bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Oral Hearing
Authors: Hamer Kenneth
Published: September 2023

This chapter elaborates on the rules of conducting an oral hearing. In order to have an oral hearing, or rather to avoid disposal without an oral hearing, the claimant needs to show that the absence of an oral hearing would be unfair. However, the cases of Ex parte Anderson, Thompson, and Osborn and Booth v. Parole Board make clear that there is no common law rule that every hearing must be an oral hearing. The chapter elaborates on the circumstances where an oral hearing will be necessary, such as facts that appear to be important and are in dispute. It looks into disciplinary cases regarding the Army Board, where the absence of an oral hearing is not unlawful, and allegations of inadequate professional service.
Public or Private Hearing
Authors: Hamer Kenneth
Published: September 2023

This chapter explicates the rules of the healthcare regulators and other professional bodies surrounding public hearings and private hearings. Hearings or parts of a hearing will usually be held in private when the tribunal is considering matters of health or other personal and sensitive information of a party or a witness. Meanwhile, a public hearing is not necessarily the case in respect of non-statutory bodies where the relationship between the parties may be contractual, which is akin to disputes between employer and employee. The chapter clarifies that derogation from open justice can only be made if it is strictly necessary. Moreover, derogation should not be made simply because the parties consented.
Registration
Authors: Hamer Kenneth
Published: September 2023

This chapter covers the provision for the registration of practitioners in healthcare professions. It explains some provisions that had been established in the Medical Act 1983, the Dentists Act 1984, and the Pharmacy Order 2010. Additionally, some regulators made provisions by statutory instruments for procedures to be followed concerning registration, such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council (Education, Registration and Registration Appeal) Rules 2004. The chapter explains that statutory and non-statutory rules of regulators provide for the registration of members and appeals relating to registration decisions. It discusses the cases of applications for registration, renewal of registration, and exemptions before considering the cases of withdrawal and cancellation of registration.
Re-opening and Review of Decisions
Authors: Hamer Kenneth
Published: September 2023

This chapter cites the power of regulators to reopen or review decisions. It explains the significance of the regulators’ power to review in lieu of the protection of the public or the prevention of injustice or otherwise in the public interest. The court will allow a regulator to review or reopen a decision where an administrative mistake or error has occurred. The chapter considers the power of a judge or the Independent Office for Police Conduct to similarly reopen decisions in certain cases. It references the recent case of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria dealing with the principles that should be applied before a judge decides whether or not to exercise the power.
Warnings
Authors: Hamer Kenneth
Published: September 2023

This chapter tackles the warnings in healthcare cases. Case examiners or investigating committees can issue warnings if there is evidence to suggest that the practitioner’s behaviour or performance has fallen below the standards expected to a degree warranting a formal response by the regulator or tribunal. Meanwhile, some fitness to practise tribunals may issue a warning or give the respondent advice on future conduct when charges are dropped, or the registrant’s fitness to practise is not impaired. The chapter clarifies that a warning will not prevent a practitioner from holding a licence to practise and will not usually place any restrictions on their registration. It insists that warnings should nonetheless be viewed as a serious response to the practitioner’s conduct or performance.
Top-Level Follow-Up and Monitoring
Authors: Santos Juan Manuel
Published: September 2023

The fight against poverty in Colombia between 2010 and 2018 was taken on at the highest level as a presidential commitment. With continued international support, including consulting services from McKinsey … Company, two concrete mechanisms were established to evaluate and supervise the strategy against poverty: the Cross-Cutting Poverty and Inequality Roundtable and a dashboard with a traffic light system that indicated progress or setbacks in the fulfillment of each involved State entity’s commitments. The work of presidential advisor María Lorena Gutiérrez was essential in designing and putting these mechanisms into practice. The chapter finishes with a lesson about the need to shift paradigms and mindsets so that the leading players in the public agenda, such as ministers and the heads of public entities, contribute to achieving these common goals. Examples from Juan Manuel Santos’s experience in reconciling views and priorities when he was Colombia’s first minister of foreign trade, the minister of finance, and the minister of national defense illustrate this lesson.
Policies and Programs to Reduce Multidimensional Poverty
Authors: Santos Juan Manuel
Published: September 2023

One of the primary aims of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is to improve the direction and targeting of social spending to make it more efficient and reach the sectors that have the greatest impact on poverty reduction. In the case of Colombia, regular analysis of this index at the Poverty Roundtable, using the dashboard as a tool, sounded alarms about possible delays or inefficiencies. These alarms served to redirect efforts and budget toward responding to specific needs in early childhood care, education, housing, and health through bold and innovative programs. Some examples from the 2010–2018 period are the National Strategy for Comprehensive Early Childhood Care, “De Cero a Siempre” (“From Zero to Forever”), based on the theories of Professor James Heckman; free primary and secondary education; the free housing program; and the Statutory Health Law, which strengthened price controls for medicines and ended the distinction between first- and second-class patients. This chapter shows that, in the face of chronic problems, it is possible to devise concrete and quick-acting solutions that make a difference.
“Devices for Thinking about the Past”
Authors: Zwicker Jonathan
Published: September 2023

At the opening of the nineteenth century, writers in Japan began to conceive of a new history of kabuki based on information that they collected using old theater programs. This history, which eschewed the focus of earlier publications on the biographies of actors and focused instead on the minutiae of performances arranged in chronological order, emerged out of a broader interest in the history of the quotidian and the everyday to which writers and collectors turned their attention in the first decades of the nineteenth century. “Devices for Thinking about the Past” shows how these early efforts to write a history of kabuki in the city of Edo stretched out across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and connected, in later years, to the establishment of the academic discipline of theater studies in Japan and to the founding of repositories and archives of theatrical history.
Epilogue
Authors: Zwicker Jonathan
Published: September 2023

The large-scale digitization of books, prints, and ephemera has created a new environment for the writing of theater history which at once allows scholars easy access to an astonishing array of materials but also creates new challenges for examining those materials in person or in situ. “Stage and Print in the Digital Age” asks how the digital environment has changed the processes of research, what challenges it poses, and what lessons can be drawn from the past when writers and collectors from two centuries were already asking what relationship copies bear to originals and how we might think of writing history when the abundance of the past seems to overwhelm the ability of any writer to catalogue and know it.
Bat City Limits
Authors: Graper Julianne
Published: September 2023

In the late 1990s, cultural geographers Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel introduced the concept of a “human-animal borderlands,” examining liminal and often hotly contested spaces of multispecies coexistence (1998, xvii–xviii). Yet in the twenty-first century, multispecies spaces are the norm, not the exception. How can a borderlands approach help us understand cultural production in urban spaces? This chapter situates music production in Austin, Texas, in broader ecologies that link human beings and bats. Using techniques from multispecies ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010), science and technology studies (Tsing 1995; Haraway 2008), and ecomusicology (Allen and Dawe 2016; Titon 2019), it discusses Austinites’ initially negative reaction to its resident bat colony, shifting conservation narratives, and the city’s ensuing proliferation of bat-based artistry. Unlike previous interpretations of bat conservation in Austin, however, the chapter maintains that bats’ status as “weird” is central to their adoption as markers of Austinite identity. As such, bat conservation has not simply replaced existing anti-bat narratives; rather, it has brought to light the mobilization of nonhuman species in disputes over sharing space—including attendant racial politics in a US state on the border with Mexico.
Music, Ecology, and Atmosphere
Authors: Torvinen Juha , Välimäki Susanna
Published: September 2023

The chapter discusses music as atmosphere that communicates collective environmental feelings. The focus is on contemporary classical music and its emerging ecocritical trend. Compositions representing this trend draw significantly on the atmospheric dimensions of music, such as pre-reflective affectivity and shared emotional experiences. Works by Finnish composers Cecilia Damström and Outi Tarkiainen are analyzed as examples of atmospheric aesthetics, which underlines the role of collective experiences in our relationship with the natural environment. These compositions also illuminate how the ecocritical trend in classical music is often concordant with intersectional feminism and societal activism. This relates to the crisis of classical music in the twenty-first century, when the long-standing discriminatory practices of the classical music culture have been challenged by a new awareness about social responsibility and environmental sustainability. Methodologically, the chapter combines ecocritical music analysis with phenomenological atmospherology.
Coyote Made the Rivers
Authors: Hamill/čnaq’ymi Chad S.
Published: September 2023

For millennia, the waterways of the Columbia Plateau have shaped the lifeways of its people, providing sustenance and an ecological framework for social cohesion. Not long after the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1805, that framework was methodically disassembled. The treaties of the mid-nineteenth century severely limited the movement of Plateau tribes, leading to fixed and stagnant communities. The dams curtailed the natural movement of the rivers, obstructing salmon and poisoning the lifeblood of the People. With a blend of traditional stories, Indigenous perspectives, and scholarship, this chapter examines the undoing of the Columbia River and its tributaries. In addition, it explores the ways in which the Spokane Tribe and other Native nations in the region practice, through long-held forms of cultural expression tied to traditional songs, resilience and resistance. These songs, like the sacred foods that have sustained Indigenous communities for thousands of years, emanate from the natural environment, in which the ancestral past folds into the present. In this way the songs, and the places they embody, have strengthened Native ways of knowing, both in the context of one’s community and the landscape in which it sits. This spiritually based ecological mindset has been critical to establishing and maintaining a correct and sustainable relationship with place, a relationship threatened by climate change and the colonial mindset. The chapter’s objective is to illuminate perspectives that take on added urgency in the era of climate change in the hope that we can avoid a global catastrophe in the making.
Democracy’s Hiccups
Authors: Cohen Meghan Sobel , Hopkinson Karen McIntyre
Published: September 2023

Chapter 5 puts forward specific political and development-related events, processes, or structures that journalists say impact their freedoms and can be used to understand media systems in developing nations from a more historically and contextually informed view: distance from conflict, political benchmarks (specifically, who is in office and for how long, elections and their aftermath, political and tribal influences on media ownership, and how laws are interpreted and enforced), international linkages, and the strength of a country’s civil society (including nongovernmental organizations, social norms, and journalism cultures). While these factors are certainly not the only elements that can influence mediascapes in varying countries, this list can be understood as a starting point for nuanced understanding and theorizing about press freedom environments operating within varying political systems.
Transitional Objects
Authors: Bollas Christopher
Published: September 2023

This chapter covers Donald Winnicott’s definitions of transitional objects and transitional phenomena. Winnicott introduced both terms to designate the immediate area of experience. Moreover, Winnicott believes the customary psychoanalytic understanding of human nature includes a third part on the immediate area of experiencing wherein inner reality and external life contribute. The chapter discusses the analyst’s effort to identify and support true self-activity in sessions as the most important feature of the Winnicottian clinical technique. It cites how the true self and its facilitation evolve into a personal pattern in the course of psychoanalysis, so the transitional space is crucial to the evolution.
Identity Politics
Authors: Anil Pratinav
Published: September 2023

This chapter is an interpretative essay that breaks new ground by looking at a wide range of nationalist Muslims, the most powerful Muslim force in modern Indian history, over half a century to argue that beneath all the complexity and variation in their thinking, there lay a common set of assumptions, a common worldview that shaped their politics. Synthesizing a mass of secondary material, and using autobiographies, letters, reports, and the Transfer of Power documents, it shows that a distinct nationalist Muslim ideology emerged in the interwar period; and that a separatist challenge, building on the work of turn-of-the-century revivalists and modernists, consolidated in opposition to it. The quarter of a century to independence, then, is best characterized as a dialectic between the “nationalist” and “separatist” Muslim, which, for reasons described in the chapter, culminated in a victory for the latter. But defeat for the nationalist Muslims was not without its silver lining. For with Partition, they came to achieve complete hegemony as representatives of Muslim India.
Class Acts
Authors: Anil Pratinav
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks at the Muslim elite, in particular the custodians of Muslim endowments; aristocrats and princely pensioners; and the patrician landed interest in charge of the Aligarh Muslim University’s board of trustees. What transpires from this analysis is that, even as India was an inhospitable place for Muslims, some wealthy and powerful members of the community never had to contend with discrimination to begin with. In many ways the princes and patricians, all political animals a step removed from politics proper, never had it better. They navigated Nehru’s regime with brio. Muslim endowment trustees made a Cayman Islands out of charitable trusts. Bahadur, Begum, Mirza, Osman, and Ifthikar Ali Khan put Casanova to shame with their seductive correspondence. The camarilla of Aligarh’s university barons made comrades out of once combative Congressmen. Ultimately, it appears class counted for a lot more than religion in postcolonial India.
‘Crisis in Civilisation’
Authors: Gupta Diya
Published: September 2023

This chapter considers interpretations of the Second World War as a profound historical crisis by two colonial intellectuals—diasporic author M. J. Tambimuttu experiencing the London Blitz and poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore writing his final essays in India. The chapter shows how the long poem Out of This War (1941) establishes causal links between the two world wars while interrogating the purpose of Western violent action. The poem culminates in an examination of “savagery” and “barbarism,” and laments for a global brotherhood of suffering created by war. The chapter forges fresh connections between this little-known poem and Tagore’s philosophical response to the Second World War, which becomes a means of interrogating the heart of “civilization” and its implications for the future of humanity. Tagore’s exchange of letters with Japanese poet Yone Noguchi in 1938—after the start of the second Sino-Japanese war, where Tagore repudiates the rise of a militant and aggressive Japan—is read alongside his last essay Crisis in Civilisation (1941). The chapter assesses how poetic and philosophical insight works as testimony, and whether seeing the Second World War as a civilizational crisis in the 1940s stems from the perspective of the colonized.
Pathologies of Aid and Development
Authors: Jamal Ahmad Shuja , Maley William
Published: September 2023

This chapter addresses issues arising from the massive flows of aid into Afghanistan after 2001. Aid came in many different forms—security sector assistance, development aid, and support for the state budget—and often had perverse effects, sometimes because of poor design, but also because of limited local capacity to absorb large amounts of assistance. The chapter goes into detail about the operations of “Provincial Reconstruction Teams” (PRTs) and discusses the challenges of both budgetary and “off-budget” funding. Concluding with a discussion of management challenges, it makes the point that whilst much more could have been achieved through better planning and preparation, one would be hard pressed to argue that problems in the delivery of aid were the crucial contributors to the collapse in August 2021.
Cascade Effects and the Unravelling of Military Power
Authors: Jamal Ahmad Shuja , Maley William
Published: September 2023

The chapter examines the two fundamental consequences of the US–Taliban deal—its psychological impact on the Afghan public and its crippling effects on the material readiness and morale of the Afghan military. The chapter explores the notion of public “support” for the Republic, including normative and prudential support. The chapter introduces the idea of cascades and details how the interplay of normative convictions and prudential calculations give rise to band-wagoning cascades, which can make the success of an insurgency seem inevitable and resistance to it seem pointless. The chapter looks at examples of political cascades in Europe and in Afghanistan, including the fall of the Communist government in 1992 and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. The chapter also describes the features of cascades, examines ways to avert them and how events might precipitate cascades.
Conclusion
Authors: Jamal Ahmad Shuja , Maley William
Published: September 2023

The chapter revisits the notions of “decline” and “fall,” which form the conceptual backbone of the book. The chapter argues that to understand the decline of Republican Afghanistan, it is necessary to examine the structural weaknesses of the political system, the personal and policy failings of Afghan leaders, and the role of Pakistan in enabling the Taliban. To understand the fall of Republican Afghanistan, we must explore the maladroit diplomatic endeavors that lit the fuse for the cascade of events that preceded the fall. The chapter evaluates the factors in domestic US politics that might have contributed to the abandonment of Afghanistan’s pro-Western government. Among them, the human and financial costs of the war, which had declined in the final years; the pressure of public opinion to withdraw, which was not particularly strong; the dominant strains in the opinions of policy elites; and the individual agency of Presidents Trump and Biden. The chapter closes with some final thoughts about how the US misread the Taliban’s intentions despite warnings from experts.
On Betrayal
Authors: Jamal Ahmad Shuja , Maley William
Published: September 2023

This chapter addresses directly some of the normative questions that arise from the account of Western policy towards Afghanistan that makes up the bulk of the book. The chapter begins by looking at definitions of betrayal, and at various forms of betrayal: breach of promise, breach of trust, and the compromising of fundamental values. It also explores the question of who in Afghanistan might have been betrayed: local allies, ordinary people, international partners, and key values. It notes, however, that it is important to avoid spreading blame for betrayal beyond the ranks of those who deserve criticism: in particular, many ordinary Americans stood courageously by their Afghan allies in very difficult circumstances. The prime focus for criticism should be the state, those in command of it, and their willing and eager agents.
The Rise of Mussolini and the Fascists
Authors: Williamson Peter J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter describes the political events behind Mussolini’s establishment of a personal dictatorship in 1925 from the formation of the unified Italian state. It particularly concentrates upon increasing political divisions affecting Italy in the decade or so before the First World War, the impact of that war, and the subsequent political and economic breakdown in the aftermath of the war with the emergence of considerable industrial and political disorder driven by the left. It then explores how these circumstances created the conditions for the rise of the Fascist movement, Mussolini’s appointment as Prime Minister during the March on Rome (1922), and how then through state powers and Fascist squad violence he built a personal dictatorship. It is argued that his reliance on violence, the support of Italy’s social and political elites, and the presentation of him as an exceptional political leader did much to set boundaries for his future rule.
Mussolini and Reshaping the State
Authors: Williamson Peter J.
Published: September 2023

The chapter examines the various extensions of the state into the social circumstances and life of Italians. It covers welfare provision, health care, relief from unemployment through public works, programs for leisure and sports, initiatives to increase the birth rate, and internal migration controls to protect rural areas but also to prevent urban unrest. Most of the policies failed to achieve their objectives, were often discriminatory with an emphasis upon social control, not generously funded by the state and proved unable to achieve the aim of bringing the working class closer to the regime. Throughout the regime discriminatory policies were pursued to curtail the rights of particular national/ethnic and social groups who were deemed a threat to the integrity of the nation, the most systematic of which was the Racial Laws of 1938 against the Jews.
Conclusions
Authors: Williamson Peter J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter reviews the nature of Mussolini’s political leadership that reflects upon how his wish to be a great historical figure was never realized and this was in significant part the result of his own failings as a political leader, notably his excessive desire for control and the emphasis he placed on the veneration of his leadership over a coherent political project. His ongoing dependence on Italy’s largely conservative social and political elites meant that his regime always curtailed or trivialized its espoused Fascist ambitions, but in a period of potentially major political dislocation it did achieve an essentially conservative and stable order that to a large extent reflected the interests of those elites. Mussolini is presented as a leader who was much better suited to obtaining and holding power than using power. The chapter concludes with an outline of what happened to Mussolini after his dismissal as Prime Minister and his time leading the German sponsored Italian Social Republic.
Russia Becomes a Continent-Wide Great Power
Authors: Ramani Samuel
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines the two-year buildup to the inaugural 2019 Russia–Africa Summit in Sochi and documents the events that unfolded at that historic conference. During this period, Russia established itself as a continent-wide great power and showcased the resilience of its influence. Despite its counter-revolutionary stance towards the April 2019 overthrow of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria, Moscow’s partnership survived the Algerian Hirak. Russia also weathered the impact of leadership transitions in Angola, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, and deepened its presence in the Sahel and Red Sea regions. These successes were tempered by Russia’s poor track record in implementing pledged investments, which even extended to Soviet-era projects like the Ajaokuta steel factory in Nigeria, and failed mediation efforts, such as its attempt to broker a resolution to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam dispute.
The Bushmeat Economy
Authors: Trefon Theodore
Published: September 2023

Chapter 6 looks at bushmeat as money. Its sections present a discussion of how to manage open access resources, a price-cost-earnings commodity chain analysis and an overview of supply and demand drivers. Largely informal, bushmeat hunting and trade is a significant contribution to many rural and urban workers. Entry costs are low. In forest areas where access to work and money is limited, bushmeat is a logical choice. The value chain is influenced by gender identity but both women and men are key actors.
Clampdown
Authors: Hansbury Paul
Published: September 2023

The regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka cracked down hard on street protests and opponents after the 2020 presidential election. This chapter outlines the methods used for control and repressions. First of all, it considers the use of administrative resources, such as financial sweeteners, but also the president’s use of appointment powers to promote securocrats (siloviki) over technocrats. Secondly, it considers the state’s control over the information space and the plight of the media in Belarus. Thirdly, it looks at the support Russia provided Belarus in the aftermath of the disputed vote. Finally, it looks at the harassment of business and media, as well as individuals, through arrest and repressive legislation, all of which marked a deterioration in the human rights situation in the country.
Introduction
Authors: Elmer Peter
Published: September 2023

This chapter sets the context of the book in the wider issues relating to the relationship between medicine, religion and politics in seventeenth-century England. In particular, it seeks to re-examine the role of puritanism in fostering medical change in the period. The chapter looks at ways in which the historiography of the period has allowed for a new approach to the subject, particularly in relation to altered perceptions of what it means to talk about puritanism in the period and its essential conservatism. This chapter then sets the scene for a major re-investigation of the role of religious and political ideas and affiliations in shaping attitudes to medicine among the practitioners both before, during and after the civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century.
The Premature Death of a Renaissance Commonplace
Authors: Elmer Peter
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on a key concept that helped to shape the relationship between medicine and politics in seventeenth-century England, namely the Renaissance commonplace of the body politic. In particular, it argues that the notion of the human body as a model for political behaviour did not die with the execution of Charles I in 1649 but remained an essential element of political discourse throughout the seventeenth century—a discourse, moreover that was shared by puritan dissidents as much as it was lauded by their Anglican opponents.
Providing ‘Physick for the Body Politick’
Authors: Elmer Peter
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks in depth at the way in which medical practitioners of all religious backgrounds responded to the collapse of authority in England during the civil wars and to the emergence of new political forms in the 1650s. It suggests that both the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in this process were profoundly shaped by these events. Physicians and surgeons who supported the winning side in the English Revolution acquired medical, material and political benefits while practitioners on the losing side often resorted to using their occupations as a means to plot and subvert the new, political order of the 1650s. The end result was to create an increasingly politicized medical ‘profession’ which helped to shape new approaches to medicine, including growing acceptance of the value of chemistry, as well as improve the status of medics within the wider body politic.
Introduction
Authors: Wood Jim
Published: September 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the broad theoretical issues relevant to nominalization, a skeletal overview of the proposal to be defended throughout the book, and background on Icelandic noun phrase structure. It summarizes the differences between gerunds and Derived Nominals, and discusses how this difference was treated in Chomsky 1970, Marantz 1997, and elsewhere. It discusses Grimshaw’s (1990) proposal that Derived Nominals are often ambiguous between three readings, with the claim that Complex Event Nominals inherit argument structure from their verbal source. It then describes what this has meant for syntactic theories of argument structure and raises some problems that such theories encounter. The chapter outlines the proposal and discusses how this proposal is grounded in a specific view of the syntax-semantics interface. It then provides some background information on the framework, specifically with respect to the syntax-semantics interface, and the author’s assumptions about the structure of Icelandic noun phrases
Icelandic nominalizations
Authors: Wood Jim
Published: September 2023

This chapter presents a general study of Icelandic nominalizations, which have received little attention in theoretically driven work. It characterizes Icelandic nominalizations within the broad theoretical literature and shows how Icelandic nominalizations are similar to English Derived Nominals (and not English gerunds), of the type marked by -ation, -ment, -ance, and the like. It describes the morphology of Icelandic nominalizations and addresses issues having to do with stem changes, zero morphology, and fusional morphemes. It provides critical scrutiny of diagnostics that identify Complex Event Nominals (CENs) but defends the claim that the CEN reading is a distinct reading. It argues that Icelandic nominalizations contain a v-head but may not contain Voice. It concludes that the similarities between English and Icelandic Derived Nominals are strong enough that conclusions about Icelandic should bear on English and vice-versa. This conclusion sets the stage for the Icelandic-specific issues raised in Chapter 3.
Ideal Gas Law
Authors: Bohren Craig F. , Albrecht Bruce A.
Published: September 2023

The kinetic theory of gases established that invisible gas molecules are ceaselessly and rapidly moving. Gas pressure is a momentum flux density measured by interaction with surfaces. Motion does not cease at absolute zero because at sufficiently low temperatures all real gases liquefy. By definition the internal energy of an ideal gas is independent of density. Air is mostly empty space. Intermolecular collisions ensure local thermodynamic equilibrium and determine mean free paths of at least thirty molecular diameters. Molecular speeds are distributed about a mean, a decrease of about 7% corresponding to a temperature drop from 20∘C to −20∘C. Relatively fewer molecules drive chemical reactions. Even fewer molecules have sufficient energy to escape Earth’s gravity. Pressure and density decrease exponentially with height in the troposphere with a scale height of around 8 km because of gravity. Earth’s atmosphere is well-mixed up to about 100 km.
Moist Air and Clouds
Authors: Bohren Craig F. , Albrecht Bruce A.
Published: September 2023

All the water vapor in clear air condenses to about 1 cm of liquid at midlatitudes. And yet, precipitation from a single storm can greatly exceed this—evidence that storms are giant engines for processing water. The lifting-condensation level is the height to which a parcel can rise where its temperature equals its dew point. This is often a good estimate of the base of cumulus clouds with their roots in the planetary boundary layer. The contribution of variable water vapor to the density of moist air can be accounted for by a virtual temperature, calculated but not measured with a thermometer. It is always greater than air temperature by a few degrees Celsius. If a rising, initially dry parcel becomes saturated, the lapse rate decreases from dry adiabatic to moist adiabatic. This warming process determines equivalent potential temperature, conserved in moist and dry processes and a critical parameter in the analysis of convective systems.
The Function of Logical Necessity
Authors: Leech Jessica
Published: September 2023

This chapter presents an account of the function of logical modal judgment. The following line of argument is presented and defended: (1) Reasoning from suppositions depends upon a belief in logical necessity (and hence the possession of concepts of logical modality and the capacity to apply them in judgment). (2) Any logical reasoning at all depends upon an ability to reason from suppositions. And (3) any thinking at all depends upon logical reasoning. Hence, any thinking at all depends upon the possession of concepts of logical modality and the capacity to apply them in judgment. This provides an answer to the questions: What is the transcendental role of judgments and concepts of logical modality? Would there be a thinker at all if they didn’t or couldn't make judgments of logical modality or didn't have logical modal concepts?
What Is Metaphysically Necessary?
Authors: Leech Jessica
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores the extent to which the proposed account of metaphysical necessity can accommodate de re metaphysical necessity. It is argued that the conditions on objectivity, to which metaphysical modality is relative, are general, and that therefore they primarily give rise to de dicto metaphysical necessities. However, a notion of conditional metaphysical necessity which can be de re is introduced. Considerations of de re modality raise the spectre of Quine. Quine challenges the intelligibility of a combination of ordinary objectual quantification and logical modality operators. This combination is a feature of the proposed view. The chapter therefore also offers a response to Quine: we can make sense of conditions that apply to objects, independent of how we refer to those objects, due to the logical features of the conditions and without appeal to the idea of inherent modal properties of the objects. We can thus defend the intelligibility of de re modal predication without being drawn into the metaphysical jungle of Aristotelian essentialism.
The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution
Authors: de Boer David
Published: September 2023

For victims of persecution, attracting international awareness of their plight is often a matter of life and death. This book uncovers how in seventeenth-century Europe, persecuted minorities first learned how to use the press as a weapon to combat religious persecution. To mobilize foreign audiences, they faced an acute dilemma: how to make people care about distant suffering? This study argues that by answering this question, they laid the foundations of a humanitarian culture in Europe. The book reveals how, as consuming news became an everyday practice for many Europeans, the Dutch Republic emerged as an international hub of printed protest against religious violence. It traces how a diverse group of people, including Waldensian refugees, Huguenot ministers, Savoyard officeholders, and many others, all sought access to the Dutch printing presses to raise transnational solidarity for their cause. By examining their publicity strategies, this study deepens our understanding of how people tried to confront the specter of religious violence that had haunted them for generations.
A Mysterious Universe
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

A Mysterious Universe introduces the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics, theory of relativity, and cosmology to a lay person in as simple a language as possible. This book is intended for readers, young and old, who would like to understand the incomprehensible laws that govern the universe without any prior background in physics and mathematics. This book is much lighter (and concise), but accurate, in dealing with deep issues related to the mysteries of modern physics. Both quantum mechanics and relativity are highly mathematical subjects and are not easily accessible. In 2020, I wrote a book Quantum Mechanics for Beginners (Oxford University Press, 2020) with the aim of introducing the fundamentals of quantum theory to someone with elementary knowledge of physics and algebra. Here I go one step further and introduce these ideas to someone with no prior knowledge of physics and mathematics. In the first part of the book the topics like wave–particle duality, the probabilistic nature of measurement, the possibility of multiple universes, and the nature of reality are discussed. In the second part, Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity and their amazing and mind-boggling consequences are presented. The impact of the theory of relativity on cosmology is immense. The big bang model of the universe, black holes, and the current hot topics of dark matter and dark energy are explained and discussed. These fields that may hold key to many unanswered questions about the universe are still evolving.
What does an atom look like?
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

A history of the atom is presented. The earliest ideas about atoms go back to Democritus in the fifth century bc. These ideas were revived by John Dalton in the eighteenth century by treating the atom as a solid sphere. In the 1890s J. J. Thomson discovered the electron and presented a “plum pudding” model of the atom. A few years later, Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus. His model of the hydrogen atom was similar to a planetary system with a proton at the center and an electron circling around it. Bohr modified the Rutherford model by invoking a quantum condition. The final and correct picture of the atom emerged with the formulation of quantum mechanics in 1926, and is nothing short of mind-boggling. All the forces of nature are discussed that explain how a nucleus remains stable despite repulsive forces between protons inside the nucleus.
A single photon—An amazing quantum system
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

Maxwell showed that light consists of electric and magnetic fields that oscillate in directions perpendicular to the direction of propagation. Associated with this picture of light as an electromagnetic wave is an important property—the polarization of light. The polarization of light is related to the direction of oscillation of the electric field in an electromagnetic wave. The polarization of a single photon and its counterintuitive behavior is explained. Based on this description of this simplest quantum system, a communication system that can allow perfect security is described. In this so-called BB-84 protocol, a key can be exchanged between two parties on a publicly accessible channel in such a way that an eavesdropper can be traced immediately. This almost magical communication system is based on the foundational ideas of quantum mechanics.
Does God play dice?
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

Perhaps the most celebrated and discussed aspect of quantum mechanics is the probabilistic nature of its predictions. For example, if a ball is thrown toward a wall, its position and how fast it will be moving at a later time can be determined with arbitrary accuracy using Newton’s laws of motion. An amazing result is that such a deterministic behavior is no longer valid according to the laws of quantum mechanics. We cannot predict with absolute certainty where the ball will be and how fast it will be moving after a given time. The probabilistic nature of measurements is explained and discussed using the example of a single photon. A brief history of how the Schrödinger equation was formulated is also discussed. The probabilistic description according to the Schrödinger equation is elucidated using some simple examples.
Is reality really real?
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

The first round of the Einstein–Bohr debates took place when Einstein challenged Bohr’s principle of complementarity at the Solvay conference in 1927 and Bohr successfully defended it. The most serious challenge, however, came in 1935 through a paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) when they argued about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics through a gedanken experiment motivating an approach based on hidden variables. In this chapter, the EPR argument about the incompleteness of quantum mechanics and Bohr’s reply to it, are presented. The ultimate answer came almost 30 years later, almost ten years after Einstein’s death, and the answer was nothing what Einstein would have expected. Bell’s inequality and the subsequent Bell–CHSH inequality, that are satisfied by all theories based on the “self-evident truths” of reality and locality are discussed. The startling result that quantum mechanics violates Bell’s inequality and that the experimental results are in agreement with the prediction of quantum mechanics is presented.
General theory of relativity
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

The basic ideas concerning Einstein’s general theory of relativity, originally published in 1907, are presented. It is shown how the principle of equivalence leads to the revolutionary idea that space and time are curved in the neighborhood of a massive object. The concept of force is replaced by the space-time curvature. The geometrical structure explains why objects fall on massive objects like earth. Space-time curvature is explained using embedding diagrams. Tests of the general theory of relativity like the bending of light around the sun, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, gravitational red shift, the gravitational lensing effect, and gravitational waves are discussed.
Dreams of the future
Authors: Zubairy M. Suhail
Published: September 2023

In this chapter, we discuss some of the unsolved problems. Do we expect to see a major upheaval of the kind that happened in the early years of the twentieth century? Will the laws of nature as understood today go through a major revision at some point in future? Development of a unified theory of gravitation with quantum mechanics into a theory of quantum gravity remains an elusive dream. Similarly it remains unclear whether a quantum theory of the human brain will ever be integrated with the known laws of nature.
Desperate House Sellers: Distress among Developers
Authors: van Straelen Eileen
Published: September 2023

I identify the effect of financial constraints on product prices using granular data on home-builder housing developments from the 2006–2009 housing crisis. Builders who experience losses in one area subsequently sell homes in unaffected areas at a discount to raise cash quickly. When builders cut prices, they sell homes faster and builders cut prices more in areas in which price cuts produce larger declines in time-to-sale. Financially constrained firms are more likely to cut prices of homes in healthy areas following losses elsewhere. Firms cut prices following losses in other projects only during the crisis, not during the boom.
Does Screening Ultrasound Timing in Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip Need to be Adjusted for Moderate Preterm and Near-term Infants: A Prospective Study
Authors: Hockett Claire , Mayfield Laura M. , Gill Corey S. , Kim Harry K.W. , Sucato Daniel J. , Podeszwa David A. , Jo Chan-Hee , Morris William Z.
Published: September 2023

Introduction:

An initial screening ultrasound is essential for patients at higher risk of developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) due to breech presentation or a family history of DDH. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends screening ultrasounds to be performed after 6 weeks of age to reduce the rate of false positives. However, there is limited evidence regarding whether these screening ultrasounds need to be adjusted for gestational age in prematurity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of moderate preterm and near-term births on screening hip ultrasounds for high-risk DDH populations.

Methods:

We identified all prospectively enrolled patients in a single-center database referred for screening hip ultrasound for DDH. We included those hips referred for risk factors of DDH, including breech presentation, family history of DDH, or hip click, and excluded those with known dysplasia or referral for hip instability. Each ultrasound was measured by a pediatric radiologist to determine the alpha angle and femoral head coverage. Patients were classified as “premature” if born at <37 weeks gestation or “full term” if born at ≥37 weeks gestation. All patients underwent screening hip ultrasound between 5 and 8 weeks of age. Sonographic markers of dysplasia and the incidences of abnormal ultrasound and Pavlik harness treatment were compared between cohorts. Significance was set at P <0.05.

Results:

A total of 244 hips in 122 patients were included, 58 hips in the premature cohort and 186 hips in the full-term cohort. The premature cohort had a significantly decreased gestational age compared with the full-term cohort (35.4 ± 1.1 vs 38.5 ± 1.1 wk, respectively, P < 0.001). However, there was no difference between premature and full-term cohorts in sex distribution (69% vs 75%, females, P = 0.39), unadjusted age at the time of ultrasound (6.6 ± 0.7 vs 6.8±0.7 wk, respectively, P = 0.07), or referral reason (P = 0.14). On hip ultrasound, there was no difference between premature and full-term cohorts with respect to alpha angle (62.6 ± 3.3 vs 62.2 ± 5.3 degrees, P = 0.41), femoral head coverage (54.9 ± 6.3 vs 55.1 ± 10.6, P = 0.19), rate of abnormal ultrasound (18.3% vs 20.7%, respectively, P = 0.68), or the rate of Pavlik harness treatment (0% vs 5.3%, respectively, P = 0.12).

Discussion:

There was no significant difference in alpha angle or femoral head coverage between premature and full-term patients at 5 to 8 weeks of unadjusted age. This preliminary data suggests that screening ultrasounds can be performed without adjusting for prematurity.

Level of Evidence:

Level II, prognostic study.