bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Fromsuperabilitàtotransabilità: towards an Italian disability studies
Authors: Noson Kate
Published: June 2014

This article discusses recent academic and theoretical approaches to disability in Italy, situating them in relation to Anglo-American disability studies as well as within the Italian academic context, and sketches out the contours of an emergent Italian disability studies. The discussion centres on three terms that have emerged recently in Italy:superabilità(implying both ‘ability to overcome’ and ‘exceptional ability’);diversabilità(being ‘differently abled’); andtransabilità(the desire for, or identification with, a disabled body by a non-disabled subject). The article considers the role of narrative in each of these categories, as well as the way that each deals with the question of limits. While discourses in each category construct or confirm a strong disabled identity, the article argues thattransabilitàmight also be understood as the transcendence of identity on the basis of ability. This alternative understanding puts pressure on the question of identity itself and challenges the very need for narrative (re)construction.
International cooperation and the inclusion of persons with disabilities: the Italian system
Authors: Ortali Francesca , Griffo Giampiero , Capobianco Simonetta
Published: June 2014

Two key themes emerging from recent studies on disability are the shift in the conception of persons with disabilities, expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), from objects to subjects of policies concerning them and the recognition of the close interconnections between disability and poverty. Both themes have clear implications for international development cooperation. It is essential that the high number of persons with disabilities in developing countries is recognised and that the programmes implemented by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including those in emergencies and disasters, are made fully inclusive of them. Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes are important in achieving inclusiveness and fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. Italian NGOs such as AIFO (Associazione Italiana Amici di Raoul Follereau) have played an important role in helping launch CBR, most notably in Mongolia. Two sets of research data published in 2008 have measured the impact of Italian action on disability in international development cooperation. The reports on the one hand reveal inadequate levels of funding in general, and funding by banks and private companies in particular, and insufficient involvement of disabled persons' organisations, but on the other suggest that Italy's domestic experience of advanced disability legislation can be productively applied in international contexts to include and empower persons with disabilities.
Disability and work inclusion in Italy: between unfulfilled promises and new disability culture
Authors: Ferrucci Fabio
Published: June 2014

This article outlines the existing provisions in Italy for inclusion in workplaces for persons with disabilities. It reports available statistics on the numbers of persons with disabilities in paid employment by sector, those seeking work and drawing pensions and those employed according to educational qualification. It considers the different channels, both formal and informal, through which persons with disabilities are able to gain access to paid employment and the concrete effects of Law 68/1999 on access to work and collocamento mirato (targeted work placement). One of the problems with the Italian legislation on compulsory work placement of disabled persons is that it applies only to employers who have at least 15 employees, whereas the vast majority of employers in Italy have fewer than 10. Lastly, the article reflects on the current situation and the challenges posed by new ways of conceiving of disability and of work. Work needs to be understood not simply as an occupation or position for which one receives payment but as a set of social relations between people, which has value in itself.
Introduction: disability rights and wrongs in Italy
Authors: Forgacs David , Tardi Rachele
Published: June 2014

This is the first issue ofModern Italyto focus on disability. We want to thank the general editors of the journal, Philip Cooke and John Foot, for having welcomed our proposal for it. The original nucleus was the panel ‘Disabilities' at the conference ‘Language, Space and Otherness in Italy since 1860’, which David Forgacs organised at the British School at Rome on 24-25 June 2010. The decision to include a panel on that topic was influenced, in turn, by Rachele Tardi's experience in 2009–2010 of managing a project in Ethiopia, funded by the Italian Foreign Ministry, for the NGO Comitato Collaborazione Medica, which worked with local partners on community-based rehabilitation (CBR) of people with disabilities. Our discussions of CBR at that time stimulated our interest in looking more closely at the contemporary situation of disability rights in Italy. Our main objective in editing this issue has been to offer readers a representative sample of writing both by Italian disability activists and researchers and by non-Italian scholars working on Italian disability issues. We deliberately sought a mix of academic writing and writing by people actively engaged in work for disability rights. Giampiero Griffo, who was the discussant at the conference panel and is one of the authors included here, was a willing mediator for other articles, and we would like to thank him for his support and help in making this issue happen. We also thank Franco Baldasso for his hard work assisting the editorial process, our peer reviewers for their invaluable input, and our translators, Bryan Brazeau, Kristin Szostek Chertoff, Brian DeGrazia and Stuart Oglethorpe. We should also like to thank Pier Vittorio Barbieri, Claudia Bertolè, Flavia Monceri and Antonio Pascale.
Frontier Politics, Providentialism, and “Hobbism” in Bacon’s Rebellion
Authors: Haskell Alexander B.
Published: June 2014

Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677) was an uprising in the Virginia colony that its participants experienced as both a civil breakdown and a period of intense cosmic disorder. Although Thomas Hobbes had introduced his theory of state sovereignty a quarter century earlier, the secularizing connotations of his highly naturalized conceptualization of power had yet to make major inroads on a post-Reformation culture that was only gradually shifting from Renaissance providentialism to Enlightenment rationalism. Instead, the period witnessed a complicated interplay of providential beliefs and Hobbist doctrines. In the aftermath of the English civil war (1642–1651), this mingling of ideologies had prompted the Puritans’ own experimentation with Hobbes’s ideas, often in tandem with a Platonic spiritualism that was quite at odds with Hobbes’s own philosophical skepticism. The Restoration of 1660 had given an additional boost to Hobbism as his ideas won a number of prominent adherents in Charles II’s government.

The intermingling of providentialism and Hobbism gave Bacon’s Rebellion its particular aura of heightened drama and frightening uncertainty. In the months before the uprising, the outbreak of a war on the colony’s frontier with the Doeg and Susquehannock peoples elicited fears in the frontier counties of a momentous showdown between faithful planters and God’s enemies. In contrast, Governor Sir William Berkeley’s establishmentarian Protestantism encouraged him to see the frontiersmen’s vigilantism as impious, and the government’s more measured response to the conflict as inherently godlier because tied to time-tested hierarchies and institutions. Greatly complicating this already confusing scene, the colony also confronted a further destabilizing force in the form of the new Hobbist politics emerging from the other side of the ocean. In addition to a number of alarming policies emanating from Charles II’s court in the 1670s that sought to enhance the English state’s supremacy over the colonies, Hobbes’s doctrines also informed the young Nathaniel Bacon Jr.’s stated rationale for leading frontiersmen against local Indian communities without Berkeley’s authorization. Drawing on the Hobbes-influenced civil war-era writings of his relation the Presbyterian lawyer Nathaniel Bacon, the younger Bacon made the protection of the colony’s Christian brotherhood a moral priority that outweighed even the preservation of existing civil relations and public institutions.

While Berkeley’s antagonism toward this Hobbesian argument led him to lash out forcibly against Bacon as a singularly great threat to Virginia’s commonwealth, it was ordinary Virginians who most consequentially resisted Bacon’s strange doctrines. Yet a division persisted. Whereas the interior counties firmly rejected Bacon’s Hobbism in favor of the colony’s more traditional bonds to God and king, the frontier counties remained more open to a Hobbesian politics that promised their protection.
Indian Removals
Authors: Bowes John P.
Published: June 2014

Indian removals as a topic primarily encompasses the relocation of Native American tribes from American-claimed states and territories east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the Mississippi River in the first half of the 19th century. The bill passed by Congress in May 1830 referred to as the Indian Removal Act is the legislative expression of the ideology upon which federal and state governments acted to accomplish the dispossession and relocation of tens of thousands of Native American peoples during that time. Through both treaty negotiations and coercion, federal officials used the authority of removal policies to obtain land cessions and resettle eastern Indians in what is known in the early 21st century as Kansas and Oklahoma. These actions, in conjunction with non-Indian population growth and western migration, made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for any tribes to remain on their eastern lands. The Cherokee Trail of Tears, which entailed the forced removal of approximately fourteen thousand men, women, and children from Georgia starting in the summer of 1838 until the spring of 1839, remains the most well-known illustration of this policy and its impact. Yet the comprehensive histories of removals encompass the forced relocations of tens of thousands of indigenous men, women, and children from throughout the Southeast as well as the Old Northwest from the 1810s into the 1850s.
Angel Island Immigration Station
Authors: Yung Judy , Lee Erika
Published: June 2014

The Angel Island Immigration Station (1910–1940), located in San Francisco Bay, was one of twenty-four ports of entry established by the U.S. government to process and detain immigrants entering and leaving the country. Although popularly called the “Ellis Island of the West,” the Angel Island station was in fact quite different from its counterpart in New York. Ellis Island was built in 1892 to welcome European immigrants and to enforce immigration laws that restricted but did not exclude European immigrants. In contrast, as the primary gateway for Chinese and other Asian immigrants, the Angel Island station was built in 1910 to better enforce discriminatory immigration policies that targeted Asians for exclusion. Chinese immigrants, in particular, were subjected to longer physical exams, interrogations, and detentions than any other immigrant group. Out of frustration, anger, and despair, many of them wrote and carved Chinese poems into the barrack walls. In 1940, a fire destroyed the administration building, and the immigration station was moved back to San Francisco. In 1963, the abandoned site became part of the state park system, and the remaining buildings were slated for demolition. Thanks to the collective efforts of Asian American activists and descendents of former detainees, the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997, and the immigration site, including the Chinese poetry on the barrack walls, was preserved and transformed into a museum of Pacific immigration for visitors.
Suburbanization before 1945
Authors: Keating Ann Durkin
Published: June 2014

Since the beginning of the 19th century, outlying areas of American cities have been home to a variety of settlements and enterprises with close links to urban centers. Beginning in the early 19th century, the increasing scale of business and industrial enterprises separated workplaces from residences. This allowed some urban dwellers to live at a distance from their place of employment and commute to work. Others lived in the shadow of factories located at some distance from the city center. Still others provided food or raw materials for urban residents and businesses. The availability of employment led to further suburban growth. Changing intracity transportation, including railroads, interurbans, streetcars, and cable cars, enabled people and businesses to locate beyond the limits of a walking city.

By the late 19th century, metropolitan areas across the United States included outlying farm centers, industrial towns, residential rail (or streetcar) suburbs, and recreational/institutional centers. With suburbs generally located along rail or ferry lines into the early 20th century, the physical development of metropolitan areas often resembled a hub and spokes. However, across metropolitan regions, suburbs had a great range of function and diversity of populations. With the advent of automobile commutation and the growing use of trucks to haul freight, suburban development took place between railroad lines, filling in the earlier hub-and-spokes patterns into a more deliberate built-up area.

Although suburban settlements were integrally connected to their neighbors and within a metropolitan economy and society, independent suburban governments emerged to serve these outlying settlements and keep them separate. Developers often took the lead in providing differential services (and regulations). Suburban governments emerged as hybrid forms, serving relatively homogeneous populations by providing only some urban functions. Well before 1945, suburbs were home to a wide range of work and residents.
Liturgical Theology
Authors: Geldhof Joris
Published: June 2014

Liturgical theology studies the meaning of Christian worship. Although it is a relatively recent approach, it is solidly anchored in the Christian tradition. Its present shape, fame, and impact would not be what they are and its major representatives would not be able to do what they are doing without the lasting influence of the Liturgical Movement and some inspiring figures that helped shape its theological profile. Their ideas and writings were widely received beyond linguistic and denominational borders and continue to be influential in the early 21st century. More concretely, the key to comprehending what liturgical theologians do lies in their appeal to and usage of the liturgy, broadly understood as the Church’s ritual, prayer, and worship practices. Therefore, liturgical theology is not so much a subdiscipline corresponding with a specific object of research and requiring a set of specialized methods, but rather a way of theologizing pertaining to the entire scope and content of the Christian faith and religion. Liturgical theologians interpret the liturgy as the normative horizon for any theoretical theological reflection and take the liturgy not as the only but definitely as the primary source for theology. This operational principle is reflected in the age-old adage lex orandi, lex credendi, which in its earliest formulation implies that the “law of faith,” or belief content, is determined, or shaped, by the “law of prayer,” or liturgical praxis. Because liturgical theology is still a field in full development, it faces a lot of challenges for the future—both within the Church and in the academy—but at the same time entails a promising ecumenical potential.
Christian Marriage and Funeral Services as Rites of Passage
Authors: Meyers Ruth A.
Published: June 2014

Weddings and funerals mark major transitions in human life. In these rites of passage, which effect a transformation from one status to another, an individual is separated from one state of existence, passes through a threshold or liminal space, and is incorporated into the community with a new status. In a wedding, individuals move from being single to being joined in a marriage, and in rites surrounding death, a person moves from the land of the living to become an ancestor. These rites of passage concern not only those making the transition but also the community. The ritual actions enable the individuals as well as the community to navigate momentous events in human life, they acknowledge and bring about a transformation in the community, and they offer an interpretive framework for the transition.

Weddings and funerals are not rooted in any single religious tradition. Rather, they are social and cultural events that may also have a religious dimension. Many religious weddings and funerals incorporate practices from different cultural contexts, and as social or cultural norms change, ritual practices may evolve to accommodate these norms. Wedding practices have changed to reflect modern Western notions of companionate marriage rather than arranged marriage, and, more recently, growing acceptance of same-sex life partnerships has led a few religious bodies to develop rituals to bless these relationships. Funerals express different understandings of life after death, and they are adapted to various practices for disposal of the body, for example, cremation or burial of the body.
Religion and the Body
Authors: Fuller Robert
Published: June 2014

The relationship between religion and the body can be viewed from two very different perspectives. The first perspective emphasizes culture’s role in constructing human thought and behavior. This approach illuminates the diverse ways that religious traditions shape human attitudes toward the nature and meaning of their physical bodies. Scholars guided by this perspective have helped us better understand religion’s complicity in such otherwise mysterious phenomena as mandated celibacy, restrictive diets, circumcision, genital mutilation, self-flagellation, or the specification of particular forms of clothing.

Newly emerging information about the biological body has given rise to a second approach to the body’s relationship to religion. Rather than exploring how religion influences attitudes toward our bodies, these new studies investigate how our biological bodies exert identifiable influences on our religious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Neural chemistry, emotions, sensory modalities, pain responses, mating strategies, sexual arousal systems, and genetic personality predispositions all influence the personal salience of religious beliefs or behavior. Attention to the biological body unravels many of the enigmas that formerly accompanied the study of such things as the appeal of apocalyptic beliefs, the frequent connection between religion and systems of healing, devotional piety aiming toward union with a beloved deity, the specific practices entailed in ascetic spirituality, or the mechanisms triggering ecstatic emotional states.
Early Christian Worship
Authors: Bradshaw Paul F.
Published: June 2014

The forms of Christian worship changed and developed considerably during the first four centuries of its existence, not least from a distinctive local or regional diversity to an increasing standardization of practice throughout the ancient world. One of the major factors influencing these changes was the eventual adoption of the New Testament as the Christian scripture, and another was the emergence of the church into public life early in the 4th century. Rites of initiation chiefly involving baptism in water marked the entry of new converts into the community of believers. The central observance was the Eucharist, celebrated every Sunday from at least the end of the 1st century. This was supplemented by services of the word on certain days of the week and by regular times of prayer each day undertaken by individuals or small groups of believers. Annual festal celebrations, the majority of which were associated with the anniversaries of martyrs and others who had died, also increased in number as time passed.

Christians understood the worship that they offered through Jesus Christ to be the spiritual fulfillment of the sacrificial cult of the Old Testament. Although at first insisting that they were not a religion like others around them—indeed, they were regarded as atheists by their contemporaries—they ultimately came to adopt the language, images, and terminology of standard religious discourse once their persecution had ceased and the Church had emerged as a cultus publicus in the 4th century. This also coincided with a shift from an understanding of worship as an essentially corporate action presided over by its appointed ministers to one where those ministers were seen as carrying out its liturgy on behalf of the people.
History of Ancient Israel
Authors: Williamson H. G. M.
Published: June 2014

The history of ancient Israel is best known to most people from the narratives in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. There, however, the name “Israel” covers a wide diversity of social and political entities over the course of many centuries. The first attestation of the name outside the Bible (on the Egyptian stela of Merneptah, c. 1208 bce) seems to refer at most to some ill-defined tribal federation. It then served for at least two different monarchies and later again as a social or religious title for the people who inhabited the Achaemenid (Persian) province of Yehud. The value of the biblical written records varies considerably with regard to historical content, and this must further be evaluated on the basis of internal literary analysis and in the light of evidence that comes from archaeological research, including in particular from epigraphic sources both from Israel itself and from many near and more distant nations.

How to combine these differing forms of evidence has been the topic of lively and sometimes rancorous debate, which varies in its detail from one period to another, often depending on the extent to which external sources are immediately available. Solutions are not always available, but exploration into the nature of these problems and misunderstandings in the application of appropriate methods reveal where the problems lie and, in some cases, what are plausible solutions.

Until the 19th century, the history of ancient Israel was, for most people, coterminous with the familiar narrative of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. No relevant external sources were known, and there was no reason to doubt its essential historical reliability, allowance made, of course, for those who could not accept the miraculous as historically factual.

Archaeological and epigraphical discoveries over the last two centuries or so, together with the introduction more recently of new and different historical methods, have led to aspects of this topic being fiercely contested in current scholarship. Taking a general familiarity with the outline “story” for granted, the following analysis will present some of the major topics on which new data have become available and on which opinion remains divided.
Greek and Roman Priests and Religious Personnel
Authors: Garland Robert
Published: June 2014

The Christian word “priest,” which is generally used to translate the Greek word hiereus and the Latin word sacerdos, only inadequately captures the essence of how those who bore this title functioned and were perceived in Greek and Roman polytheism. Foremost among the differences between pagan and Christian priests is the fact that the former did not have any pastoral responsibilities, were not expected to lead exemplary lives, and did not exist in a hierarchy under a centralized religious authority. Instead their duties were largely liturgical and administrative, the proper performing of sacrifice and the upkeep of the sanctuary being among the foremost. Methods of appointment varied—some priesthoods were reserved within specific kin-groups, others were available to the entire citizen body, and still others could be sold to the highest bidder.

There were, however, important distinctions between Greek and Roman priests. In the Roman world, for instance, there were far fewer priestesses and a closer connection between religion and politics. In both systems, however, religion provided important outlets for women, not least by presenting them with a unique opportunity to enhance their social status. In Rome the connection between religion and politics strengthened over time. Under the Augustan Principate the position of pontifex maximus, a kind of high priest, became central to the identity of the princeps and was filled by all his successors at least until the late-4th century. The Graeco-Roman world also had a variety of other religious personnel, who performed important functions like the supervising of temple finances or the expounding of sacral law. Among the most important were seers or diviners, who produced oracles and had the expertise to interpret omens.
Sex in America
Authors: DeRogatis Amy
Published: June 2014

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Please check back later for the full article.

Significant topics addressed in the study of sexuality and religion in the United States from precolonial times to the early twenty-first century include menstruation, puberty, reproduction, contraception, miscegenation, chastity, sexual variance, sexual prohibitions, sexual identity, sexual performance, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues. Providing examples from a wide historical time frame and a broad religious spectrum and pointing to comparisons and distinctions among religious traditions regarding sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual practices show that ideas about sexuality in religious groups and contexts have changed over time. The majority of scholarship on religion and sexuality in the United States has been published since the 1990s and much (although not all) is focused on contemporary issues. Also of relevance are contemporary U.S. debates about sexuality and religion that have become part of the public discussion of religious freedom and civic values, as well as relevant court cases (for example, the Hobby Lobby case argued in front of the Supreme Court in March 2014) and public discussions.
Scientific Approaches to Mysticism
Authors: Kaplan Stephen
Published: June 2014

The title “Scientific Approaches to Mysticism” reveals half the task and belies the other half—namely, which of the sciences and whose mysticism are to be considered. Is it Capra’s tao of physics, Bohm’s holomovement of undivided wholeness, or Saver/Rabin’s limbic correlates of mystical ecstasy? Is it Freud’s psychoanalytic oneness of nursing at the breast, or Goodall’s evolutionary biology of mystical wonder? Numerous mystics have presented us with a cornucopia of mystical experiences, and many sciences have been employed to analyze mysticism. Any effort to create a singular scientific approach to an “imagined singular mysticism” is doomed to vagueness. Specifics matter, and they matter in the scientific approaches to mysticism.

A scientific study of mysticism must first clarify what mysticism means—namely, a conscious experience in which one feels that the normal subject-object boundaries manifest in waking consciousness are altered, presenting a state of unity, union, or interrelationship. This definition of mysticism is broad enough to encompass nature mysticism, theistic I–Thou mysticism, and various forms of non-dualistic mysticisms ranging from experiences of the oneness of Being to the awareness of the emptiness of becoming. Each of these broad categories of mysticism must be refined by examining the particular tradition in which it manifests. As such, the scientific study of mysticism cannot assume, for example, that all Christian mystics, proclaiming the ultimacy of a personal communion with the Trinitarian god, are uttering the same thing, nor that non-dualistic mystics from different traditions, such as Christianity and Hinduism, are saying different things.

The scientific study of mysticism must immediately confront the threat of reductionism, in which “mystical experience” is reduced to some elemental explanation such as, “it is only one’s brain.” This threat of scientific reductionism has long been elicited by the knowledge, for example, that the intake of drugs is correlated with mystical experience; more recently, this threat of reductionism has been intensified by the knowledge that we have machines that measure the neural patterns associated with individuals having mystical experiences, and we have machines that can allegedly induce mystical experiences. Stepping beyond the psychological, cognitive, and neuropsychological approaches to mysticism, the connections between mystical experience and physics have also been drawn. Relativity and quantum theories have become the hermeneutical tools to analyze and interpret the declarations of all sorts of mystical experiences. These studies of mysticism tend to present parallel explanations of the world. Evolutionary theory and biology also offer different angles of approach to the study of mysticism proposing explanations, for example, which relate mystical experience to the evolutionary chain of being or to techniques for transcending present limitations.
The Female Body in Hindu Ritual Practices: Women’s Goddess Worship, Dharma, and the Question of Spiritual Agency
Authors: Yadlapati Madhuri M.
Published: June 2014

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion. Please check back later for the full article.

Women’s embodiment has often historically been denigrated in many religious traditions as a limited or inferior avenue to spiritual realization, sparking widespread feminist criticism of orthodox religious observances as a perpetual reinscription of patriarchal power structures. However, a growing body of feminist scholars is rejecting the false dichotomization of agency and complicity. Saba Mahmood and Orit Avishai, for example, discuss the role of agency within “conventional” religious observances of hijab and niddah in the discipline of living according to these rules and developing an inward virtue of modesty, piety, and discipline despite ambivalence. Especially in the Indian context of dharma, which privileges duties over rights and interconnected community over individual freedom, agency and power cannot mean individual self-promotion or resistance to responsibility, but instead reinforce one’s identity in responsibility to others.

Investigation into three ritual traditions of goddess worship (the Varalakshmi puja performed by Telugu women, the Kanya puja performed by many Indian communities, and the Tamil worship of Adhiparasakthi both in Chennai and in the Hindu diaspora) reveals the extent to which ritual embodiment of the goddess may translate into spiritual agency and empowerment for women. Whether the ritual explicitly extols conventionally feminine ideals of selflessness and caring for others, as in the Varalakshmi puja, or subverts conventional orthodoxy and male religious authority, as in the Adhiparasakthi worship, the agency and empowerment described by the worshipers largely reflect the values of interconnection, responsibility, and worldly concerns of practical flourishing of family and society. According to the ethnographic work of recent scholars, women worshipers often express emotional satisfaction, spiritual peace, and a marked sense of empowerment in their being able, through their worship, to affect the practical well-being of their families in myriad ways. Such reports offer a serious challenge to the previous view, suggested by Judith Butler, for example, that locates agency in one’s resistance to received norms.
Maternal Health in the Andes
Authors: Pacino Nicole L.
Published: June 2014

During the pre-Columbian and colonial periods, Andean cosmological understandings shaped indigenous approaches to maternal health. Women typically gave birth at home with the assistance of a midwife (also called a partera or comadrona in Spanish). Birthing and post-partum care relied on local herbal remedies and followed specific social rituals. Women drank teas derived from anise or coca during the labor process, gave birth in a squatting position (toward Mother Earth, or Pachamama), and drank sheep soup after labor to replenish strength and warm the body. Rooms were kept dark because the common perception was that bright light injured newborn babies’ eyes. After labor, families buried or otherwise disposed of the placenta to keep the baby and mother healthy and facilitate lactation, as per Andean tradition.

Changes in maternal health rituals began in the 18th century, as colonial rule became more consolidated. The rise of a distinct medical profession and government interest in population growth gradually shifted responsibility for maternal health from the Catholic Church and charitable organizations to the state. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the growing power and authority of the state and the medical profession led doctors and urban-based reformers to attempt to change long-standing Andean birthing practices, which they considered archaic and unsanitary. These reforms emerged from a desire to reduce infant mortality rates and to replace traditional healers with medical professionals who were trained, licensed, and regulated by the state. As reformers looked to replace Andean maternal health and healing practices with new scientific understandings of the female body and birthing process, they also worked to discredit and displace midwives’ knowledge and practices. In particular, they encouraged women to give birth in newly constructed hospitals and to seek the guidance of medical professionals, like obstetricians. However, these reforms met with limited success. In the Andes today, midwives still attend to roughly 50 percent of all births, and in some remote areas, the figure is as high as 90 percent. It is also more common today to see the merging of biomedical and ritual practices to increase women’s access to and acceptance of health services and to reduce overall mortality rates.
Comment on: “Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches” by Al-Abdulrazzak and Pauly
Authors: Garibaldi Luca , Gee Jennifer , Tsuji Sachiko , Mannini Piero , Currie David
Published: June 2014

This Comment was prompted by the substantial difference in weir catch estimates in the Gulf between (i) those reported by Al-Abdulrazzak and Pauly (2014. Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71(3), 450–454), who used Google Earth to count weir numbers, and (ii) those available from official national statistics provided by two major weir fishing countries (Bahrain and Iran). Satellite imageries, including Google Earth, are powerful tools for collecting data on visible structures when verified with adequate ground validation. However, an extension of their contribution to improving overall catch estimates is rather limited without having solid information on daily catch, which will substantially differ according to time and area, and fishing season lengths. It was noted that Al-Abdulrazzak and Pauly (2013) introduced positive biases through their interpretation of Google Earth images and data treatment. They included several assumptions, such as removing the impact of poor visibility, correcting grids of low resolutions, estimating number of unseen weirs, and applying daily catch rates higher than referenced observed values. The overall extent of such potential positive bias could be more than six times that which we considered reasonable. This Comment also corrects misconceptions about “FAO catch data”, discusses other available national data, and introduces the existence of the Regional Commission for Fisheries (RECOFI), a mechanism for fisheries management in the Gulf region, and its recent activities to collect more complete catch and effort data separated by gear.
Population structure of the European anchovy, Engraulis encrasicolus, in the SW Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean: evidence from otolith shape analysis
Authors: Bacha Mahmoud , Jemaa Sherif , Hamitouche Azzedine , Rabhi Khalef , Amara Rachid
Published: June 2014

Understanding the influence of oceanographic features on the structure of fish population is of basic importance to population dynamics studies and fisheries management. The European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus) exhibits a complex population structure which has produced conflicting results in previous genetic studies. This study examines the variability in the shape of the anchovy's otolith as a tool for identifying different stocks, and investigates the effects of oceanographic features on population structure. Anchovies were analysed from seven locations in the SW Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean along the northwestern African (Morocco) and Portuguese (Bay of Cadiz) coasts. A combination of otolith shape indices and elliptic Fourier descriptors were investigated by multivariate statistical procedures. Within the studied area, three distinct anchovy stocks were identified: the Algero-Provençal Basin, the southern Alboran Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean (Morocco and Gulf of Cadiz). The separation of the stocks was based on non-parametric discriminant analysis returning a classification percentage. Over 81% of the separation of the stocks could be explained by oceanographic features. Shape variability of anchovy otoliths was associated with the presence of the Almeria-Oran front, and the strait of Gibraltar. The Alboran stock was distinct from the Algero-Provençal Basin and from the closest Atlantic stocks (Gulf of Cadiz or Atlantic coast of Morocco). Results are discussed and compared with those previously obtained by genetic studies. This study supports the efficiency of otolith shape analysis for the stock identification of anchovy, and highlights the role of oceanographic features in stock separation.
Development of the large fish indicator and associated target for a Northeast Atlantic fish community
Authors: Modica Larissa , Velasco Francisco , Preciado Izaskun , Soto Maria , Greenstreet Simon P. R.
Published: June 2014

The large fish indicator (LFI) was developed to support the North Sea fish community Ecological Quality Objective (EcoQO) pilot study, intended to establish an operational ecosystem approach to management. Subsequently, procedures established in the North Sea were applied to the Celtic Sea to derive an LFI and target specific to this region. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires EU Member States sharing marine regions to cooperate using the Regional Seas Conventions, and using indicators already adopted by them. The MSFD explicitly suggests the LFI as a foodweb indicator, but it could equally well be used to monitor biodiversity. Here, we apply the established rationale to develop an LFI and target specific to the southern Bay of Biscay. Despite declining in the 1990s, the LFI subsequently recovered to near original values in 2008. Previously, relationships between the LFI and fishing pressure have involved lengthy time-lags. We observe a similar relationship, but with shorter lag. The nature of the larger species responsible for much of the change in the LFI may explain this difference, and might also suggest that, in the Bay of Biscay, the LFI is more appropriately used as a biodiversity indicator, rather than a foodweb indicator.
Ultra-faint high-redshift galaxies in the Frontier Fields
Authors: Yue B. , Ferrara A. , Vanzella E. , Salvaterra R.
Published: June 2014

By combining cosmological simulations with Frontier Field (FF) project lens models, we find that, in the most optimistic case, galaxies as faint as m ≈ 33–34 (AB magnitude at 1.6 μm) can be detected in the Frontier Fields. Such faint galaxies are hosted by dark matter haloes of mass ∼109 M⊙ and dominate the ionizing photon budget over currently observed bright galaxies, thus allowing for the first time the investigation of the dominant reionization sources. In addition, the observed number of these galaxies can be used to constrain the role of feedback in suppressing star formation in small haloes: for example, if galaxy formation is suppressed in haloes with circular velocity vc < 50 km s−1, galaxies fainter than m = 31 should not be detected in the FFs.
Suzaku discovery of Fe K-shell line from the O-rich SNR G292.0+1.8
Authors: Kamitsukasa Fumiyoshi , Koyama Katsuji , Tsunemi Hiroshi , Hayashida Kiyoshi , Nakajima Hiroshi , Takahashi Hiroaki , Ueda Shutaro , Mori Koji , Katsuda Satoru , Uchida Hiroyuki
Published: June 2014

We report the Suzaku/XIS results of the Galactic oxygen-rich supernova remnant G292.0+1.8, a remnant of a core-collapse supernova. The X-ray spectrum of G292.0+1.8 consists of two types of plasma, one is in collisional ionization equilibrium (CIE) and the other is in non-equilibrium ionization (NEI). The CIE plasma has nearly solar abundances, and hence would be originated from the circumstellar and interstellar mediums. The NEI plasma has super-solar abundances, and the abundance pattern indicates that the plasma originates from the supernova ejecta with a main sequence of 30–35 M⊙. The iron K-shell line at an energy of 6.6 keV is detected for the first time in the NEI plasma.
Potential Role of Flavobacterial Gliding-Motility and Type IX Secretion System Complex in Root Colonization and Plant Defense
Authors: Kolton Max , Frenkel Omer , Elad Yigal , Cytryn Eddie
Published: June 2014

Members of the Flavobacterium genus are often highly abundant in the rhizosphere. Nevertheless, the physiological characteristics associated with their enhanced rhizosphere competence are currently an enigma. Flavobacteria possess a unique gliding-motility complex that is tightly associated with a recently characterized Bacteroidetes-specific type IX protein secretion system, which distinguishes them from the rest of the rhizosphere microbiome. We hypothesize that proper functionality of this complex may confer a competitive advantage in the rhizosphere. To test this hypothesis, we constructed mutant and complement root-associated flavobacterial variants with dysfunctional secretion and gliding motility, and tested them in a series of in planta experiments. These mutants demonstrated significantly lower rhizosphere persistence (approximately 10-fold), plant root colonization (approximately fivefold), and seed adhesion capacity (approximately sevenfold) than the wild-type strains. Furthermore, the biocontrol capacity of the mutant strain toward foliar-applied Clavibacter michiganensis was significantly impaired relative to the wild-type strain, suggesting a role of the gliding and secretion complex in plant protection. Collectively, these results provide an initial link between the high abundance of flavobacteria in the rhizosphere and their unique physiology, indicating that the flavobacterial gliding-motility and secretion complex may play a central role in root colonization and plant defense.
Differential regulation of aggressive features in melanoma cells by members of the miR-17-92 complex
Authors: Greenberg Eyal , Hajdu Steven , Nemlich Yael , Cohen Ronit , Itzhaki Orit , Jacob-Hirsch Jasmine , Besser Michal J. , Schachter Jacob , Markel Gal
Published: June 2014

The various roles of microRNAs (miRNAs) in controlling the phenotype of cancer cells are the focus of contemporary research efforts. We have recently shown that miR-17 directly targets the ADAR1 gene and thereby enhances melanoma cell aggressiveness. miR-17 and miR-20a belong to the miR-17/92 complex, and their mature forms are identical except for two non-seed nucleotides. Nevertheless, here we show that these two miRNAs carry markedly different effects on melanoma cells. A strong positive correlation was observed between the expression of miR-17 and miR-20a among various melanoma cultures. Luciferase assays showed that miR-17 but not miR-20a directly targets the 3’ untranslated region of the ADAR1 gene. Ectopic expression of these miRNAs in melanoma cells differentially alters the expression of five exemplar TargetScan-predicted target genes: ADAR1, ITGB8, TGFBR2, MMP2 and VEGF-A. Whole-genome expression microarrays confirm a markedly differential effect on the transcriptome. Functionally, over-expression of miR-20a but not of miR-17 in melanoma cells inhibits net proliferation
in vitro
. The differential functional effect was observed following ectopic expression of the mature miRNA or of the pre-miRNA sequences. This suggests that the two non-seed nucleotides dictate target sequence recognition and overall functional relevance. These miRNAs are clearly not redundant in melanoma cell biology.
Accounting for biases in riboprofiling data indicates a major role for proline and not positive amino acids in stalling translation
Authors: Artieri Carlo G. , Fraser Hunter B.
Published: June 2014

The recent advent of ribosome profiling – sequencing of short ribosome-bound fragments of mRNA – has offered an unprecedented opportunity to interrogate the sequence features responsible for modulating translational rates. Nevertheless, numerous analyses of the first riboprofiling dataset have produced equivocal and often incompatible results. Here we analyze three independent yeast riboprofiling data sets, including two with much higher coverage than previously available, and find that all three show substantial technical sequence biases that confound interpretations of ribosomal occupancy. After accounting for these biases, we find no effect of previously implicated factors on ribosomal pausing. Rather, we find that incorporation of proline, whose unique side-chain stalls peptide synthesisin vitro, also slows the ribosomein vivo. We also reanalyze a recent method that reported positively charged amino acids as the major determinant of ribosomal stalling and demonstrate that its assumptions lead to false signals of stalling in low-coverage data. Our results suggest that any analysis of riboprofiling data should account for sequencing biases and sparse coverage. To this end, we establish a robust methodology that enables analysis of ribosome profiling data without prior assumptions regarding which positions spanned by the ribosome cause stalling.
Rewiring Host Lipid Metabolism by Large Viruses Determines the Fate of Emiliania huxleyi, a Bloom-Forming Alga in the Ocean
Authors: Rosenwasser Shilo , Mausz Michaela A. , Schatz Daniella , Sheyn Uri , Malitsky Sergey , Aharoni Asaph , Weinstock Eyal , Tzfadia Oren , Ben-Dor Shifra , Feldmesser Ester , Pohnert Georg , Vardi Assaf
Published: June 2014

Marine viruses are major ecological and evolutionary drivers of microbial food webs regulating the fate of carbon in the ocean. We combined transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore the cellular pathways mediating the interaction between the bloom-forming coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi and its specific coccolithoviruses (E. huxleyi virus [EhV]). We show that EhV induces profound transcriptome remodeling targeted toward fatty acid synthesis to support viral assembly. A metabolic shift toward production of viral-derived sphingolipids was detected during infection and coincided with downregulation of host de novo sphingolipid genes and induction of the viral-encoded homologous pathway. The depletion of host-specific sterols during lytic infection and their detection in purified virions revealed their novel role in viral life cycle. We identify an essential function of the mevalonate-isoprenoid branch of sterol biosynthesis during infection and propose its downregulation as an antiviral mechanism. We demonstrate how viral replication depends on the hijacking of host lipid metabolism during the chemical “arms race” in the ocean.