bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
LAVASET: Latent Variable Stochastic Ensemble of Trees. An ensemble method for correlated datasets with spatial, spectral, and temporal dependencies
Authors: Kasapi Melpomeni , Xu Kexin , Ebbels Timothy M D , O’Regan Declan P , Ware James S , Posma Joram M
Published: February 2024

Motivation

Random forests (RFs) can deal with a large number of variables, achieve reasonable prediction scores, and yield highly interpretable feature importance values. As such, RFs are appropriate models for feature selection and further dimension reduction. However, RFs are often not appropriate for correlated datasets due to their mode of selecting individual features for splitting. Addressing correlation relationships in high-dimensional datasets is imperative for reducing the number of variables that are assigned high importance, hence making the dimension reduction most efficient. Here, we propose the LAtent VAriable Stochastic Ensemble of Trees (LAVASET) method that derives latent variables based on the distance characteristics of each feature and aims to incorporate the correlation factor in the splitting step.

Results

Without compromising on performance in the majority of examples, LAVASET outperforms RF by accurately determining feature importance across all correlated variables and ensuring proper distribution of importance values. LAVASET yields mostly non-inferior prediction accuracies to traditional RFs when tested in simulated and real 1D datasets, as well as more complex and high-dimensional 3D datatypes. Unlike traditional RFs, LAVASET is unaffected by single ‘important’ noisy features (false positives), as it considers the local neighbourhood. LAVASET, therefore, highlights neighbourhoods of features, reflecting real signals that collectively impact the model’s predictive ability.

Availability and implementation

LAVASET is freely available as a standalone package from https://github.com/melkasapi/LAVASET.
To Whom is the Chaplain Beholden? Guest Editor Introduction to Special Issue
Authors: Mason Jordan
Published: February 2024

In this issue of Christian Bioethics, we invite chaplains and theologians to examine the role of the hospital chaplain in the contemporary institutional setting of the hospital. The simplicity of the chaplain’s role is often taken for granted; yet, this role is actually multivalent, with duties and loyalties pulling from many different sides. Chaplains are people of faith, ordained and/or endorsed ministers, and pastoral care professionals; they are at once beholden to God, to their own faith expression, and to their sense of vocation, to the hospital, and to the patient. With various loyalties and responsibilities in mind, we must ask the question, “To whom is the chaplain beholden?” The responses in this issue critically and constructively examine this question, providing theological resources that call chaplaincy away from the dominant modes of medicine. Whether through a primary loyalty to their calling, to God, to Divine presence, or to the spiritual formation of the patient, the authors in this special issue aim to help chaplains find theological resources to faithfully withstand the tensions they face in modern medical institutions.
Separable amygdala activation patterns in the evaluations of robots
Authors: Wei Zhengde , Chen Ying , Zhao Qian , Ren Jiecheng , Piao Yi , Zhang Pengyu , Zha Rujing , Qiu Bensheng , Zhang Daren , Bi Yanchao , Han Shihui , Li Chunbo , Zhang Xiaochu
Published: February 2024

Given the increasing presence of robots in everyday environments and the significant challenge posed by social interactions with robots, it is crucial to gain a deeper understanding into the social evaluations of robots. One potentially effective approach to comprehend the fundamental processes underlying controlled and automatic evaluations of robots is to probe brain response to different perception levels of robot-related stimuli. Here, we investigate controlled and automatic evaluations of robots based on brain responses during viewing of suprathreshold (duration: 200 ms) and subthreshold (duration: 17 ms) humanoid robot stimuli. Our behavioral analysis revealed that despite participants’ self-reported positive attitudes, they held negative implicit attitudes toward humanoid robots. Neuroimaging analysis indicated that subthreshold presentation of humanoid robot stimuli elicited significant activation in the left amygdala, which was associated with negative implicit attitudes. Conversely, no significant left amygdala activation was observed during suprathreshold presentation. Following successful attenuation of negative attitudes, the left amygdala response to subthreshold presentation of humanoid robot stimuli decreased, and this decrease correlated positively with the reduction in negative attitudes. These findings provide evidence for separable patterns of amygdala activation between controlled and automatic processing of robots, suggesting that controlled evaluations may influence automatic evaluations of robots.
Sex-based differences in fairness norm compliance and neural circuitry
Authors: Chen Wanting , Xiao Zhibing , Turel Ofir , Zhang Shuyue , He Qinghua
Published: February 2024

Human behavior often aligns with fairness norms, either voluntarily or under external pressure, like sanctions. Prior research has identified distinct neural activation patterns associated with voluntary and sanction-based compliance or non-compliance with fairness norms. However, an investigation gap exists into potential neural connectivity patterns and sex-based differences. To address this, we conducted a study using a monetary allocation game and functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how neural activity and connectivity differ between sexes across three norm compliance conditions: voluntary, sanction-based, and voluntary post-sanctions. Fifty-five adults (27 females) participated, revealing that punishment influenced decisions, leading to strategic calculations and reduced generosity in voluntary compliance post-sanctions. Moreover, there were sex-based differences in neural activation and connectivity across the different compliance conditions. Specifically, the connectivity between the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right dorsal anterior insular appeared to mediate intuitive preferences, with variations across norm compliance conditions and sexes. These findings imply potential sex-based differences in intuitive motivation for diverse norm compliance conditions. Our insights contribute to a better understanding of the neural pathways involved in fairness norm compliance and clarify sex-based differences, offering implications for future investigations into psychiatric and neurological disorders characterized by atypical socialization and mentalizing.
Development of the gas chromatography/mass spectrometry-based aroma designer capable of modifying volatile chemical compositions in complex odors
Authors: Obara Kaname , Uenoyama Reiko , Obata Yutaro , Miyazaki Masao
Published: February 2024

Many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are used to produce various commercial products with aromas mimicking natural products. The VOCs responsible for aromas have been identified from many natural products. The current major strategy is to analyze chemical compositions and aroma qualities of individual VOCs using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and GC-olfactometry. However, such analyses cannot determine whether candidate VOCs contribute to the characteristic aroma in mixtures of many VOCs. In this study, we developed a GC/MS-based VOC collection/omission system that can modify the VOC compositions of samples easily and rapidly. The system is composed of GC/MS with a switching unit that can change gas flow routes between MS and a VOC collection device. We first applied this system to prepare gas samples for omission tests, and the aroma qualities of VOC mixtures with and without some VOCs were evaluated by panelists. If aroma qualities were different between the 2 samples, the omitted VOCs were likely key odorants. By collecting VOCs in a gas bag attached to the collection device and transferring some VOCs to MS, specific VOCs could be omitted easily from the VOC mixture. The system could prepare omission samples without chemical identification, preparation of each VOC, and laborious techniques for mixing VOCs, thus overcoming the limitations of previous methods of sample preparation. Finally, the system was used to prepare artificial aromas by replacing VOC compositions between different samples for screening of key odorants. In conclusion, the system developed here can improve aroma research by identifying key odorants from natural products.
Report of Citrus tristeza virus in Diaphorina citri (Hemiotera: Liviidae) insects of different sexes, color morphs, and developmental stages
Authors: Zhang Jingtian , Xiao Yuxin , Hu Panpan , Chen Longtong , Deng Xiaoling , Xu Meirong
Published: February 2024

Diaphorina citri, also known as the Asian citrus psyllid, is the main vector of ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’ (CLas) associated with citrus Huanglongbing. It has been reported that D. citri could also be infected by Citrus tristeza virus (CTV), a virus that has been previously reported to be vectored by certain aphid species. In this study, the CTV and CLas profiles in different organs, color variants, developmental stages, or sexes of D. citri insects were analyzed. Although no significant differences were found between nymphs and adults in CTV titers, we found that the third instar nymph of D. citri was more efficient in CTV and CLas acquisition compared to the fourth and fifth instars and adults. With the instars of D. citri development, the relationship between the acquiring of CTV and CLas by D. citri seemed to follow an inverse trend, with the titer of CLas increased and the titer of CTV decreased. No significant differences were observed between the 2 sexes of D. citri in acquiring either CTV or CLas titers in the field. However, no differences were drawn among the 3 color morph variants for CTV titers. CTV titers in the midguts of adult D. citri were significantly higher than those in the salivary glands. Both CTV-positive incidence and CTV titers in the midguts of adult D. citri increased with increasing exposure periods. This study provides new data to deepen our understanding of the CTV-involved interaction between D. citri and CLas.
Oxford Professional Practice: Handbook of Quality Improvement in Healthcare
Authors: Lachman Peter
Published: February 2024

Quality of care is an essential outcome in modern healthcare. Improving the quality of care is an integral part of our daily work. In this book, the theories and methods of improvement are presented in an easy-to-follow format. The book provides the theoretical background and practical applications of the methods and tools of quality improvement. The book is organized on the principles of the Science of Improvement. It follows the evolution of quality from quality assurance (Quality 1.0) to system-wide quality improvement (Quality 2.0) to co-production of health (Quality 3.0). It systematically covers the theories and methods of Improvement and Implementation Science, with a focus on key challenges in healthcare such as developing safe person-centred care, ensuring equity of care, meeting the challenge of climate change, and ensuring that care is safe, effective, timely, and delivered efficiently. The book provides a practical approach that can be easily translated into day-to-day work, with practical case studies on how to improve service and clinical care. The psychology of change is explored, so that readers can learn how to engage with others to improve care. The ethics of quality improvement are examined, as are ways to assess the economics of improvement programmes and how to sustain and spread positive outcomes.
Health Measurement Scales
Authors: Streiner David L. , Norman Geoffrey R. , Cairney John
Published: February 2024

Health Measurement Scales is the ultimate online guide to developing and validating measurement scales that are to be used in the health sciences. It covers how the individual items are developed; various biases that can affect responses (e.g. social desirability, yea-saying, framing); various response options; how to select the best items in the set; how to combine them into a scale; and finally how to determine the reliability and validity of the scale. It concludes with a discussion of ethical issues that may be encountered, and guidelines for reporting the results of the scale development process. Appendices include a comprehensive guide to finding existing scales, and a brief introduction to exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.
Introductions and Sources of Meaning
Authors: Applebaum Allison J. , Breitbart William S.
Published: February 2024

The first session of Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Cancer Caregivers (MCP-C) beings with a rationale and overview of MCP-C, including a reflection on the experiences of Viktor Frankl and his creation of logotherapy. Next, a general introduction of the intervention is provided, including treatment goals, session topics, and logistics. The introduction includes a brief description of the four sources of meaning—historical, attitudinal, creative, experiential—that are explored in depth in subsequent sessions. The first session also provides an opportunity for caregivers to share their story and experience of caregiving, and to explore their definitions and understanding of the constructs of meaning and caregiving.
Historical Sources of Meaning
Authors: Applebaum Allison J. , Breitbart William S.
Published: February 2024

The third session of Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Cancer Caregivers focuses on the meaning that can be derived through reflecting on the historical context in which caregiving occurs. The main goal for Session 3 is to explore the topic of Historical Sources of Meaning and the guiding theme, Life as a Legacy. The discussion explores the legacy that caregivers are given, the legacy they are actively living, and the legacy that they will give to others in the future. By the end of Session 3, caregivers should have an understanding of the ways in which their past, present, and future legacies are connected and shaped by caregiving.
Experiential Sources of Meaning
Authors: Applebaum Allison J. , Breitbart William S.
Published: February 2024

The sixth session of Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy for Cancer Caregivers focuses on the meaning that can be derived through connecting to life through the five senses and through the experiences of love, beauty, and humor. The main goal for Session 6 is to introduce and explore the topic of Experiential Sources of Meaning by way of the guiding theme, Connecting with Life. By the end of Session 6, caregivers will be able to recognize ways in which the experiential source of meaning can become a particularly powerful resource when the challenges of caregiving intensify and/or when patients’ physical capacities become limited.
Cardiometabolic Health in Pregnancy and Postpartum: Findings From a Prospective Cohort Study in South Africa
Authors: Bengtson Angela M , Madlala Hlengiwe , Matjila Mushi J , Goedecke Julia H , Cu-Uvin Susan , McGarvey Stephen T , Werner Erika , Myer Landon
Published: February 2024

Background

The cardiometabolic impact of HIV infection and treatment with antiretroviral therapy (ART) in pregnancy and the postpartum period remains unclear.

Methods

We enrolled pregnant persons with (PHIV) and without HIV in Cape Town, South Africa, who were ≥18 years old at 24–28 weeks’ gestation and followed them up to 32 months postpartum. We estimated associations between HIV status and cardiometabolic risk including body mass index (BMI), obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2), blood pressure (BP; elevated systolic BP ≥130 and/or diastolic ≥85 mmHg), lipid levels, and metabolic syndrome according to the Joint Interim Statement criteria using multivariable log binomial or linear regression models. Subgroup analyses compared PHIV on efavirenz (EFV)- vs dolutegravir (DTG)-based ART.

Results

Among 400 participants (n = 200 without HIV, n = 200 PHIV), 52% had prepregnancy obesity and 9% had elevated BP. Postpartum, 57% were classified with obesity, 31% had elevated BP, and 29% had metabolic syndrome. In multivariable analyses, HIV was associated with a lower BMI prepregnancy but not postpartum; however, mean indices were in the obese range regardless of HIV status. Neither BMI nor obesity prepregnancy or postpartum differed by ART regimen. Among PHIV, participants on DTG had higher levels of elevated BP in pregnancy and postpartum, compared with PHIV on EFV.

Conclusions

We observed high levels of obesity, elevated BP, and metabolic syndrome in the perinatal period but few differences by HIV status. Participants on DTG may be more likely to have elevated BP in pregnancy and postpartum. Monitoring of cardiometabolic health for pregnant persons on DTG is warranted.
Museum Worthy
Authors: Campbell Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

A central component of the Nazi Final Solution was the seizure of Jewish assets, including cultural property. Agents of the Third Reich and their collaborators in occupied Europe scoured Jewish homes, galleries, and bank vaults for coveted objects, and manipulated art sales from persecuted owners. All told, they plundered millions of works of art, quality furniture pieces, archives, rare books, musical instruments, and other cultural items. With the defeat of the Third Reich, cultural officers in western Allied forces, popularly known as “the Monuments Men,” tracked down the plunder in castles, churches, and salt mines, and by the mid-1950s returned thousands of items to despoiled individuals. While restitution success stories have been told in books and films such as The Monuments Men and Woman in Gold, less known is the fate of thousands of objects that were repatriated to countries of origin but never returned to rightful owners. In France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, postwar governments selected the most coveted unclaimed works for public use, and distributed them to state-run museums and other public buildings. Museum Worthy examines the origins of these art custodianships built with so-called heirless art, justified in each case as a restoration of national cultural patrimony—at the expense of private Jewish owners. The quest to recover these items, carried out by descendants of Nazi-era victims, continues today.
Nazi Art Plunder in Western Europe
Authors: Campbell Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides an overview of Nazi looting operations in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, illustrating differences in occupation institutions, German and collaborationist antisemitic persecution, and the extent of cultural plunder. Despite contrasting trends and circumstances, the Nazis and their agents employed similar plundering mechanisms in the three countries. They drew on existing bureaucracies to seize items from Jewish homes, galleries, bank vaults, and repositories, and dominated a booming art market. While benefiting from a skewed exchange rate favoring the Third Reich, they amassed works at crowded auction houses in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam, and they pursued private sales with varying degrees of coercion, using thinly veiled threats to persuade more reluctant sellers.
Negotiating Cultural Restitution
Authors: Campbell Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes postwar diplomatic negotiations that enabled cultural repatriation to European countries of origin, a process carried out by the MFAA. The liberated countries of western Europe aimed to receive restitution of lost artworks with in-kind equivalent pieces, an objective eventually blocked by the United States. Without restitution in kind, French, Dutch, and Belgian officials believed the enemy had diminished their national cultural patrimony with impunity, though most losses were from private collections, not state-run museums. Through these negotiations and the eventual phasing out of MFAA operations in the early 1950s, tensions emerged between the international corps of cultural officers, many of whom wanted to continue research and restitution procedures, and higher civilian and military officials in the context of the Cold War.
Contested Patrimony
Authors: Campbell Elizabeth
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores a forty-year lull in art restitution claims, and the factors in a revival of claims in the mid-1990s. Case studies of legal disputes over works in the French and Dutch custodianships at the end of the century illustrate a shift in cultural property norms, particularly regarding wartime sales under duress. Among the three countries, the Dutch government was the most proactive in carrying out provenance research on works still held by the state by the early 2000s. After limited progress through the late 2010s, the French government finally launched a more robust research program in 2019. The Belgian government was least transparent and proactive during this time, and amid research and repatriation debates over colonial collections, expressed a commitment to pursuing research on works in the custodianship in 2022.
Resource Theory and Levels of Explanation: From Universal Structure to the Construal of Interpersonal Behavior
Authors: Adamopoulos John
Published: February 2024

Social resource theory (SRT) has made important contributions to the understanding of the structure of interpersonal behavior and the process of resource exchange in social interaction since the seminal work by Foa and Foa was published in 1974. An implicit theme underlying the original theory was that its basic constructs may be applied to different levels of conceptualizing social exchange—from the cognition of interpersonal events to the universal constructs of social behavior. This chapter attempts to formalize this multilevel perspective of the early work on SRT by delineating its implications for three distinct levels of operation. These levels differ in abstractness and include (abstract to specific) (a) the universal structure—the fundamental dimensions—of social behavior, (b) cultural patterns of interpersonal relations, and (c) cognitive processes involved in the construal of unique interpersonal events.
When Your Heart Goes Bumpity Bump: Neurological Characteristics of Love
Authors: Hatfield Elaine , Rapson Richard L. , Cacioppo Stephanie
Published: February 2024

This chapter reviews the classic formulation of social resource theory. It then recounts what is known about passionate love. It presents the most recent research by neuroscientists on the neurological characteristics of this resource. The chapter reviews data on the advantages and disadvantages, in this age of COVID-19, of computer matching for dates and mates. It discusses how social exchange and market conditions operate in the pairing up of couples who are similar/dissimilar in social desirability, leading to the consequences of equitable as opposed to inequitable exchanges. The chapter suggests that maternal and paternal love are different (and can perhaps be viewed as subtypes of love). Thus, not only are different subtypes of love different (romantic, compassionate, companionate, etc.) but also different “kinds” of love as distinguished by the sentient person, the person who “harbors” or feels love, are different.
Pneumatology
Authors: Gribben Crawford
Published: February 2024

Darby was not a cessationist. Believing that the Holy Spirit continued to distribute gifts to Christians, he identified the church as the Spirit’s special sphere of operations. This “pneumatic ecclesiology” allowed Darby to argue against any need for a distinctive clerical caste. In the church, the Spirit should be allowed freedom to work as he would, and any attempt to limit that activity represented a failure to understand what was most distinctive about the current age. Darby’s teaching about the Spirit’s work among individuals was also distinct. He came increasingly to argue that the sealing of the Spirit was an experience that believers enjoyed sometime after regeneration, a position that influenced some nineteenth-century accounts of sanctification and that, in the 1870s, influenced the emerging Keswick movement—much to his concern.
Artists Illuminating Milton’s Gendered Instant of Creation
Authors: Furman-Adams Wendy
Published: February 2024

‘Immediate are the acts of God’, the archangel Raphael tells our ‘first parents’, Adam and Eve, in book 7 of Paradise Lost, ‘but to human ears | Cannot without process of speech be told’. Milton’s illustrators faced an analogous but opposite challenge to that of his angel narrator: to represent the birth of time in spatial terms, through various moments selected out of a temporally related creation. While John Baptiste Medina (1688) simply privileged literal human chronology, later artists began to emphasize Raphael’s paradox of instantaneous process. In so doing, they also began to discover the poet’s ecstatically gendered conception of the universe. Notable visual interpretations include John Martin’s luminously gendered creation of light (1825–8), as well as visual renderings by Carlotta Petrina (1936) and Mary Groom (1937) that likewise foreground Milton’s careful delineation of the ‘two great sexes [which] animate the world’.
Working at the Edge in the Police City
Authors: Pauschinger Dennis
Published: February 2024

Chapter 5 brings the reader into the immediacy of police work in Rio’s everyday security operations. The chapter dives into the routine dynamics of a civil police station to assess the defining elements in understanding the police officers’ daily frustration in losing control of effectively handling Rio’s public security problematics—which ultimately leads to acts of violence as Foucauldian sovereign power. The chapter provides ethnographic material within a police station in which the author accompanied police officers during their day and night shifts. The insights into the world of ordinary policing before, during, and after the mega-events are telling in terms of how the promises of the host city’s public security are not at all reflected among those who are at the forefront of Rio’s urban conflict. Examining the militarized civil police Special Forces shows how daily war-like activities spark distinct everyday emotions such as adrenaline rush, frustration, and pleasure, and upset in practice the rationales of static and technology-based event security models.
Preserving the Judicial Function: Provisional Measures in International Adjudication
Authors: Francis Donovan Donald
Published: February 2024

Two basic propositions—first, provisional-measures authority as an essential component of the adjudicatory function, and second, the need to exercise that authority with discipline—drive the remarks in this chapter. These propositions are considered in light of the growth and proliferation in recent decades of international adjudicatory regimes. The chapter reviews the development and elaboration of the criteria by which adjudicators in these regimes assess requests for provisional measures, especially as the need to do so was given impetus by the consensus reached over the last two decades, across various regimes, that provisional measures are binding. The chapter considers this on the conviction that the current treatment of provisional measures reflects the progressive development of the international legal order and the increasing confidence of the international community in international adjudication as an essential component of the rule of law on the international plane.
A Concreteness Requirement in International Adjudication?
Authors: Caplan Lee M
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores whether the time-honoured standard for determining the existence of a “dispute” in international adjudication contains an implicit concreteness requirement. Specifically, it examines whether a justiciable claim is one based on an alleged breach of international law, as opposed to an abstract interpretive question. The chapter begins with a critique of Ecuador v United States, a state–state arbitration in which Ecuador sought an authoritative interpretation of a provision of the US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty. As the author explains, the United States won the case, but its concreteness argument did not persuade the tribunal which, instead, adopted an approach to defining a “dispute” that arguably jeopardizes sovereign discretion. The chapter then discusses the approach of international courts and tribunal in assessing the justiciability of abstract claims, noting the importance of clearly defining the parameters of the judicial function. Finally, the chapter addresses the ambiguity found in the compromissory clauses found in numerous treaties that permit the settlement of disputes “concerning the interpretation or application of the Treaty”, finding that the most reasonable interpretation of such language excludes the adjudication of purely abstract matters by international courts and tribunals.
The Human Right to a Clean Environment and the Jurisprudence of International Courts and Tribunal
Authors: Fitzmaurice Malgosia
Published: February 2024

The human right to a clean environment is one of the areas in which international courts and tribunals have developed and to a certain degree shaped international environmental law. Following the adoption of the 26 July 2022 Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on the human right to a clean environment, the judicial practice in this respect has become particularly significant. Regional and national courts and tribunals have contributed immensely to the development and clarification of the human right to a clean environment through their case law and Advisory Opinions. In general, they have played an innovative role in its evolution, fleshing out its principles. In this respect, the Advisory Option of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of 2018 is a particular importance when it has linked the existence of a human right to a clean environment to a catalogue of human rights in the American Convention on Human Rights, and under certain circumstances has acknowledged an extraterritorial application of such a right. Likewise, the concept of intergenerational equity has gained recognition through its implementation by courts and tribunals (national and international).
Introduction
Authors: Harrison Stephen , May Regine
Published: February 2024

This chapter sets out the project’s general methodology and use of reception theory, and provides a summary account of Apuleius and his literary output, of the original Latin story, and of its reception and interpretation before 1650, especially in Italy, which is the main source for the French receptions treated in Chapter 2; Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone/Lo cunto de li cunti and Giambattista Marino’s Adone are important here in their direct use of Apuleius. The separation of C&P from the rest of Apuleius’ novel and its symbolic/allegorical interpretation happen as early as Fulgentius (sixth century ce), setting precedents for later treatments; little known in the Middle Ages, the diffusion of C&P into vernacular European cultures is rapid and spectacular after the first printing of Apuleius in 1469.
Friend of the Family
Authors: Limbale Sharankumar
Published: February 2024

Part I of Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature contains short stories by Dalit authors addressing the theme of hidden identity. The seventh of these is Sharankumar Limbale’s ‘Friend of the Family’ (originally titled ‘Jaat’, or caste), first published in the short story collection Dalit Brahmin in 1984, and translated from Marathi here by Kedar A. Kulkarni. ‘Friend of the Family’ tells the story of a friendship between two university students, one from a family of dominant caste (Lingayat) landlords and the other from a family of Dalit (Mahar) labourers. When the wealthy friend invites his Dalit friend home for a holiday, subterfuge is employed to avoid precipitating a crisis.
Tattoo
Authors: Navaria Ajay
Published: February 2024

Part I of Concealing Caste: Passing and Personhood in Dalit Literature contains short stories by Dalit authors addressing the theme of hidden identity. The eleventh of these is Ajay Navaria’s ‘Tattoo’, translated from Hindi by Laura Brueck. ‘Tattoo’, which appeared in the critically acclaimed collection Unclaimed Terrain, is the story of a middle-aged bureaucrat embarking on a fitness program in Delhi. Anticipating the gaze of strangers at the gym, he becomes acutely conscious of the subtle visual signals by which he might inadvertently betray his caste and class origins.
Politicization of taxation and state–society reciprocity in Africa
Authors: Kjær Anne Mette , Ulriksen Marianne S. , Bak Ane Karoline
Published: February 2024

Since the 2000s, attention to domestic revenue mobilization has expanded and, in parallel, so have tax revenues in Africa. We argue that this expansion has led to politicization of taxation and with it the potential to change state–society relations and improve reciprocity. A flourishing literature on taxation and the fiscal contract has linked taxation to state-building and political outcomes such as democracy, accountability, and political participation, while critical strands argue that history, socio-economic conditions, and local power relations are conditioning circumstances. Yet, there is limited systematic comparative case-based research on what happens when state actors and revenue providers bargain over taxes. This motivates our volume and the research question: When and under what conditions does revenue bargaining emerge, evolve, and lead to fiscal contracts? To answer this question, we combine the fiscal contract theory with the political settlement approach. In this introductory chapter, we present our contributions to these two literatures and our country cases: Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda.
We pay, we act?
Authors: Jacobsen Ane Edslev
Published: February 2024

Fiscal contract theory proposes that governments’ need for taxation can foster revenue bargaining and government accountability through popular collective action, tax resistance, and political pressure. This chapter investigates this potential micro-level taxation-collective action link among small-scale revenue providers—women informal market traders—in seven markets in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The study shows that taxation can motivate collective organizing and action among the traders through experiences of economic hardship and lack of reciprocity, but also shows that the traders experience significant power-related barriers to collective action constraining their capacity for collective engagement. Nonetheless, women in some markets display a greater capacity for collective action. This is the case in markets where a trader or an external organization deliberately acts as a cultivator of social trust, community, and organizational capabilities among the women. This supports the women’s collective engagement and, in some instances, their collective attempts to bargain with local authorities.
A third party at the table
Authors: Beach Rachel
Published: February 2024

Theories of revenue bargaining often assume that bargaining involves two actors: state and society. This chapter show how third parties such as donors and traditional authorities can affect the negotiations, power dynamics, and outcomes. Societal actors rarely sit alone with the state at the metaphorical bargaining table. It is therefore important to understand how third parties influence bargaining processes. This chapter shows that a third party’s intervention can invert the bargaining power and position of the state. In one case, a donor-financed programme shifts the state’s capacity for tax enforcement. In a second case, the state leverages the organizational power of a chieftain in exchange for personal tax leniency. Consequently, this chapter emphasizes the importance of implementation of fiscal policy and tax practices in a developing country as an arena of revenue bargaining.
Climate Change as Political Catastrophe
Authors: Mittiga Ross
Published: February 2024

In a 2018 special report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the world’s leading climate research body—warned of “catastrophic” outcomes unless states were to undertake “unprecedented” action “across all sectors of society” before 2030. In the years since, hundreds of governments have declared a “climate emergency.” Not surprisingly, then, scholars in many disciplines—from environmental science to economics—have begun to give a more central place to the potential for climate catastrophe and collapse in their research. This book extends this interdisciplinary conversation to the field of normative political theory, investigating what exactly counts as a “climate catastrophe” and what catastrophic climate change portends for contemporary societies. It argues that climate change is politically catastrophic insofar as it threatens to undermine the material conditions that make justice and, by extension, (stable) democratic government possible. It then uses the lens of catastrophe to bring into focus pressing questions about how to navigate trade-offs between fairness and precautionary efficacy in the design of climate policy, the legitimacy of authoritarian climate emergency powers, and the nature and role of climate disobedience. Apart from the specter of nuclear annihilation, human civilization has never had to reckon with a threat so final and encompassing as that of climate catastrophe. This book starts from the premise that, much as “supreme necessity” is thought to alter the contours of what is permissible in war, the credible threat of politically catastrophic climate change upends many of our most basic and widely shared assumptions in liberal and democratic thought.
Climate Change, Catastrophe, and the Circumstances of Justice
Authors: Mittiga Ross
Published: February 2024

The most efficacious allocation of burdens is not always the fairest. In cases of conflict, which value should take priority? How we resolve this dilemma has vast implications for how we respond to climate change. For after decades of inaction we may simply be unable to prevent climate catastrophe without imposing unfair burdens on some parties. After examining and rejecting two potential solutions to this dilemma, this chapter advances an alternative, which holds that precautionary efficacy may take priority over fairness whenever the material conditions that make justice possible are themselves at risk—i.e. when faced with (credible threats of) political catastrophe. Put more plainly, in certain exigent cases, injustice may be permissible for the sake of justice itself. The chapter then defends the claim that climate change poses such a threat, before examining what efficacious precaution against politically catastrophic climate change might involve.
Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change
Authors: Mittiga Ross
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines how climate (in)action bears on political legitimacy, and whether authoritarian climate emergency powers could ever be considered legitimate. It begins by distinguishing between “foundational legitimacy,” which pertains to the ability to ensure safety and security, and “contingent legitimacy,” which typically requires democracy, rights, or, more generally, that political power be acceptable to those subjected to it. While under normal conditions foundational and contingent legitimacy are perfectly compatible, in emergency situations conflicts can and often do arise. A salient example of this was the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association became legitimate techniques of government. Politically catastrophic climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, the chapter argues, legitimacy may permit, or even require, a similarly authoritarian approach. After defending this claim, the chapter considers ways in which confronting the climate crisis may precipitate an enduring reconfiguration of contingent legitimacy.
Conclusion
Authors: Shaffer Paul
Published: February 2024

The notion of immiserizing growth is not new. It was a mainstay of English radicalism in the early nineteenth century and figured in the works of some of the most important classical political economists, including Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx. The aim of this book has been to shed additional light on this phenomenon which has not received its due attention in recent years Specifically, it aims to answer three core sets of questions: (1) what is immiserizing growth and how should it be conceptualized?; (2) how often, when and where does it occur?; and (3) why does it occur? Chapter 9 reviews the main findings of the individual chapters of the book which bear on these three questions. It concludes by suggesting a number of policy-related reasons why immiserizing growth matters.
Exchange Bias
Authors: O’Grady K. , Fernandez G. Vallejo , Hirohata A.
Published: February 2024

The phenomenon of exchange bias occurs when a ferromagnetic material is grown in intimate contact with an antiferromagnetic material leading to complex behaviour and a shifted hysteresis loop when the antiferromagnet is cooled in the presence of an exchange field from the ferromagnetic layer which must be saturated. The discovery and the physical origin of exchange bias is discussed along with early analytical models of the phenomenon. A few selected numerical models are also discussed but then there follows a detailed discussion of the York Model of Exchange Bias and the York Protocols which are now universally accepted as the optimum description of this effect in granular thin films.
Magneto-Resistance
Authors: O’Grady K. , Fernandez G. Vallejo , Hirohata A.
Published: February 2024

The basic origins of magneto resistance are discussed in terms of the long established two channel model originally developed by Mott and others. The consequence of this for anisotropic magneto-resistance is presented followed by a detailed description of the band theory of ferromagnetism due to the more recent discoveries of giant magneto-resistance (GMR) and tunnelling magneto-resistance (TMR) which depend on the band structure of ferromagnetic materials. Finally the phenomenon of spin transfer torque where a polarised spin current can be used to reverse the orientation of a magnetic micro or nano dot is presented.
Pufendorf’s International Political and Legal Thought
Authors: Schröder Peter
Published: February 2024

This chapter introduces Samuel Pufendorf’s political and legal international thought. It gives an overview and introduction of key contexts and concepts which are treated in the volume, which aims to clarify Pufendorf’s sometimes previously understated ideas about interstate relations from a variety of new and multidisciplinary perspectives. The chapter then sets out the structure of the volume and provides a synthesis of each chapter.
Pufendorf’s Contract Theory of the State and the Distinction between Citizens and Foreigners
Authors: Ramelet Laetitia
Published: February 2024

This chapter investigates the distinction between citizens and foreigners operated by Pufendorf’s contractual theory of the state. His account of the double covenant creates a long-lasting differentiation between the honorific title of citizen, which applies to the members of the state’s founding association as well as their descendants, and the status of foreigners, who at first can only covenant with the ruler, not with the members of this association. Foreigners’ rights of entry and residency are left for the sovereign to determine. This is because the scope of these rights is considered as a matter of safety, the purpose of the double covenant, which may take precedence over the natural, yet imperfect obligations of hospitality across borders. The chapter also compares Pufendorf’s account with those of his predecessors, Grotius and Hobbes, and shows how it exemplifies an inherent tendency of contract theories of the state to favour a community’s claims over those of foreigners.
Pufendorf on European Conquest and Non-European Peoples
Authors: Christov Theo
Published: February 2024

Pufendorf is strikingly unique. In an age when few voices called out the inhumane treatment of European empires towards native populations, Pufendorf provides an instructive lesson for pluralizing our understanding of early modern political thought. Unlike many of the political thinkers with whom he is usually grouped, he stands out as a clear outlier in his vision for harnessing Europeans’ ambitions for overseas empires and voices an active defence of the rights of indigenous people. Keenly aware of the growing inequities between Europeans and non-Europeans created by conquest and subjugation, Pufendorf essentially offers a critique of the Eurocentric nature of the law of nations long before anyone could see its far-reaching and devastating hold on those people living outside of Europe.
‘Infinite Right’
Authors: Olsthoorn Johan
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyses Pufendorf’s doctrine that natural rights of war and violent self-defence are ‘infinite’. Nothing that victims do to avert an unjust attack can wrong their assailants or leave them with standing to complain. This doctrine—call it Infinite Right—makes it rightful to kill a thief to protect one’s property. This chapter contrasts Pufendorf’s interpretation and justification of Infinite Right with those of Grotius and Kant. For Grotius, the in bello requirement of necessity (‘minimum-force’) is internal to Infinite Right. Pufendorf and Kant, by contrast, posited a natural right to kill in self-defence even if less harmful ways of avoiding the unjust threat are available. Grotius and Kant upheld Infinite Right by reasoning that it must be morally possible for victims of unjust aggression to enforce their rights. Pufendorf argued instead that natural law duties are owed only towards those who reciprocally act peacefully and sociably.
How can governments legitimize their budgets?
Authors: Karremans Johannes
Published: February 2024

This opening chapter poses the question of how governments can legitimize their expenditures and taxation policies. Based on theoretical insights derived from the literature on political parties, it argues that in representative democracies governments need to find a balance between responding to electoral demands and responsibly securing the long-term availability of sufficient resources to finance public goods and services. Populist and technocratic visions of public governance directly challenge this balance, as they respectively emphasize the two different aspects of democratic legitimacy. Considering that in current times populist parties are highly electorally successful and public policy delivery requires growing levels of technocratic expertise, the question is raised how European governments in recent years have navigated these pressures.
The coding of annual budget plans
Authors: Karremans Johannes
Published: February 2024

The coding of annual budget plans is the key empirical basis behind the present study. It is therefore important to contextualize and highlight the added value of this particular empirical source. Talk is often cheap, but sometimes it matters a great deal. This chapter argues that talk becomes relevant for understanding public policy when it is produced in contexts where all stakeholders are in the audience and when it features direct reference to policy initiatives. The presentation of annual budget plans by the finance minister to the parliament fulfils these criteria, and also features several important comparative advantages. This chapter presents the coding strategy for measuring responsiveness and responsibility in these texts, and illustrates the empirical material that is at the heart of the analysis presented in this book.