bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
India’s Space Program
Authors: Rajagopalan Rajeswari Pillai , Ganguly Šumit
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses India’s space program, which began with a focus primarily on the country’s civilian requirements but has matured, and India is now considered an established space power with its own launch capabilities and space exploration programs such as the moon and Mars missions. Compelled by changing regional security dynamics and the larger global space developments, the Indian space program has also expanded to address growing military and security requirements. In the Indo-Pacific, China’s space power, with considerable counterspace capabilities, has been a particular consideration in India’s changing approach to space. Indian decision-makers feel the need to respond to China’s space capabilities in order to secure Indian interests. One important feature of this change is the evolution of the Indian position from a moral and principled stance of non-militarization of outer space to one that is conditioned by pragmatism and national security considerations to accept some forms of militarization, though not weaponization. As the chapter shows, this has pushed India to also expand its capacity by bringing in the private sector, albeit in limited ways, thereby making India a more competitive player.
The European Union’s Deepening Engagement in Space Security
Authors: Bataille Mathieu , Hrozensky Tomas
Published: February 2024

The European Union (EU) has recently increased its involvement in space, in particular through initiatives of the European Commission (COM). While socio-economic benefits used to be the predominant driver of EU action in space, recent developments have shown that the security dimension has increasingly gained prominence. Indeed, all the components of the EU Space Programme include a security dimension (in space and on Earth) and space is more and more integrated in the EU security and defense frameworks. Similarly, space is increasingly identified as a key contributor to European strategic autonomy, while the need to ensure strategic autonomy in the space sector is also emphasized. This chapter will argue that this evolution can be understood as the implementation of the hedging behavior adopted by the European Union in response to changes occurring in the international (space) landscape.
Southeast Asia Space Security and Strategy
Authors: Parameswaran Prashanth
Published: February 2024

Over the past few years, key states in Southeast Asia have been looking to increase their investments in space technologies and accompanying capabilities amid a confluence of developments. This chapter examines the state of play in Southeast Asia space security and strategy, leveraging a mix of primary and secondary sources applicable to regional realities. It argues that the increasing pursuit of space capabilities by a wider range of Southeast Asian states over the past few years can be understood in three phases of multi-decade long thinking in this domain, and that it is driven by four key factors: technological diffusion, rising commercial opportunities, intra-regional competition, and a more sobering regional and global geopolitical environment. The evolving dynamics reveal a mix of progress and limitations in the domestic, regional, and global dimensions that are worth keeping an eye on as states in Southeast Asia continue to develop capabilities in this domain.
The Dynamics of South Korea’s Space Trajectories
Authors: Lee Su-Mi , Jeong Hanbeom
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines what drives South Korea’s space development. To do so, we review the thirty-year history of South Korea’s space programs, highlighting major milestones and government policies. Then, using a realist approach to analyze the drivers behind South Korea’s space development, we show how South Korea’s desire to develop space programs is attributed to its security concerns about the threats from North Korea. We uncover how distrust in the anarchical international system leads South Korea to pursue self-reliance while signing on to space cooperation with the United States to strengthen and expand the scope of its existing ROK-US security alliance. We also discuss the economic considerations behind South Korea’s space endeavor. The chapter ends with a projection of the future trajectory of South Korea’s space development.
Legal Frameworks for Space Security
Authors: Aoki Setsuko
Published: February 2024

This chapter describes legally binding and non-legally binding international frameworks for enhancing space security and concludes that non-legally binding norms may possibly maintain and enhance space security. For more than half a century, only stationing weapons of mass destruction in outer space and the threat or use of force to, from, and in outer space have been prohibited under international law. Moreover, there is no clear picture of laws of armed conflict applicable to space armed conflicts. However, the recent United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution on Responsible Behaviors is promising in generating new norms for space security. So are the Long-Term Sustainability (LTS) Guidelines made in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space as concrete specifications to be made would assist in the implementation of the said UNGA Resolution together with other guidelines. The feedbacks and virtuous cycles between national, regional, and international norm-making processes can hopefully enhance space security, with emerging Space Traffic Management (STM) rules and guidelines.
The Greatest Transformation
Authors: Martinez Larry F.
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers how cyber is merging cyberspace into outer space as the battlefield of the twenty-first century. Cyber “security” is the growing awareness of cyber’s capabilities to both instigate or deter manipulations of software code to disrupt digitally dependent societal or security infrastructures on earth and in space. As a consequence of cyber criminality’s growing commercial clout and pervasiveness of vulnerable digital infrastructures, cyber security is becoming the prime factor militarizing outer space and its governance. As a factor of international strategic, economic, and political power, cyber is compelling a recalibration of strategic doctrine and deterrence strategy as cyberspace becomes the prime domain for projecting space power. This strategic shift to cyber-intensive forms of coercive force challenges fundamental paradigms about (1) the state’s role in space security, (2) the demarcation of “peaceful uses” between defensive cyber operations and those projecting coercive force, and (3) state approaches to cyber and space security as increasingly crucial elements of overall state strategic doctrine.
Space Sustainability
Authors: Guoyu Wang
Published: February 2024

Geopolitical tensions find expression in space where the physical environment is congested and vulnerable. Space security global governance (SSGG) is a timely and effective means to preserve space sustainability because among all the challenges in the space environment, the escalation of the misperceptions and misunderstandings among powers seem to be more fatal and urgent than other factors. It is possible for SSGG to become another forum used by space powers to pursue maximization of their own national security interests rather than for the sake of the international community. This chapter argues that states in the forum of prevention of arms race in outer space should pursue sincerity and wisdom in seeking common understandings of key terms, like space safety, security, stability, and sustainability.
Norm Formation and Space Traffic Management
Authors: Blount P.J.
Published: February 2024

Space traffic management has been advanced as a potential way to cope with the pressure on the space environment resulting from new actors and architectures. This chapter takes up this concept through the lens of norm life cycle for the formation of international norms. It suggests that currently we have a space traffic coordination system that is structured within the norm of information sharing. In order for a space traffic management system to emerge, it will be critical for states, commercial actors, and epistemic communities to continue the discursive practices that advance norms. This chapter suggests that this is a multivariate process that happens at different levels of international governance by a variety of actors in a number of different forums.
The State, Development, and Human Security in Space
Authors: Amara Mohamed , Sethu Sagee Geetha
Published: February 2024

The development of a nation depends on its social, economic, and political factors, security being one of the essential elements that contributes to this development. Using space technology for the advancement of security, mainly human security, is on the top of the national agenda for most space-emerging countries, and states focus on adopting programs toward this end. This chapter makes an argument for a theoretical understanding of why states will pursue such programs and how they are using international cooperation as a means to enhance space technologies for furthering the human security agenda. It makes a comparative analysis on the space programs of four space-emerging countries, namely the UAE, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa to understand which elements of human security are priorities for these states and why.
The Future of Cooperation in Space
Authors: Bo Zhou , Guoyu Wang
Published: February 2024

There are basically two schools of thoughts on outer space governance. China and Russia on one side wish to make a binding treaty of non-weaponization and no arms race in space while US-led western states on the other side claim that the weaponization of outer space is unavoidable and instead proposes to develop non-legally binding rules on responsible behaviors. These two views are not necessarily incompatible. A dual-track approach is that all parties agree to the goal of negotiating a binding treaty of non-weaponization and no arms race while encouraging discussions on responsible behaviors that could serve the goal of preventing an arms race in outer space. For that to happen, major powers should accept “mutually assured vulnerability” in space and take the lead in cooperation wherever possible.
Techno-Security Space Innovation
Authors: Ming Cheung Tai , Fukushima Yasuhito
Published: February 2024

Techno-security innovation is a crucial but overlooked phenomenon in the study of the development of the space sector. This chapter offers analytical insights and approaches drawn from the broader examination of defense innovation and techno-security innovation that can be applied to the space domain. A number of key characteristics of techno-security space innovation can be discerned that include the catalytic role played by external threat perceptions and top-level leadership intervention, the powerful presence of self-reliant techno-nationalistic impulses driving decision-making, and the emphasis on civil-military integration. These factors are readily apparent in case studies of the US and Chinese techno-security space innovation systems, and their impact can be expected to grow more prominent as US-China great power techno-security competition intensifies. Both countries believe that civil-military integration is pivotal in gaining a decisive edge, although their approaches differ greatly.
Critical Space Security
Authors: Graefe Carl , Duvall Raymond
Published: February 2024

This chapter reviews a crucial issue of space security: the possibility that states might attempt to control portions of space for exclusive use in security competition with other states. It examines that issue from a critical theoretical perspective, by challenging widely accepted lines of argument. The first of these is that the unique properties of space prevent exclusionary politics, because the costs and risks associated with exclusive politics in space are too high; the second, that the same properties serve to facilitate the domain’s prospective democratization. By contrast, the chapter’s critical perspective highlights that differential dynamics of cost reductions in attempted mastery over space operations may contribute to the development of the means for selective exclusion. Then, while remembering that this potential for exclusion would play out on material and social planes simultaneously, the chapter turns to the political implications of the establishment of a colonial regime of selective exclusion in outer space.
The Interplay of Domestic Policy and International Space Security
Authors: Wu Xiaodan
Published: February 2024

This chapter reviews how states’ perception of space security in the form of domestic policy is a powerful shaping force for space security. It shows how a range of military, S&T, political and economic interests are intertwined in outer space and national considerations for space security; and these interests can also be influenced and defined by seemingly trivial and irrelevant factors. National policy formulation is supported by an array of governmental and non-governmental actors and all the actors interact within a state’s space governance mechanism. Their roles are largely influenced by the political climate and also determined by a state’s development model of space activities. International space security is sustained by the interplay of domestic policy and achieved at the nexus of competition and cooperation. This is a self-restraining process with uncertain results. The space power competition and the democratization of space are increasing the intensity and complexity of this interplay. There is a renewed need to improve this overlapping organizational structure to foster dialogue and strengthen international cooperation to reduce the uncertain results and the conflict potential.
Gendering Transitional Justice
Authors: Berry Marie , Lake Milli , Ackah-Arthur Jemima
Published: February 2024

The past three decades have seen increasing attention to gender in war-to-peace transitions, particularly in the context of access to justice. We review the gains made by activists in this field, focusing on domestic legal systems rather than international and hybrid tribunals. We show how an emphasis on gender-based violence in war serves as an important corrective to past omissions. However, we also direct attention to two forms of structural disempowerment documented by scholars working in this area. The first pertains to a neglect of the expressed needs and diverse lived experiences of women and sexual and gender minorities in the pursuit of justice; and the second to a prioritization of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) over other (sexual and gendered) harms. Together, these trends have sometimes inadvertently reinforced gendered hierarchies and structures of power.
Foreign Policy and Organized Crime
Authors: Moro Francesco Niccolò , Strazzari Francesco
Published: February 2024

Organized crime (OC)’s activities and impact extend well beyond national borders, and policies designed to tackle OC have to transcend the domestic domain too. These policies are now embedded into different foreign policy activities across a very diverse set of domains—from anti-drug to cybercrime policies—and through a plurality of tools. This chapter reconstructs the emergence of OC as a foreign policy problem, looking at the difficulties in categorizing extremely diverse phenomena. It then delves into the main strategies pursued to tackle OC at the international level. Repression is the main common frame, with the military and/or law enforcement as key agents, and a growing debate about outcomes and consequences. The chapter shows how these aspects can be empirically observed in specific criminal domains, and identifies pluralization of agency and hybridization of approaches as emerging trends in policy response.
Burns and Bawdry
Authors: Mackay Pauline
Published: February 2024

Burns’s bawdy sensibility forms an essential component of his creativity and lies at the centre of some of his most celebrated poetry and song. This essay traces Burns’s engagement with a broad historical culture of Scottish, British, and European bawdry, from his earliest compositions (‘My Girl She’s Airy’) to his later masterpieces (‘Tam o’ Shanter’) and explains the complex relationship between ‘traditional’ verse, Burns’s ‘reserved oeuvre’, and his ‘official’, more widely accepted canon. A survey of Burns’s bawdy verse privately printed in The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799), alongside his religious and political satire, illuminates the bard’s creative drive to use sexuality as a lens through which to scrutinize human behaviour.
‘Tam o’ Shanter’
Authors: Irvine Robert P.
Published: February 2024

This chapter defends the joyful unseriousness of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ against those who see it as a troubled precursor to later Romantic modes of verse. It describes the origins of the poem in Burns’s collaboration with the antiquarian Francis Grose. It explicates the poem’s deployment of apostrophe as both a reflection of Burns’s experience of addressing socially diverse audiences and the narrator’s way of putting ironic distance between himself and the poem’s ostensible moral judgements. While acknowledging the contexts of oral performance that inform the poem, to which it alludes and in which it is still enjoyed, this chapter argues for understanding ‘Tam o’ Shanter’ in terms of its Augustan literary pedigree, and in particular its use of the hudibrastic verse form, with Thomas Holcroft’s Human Happiness (1783) providing a useful point of comparison.
Burns and the Natural World
Authors: Stafford Fiona
Published: February 2024

On his long expeditions across America, the pioneering nineteenth-century conservationist John Muir was accompanied, spiritually, by Robert Burns. The poems and songs Burns had known from youth offered inspiration to the solitary naturalist because of their evident sympathy for all living things. Muir’s gratitude to Burns offers a way into reading Burns’s poetry and reassessing the significance of ‘Nature’s Bard’ in the twenty-first century, when matters of conservation and the environment are of urgent concern. The title alludes partly to Keith Thomas’s Man and the Natural World, in which Burns appears fleetingly but significantly, as a poet whose attitude to the non-human as ‘fellow-mortals’ was groundbreaking. The chapter considers shifting critical attitudes to Burns as the poet of nature and focuses on key poems such as ‘To a Mouse’, ‘To a Mountain Daisy’, ‘Poor Mailie’s Elegy’, ‘The Humble Petiton of Bruar Water’, and ‘The Twa Herds’. Close readings of Burns’s literary treatment of animals, birds, fish, and plants, considered in the light of contemporary literary and environmental contexts, demonstrate a profound consciousness of the complexity of the relationship between man and the natural world in his work: ‘Nature’s Bard’ is a very different entity from ‘the Simple Bard’. Burns’s deep understanding of the often conflicted relationship between human and non-human life forms may be as illuminating for twenty-first–century readers in an age of environmental crisis as it was to John Muir in nineteenth-century America. Conversely, the acute environmental concerns of today open new approaches to reading Burns.
Robert Burns, Club Society, and Convivial Sociability
Authors: Andrews Corey E.
Published: February 2024

Robert Burns’s experiences with club life were extensive, ranging from informal provincial groups like the Tarbolton Bachelors to international organizations like the Freemasons. Throughout his life, Burns was eminently clubbable, finding plenty of opportunities for intellectual and convivial fellowship with Scots of all classes. This chapter will discuss Burns’s involvement in a variety of clubs, including the Crochallan Fencibles (an Edinburgh drinking club), the Court of Equity (an impromptu club of local Scots castigated for profligacy by the Kirk), as well as those listed above. A primary goal of the chapter is to explain and elaborate upon how each club society influenced his writing, for each group to which he belonged offered him its own peculiar form of associational experience. In short, each club provided him with a different type of convivial sociability, to which Burns often responded in his writing. The chapter will include an overview of the verse that Burns produced in club settings as well as in his published work, with attention to his changing attitudes about convivial sociability.
The Architectural Monument to Robert Burns in the New Age of Identity Politics and Nationalism
Authors: Rodger Johnny
Published: February 2024

What does it mean to build an architectural monument to a poet in the twenty-first century? The heyday of hero building and architectural monuments to national identity was in the nineteenth century, when monuments to Robert Burns were built across Scotland. In the early twenty-first century, we appear to have entered a new era of populist, nationalistic, and identity politics. Does the latest architectural memorializing of the ‘national’ poet empower users to ‘take back control’? This chapter will use conceptualizations from the art of poetry to analyse and criticize the most recent architectural monument to Robert Burns, built in the twenty-first century. Following an examination of monuments that celebrate national heroes, including some built in other countries, the essay will look at specific architectural monuments to Burns and their connections with his poetry before focussing on the building of the Burns Birthplace Museum and its relation to the land around it, ultimately linking it to commodity capitalism.
‘At the Grave of Burns’
Authors: Deans Alex
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers the posthumous reception of Robert Burns and his work in the years following 1800, in relation to the development of British Romanticism, both as an ideology that privileged the individual poetic voice and a phenomenon that responded to the shifting forms of nation, politics, and class. In particular, it traces how James Currie’s 1800 ‘Life of Burns’ and ‘Remarks on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry’ established a connection between Burns’s works, personal character, and social background to illustrate the moral and political dangers of excessive sensibility. The chapter explores how William Wordsworth in particular drew on Currie’s account of Burns to construct a mode of poetic identity and purpose that was influenced by Burns even as it sought to distance itself from him. The chapter then considers how debates over Burns’s cultural and political symbolism, again based on Currie, fuelled the heated periodical culture of nineteenth-century Scotland.
Parallel Universes
Authors: Black Ronald
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents an objective assessment of the relationship between Robert Burns and the Gaelic language. It was not a direct relationship but an indirect one. Gaelic literature was dynamic in his day, yet to him it was virtually a foreign language, frequently heard without being understood and poorly mediated in print. Burns himself was, however, of Gaelic heritage through his Carrick-born mother, Agnes Broun, whose influence on her son’s work has been underestimated. The last Gaelic speaker in his bloodline will have been his great-grandmother Janet McGren, or McGrean, who died in 1738. The precise nature of Burns’s Gaelic heritage is discussed in the context of current scholarly work on the late survival of Gaelic in Carrick, as well as his personal points of contact with the language and the limited extent of his familiarity with Gaelic verse and song. The chapter ends with consideration of the unlikely proposition that Burns influenced Gaelic verse during his lifetime, and an assessment of the countless Gaelic translations of Burns’s poems that have been published since 1829.
Robert Burns and Twentieth-Century War
Authors: Goldie David
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the reception of Burns’s work in the UK in the First and Second World Wars, and the uses to which Burns was put, as both writer and cultural figure, by those who supported and those who opposed both wars. The chapter suggests that Burns was a highly salient and significant figure in the First World War, visible as a model for emulation and inspiration to poets, political campaigners, and propagandists alike. Such salience was diminished in the Second World War, and the chapter explores the reasons for this lessened influence, among them the effects of the Scottish Literary Renaissance, the rise of visual and aural media, and alterations in the Scottish political climate.
Burns Biography, 1786–1820
Authors: Brown Rhona
Published: February 2024

This chapter is the first of three on the development of Robert Burns’s biography, focusing on the poet’s self-fashioning and biographical construction from the publication of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) to the eighth edition of James Currie’s Life and Works of Burns (1820), which features significant new contributions by Burns’s brother Gilbert. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first analyses Burns’s development of his own poetic persona in the 1786 preface to the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, and explores key early reviews and responses to his work which help to establish Burns’s early biography. The second section focuses on biographical studies by Maria Riddell and Robert Heron, which appeared shortly after the poet’s death. The third considers James Currie’s correspondence with Burns’s acquaintances, undertaken as the biographer prepared the first posthumous Life and Works of Burns (1800), ending with an analysis of Currie’s popular and influential biography.
Burns Biography, 1808–1939
Authors: Baraniuk Carol , Carruthers Gerard
Published: February 2024

This chapter, the second of three on the development of Burns biography, focuses on biographical constructions of the poet from the publication of R. H. Cromek’s Reliques of Robert Burns (1808) to J. DeLancey Ferguson’s Pride and Passion (1939). The first part examines how nineteenth-century writers and editor-biographers after James Currie augmented the known facts about the poet’s life, and appraised his character and morals, in a period which also saw significant progress in the textual editing, criticism, and appreciation of his oeuvre, and in the process of Burns memorialization. The second considers works of Burns vindication from the early decades of the twentieth century which to an extent reflect Victorian sensibilities but in some aspects evidence a transition away from sentimental or romanticized versions of the poet. The third section discusses the modernist and empirical investigations of Burns undertaken by Catherine Carswell and by distinguished international scholars in the 1930s—the latter setting a standard against which Burns biographies would be judged in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
Further Resources
Authors: Gallagher Kevin Thomas
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides further information and details on various resources—including archives, collections, museums, libraries, historical locations, Burns Clubs, and online scholarship projects—that may be of interest to readers of this book. Links to websites that can provide further information about each resource are included. A non-exhaustive list of important academic texts that focus on Burns is included, as well as a short discography of recorded Burns works. This chapter also offers a timeline of Burns’s life and afterlife, pinpointing significant events and publication dates up to the publication of his first biography by James Currie in 1800.
The Pragmatics of Punctuation in the Letters of Robert Burns
Authors: Smith Jeremy J.
Published: February 2024

Robert Burns’s letters are currently being re-evaluated as a significant part of his creative activity, but their formal aspects, notably their punctuation, have received comparatively little attention. In this chapter, Burns’s usage is placed within its eighteenth-century context, with reference to contemporary letter-writing manuals and views on language. Examples from Burns’s letters demonstrate his use of a wide range of punctuation marks to replicate speech patterns, in keeping with the then-existing belief that speech took precedence over writing. Burns’s letter-writing style is compared and contrasted with other eighteenth-century writers such as Laurence Stern. It is shown that his letters draw directly on contemporary views on the speech-writing relationship, notably elocutionism.
The Rise of ‘No Religion’
Authors: Turpin Hugh
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines religious disaffiliation on the island of Ireland. It focuses first on ex-Catholics in the Republic, describing how they fit a global pattern of rising non-religion. After this, the distinctive normative stance of Irish ex-Catholicism is explored using qualitative data from fieldwork and interviews carried out in Dublin. These suggest that for these ex-Catholics, disaffiliation means the moralized relinquishment of an increasingly casual, capacious, and amorphous form of ethnically linked collective identification: ‘cultural Catholicism’ for short. The roots of this stance lie in the country’s trajectory of economic growth, social liberalization, attenuated domestic religious socialization, the moral collapse of the church, and its lingering influence in social institutions and laws. In Northern Ireland, in contrast, things are quite different. There, it is Protestants rather than Catholics who primarily choose to opt out of their natal designations.
Catholic Responses to Violence in Northern Ireland
Authors: Scull Margaret M.
Published: February 2024

This chapter illustrates tensions between Irish Catholic bishops, individual priests, and women religious in their reactions to the Northern Ireland Troubles. The institutional Irish Catholic Church acted as an unofficial mouthpiece for the Catholic community, with the international media regularly questioning Irish bishops on their perceived inability to stop republican violence. While Irish bishops publicly condemned republican paramilitary violence, it was individual priests and women religious ‘on the ground’ who privately acted as intermediaries between the British government and republican paramilitaries to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict. The Irish Catholic Church regularly faced pressure throughout the conflict, yet this pressure intensified during key events such as the introduction of internment without trial, the 1980–81 hunger strikes, republican funerals and the issue of excommunication, and the peace process. These specific moments during the conflict illustrate the differing opinions and actions of individual church members to institutional pressures.
Paganism
Authors: Butler Jenny
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses contemporary Paganism in Ireland and documents the historical emergence of this new religious movement against the backdrop of historical romanticization of the Celtic world and Celtic spirituality. It examines the traditions of those who self-identify as Pagan today, including Druids and Witches, based on ethnographic research. Presented here is an overview of the cosmology and worldview of contemporary Paganism and the relationship between globalized Paganism and local and national identities. An overview is provided of how, through their ritual practices, Pagans have a unique connection to nature and the landscape, archaeology, and the ancient past. Consideration is given to how modern Pagans engage with folklore and mythological traditions and to how cultural resources, including the Irish language, are drawn upon in the formation and maintenance of Pagan identities.
The Raeti and Other Northeastern Alpine Peoples
Authors: Marzatico Franco
Published: February 2024

With distinctive features in both their material and ideological expressions, the Raeti have been documented over a wide area of the eastern Alps from the mid-sixth century until the Roman conquest in the first century BCE. Strabo describes the peoples living beyond Comum as “predatory and deprived of means”; of course, he and the other historians were justifying the expansionist aims of Rome when they described the Raeti and their neighbors in such harsh terms. Modern scholars must therefore rely on archaeology for information when trying to determine an accurate history for these peoples. This chapter traces the movements and cultural developments of the various inhabitants of the eastern Alps during the first millennium BCE up to the advent of Augustus.
Alphabets, Orthography, and Literacy
Authors: Wallace Rex
Published: February 2024

Ancient Italy is a veritable petri dish for the study of the adoption and the adaptation of alphabetic writing systems. Once introduced by Euboean Greeks and adopted by Etruscans, this new technology spread quickly via elite networks to a majority of the peoples of ancient Italy. It is possible to chart the developments in the alphabets and writing systems of ancient Italy, the adjustments that were made to accommodate the spelling of each language’s sounds, and the reforms that writers made to the alphabets once texts began to be written. We observe the expansion of the functions of writing as it moved from the private to the public domain. Finally, we are witness to the loss of alphabets—and languages—under the growing political and economic power of Rome.
The Lucani
Authors: Gualtieri Maurizio
Published: February 2024

Against the backdrop of the descriptive traits and behaviors provided by the ancient narratives, the data on the material culture and sociopolitical developments provide a picture of rapid change differentiated in space and through time, including a significant number of communities that functioned both independently and collectively. Historical texts paint a relatively simple picture of complete Romanization achieved through conflict, but this is at odds with the much more fluid and variegated picture that emerges from the archaeological record. This chapter seeks to elucidate the more variegated overall picture of ancient Lucania and the Lucanian communities provided by archaeological research.
Defining Sacred Space in Ancient Italy
Authors: Edlund-Berry Ingrid
Published: February 2024

Just as different groups in pre-Roman Italy created settlements for the living and resting places for the dead, they also chose places to worship their deities. The location of such sacred sites (essentially mountains, caves, rivers, and springs) follows a pattern that reveals both local and general practices of incorporating deities into settlements, and of linking them to places in nature. This chapter focuses on the evidence that suggests that the landscape played a vital role in the societies of ancient Italy; although our knowledge is limited, it is important to identify these sacred places and to suggest avenues for further analysis.
Italic Mercenaries in the Pre-Roman Period
Authors: Tagliamonte Gianluca
Published: February 2024

The widespread practice of mercenary military service must have contributed to the ancient perception of the pre-Roman Italic peoples as bellicose. For the Campani, the practice represented, at least in part, a relevant economic activity of a dominant class (equites Campani) or even of the male representatives of the minores gentes. For the Samnites, Lucani, and Bruttii, however, it continued to fulfill a fundamental demographic and economic function, along with other forms of mobility or the violent appropriation of goods (war, banditry). For these populations, mercenary practices were a long-standing historical phenomenon, which this chapter reconstructs in broad strokes between the sixth and third centuries BCE.
The Faliscans and the Capenates
Authors: Biella Maria Cristina
Published: February 2024

Among the least mentioned peoples of central pre-Roman Italy, both the epigraphic and the archaeological records give us the opportunity to distinguish the Faliscan and Capenate cultures, which have often been inaccurately lumped together in the archaeological literature. The Capenates spoke an Italic language and the Faliscans a kind of Latin dialect, but both their cultures were strongly influenced by their neighbors, the Etruscans. This chapter follows the development of the two regions in the Iron Age, when the main settlements took shape in the lower Tiber River Valley, with cultural and commercial links to both the central Tyrrhenian and the inner Italic communities. The growing complexity of the political structures is evident from the sacred areas, the necropoleis, and, more generally, the infrastructure. From the fifth century onward, Rome’s interest in the area escalated; in the conflicts that ensued, the Faliscans and Capenates often fought on the Etruscans’ side. Ultimately, of course, both areas were annexed by Rome.
Characterization and closed-loop control of infrared thalamocortical stimulation produces spatially constrained single-unit responses
Authors: Coventry Brandon S , Lawlor Georgia L , Bagnati Christina B , Krogmeier Claudia , Bartlett Edward L
Published: February 2024

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a powerful tool for the treatment of circuitopathy-related neurological and psychiatric diseases and disorders such as Parkinson's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as well as a critical research tool for perturbing neural circuits and exploring neuroprostheses. Electrically mediated DBS, however, is limited by the spread of stimulus currents into tissue unrelated to disease course and treatment, potentially causing undesirable patient side effects. In this work, we utilize infrared neural stimulation (INS), an optical neuromodulation technique that uses near to midinfrared light to drive graded excitatory and inhibitory responses in nerves and neurons, to facilitate an optical and spatially constrained DBS paradigm. INS has been shown to provide spatially constrained responses in cortical neurons and, unlike other optical techniques, does not require genetic modification of the neural target. We show that INS produces graded, biophysically relevant single-unit responses with robust information transfer in rat thalamocortical circuits. Importantly, we show that cortical spread of activation from thalamic INS produces more spatially constrained response profiles than conventional electrical stimulation. Owing to observed spatial precision of INS, we used deep reinforcement learning (RL) for closed-loop control of thalamocortical circuits, creating real-time representations of stimulus-response dynamics while driving cortical neurons to precise firing patterns. Our data suggest that INS can serve as a targeted and dynamic stimulation paradigm for both open and closed-loop DBS.
SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT OF CANCER-ASSOCIATED RETINOPATHY WITH INTRAVITREAL DEXAMETHASONE IMPLANT FOLLOWED BY A 0.18-MG FLUOCINOLONE IMPLANT WITHOUT SYSTEMIC IMMUNOSUPPRESSION
Authors: Huang Lingling , Yang Paul , Flaxel Christina , Suhler Eric , Lin Phoebe
Published: February 2024

Purpose:

The aim of the study was to report a case of clinically diagnosed cancer-associated retinopathy successfully treated with intravitreal corticosteroid implants without systemic immunosuppression.

Methods:

This was a case report with multimodal imaging.

Results:

An 80-year-old man without known systemic malignancy presented with debilitating shimmering, hemeralopia, and rapidly progressive bilateral vision loss following uncomplicated cataract surgery. Mild vitritis, extensive photoreceptor loss, mottling of retinal pigment epithelium, and mild vascular attenuation were found in both eyes. Full-field electroretinogram showed severe bilateral rod–cone dysfunction. Infectious etiologies and vitreoretinal lymphoma were ruled out. During cancer workup, intravitreal corticosteroid treatment was offered. Significant anatomical improvement with reconstitution of the ellipsoid zone, improved retinal pigment epithelium irregularities, and functional improvement were observed 3 weeks after bilateral intravitreal dexamethasone implants (Ozurdex). After 2 months, the patient received bilateral intravitreal 0.18-mg fluocinolone acetonide implants (YUTIQ). Later, a colonic adenocarcinoma was found (pathologic stage pT3 pN0). The patient recovered well from surgery, and no chemotherapy was needed. Nine months since bilateral intravitreal fluocinolone acetonide implants (11 months since bilateral intravitreal dexamethasone implants), best-corrected vision maintained at 20/25-2 in the right eye and 20/20 in the left eye without ongoing treatments. Bilateral reconstitution of ellipsoid zones and near resolution of retinal pigment epithelium irregularities remained stable. Repeat full-field electroretinogram demonstrated improved cone response in the left eye and stable diminished rod response in both eyes. The patient reported resolution of ocular symptoms.

Conclusion:

The sustained improvements with intravitreal corticosteroid monotherapy suggest potential advantages using local therapy over systemic treatment. A long-term follow-up is warranted. Further research is needed to evaluate the efficacy of using the 0.18-mg fluocinolone implant (YUTIQ) to treat cancer-associated retinopathy.
Exercise and nutrition interventions for renal cachexia
Authors: Slee Adrian , Reid Joanne
Published: February 2024

Purpose of review

Renal cachexia is a deleterious condition characterized by weight loss, muscle wasting and loss of physical function, quality of life, and increased mortality. Multimodal treatment strategies utilizing exercise and nutrition interventions have been recently suggested although the evidence base is still in its infancy. This paper aimed to review the current literature surrounding the use of exercise and nutrition for renal cachexia.

Main findings

Evidence from systematic reviews and narrative reviews indicates that resistance training (RT) is proven to have beneficial effects on improving muscle strength and in some cases physical function, although effects on muscle mass are mixed and inconclusive. Further, combined RT and aerobic training (AT) may have also beneficial effects on overall functional capacity and there appears to be no superior mode of protocol (inter/intra-dialysis vs. home-based). For nutrition, there is new data from systematic review of studies indicating that oral nutritional supplementation (ONS) may have beneficial effects on nutritional status (e.g. body mass index, plasma albumin and handgrip strength). Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects in haemodialysis patients from two recent systematic reviews, and evidence from other populations groups indicate they may be beneficial for improving muscle mass and strength.

Evidence is accumulating for individual exercise and nutrition components but specific multimodal treatment studies in renal cachexia need to be urgently undertaken.
Goldenhar Syndrome: Quality-of-Life Analysis of 43 Consecutive Patients
Authors: Schneider Josephine , Jehn Philipp , Gellrich Nils-Claudius , Lentge Fritjof , Spalthoff Simon , Korn Philippe
Published: February 2024

Goldenhar syndrome is a rare congenital disease, characterized by the malformation of craniofacial features, spine, and other organs. Its pathogenesis and impact on patients’ quality of life (QoL) have not been fully elucidated as yet. Therefore, data of all patients with Goldenhar syndrome, who were treated at Hannover Medical School between 1997 and 2020, were analyzed. Forty-three patients were identified. Their medical records were carefully reviewed for data regarding their age, sex, demographics, Pruzansky classification, surgical history, and affected side. Goldenhar syndrome-associated medical conditions, therapeutic procedures, and the impact of disease on QoL were assessed. Their QoL was assessed using the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP)-14 questionnaire. The χ2 test and Pearson correlation were performed for statistical evaluation. Female sex was positively correlated with OHIP outcomes, whereas male sex had a negative correlation with OHIP outcomes. Therefore, females had significantly worse QoL than males. No significant correlation was observed between the Pruzansky classification and QoL or between surgical history and QoL. Goldenhar syndrome is a rare disease that presents with varying severity. Hence, prospective studies are required to further investigate the impact of Goldenhar syndrome on the QoL.
Does digitalization affect shariah supervisory board efficiency? Evidence from Islamic banks
Authors: Cherni Sabrine , Ben Amar Anis
Published: February 2024

Purpose

This study aims to examine how digitalization affects the work efficiency of the Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) in Islamic banks.

Design/methodology/approach

This study uses panel data analysis of annual report disclosures over the past 10 years. The authors have selected 79 Islamic banks for the period ranging from 2012 to 2021. The criteria for SSB efficiency used in this research are disclosure of Zakat and disclosure in the SSB report.

Findings

The econometric results show that digitalization has a positive effect on improving the work efficiency of the SSB in Islamic banks. Accordingly, the authors provide evidence that the higher the bank's digital engagement, the higher the quality of the SSB.

Originality/value

The findings highlight the need to improve the current understanding of SSB structures and governance mechanisms that can better assist Islamic banks in engaging in effective compliance with recent governance and accounting reforms. Moreover, Islamic banks are the most capable and appropriate to implement and activate digitalization because they are based on a vital root calling for development if there are executives believing in it, as well as legislation supporting and serving them.