chapter also offers policy suggestions to each side for stabilizing relations and avoiding war. No one expects Xi to change his leadership style or choose someone to be his successor at the upcoming Party congress. The chapter then discusses Xi’s attempt to make China a respectable global power instead of being ostracized as a rogue state. It also acknowledges the festering resentment triggered by the US’ hostile rhetoric and actions, which could be a liability in stabilizing relations between the two countries. The chapter suggests that America’s best response to China’s overreach is to temper its reactions, avoid becoming more like China, and become a better version of an open-market democracy.
Public Officials
Authors: Howard Christopher
Published: October 2022

Democratic officials tend to pay more attention to poverty-related issues than their Republican counterparts. Neither party, however, has talked much about these issues in their recent party platforms or State of the Union speeches. Democrats may “own” the poverty issue, based on their rhetoric, but the price of ownership has been remarkably low. Like labor unions, Democratic officials focus on workers and working families without mentioning the working poor. Government should take care of the poor by raising the minimum wage and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Democrats seldom mention a role for charities. Like business groups, Republican officials believe that less government will lead to economic growth and widespread prosperity. Republicans talked more about the role of churches and charities when George W. Bush was president than when Donald Trump was in office.
Postscript: The Social Safety Net and the Pandemic
Authors: Howard Christopher
Published: October 2022

Who Cares depicts the social safety net before the Covid-19 pandemic began. This postscript offers an initial assessment of how the social safety net performed under historic stress. While the rhetoric of caring changed a little, the practice changed a lot. The public safety net expanded substantially. Through stimulus checks and expansions to Unemployment Insurance, the national government offered more income support to many more Americans. The number of Medicaid and SNAP recipients also grew. Eviction moratoriums helped many low-income residents stay in their apartments. Because the national government took unprecedented steps, most types of material hardship did not increase—a remarkable achievement. Yet many of these steps were temporary. The Build Back Better initiative would strengthen the social safety net while also helping the middle class, but it was stalled in Congress.
Unemployment Insurance After the Great Recession
Authors: Klerman Jacob Alex
Published: October 2022

This chapter discusses the goals of unemployment insurance (UI) programs and American and European experiences with unemployment and UI programs, particularly during the Great Recession and the COVID recession. It reviews the American and European literature on the impact of the details of UI programs, including benefit level, benefit duration, and monitoring of job search, on the length of benefit receipt and subsequent earnings. Based on experience during the Great Recession and the COVID recession and a review of the impact literature, the chapter considers the role of UI programs during both recessions and several possible reforms to such programs, particularly low-intensity activation programs (e.g., mandatory meetings to verify job search). The chapter concludes that the available evidence suggests that UI (and higher benefits) increases unemployment duration and that low-intensity activation programs—when rigorously enforced—have the potential to moderate lower unemployment.
Activation in Eight European Social Assistance Programs
Authors: Lødemel Ivar , Moreira Amílcar
Published: October 2022

In Europe, conditional activation took hold in the 1990s. In that period, national programs differed substantially, and most of the nations pursued a strategy focused more on strengthening the human resources of recipients than to imposing conditions. This changed in the following decade, and this chapter shows that, until the onset of the 2008 crisis, the main trend in the governance of activation concerned the strengthening of work obligations for minimum income recipients. This was, however, not accompanied by a strengthening of sanctions but instead by efforts to adjust the delivery of activation services to the individual needs of minimum income recipients. Developments after the Great Recession have not led to a strengthening of the level of protection of those most in need; rather, they signified a reversal of the move toward more individualized and tailored services and a deepening of the focus on work-first strategies.
Whither Activation Policies?
Authors: Martin John P.
Published: October 2022

The author has previously argued that activation strategies performed well during the Great Recession and subsequent recovery in some, but not all, countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. At the same time, it is pertinent to look to the future and consider what challenges the activation paradigm is likely to face over the coming decades when US and European labor markets will have to cope with aging workforces and immigration, to name but two. In this chapter, the author sets out his views on four such challenges: how activation can be applied to the large numbers of working-age recipients of other inactive benefits, how activation can ensure career progression, the growing trend toward private provision of activation services, and the potential and pitfalls of digitization as applied to the delivery of activation.
Dementia, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Normal Changes of Aging
Authors: Noble James M.
Published: October 2022

This chapter differentiates dementia from mild cognitive impairment and normal changes of aging. Dementia is a collective, or “umbrella,” term given to a group of diseases affecting the brain that cause someone to develop difficulty in thinking, speaking, remembering, or behaving in the way they did throughout their normal adult life. Age is an important factor in dementia, both in why some people may develop it and in how it is named. A late-onset dementia typically refers to dementia that develops at age 60 years or later, whereas early-onset dementia, a far less common form, begins before age 60. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. Before someone develops dementia with obvious changes in instrumental activities of daily living, most people pass through a transitional stage called mild cognitive impairment. Mild cognitive impairment broadly falls into two main categories: amnestic and nonamnestic.
Diagnosing Dementia
Authors: Noble James M.
Published: October 2022

This chapter reviews the steps a physician will take to make a diagnosis of dementia. No matter the medical situation when going to a doctor for a dementia evaluation or anything else, physicians first develop an approach to making a diagnosis by taking a history. Questions asked in clarifying the history aim to determine the duration of symptoms, the pattern of changes, the earliest and most pervasive cognitive changes, evidence of changes in behavior, and the presence or absence of changes in physical function. After the history is obtained, a physical examination provides information complementary to the history and serves to refine the approach to a diagnosis. The actual examination comprises two major components: the general medical examination and the neurologic examination. At the conclusion of the history and examination, most doctors will order diagnostic tests—such as blood work, or phlebotomy, and brain imaging—to screen for reversible causes of dementia. In addition to cognitive evaluations, patients may be referred for formal neuropsychological testing. The chapter also considers biomarker-based tests, nuclear medicine neuroimaging, cerebrospinal fluid analyses, and genetic testing.
Where, Why, and How Dementia Affects the Brain
Authors: Noble James M.
Published: October 2022

This chapter examines brain anatomy from its structure to its microscopic cells, how the parts of the brain relate to one another, how dementia develops, and why certain symptoms occur. The human body has three nervous systems. The central nervous system includes the brain and related structures in the head along with the spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system is made up of all of the nerves that exit the brain and spinal cord; it carries sensory information from the skin and body and sends movement signals from the spinal cord to muscles in the arms, legs, and trunk. The third nervous system combines parts of the central and peripheral nervous systems and is called the autonomic nervous system. To best understand the process of dementia, it is important to understand the lobes of the cerebrum (frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital) and their functions. The chapter then looks at deeper brain structures, which are broadly called the basal ganglia; the vascular supply of the brain; the main cells of the nervous system; cerebrospinal fluid; the relationship between brain anatomy and brain changes in dementia; and neurotransmission.
Frontotemporal Dementia
Authors: Noble James M.
Published: October 2022

This chapter covers frontotemporal dementia, also referred to as frontotemporal lobar degeneration, which is an umbrella term used to capture several less common forms of dementia with overlapping symptoms, microscopic changes, and genetic causes. Two main forms of frontotemporal dementia exist: a behavioral form (behavioral variant) and a language form (primary progressive aphasia). Either form may be accompanied by parkinsonism or a disorder of muscle weakness called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease or motor neuron disease). Less common are forms of frontotemporal dementia that can present primarily with physical decline, including corticobasal syndrome and progressive supranuclear palsy. The chapter then considers how to identify the key signs and symptoms of common forms of frontotemporal dementia, including language and behavioral changes, and how they differ from other forms of dementia.
Ethnomethodology’s Legacies and Prospects
Authors: Heritage John , Maynard Douglas W.
Published: October 2022

Harold Garfinkel's Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967) was published a little more than 50 years ago. Since then, there has been a substantial—although often subterranean—growth in ethnomethodological work and influence. Studies in and appreciation of ethnomethodological work continue to grow, but the breadth and penetration of his insights and inspiration for ongoing research have yet to secure their full measure of recognition. The first part of this chapter reviews the development of Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, whose origins include both the theorizing of Parsonian sociology and the phenomenology of Alfred Schütz. The authors discuss ethnomethodology’s orientation to the trust conditions making for a stable society, the “documentary method of interpretation,” rules and rule usage, and phenomena of language use and accountability. The second part of the chapter describes ethnomethodology’s legacies—its contributions to such areas or subdisciplines as conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA), its distinctive forms of ethnographic inquiry, and its influences on a host of substantive domains. These domains include legal environments, science and technology, workplace and organizational inquiries, survey research, social problems and deviance, disability and atypical interaction, and others. Ethnomethodology especially helped to set the agenda for gender studies, while also developing insights for inquiries into racial and ethnic features of everyday life and experience. Still, there is much of what Garfinkel called “unfinished business,” which means that ethnomethodological inquiries are continuing to intensify and develop.
The Ethnomethodological Lineage of Conversation Analysis
Authors: Clayman Steven E. , Heritage John , Maynard Douglas W.
Published: October 2022

Conversation analysis is undoubtedly the most visible and conventionally successful of Garfinkel’s legacies. Yet the lineage is complex. This chapter traces it, first, by discussing Garfinkel’s initial interest, as revealed in an early (1948) dissertation proposal, in the domain of human interaction. He specifically addressed analytical problems related to the concision of speech (that it conveys much more than what is said), and the associated context-dependency of meaning, whereby linguistic expressions—later termed indexical expressions—gain their meaning by way of their context. Interaction and speech, in Garfinkel’s early work, were explicated using phenomenological resources, including the study of background expectancies, presuppositions accessed through breaching experiments and other demonstrations, and analysis of the documentary method of interpretation. Harvey Sacks’s approach was more direct, less theoretical, and habilitated the direct study of interaction through a selective engagement with key Garfinkelian stances and ideas. Sacks also drew from Erving Goffman concerning the interaction order, and from a variety of other scholars and works. The result was a focus on specimens of actual speech, coupled with methodological innovations related to membership categories as an aspect of common-sense knowledge, the sequential organization of talk, and increasingly sophisticated ways of working with collections of phenomena to delineate interactional activities and practices. This creative synthesis, and the conversation analytic discipline that emerged from it, was conditioned by Sacks’s own abiding interest in advancing a highly rigorous but thoroughly emic science of the “witnessable order” of human interaction.
Post-Exposure Processing
Authors: Dunaway Johanna , Searles Kathleen
Published: October 2022

We offer a framework and a model that illuminates how communication technology shapes media effects by first understanding how people are exposed to information, and, second, understanding how they process that information once exposed. The chapter emphasizes that exposure is necessary but insufficient for learning and thus, a more serious treatment of attention is needed. The physical and cognitive access framework underscores the difference between the opportunities mobile devices offer for physical access to information, and the ways that same device structures cognitive access to information. Notably, physical access can mitigate, but not eradicate, the costs associated with information seeking and processing, which are exacerbated by mobile device features. Mobile features make attention allocation, and thus learning, more costly. With this in mind, the post-exposure processing model sets forth parameters for understanding the effects of changes in communication technology. We apply the framework and model to mobile devices.
Attention to News on Mobile Devices
Authors: Sui Mingxiao , Paul Newly
Published: October 2022

In this chapter we test the post-exposure processing (PEP) model to better understand how the use of mobile devices for news consumption shapes attention to content. Using two laboratory experiments featuring eye tracking we find differences in duration of attention to news content between mobile and computer users, with computer users spending more time attending to news. We find the same patterns when we look at attention to news links. These results lend support to the PEP model and our broader argument that information seeking is more costly on mobile devices relative to computers and, thus, affects cognitive access to information on smartphones.
The ‘Force of Law’ Performed—The Institutional Politics of Legal Practice
Authors: Van Den Meerssche Dimitri
Published: October 2022

Building on the analysis of how Shihata cultivated the ‘force of law’, Chapter 3 analyses how this authority was wielded during two important controversies that the institution faced in the 1990s: the turn to ‘governance’ reform in the beginning of that decade, and the call by states from the Global South to place the entire domain of global development under the control and supervision of ECOSOC. These controversies reflect enduring doctrinal and political problems in the law of international organizations: (i) the problem of ‘mission creep’ in relation to international interventionism, and (ii) the problem of inter-institutional discord between organizations that have different mandates and reflect different balances of political power. The chapter shows that during both episodes, the ‘rule of law’ ideal that Shihata cultivated performed a pivotal institutional role. While Shihata’s governance opinion is widely discussed in literature, this chapter provides a different account of the politics of law manifested here. Its original, relational and sociologically informed account of the ‘life of law’ during Shihata’s tenure as General Counsel shows how legal interventions constrained those in the institution with extensive reformist ambitions and comforted states from the Global South. At the same time, the liberal logic behind Shihata’s legal thinking served to justify projects of ‘economic’ reform and insulated the World Bank from alternative development approaches articulated at the United Nations. In tracing these effects, this chapter reveals the institutional role of law as a technology that provided closure to controversies, enrolled political representatives and constrained the institution’s expansionary drift.
‘A New Normative Architecture’—Risk, Resilience and Deformalization
Authors: Van Den Meerssche Dimitri
Published: October 2022

Chapter 7 builds on the analysis of Leroy’s ‘paradigm shift’ and retraces the tenets of the ‘new normative architecture’ that she instilled in the Bank. It uses her legal framework on involvement in criminal justice to contextualize, reconstruct and assess the managerial technology of risk management that has become the central tool of legal practice. The chapter thereby provides a granular account of the professional ideals, bureaucratic templates, material tools and institutional agendas that shape the contemporary practice of international law within the World Bank. This analysis thereby also maps out how embracing risk management as a central mode of international lawyering introduced an infinite mandate for new operational practices and ambitions. This shift aligned with broader changes in the World Bank’s processes of development practice, governance reform and interventionism. The modernist ideals of causal planning that underpinned the grand narratives of liberal internationalism were traded for complex, iterative, adaptive and open-ended reform processes, attuned to uncertainty and contingency and oriented towards logics of risk and resilience. This risk-based governmentality discards linear, top-down models of socio-political change and dispenses with the liberal dichotomy between sovereignty and interventionism—a change that resonated in Leroy’s ‘new normative architecture’. The chapter concludes by showing how Leroy sought to play an ‘enabling’ role regarding this expansion and reorientation of the World Bank’s agenda. This shows how changes in the cultural technique and material fabric of international law became entangled with the development and justification of new rationalities and practices of reform.
What Is a University?
Authors: Bourke Joanna
Published: October 2022

Birkbeck was gradually assimilated within the University of London, a move that was fought for by the College’s students. It entailed major changes in the way courses were organized and the College managed. The College’s Master, George Armitage-Smith, launched a highly effective campaign to persuade the other colleges in the University of London (particularly its nearest rival, King’s College London) to admit Birkbeck. The Royal Commission on University Education recommended that Birkbeck become a ‘Constituent College in the Faculties of Arts and Science for evening students’ in 1913, but admission was delayed until after the First World War. However, Birkbeck had to abandon daytime teaching and cease teaching economics. Birkbeck became part of the University of London in 1920.
‘Man versus Rabbits’
Authors: Bourke Joanna
Published: October 2022

Animals have played a role in the history of the College. One of Birkbeck’s students—Charles Wesley Hume—created the University of London Animal Welfare Society, which sought to improve relationships between human and nonhuman animals. Unlike many other animal welfare organizations, it was less concerned with animal rights and more with animal welfare. The college was active in reforming the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act, although there was considerable hostility amongst some scientists who employed animals in laboratory experiments. The use of animals in such experiments gradually ceased, in part due to shifts in scientific interests, the impact of legislation, and animal liberation activists. By 2000, animal experimentation had also fallen out of favour at Birkbeck. Although the Department of Psychology had been a hotbed for behaviourism—with its long history of studying nonhuman animals—this had been superseded by other intellectual approaches by the start of the twenty-first century; specifically, the neurosciences.
Worlds at War, 1939–1945
Authors: Bourke Joanna
Published: October 2022

During the aftermath of the First World War, anti-war sentiment was prominent at Birkbeck. Famously, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad, head of the Department of Philosophy and Psychology, was one of five speakers involved in the ‘King and Country’ debate in 1933 which ended in a vote that ‘this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’. From 1939, Birkbeck students were conscripted into the military. Birkbeck was the only college that remained open throughout the war, despite bombing raids. Windows were bricked up and ‘baffle walls’ erected as a protection against blast. The College received direct hits from bombing raids, the worst of which took place on 11 May 1941, destroying the library. The chapter also explores some of the front-line experiences of former students. The war memorial erected to honour the dead was controversial.
Containing the Crisis
Authors: Bourke Joanna
Published: October 2022

The periods between the late 1970s and 1980s, then after 2008, were difficult years for university educationalists. They saw a sharp decline in student numbers, non-European students being charged ‘full-economic costs’, abolition of academic tenure, the introduction of RAE/REF, and declining government support. A reformed University Grants Committee decreed that a part-time student was equivalent to 0.5 of a full-time student. This immediately slashed $2.5 million from Birkbeck’s budget of $11 million. Staff and students fought for the survival of the College. It was restructured, including the incorporation of the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies. The Department of Classics was cut. In 2008, Birkbeck went through a further crisis. Without warning, the government introduced the Equivalent and Lower Qualification policy, which meant that students taking an equivalent or lower degree to the one they already possessed were no longer entitled to any financial support. Overnight, 30 per cent of Birkbeck’s funding for teaching disappeared. To survive, Birkbeck engaged in further restructuring.
Into the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Bourke Joanna
Published: October 2022

On 16 March 2020, Birkbeck closed its doors for only the second time in nearly 200 years. The last occasion was in September 1939 when war was declared on Germany. That decision was quickly reversed. In 2020, the cause was COVID-19. This chapter starts by exploring how staff and students coped. It then traces the broad shifts in the College and its personnel over 200 years. It looks at the rise of public engagement and uses of new media. It explores the challenges due to changes in the Universities’ Superannuation Scheme, the rapid rise in student fees, and the outsourcing of many jobs, especially the jobs of cleaners, night security, and catering staff. Birkbeck also had to respond to new threats of terrorism and Brexit. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the importance of education and Birkbeck’s unique mission.
Development
Authors: Ní Chaoimh Eadaoin
Published: October 2022

Chapter 3 traces the origin and development of the Legislative Priority Rule over several decades, outlining its evolution from a guideline, used mostly in the context of the Common Agricultural Policy, into a key element in the European Court of Justice’s toolbox to resolve disputes in the internal market for goods. Particular attention is paid to the judgment in Tedeschi v Denkavit, which sought to balance the pre-emptive effects of secondary legislation with the presumption that such legislation complied with primary law. Chapter 3 also examines the conditions to trigger the Legislative Priority Rule, which include establishing the regulatory scope and character of the secondary rule, and which highlight the Rule’s conditional effect and its respect for national regulatory competence. These elements feed into an understanding of the Legislative Priority Rule as facilitating a coherent, balanced and Treaty-compliant framework to assess the impact of secondary product rules.
Conclusion
Authors: Ní Chaoimh Eadaoin
Published: October 2022

Casting the internal product market as a cooperative federal arrangement, this final chapter briefly reviews the role played by the Legislative Priority Rule in supporting this shared legal sphere, as it offers a short summary of previous chapters. While regulatory disputes often arise in the presence of EU product rules, the European Court of Justice can rely on the Rule to resolve these disputes in a manner that ensures respectful coexistence between the Member States and EU, and between national, secondary, and primary law. Key to this equilibrium is the existence of effective regulatory capacity at EU level, which allows the EU legislator to express preferences and distribute power. As the Rule guides the Court in enforcing legislative choice, while respecting the Treaty, Member States can accept the principle of free movement, even if they sometimes disagree with its legal effects. What follows is a Treaty-compliant system to protect and promote the free movement of goods.
Objective Imperatives
Authors: Walker Ralph C. S.
Published: October 2022

Kant sees the moral law as an objective imperative in its own right, inherently prescriptive and not dependent on anything or anyone else. This book argues in defence of his position. That has often been misunderstood, largely because of the obscurities in his presentation. The book seeks to clarify the account of the Categorical Imperative in the light of its standing as an objective imperative, exploring the centrality of ‘autonomy’ and the several ways in which feeling is essential to morality. He commits himself to a form of determinism that apparently leaves no place for an objective imperative to motivate anyone. He never provides a clear solution of this apparently fundamental objection to his position. The simplest way would be to reject his determinism. He never explicitly does that, but it turns out that the determinism to which he commits himself is not really complete. Though he never seems fully to recognize it, the transcendental idealism of his first Critique is actually incompatible with the thesis that every event has a cause. This is because his account of the spatio-temporal world is an anti-realist one, open-ended in that it leaves no place for ‘every event’: there is no such thing as ‘every event’. In addition, Kant’s whole position could have been made clearer if he had accepted our conception of a theory. He comes closer to that, however, as time goes on, recognizing that rationality warrants belief in the continuing order of the world and of a designer.
Writing oneself into history
Authors: Gheeraert-Graffeuille Claire
Published: October 2022

This chapter concentrates on the final quarter of the Memoirs covering the years 1660–1664 when, as she was stepping out of her own sphere to intervene in Restoration politics, Lucy Hutchinson’s role changed from witness to actor—a highly prized role among early modern memoir-writers. By exploring the connections between Lucy Hutchinson, as agent in history, and Lucy Hutchinson, as the author of the Memoirs, this chapter looks at the ways in which, despite patriarchal prohibitions, she writes herself into history to come to grips with her past. In this autobiographical portion of the Memoirs, Lucy Hutchinson’s search for personal intelligibility proves to be inseparable from her vindication of the Colonel. Simultaneously, her profession of truth becomes more problematic as she ostensibly tinkers with history and memory.
Metrical Claims and Poetic Experience
Authors: Eldridge Hannah Vandegrift
Published: October 2022

This project contributes to the fields of lyric poetry and poetics (especially poetic form), aesthetics, and German literature by intervening in debates on the social functions, cognitive and emotional effects, and value of poetry. It builds on and moves beyond previous theories of rhythm to tie meter more particularly to the specificities of poetic language in blending of embodied responses, cultural situations, and linguistic particularities. The project examines the German-language tradition across three centuries, arguing that the interdisciplinarity and richness of metrical theory and practice emerge in the heterogeneity of poetry and its defenders in their specific historical moments. Focusing on Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Durs Grünbein, the book contextualizes each in the metrical and aesthetic debates of his epoch, showing how questions of meter are linked with overarching poetic goals such as the relationship between form and meaning, the adaptation of the Classical past for German literature, and the ways poetry’s sounds work in the body. It argues that Klopstock’s, Nietzsche’s, and Grünbein’s metrical theory and practice offer valuable insights for thinking about the ways poetry works and why it matters.
Introduction
Authors: Eldridge Hannah Vandegrift
Published: October 2022

The introduction uses Mark Twain’s 1876 “A Literary Nightmare” to introduce the questions that drive the book: How does meter affect the mind and the body? How does it relate to meaning? How is it transmitted? For whom and in what forms is it effective? It then shows the differences and overlaps between meter and rhythm in poetry, including tracing commonalities and disagreements with other main approaches to thinking about meter and rhythm. It considers the risks inherent in linking cultural achievements—here, poetic language—with bodily effects or characteristics, and argues that meter can in fact disrupt the idea that claims of bodily effectiveness commit poets or theorists to an essentialist view that equates language with culture with physiology.
Dangers of discretion: Empirical evidence of inconsistency
Authors: Harris Lyndon
Published: October 2022

Chapter 3 considers the empirical evidence of inconsistency in sentencing practices from around the world and, by consequence, the dangers of affording sentencing courts with discretion. Common law jurisdictions afford sentencing judges with a degree of discretion to reflect the importance of individualization and the adage that no two cases are the same. The empirical evidence, however, reveals that the cost of individualization is manifest inconsistency. This is seen by geographical region, race, gender, and the individual penological philosophy of the sentencer. This chapter considers various quantitative and qualitative studies, critically examining the findings, culminating in the identification of a clear and consistent conclusion that there is widespread inconsistency present in discretionary sentencing decisions around the world. If, as contended for in Chapter 2, consistency is a vital concept in a fair sentencing system, then the empirical research provides a strong grounding from which to make a case for strong measures to address this inconsistency.
Introduction
Authors: Chen-Wishart Mindy , Sono Hiroo , Vogenauer Stefan
Published: October 2022

This chapter sets the scene for volume IV of the Studies in the Contract Laws of Asia. It describes the genesis and the main objectives of the series, i.e. to facilitate conversations between Asian jurisdictions and between them and ‘Western’ jurisdictions. It provides some basic information on the population numbers and the economic importance of the thirteen Asian jurisdictions covered (China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam). Moreover, it comments on the methodology employed throughout the volume and reproduces the guidance that the editors provided to the various contributors in order to ensure that their chapters cover roughly the same ground. This chapter concludes with an overview of the content of the further twenty-three chapters included in volume IV of the series.