bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Journals
Authors: Scott Robert Falcon
Published: July 2024

Captain Scott’s harrowing account of his expedition to the South Pole in 1910-12 was first published in 1913. In his journals Scott records his party’s optimistic departure from New Zealand, the hazardous voyage of the Terra Nova to Antarctica, and the trek with ponies and dogs across the ice to the Pole. On the way the explorers conduct scientific experiments, collect specimens, and get to know each other’s characters. Their discovery that Amundsen has beaten them to their goal, and the endurance with which they face an 850-mile march to safety, have become the stuff of legend.

This new edition publishes for the first time a complete list of the changes made to Scott’s original text before publication. In his Introduction Max Jones illuminates the Journals’ writing and publication, Scott’s changing reputation, and the continued attraction of heroes in our cynical age.
Memory for Time
Authors: Howard Marc W.
Published: July 2024

The brain maintains a record of recent events, including information about the time at which events were experienced. This chapter reviews behavioral and neurophysiological evidence as well as computational models to better understand memory for time. Neurophysiologically, populations of neurons that record the time of recent events have been observed in many brain regions. Time cells fire in long sequences after a triggering event demonstrating memory for the past. Populations of exponentially decaying neurons record past events at many delays by decaying at different rates. Both kinds of representations record distant times with less temporal resolution. The work reviewed in this chapter converges on the idea that the brain maintains a representation of past events along a scale-invariant compressed timeline.
Affective Memory
Authors: Kensinger Elizabeth A. , Fields Eric
Published: July 2024

Only a fraction of the events that humans experience will be remembered, and even when the occurrence of an event is remembered, only a portion of its details will be retrieved. This selectivity is a hallmark feature of episodic memory. Events that elicit an affective response tend to be prioritized in memory, although there is often an unevenness to those memories, with some details remembered well and others forgotten. This chapter examines the many ways in which an affective response can modulate memory. The chapter is organized around processes that act as an event is initially experienced and encoded, updated or prioritized by new learning, and retrieved. For each of these processes, the chapter integrates knowledge learned from laboratory assessments of behavior with that acquired through investigations of neural mechanisms.
Inhibition as a Cause of Forgetting
Authors: Marsh Laura C. , Anderson Michael C.
Published: July 2024

Inhibitory control is a fundamental process that enables suppression of representations or processes that interfere with ongoing cognition and behavior. This chapter reviews the role of such control processes in causing forgetting from long-term memory. It considers several functional contexts that trigger inhibitory control, including the need to selectively retrieve information and the need to stop retrieval. These give rise to retrieval-induced forgetting and suppression-induced forgetting, respectively. The chapter reviews the extensive cognitive and neurobiological work conducted during the past three decades on how inhibitory control induces forgetting in these contexts, including work establishing its fundamental functional properties, neural mechanisms underlying them, and recent work establishing the species generality of the phenomena. Taken together, this work illustrates the adaptive function of inhibition in overcoming interference that can arise during memory retrieval and in adapting the state of memory in accordance with current behavioral goals.
Memory Development in Middle Childhood and Adolescence
Authors: Ghetti Simona
Published: July 2024

The capacity to remember past episodes develops rapidly from childhood into adolescence. This development emerges from the contribution of neurocognitive processes supporting improvements in the quality of memory representations and in the ability to monitor and regulate memory accuracy. After a brief historical overview, this chapter discusses these contributing factors. First, it examines evidence linking changes in hippocampal processes to memory representations becoming increasingly more precise, rich in spatiotemporal detail, and retrievable through a larger variety of cues. Second, the chapter reviews the literature on strategy and metamemory development and highlights initial findings suggesting that cortical changes especially in frontoparietal regions support children’s ability to monitor and regulate their memory states. Finally, given the importance of healthy development of episodic memory, the chapter examines atypical functioning observed in several medical conditions, neurodevelopmental disorders, and environments; this body of work calls into question the understanding of normative development and urges the consideration of the complexity and multidetermined nature of memory development.
Episodic Memory
Authors: Ranganath Charan
Published: July 2024

Episodic memory refers to the ability to recollect a past event. Episodic memory is thought to differ from other forms of memory in that it is organized according to spatiotemporal context and is associated with the conscious experience of re-experiencing the past from the first person. In other words, episodic memory enables a person to put together the relationships between people, things, and situations that characterize a past event, such that the person can consciously recollect it later. This chapter reviews evidence about the functional characteristics of episodic memory, the extended brain networks that support episodic memory, and how episodic memory may be related to semantic knowledge. It closes by considering how episodic memory might be related to imagination and planning.
Basal Ganglia Diseases
Authors: Ryman Sephira G. , Poston Kathleen L.
Published: July 2024

The concept of multiple memory systems is based on the foundational studies that have dissociated the roles of the basal ganglia and medial temporal lobe structures in memory. While it is increasingly appreciated that there are complex interactions between these systems, there is clear evidence for nondeclarative memory dysfunction in basal ganglia disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. Recent investigations emphasize the role of goal-directed learning in Parkinson's disease, urging a deeper understanding of frontostriatal system dynamics in both stimulus-response and goal-directed feedback tasks. It is important to differentiate between encoding and retrieval deficits in declarative memory processes in basal ganglia disorders, which reflect dysfunction in different anatomical systems (frontostriatal versus medial temporal lobe). While basal ganglia disorders were once thought to reflect circumscribed disease processes, there is enormous heterogeneity of neuropathological processes involved and it is important carefully characterize the nature of memory dysfunction in these disorders.
Acquiring an Accurate Mental Model of Human Learning
Authors: Pan Steven C. , Bjork Robert A.
Published: July 2024

To learn effectively requires understanding some fundamental, but unintuitive, properties of how the human learning and memory system works. A variety of research findings suggest, however, that human beings are prone to employ a mental model of learning and memory processes that is inaccurate and/or incomplete in some fundamental ways—due, in part, to the implicit or explicit assumption that the storage and retrieval processes that characterize human learning and memory are similar to those that characterize man-made recording devices, such as a computer hard drive or a memory disk. Consequently, many humans engage in practices that yield short-term gains in performance but do not foster durable and flexible learning. This chapter discusses why and in what ways humans tend to misunderstand how to optimize their own learning, and it provides a set of principles that are essential components of any owner’s manual on how to learn and remember.
Generalization and Abstraction
Authors: Rogers Timothy T.
Published: July 2024

Human memory has sometimes been likened to a mental library where prior experience and factual information are stored and systematized for later retrieval. This metaphor is misleading: The sum of human knowledge allows people both to generalize prior learning to new items and situations and to imagine and innovate new forms that extend far beyond direct experience. This chapter reviews the current understanding of the cognitive, computational, and neural systems that support these remarkable abilities in the domain of human semantic/conceptual knowledge. It begins by reviewing why semantic generalization and abstraction have proven difficult to understand, outlining three broad phenomena an adequate theory should address. It then describes an explanatory framework, controlled semantic cognition, that draws on insights from neural network models to suggest how these phenomena arise in the mind and brain. The framework proposes that semantic knowledge arises within two interdependent systems: a system of representation that learns cross-modal conceptual structure and a system of control that shapes the flow of activation within the semantic system to support flexible, task-specific behaviors. These ideas connect a broad range of models in the literature, each focusing on a subdomain of behavior but adopting a shared set of underlying explanatory principles. They also shed light on key phenomena in development, mature cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. The chapter concludes by noting a series of open questions that are the subject of current work.
Queering South African History
Authors: Matebeni Zintombizethu , Kiguwa Peace
Published: July 2024

This chapter embarks on a journey to uncover a narrative often marginalized in the historical discourse of South Africa. Employing a “queering” lens as a methodological approach, the narrative challenges normative perspectives and advocates for a more nuanced understanding of South Africa’s history within the broader African context. The focal point is the recent developments in Uganda under President Yoweri Museveni, specifically the signing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act No. 6 of 2023. Julius Malema’s unexpected opposition to Museveni’s legislation challenges traditional alignments, marking a novel political approach to sexuality issues. The narrative navigates through South Africa’s LGBTQ + rights landscape, tracing the legacy of intersectional queer activism. The historical backdrop of apartheid’s discriminatory laws, including the Immorality Act and the Immigration Act, set the stage for understanding the complexities of the LGBTQ + rights movement. The rich tapestry of South Africa’s queer activism unfolds through the lens of intersectionality, weaving together the stories of individuals and organizations that have left an indelible mark on the country’s LGBTQ + rights movement.
The Automotive Industry in the Emerging Economies
Authors: Li Zejian
Published: July 2024

This chapter situates the development of automobile production and demand in emerging economies within the long-term dynamics of the global automotive industry. It stresses the dominance of carmakers from the Triad of the US, Western Europe, and Japan for much of the 20th century and how they relocated part of their production to emerging markets to fulfil growing local demand, thereby fulfilling the host country’s aims for import substitution though without sharing their know-how. China constitutes a recent exception in this respect. A shift in industrial policy from a focus on existing state-owned enterprises to new domestic companies, combined with efforts to foment technology transfer from the multinationals, allowed the former to not only catch-up but eventually leapfrog the latter, namely by targeting customers from lower social strata and producing battery-powered vehicles.
Dynamics of Industrial Innovation
Authors: Utterback James M.
Published: July 2024

This chapter details the author’s contribution to the development of innovation studies, moving them from largely ‘demographic’ (characteristics of products) and linear (design, production, diffusion) perspectives to a more dynamic model, through collaboration with Bill Abernathy. Their work drew attention to the process that led to an industry-wide solution—a ‘dominant design’. This process has major implications for understanding industry dynamics, since a period marked by the entry of many, often co-located firms will be followed, as the dominant design takes hold, by efficiency improvements and increasing consolidation. Industries differ in the speeds of entry and exit, as well as the height reached by their peak—with both movements largely dependent on the size of the market. This model highlights the importance of new entrants for innovation, while pinpointing to the reluctance of most incumbents to engage in product rather than process innovation.
Emerson and Carlyle
Authors: Sommer Tim
Published: July 2024

Emerson’s lifelong engagement with Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was of crucial importance for the development of his aesthetics, for his approach to cultural history, and not least for his critical and popular reception in Victorian Britain. Taking these aspects of their transatlantic relationship into account, this chapter focuses on race, slavery, and abolition—subjects that in the 1850s and 1860s created a rift between Emerson and Carlyle from which their friendship never fully recovered. Building on recent scholarship on Emerson’s antislavery convictions—and drawing on Emerson’s “Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies” (1844), his 1856 book English Traits, and Carlyle’s controversial “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question” (1849)—the chapter analyses continuities and discontinuities between his Anglo-Saxonism and his abolitionism and reconstructs the impact Carlyle’s increasingly violent rhetoric had on Emerson’s conversion to the abolitionist cause.
Ottoman Armenian Visual Realism and Social Reform
Authors: Davidian Vazken Khatchig
Published: July 2024

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, realism became one of the most dominant intellectual philosophies adopted and adapted by a multicultural milieu of writers, thinkers, and artists in the Ottoman Empire. This chapter provides a complex and multifaceted reading of one of Ottoman realism’s overlooked visual manifestations. It exposes convergences between the politics of social reform in the empire and representation in works by artists associated with the urban social-reformist Constantinople Armenian Realist Generation (Bolsahay Irabashd Serount). Drawing on a wide range of archival material and visual sources, it considers how some artists sought to utilize the fashionable ethnographic aesthetics of the day (usually associated with so-called orientalism) in order to cloak content that would have been considered subversive by, and therefore circumvent the draconian censorship of, the autocratic regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). Artists discussed include Bedros Srabian (1833–1898), Garabed Nichanian (1861–1950), and Simon Hagopian (1857–1921).
French Careers in Eighteenth-Century India
Authors: Alavi Seema
Published: July 2024

This chapter focuses on the enduring French presence in India after the Seven Years’ War to illuminate the many connections between Europe and India that the conflict enabled. These entanglements and dependencies were of a military as well as a non-military nature. During and after the war, military recruitment from India became the biggest conduit linking the two continents. But equally important was the exodus of many Europeans, especially the French, to India seeking employment and new opportunities as war dislocated people and livelihoods. The Company offered employment and footholds to Frenchmen unmindful of the metropolis policies and “national” projects. The diversification of the English Company to include them into its service at a time when the Anglo-French wars both in Europe and India had created visible polarization was a significant spill-out effect of the war in South Asia. It transformed the political culture of the subcontinent.
The Indian Ocean World
Authors: Eacott Jonathan
Published: July 2024

The conflicts and resources of Asia’s own empires, most notably the Durrani, Maratha, Mughal, and Qing, shaped the courses and outcomes of the Seven Years’ War. A reconsideration of the Indian Ocean World as a concept, commercial space, origin of Atlantic fashions, supplier of goods exchanged for enslaved labor, and theatre of conflict among Asian empires shows that Europeans benefited from, rather than simply drove changes in Asia. European merchants, companies, consumers, and political and military leaders entangled their empires into existing trading networks and imperial competition. Leaders in Asia, as well as those in Britain, France, and Russia, saw control of the Indian Ocean World’s resources, trading routes, and commerce as vital to growing their power. British victory in Bengal depended in part on these rivalries among Asian powers, and Asian resources were vital to further warfare. The war was not a radical break with Indian Ocean World trade, violence, and conflict.
Native America after 1763
Authors: Sleeper-Smith Susan
Published: July 2024

The Seven Years’ War changed the dynamics of Indigenous-Euro-American interaction. In sparsely settled regions, like the Great Lakes, Native people continued to play Great Britain against the Spanish and later, against the US. While French North America appeared to offer British leaders limitless possibilities for economic expansion the massive debt Britain acquired as a result of the war forced drastic reductions in imperial expenditures. Pontiac’s Rebellion vividly demonstrated that Indigenous people were not a conquered nation and in response, Britain issued the Proclamation Line of 1763. But by recognizing the sovereign status of Indigenous nations the British openly alienated English colonists. Excluding settler colonists from the Trans-Appalachian frontier inflamed resentment of British authority and inspired rebellion. The drastic reduction in military expenditures left Britain unable to enforce this boundary between White and Indigenous societies. Ongoing settler intrusions hindered later British attempts to secure Indigenous allies during the Revolutionary War.
The American Revolution
Authors: Gray Edward G.
Published: July 2024

This chapter addresses a scholarly consensus that Parliamentary efforts to address Britain’s ballooning national debt brought political calamity in the mainland North American colonies. That consensus has focused on the colonial response to the 1764 Currency Act and the 1765 Stamp Act. This chapter emphasizes the taxation challenges colonial governments faced in the mainland colonies. Because English colonial charters provided contradictory indications of colonies’ territorial boundaries, these governments faced chronic jurisdictional ambiguity. Ordinary colonists grew accustomed to exploiting that ambiguity to avoid taxes. Colonial governments attempted to address the problem through various boundary commissions. But the fundamental fact was that fiscal politics in the mainland colonies had long diverged from those of Great Britain itself. As much as more familiar constitutional questions over representation and Parliamentary authority, British fiscal reform following the Seven Years’ War thus faced fundamental structural challenges.
Europe and Global Dynamics, 1713–1755
Authors: Externbrink Sven
Published: July 2024

This chapter provides an overview of developments in the international state system of the eighteenth century. Three tendencies influenced the interactions of the system: the willingness to resolve conflicts through negotiation or to forgo territorial gains; the continuity of the idea of the “Roi de Guerre” embodied by the “philosopher king” Frederick II; and the growing influence of non-European actors and interactions on Europe. Thanks to Franco-English cooperation, Western, Central, and Southern Europe were largely spared major conflicts. This “system” was brought crashing down from two sides: from England, where Walpole’s policy was criticized because France was seen as a competitor in colonial trade; and by Frederick II of Prussia, who launched a war with the aim of territorial expansion for Prussia. The experience of this war and inadequately resolved issues of Anglo-French competition in North America ultimately led to the famous “diplomatic revolution” of 1756 in Europe.
Visual Arts and Culture
Authors: Fordham Douglas
Published: July 2024

The impact of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) on the visual arts was both subtle and profound. This chapter identifies four developments in European visual culture that were shaped, to a significant degree, by this conflict. They include innovations in the representation of military heroes, an institutional shift in the relationship of art to the state, an increased investment in the replication of printed images of war, and a more systematic collecting of Indigenous American arts. Catalyzed by the global conflict that is now known as the Seven Years’ War, each of these developments would reverberate throughout the nineteenth century.
The Third Silesian War
Authors: Storring Adam L.
Published: July 2024

The Seven Years’ War in Central Europe was the last of three “Silesian Wars,” fought principally between Austria and Prussia over the province of Silesia, whose seizure had enabled Prussia to challenge Austrian Habsburg hegemony in Germany. The Russians called it the “Prussian War,” and it was indeed fought primarily to determine whether Prussia would retain its new position of power. One of the few theatres of the Seven Years’ War where neither the British nor the French played a leading role, its key link with the global war was the fighting in western Germany. Prussia’s survival against a huge coalition has been called a miracle, but in fact Prussia was much better at mobilizing resources and was in a much more favorable geographical position than has sometimes been recognized. Further research on non-Prussian participants in the war, and on Prussian figures beyond King Frederick II, would be particularly welcome.
Demography and the Seven Years’ War
Authors: Peterson Mark
Published: July 2024

Demography is an essential factor in understanding the causes and course of the Seven Years’ War. The war occurred in the midst of an era of rapid demographic change, especially in the emerging Atlantic world. Accelerating population growth and urbanization in Europe, the transportation of millions of enslaved West Africans to the Americas, and the explosive growth of North American populations all played major parts in shaping the aims of the war’s imperial combatants and their capacities to field the enormous armies and navies that fought the war. Additionally, the growth of the new science of “political arithmetic” shaped imperial schemes for the manipulation of populations for economic or political advantage. The war marked a tipping point of North America’s emergence as a major population and economic center.
Women and Gender
Authors: Damiano Sara T.
Published: July 2024

This chapter advances a gendered narrative of the Seven Years’ War, one that foregrounds women as historical actors and tracks power relations between men and women. Examining the conflict’s effects in six places—Britain, New England, West Africa, Jamaica, the North American interior, and Louisiana—underscores the durability and flexibility of early modern patriarchy. Women leveraged the wartime context and kinship practices to benefit themselves and their offspring. However, the projects of state-building and imperial growth hinged on regulating women’s bodies, labor, and resources. As civil and military officials implemented reforms, they elevated men’s economic and political power at the expense of women. White women reaped few benefits from their economic support of the war effort, and African, African-descended, and Native American women lost pathways to freedom and economic prosperity.
Religion and Politics in the Seven Years’ War
Authors: Young Brian , Whatmore Richard
Published: July 2024

Never did a more successful war lead to so much crisis and national malaise as was felt in Britain during and after the Seven Years’ War. Britain’s status as a free state was challenged by developments in commerce, with concerns that luxury was spreading selfishness and effeminacy to the point of military impotence. Corruption in politics and especially at Court was expected to overturn liberty, as Montesquieu had prophesied. But all the ills of Britain were seen through a theological lens, and this chapter underlines the extent to which English and Scottish divines, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, saw contemporary crisis as rooted in fanaticism and enthusiasm, the product of Jacobitism and Popery. Even David Hume, arch-skeptic that he was, employed religious language to understand the decline of Britain and its imminent demise, despite short-lived victory at war.
Aftermaths of War in South Asia
Authors: Cross Elizabeth
Published: July 2024

Among both contemporary observers and later historians, the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 has long been seen as the decisive moment in the making of British rule in India. In examining the aftermaths of the conflict in South Asia and in the British and French empires, this chapter re-evaluates whether 1763 marked a critical endpoint to imperial challenges to British control. After the war, the British East India Company’s fraught attempts to consolidate its power led to humanitarian crises on the Indian subcontinent and numerous political scandals at home. The apparent precarity of British rule led key South Asian powers—principally the Maratha Confederacy and the kingdom of Mysore—and French imperial officials to continue to directly challenge the makings of British supremacy through diplomatic, military, or commercial means, giving rise to new armed conflicts amid the global age of revolutions.
European Geopolitics, 1756–1783
Authors: Dziembowski Edmond
Published: July 2024

The Seven Years’ War caused a considerable upheaval in the balance of power in Europe. While the Treaty of Paris (10 February 1763) marked the triumph of Great Britain and the humiliation of France, the Treaty of Hubertusburg (15 February 1763), which settled the German side of the conflict, sanctioned the rise of Central and Eastern Europe in international relations. Previously subject to the preeminence of France, Europe would live to the rhythm of a pentarchy comprising France, Great Britain, the House of Austria, Prussia, and Russia until World War I. While France’s influence declined and Great Britain lacked control over European relations, Prussia, Russia, and Austria were free to assert their ambitions. The dynamism of these three predatory powers led to the first partition of Poland in 1772. Faced with the danger of an uncontrollable Central and Eastern Europe, France and Great Britain came to reconsider their old rivalry.
Sociology and Machine Learning
Authors: Borch Christian , Pardo-Guerra Juan Pablo
Published: July 2024

This chapter serves as an introduction to the Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Machine Learning. It outlines the volume’s principal objective: To provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview and forward-looking discussion of three pivotal themes that connect machine learning (ML) and sociology. These themes are (a) ML as a methodological tool for sociological research, (b) the adaptation of ML in society, examined as an empirical phenomenon, and (c) the repercussions of ML on social theory. Furthermore, this chapter delineates the volume’s four parts and the respective chapters they encompass. These parts are “The Past, Present, and Future of Machine Learning in Sociology,” “Machine Learning as a Methodological Toolbox,” “Societal Machine Learning Applications,” and “Machine Learning and Sociological Theory.”
Fitting Paradox
Authors: Shin Eun Kyong
Published: July 2024

The growing quantity and diversity of available data for sociologists necessitates adopting a novel analytic technique that is more appropriate to this new horizon of empirical reality. As a result, a rapprochement between machine learning (ML) and sociology is taking place. The ML modeling approach differs from traditional statistical methods. In ML modeling, four types of fitting outcomes are derived by juxtaposing training results with validation results: ideal fitting, unknown fitting, underfitting, and overfitting. Sociologists experience challenges with using ML approaches to elucidate the differences between ML-based data analysis and conventional statistical techniques. Fitting results do not guarantee the intrinsic validity of the model. Model refinement and validation, which involve fine-tuning hyperparameters, algorithm cross-checking, and subsectioning, are also crucial parts of ML-based analysis. Although well-fitted algorithms do not provide sociologists with immediate explanations for social mechanisms, the anatomy of the well-fitted algorithms can help debunk hidden social mechanisms.
Simone Weil’s Practical Philosophy
Authors: Goodchild Philip
Published: July 2024

The distinctive religious metaphysics of Simone Weil may be explained as a practical philosophy—a philosophy of work. By exploring the development of her key ideas chronologically, her philosophy may be placed back within a particular French post-Kantian approach to moral philosophy. By paying close attention to her reformulation of ideas from Descartes, Rousseau, Lagneau, and her own teacher, Alain, her focus on necessity, philosophy of work, her consent to whatever happens, and her appeal to supernatural grace may be understood.
Philosophical Historiography in Modern French Philosophy
Authors: Krogh Marie Louise
Published: July 2024

This chapter addresses major tendencies in the history of academic French historiographies of philosophy, from the establishment of history of philosophy as a university discipline in the early nineteenth century to feminist critiques of the philosophical canon in the twentieth century. Focusing on the ways in which the philosophical character of the history of philosophy has been conceptualized, it argues that the history of the historiography of philosophy in France is marked in two ways by the intellectual legacy of Victor Cousin. At the level of canon-formation, this history has involved continuity and reproduction of those authors and texts which Cousin regarded as central to the history of philosophy. With feminist historiographies of philosophy, the theory-constitutive function of the canon itself comes into question, thus opening a new field of inquiry as to what should be counted as properly ‘philosophical’.
Spiritualism as a Philosophy of Culture
Authors: Viola Tullio
Published: July 2024

This chapter deals with the work of Félix Ravaisson (1813–1900) and Emile Boutroux (1845–1921). Together with Jules Lachelier, these philosophers are to be taken as the paramount representatives of a mid-nineteenth-century revival of spiritualist philosophy in France. To the extent that they broke with the eclectic philosophy of Victor Cousin, they veered towards what Ravaisson called a ‘spiritualistic realism or positivism’ based on a close dialogue with the sciences and on a new emphasis on the concept of contingency. The chapter considers, in particular, the implications of this wave of spiritualism for the philosophy of culture and the philosophy of history.
French Philosophy during the First World War
Authors: Hanna Martha
Published: July 2024

During the First World War, French philosophers debated whether German philosophy—and Kantianism, in particular—could be held responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914. Many Catholic philosophers and all who identified with the neo-royalists of the Action française endorsed this proposition unreservedly. Neo-Kantians, many of whom held prominent positions within the French academic establishment, denied categorically that Kantian principles constituted the intellectual foundation of German militarism. Much lauded during the war years, this ‘mobilization of intellect’ came under increasing criticism thereafter and contributed in the 1920s to a reorientation of French philosophy. Neo-Kantians suffered attacks from the right for their defence of German philosophy and from the left for their apparent willingness to subordinate their intellectual independence to the needs of patriotism. As a result, there was a significant shift in French philosophy by the end of the 1920s, away from neo-Kantianism and towards neo-Hegelianism and phenomenology.
Bergson after Boutroux on Freedom and Contingency
Authors: Sinclair Mark
Published: July 2024

Henri Bergson seldom refers to Emile Boutroux directly, and for this reason his relation to his teacher has often been neglected. On the basis of some of Bergson’s remarks about contingency in his recently published 1904–05 lecture course on the Evolution of the Problem of Freedom, this chapter shows how his whole philosophical career develops the ideas of Boutroux’s 1874 On the Contingency of Laws of Nature. The first part of the chapter concentrates in particular on how Bergson’s notion of free will in the third chapter of his primary doctoral dissertation develops Boutroux’s ideas about contingency in the psychological domain. The second part of the chapter focuses on Boutroux’s account of contingency in the natural world and shows that Bergson is more reluctant than his teacher to reject the truth of mechanistic philosophy and to adopt entirely a philosophy of contingency.
The Environment, the Constitution, and the Legal Framework at the National Level
Authors: Divan Shyam
Published: July 2024

The Constitution of India profoundly influences environmental law making and policy. Express provisions in the Constitution elevate environmental protection to a high national goal. The federal structure created by the Constitution demarcates and distributes law-making power amongst the Union government and the states. The fundamental right to life guaranteed in Part III of the Constitution has been interpreted to embrace the right to a clean environment. The Constitution provides for a dispute resolution machinery through constitutional courts which lay down guiding principles of environmental law. The challenges posed by climate change will require creating new institutions within the constitutional framework that can effectively respond to the drastic impacts that will shortly befall the subcontinent.
Bilateral Investment Treaties and the Environment
Authors: Ranjan Prabhash
Published: July 2024

Several investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases demonstrate that the goal of investment protection and the state’s right to adopt environment-related regulatory measures might come face to face. Given this global backdrop, this chapter studies India’s bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and investment chapters in free trade agreements to find out whether they contain provisions that allow the host state to adopt measures for the protection of the environment. Most BITs signed by India during the period 1994 to 2010 contained very few provisions for the protection of the environment. India’s new treaty practice heralded by the adoption of the Model BIT in 2016 has changed this pattern.
Periodic Rolling and Bumping
Authors: Jenkins James T , Valance Alexandre
Published: July 2024

We consider a sphere that rolls down an inclined corrugation of identical, frictional circular cylinders in contact. We assume that the motion is a periodic succession of rolling and bumping that results in a velocity that is, on average, steady. We use balances of force and moment and impulse and momentum change to calculate the instantaneous and average velocities, the tangential and normal contact forces, and their ratio in rolling regimes that involve no sliding, some sliding and a transition between these at contact. We compare the predictions for the steady average velocity versus the inclination for different sphere to cylinders radii ratio and the predictions for the angle of inclination versus the radii ratio for stopping, initiation of sliding and loss of contact with the results of numerical simulations.
Distinct phenotype and prognosis of immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy based on clinical–serological–pathological classification
Authors: Yang Hongxia , Zhang Lining , Tian Xiaolan , Li Wenli , Liu Qingyan , Peng Qinglin , Jiang Wei , Wang Guochun , Lu Xin
Published: July 2024

Objective

The aim of the study was to investigate the characteristics and prognosis of patients with immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) based on clinical, serological and pathological classification.

Methods

A total of 138 patients with IMNM who met the 2018 European Neuromuscular Center criteria for IMNM including 62 anti-SRP, 32 anti-HMGCR-positive and 44 myositis-specific antibody–negative were involved in the study. All patients were followed up and evaluated remission and relapse. Clustering analysis based on clinical, serological and pathological parameters was used to define subgroups.

Results

Clustering analysis classified IMNM into three clusters. Cluster 1 patients (n = 35) had the highest creatine kinase (CK) levels, the shortest disease course, severe muscle weakness and more inflammation infiltration in muscle biopsy. Cluster 2 patients (n = 79) had the lowest CK level and moderate inflammation infiltrate. Cluster 3 patients (n = 24) had the youngest age of onset, the longest disease course and the least frequency of inflammatory infiltration. Patients in cluster 3 had the longest time-to-remission [median survival time: 61 (18.3, 103.7) vs 20.5 (16.2, 24.9) and 27 (19.6, 34.3) months] and shorter relapse-free time than those in cluster 1 and 2 [median remission time 95% CI 34 (19.9, 48.0) vs 73 (49.0, 68.7) and 73 (48.4, 97.6) months]. Patients with age of onset >55 years, more regeneration of muscle fibres, more CD4+ T infiltration and membrane attack complex deposition had more favourable outcomes regarding time to achieving remission.

Conclusions

Stratification combining clinical, serological and pathological features could distinguish phenotypes and prognosis of IMNM. The pathological characteristics may impact the long-term prognosis of patients with IMNM.
Trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole prophylaxis and serious infections in granulomatosis with polyangiitis treated with rituximab
Authors: Mendel Arielle , Behlouli Hassan , Vinet Évelyne , Curtis Jeffrey R , Bernatsky Sasha
Published: July 2024

Objective

To assess the association of trimethoprim sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) prophylaxis with serious infections in rituximab-treated patients with granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA).

Methods

This retrospective cohort study included adults with GPA (2011–2020) within the United States Merative™ Marketscan® Research Databases with ≥6 months’ enrolment prior to first (index) rituximab treatment. We defined TMP-SMX prophylaxis as a ≥28-day prescription dispensed after or overlapping the index date. Serious infection was a hospital primary diagnosis for infection (excluding viral or mycobacterial codes). Secondary outcomes were outpatient infection, Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) and adverse events potentially attributable to TMP-SMX. Cox proportional hazards regression assessed the association of time-varying TMP-SMX with outcomes of interest, adjusting for potential confounders. Individuals were followed until the outcome of interest, end of database enrolment or 31 Decamber 2020.

Results

Among 919 rituximab-treated individuals (53% female), mean (s.d.) age was 52.1 (16) years and 281 (31%) were dispensed TMP-SMX within 30 days of index date. Over a median of 496 (interquartile range 138–979) days, 130 serious infections occurred among 104 individuals (incidence 6.1 [95% CI: 5.0, 7.4] per 100 person-years). Time-varying TMP-SMX was negatively associated with serious infection (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] 0.5; 95% CI: 0.3, 0.9). The aHR for outpatient infections was 0.8 (95% CI: 0.6, 1.1). The estimate for PJP was imprecise (13 events, unadjusted HR 0.2; 95% CI: 0.03–1.8). TMP-SMX was potentially associated with adverse events (aHR 1.3; 95% CI: 0.9, 1.9).

Conclusions

TMP-SMX prophylaxis was associated with reduced serious infections in rituximab-treated GPA, but may increase adverse events, warranting further study of optimal prophylaxis strategies.
Targeting POLD1 to suppress the proliferation and migration of breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cell lines by downregulation of SIRT1
Authors: Salih Areege Ibrahim , Al-Sudani Basma Talib , Mshimesh Bahir Abdul-Razzaq
Published: July 2024

Background

The resistant and aggressive nature of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) renders it mostly incurable even following extensive multimodal treatment. Therefore, more studies are required to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of its pathogenesis. SIRT1 is a class III histone deacetylase NAD + -dependent enzyme that is interlinked in tumor progression, apoptosis, metastasis, and other mechanisms of tumorigenesis, while DNA polymerase delta 1 (POLD1) functions as a gene coding for p125, which plays an important role in genome stability and DNA replication.

Objective

We aimed to investigate the downstream signaling pathway of EX-527, a potent and selective SIRT1 inhibitor, in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cell lines, and the crosstalk between SIRT1 and POLD1, which is essential for the activities of polymerase δ.

Methods

The antiproliferative and apoptotic effects of EX-527 on MDA-MB-231 cells were assessed by MTT and annexin V/PI double staining assays. Migration and invasion activity of MDA-MB-231 cells were assessed by wound-healing scratch and transwell assays. Protein expressions were examined using Western Blot analysis.

Results

MDA-MB-231 cells treatment with IC50 values of 45.3 μM EX-527 significantly suppressed cell proliferation and induced apoptosis by down-regulating SIRT1. Also, it significantly repressed migration and invasion of MDA-MB-231 cells as evaluated by wound healing and transwell invasion assays. Western blot results showed that decreased expression of SIRT1 is positively correlated with expression of p53 along with down-regulating POLD1.

Conclusion

SIRT1 could have an oncogenic role in breast cancer development and progression via activating POLD1. These conclusions present new insights into the underlying mechanisms of TNBC.
Deciphering the evolutionary landscape of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus across East Asia
Authors: Park Dongbin , Kim Kwan Woo , Kim Young-Il , Casel Mark Anthony B , Jang Hyunwoo , Kwon Woohyun , Kim Kanghee , Kim Se-Mi , N Monford Paul Abishek , Kim Eun-Ha , Jang Hobin , Hwang Suhee , Yun Seok-Min , Lee Joo-Yeon , Jeong Hye Won , Park Su-Jin , Choi Young Ki
Published: July 2024

Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) poses a significant public health challenge in East Asia, necessitating a deeper understanding of its evolutionary dynamics to effectively manage its spread and pathogenicity. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the genetic diversity, recombination patterns, and selection pressures across the SFTSV genome, utilizing an extensive dataset of 2041 sequences from various hosts and regions up to November 2023. Employing maximum likelihood and Bayesian evolutionary analysis by sampling trees (BEAST), we elucidated the phylogenetic relationships among nine distinct SFTSV genotypes (A, B1, B2, B3, B4, C, D, E, and F), revealing intricate patterns of viral evolution and genotype distribution across China, South Korea, and Japan. Furthermore, our analysis identified 34 potential reassortments, underscoring a dynamic genetic interplay among SFTSV strains. Genetic recombination was observed most frequently in the large segment and least in the small segment, with notable recombination hotspots characterized by stem-loop hairpin structures, indicative of a structural propensity for genetic recombination. Additionally, selection pressure analysis on critical viral genes indicated a predominant trend of negative selection, with specific sites within the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase and glycoprotein genes showing positive selection. These sites suggest evolutionary adaptations to host immune responses and environmental pressures. This study sheds light on the intricate evolutionary mechanisms shaping SFTSV, offering insights into its adaptive strategies and potential implications for vaccine development and therapeutic interventions.
Biocontrol Mechanisms of Three Plant Essential Oils Against Phytophthora infestans Causing Potato Late Blight
Authors: Tian Yongqiang , Wang Jianglai , Lan Qingqing , Liu Yang , Zhang Jinfeng , Liu Lu , Su Xu , Islam Rehmat
Published: July 2024

Late blight, caused by the notorious pathogen Phytophthora infestans, poses a significant threat to potato ( Solanum tuberosum) crops worldwide, impacting their quality as well as yield. Here, we aimed to investigate the potential use of cinnamaldehyde, carvacrol, and eugenol as control agents against P. infestans and to elucidate their underlying mechanisms of action. To determine the pathogen-inhibiting concentrations of these three plant essential oils (PEOs), a comprehensive evaluation of their effects using gradient dilution, mycelial growth rate, and spore germination methods was carried out. Cinnamaldehyde, carvacrol, and eugenol were capable of significantly inhibiting P. infestans by hindering its mycelial radial growth, zoospore release, and sporangium germination; the median effective inhibitory concentration of the three PEOs was 23.87, 8.66, and 89.65 μl/liter, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that PEOs caused the irreversible deformation of P. infestans, resulting in hyphal shrinkage, distortion, and breakage. Moreover, propidium iodide staining and extracellular conductivity measurements demonstrated that all three PEOs significantly impaired the integrity and permeability of the pathogen's cell membrane in a time- and dose-dependent manner. In vivo experiments confirmed the dose-dependent efficacy of PEOs in reducing the lesion diameter of potato late blight. Altogether, these findings provide valuable insight into the antifungal mechanisms of PEOs vis-à-vis late blight-causing P. infestans. By utilizing the inherent capabilities of these natural compounds, we could effectively limit the harmful impacts of late blight on potato crops, thereby enhancing agricultural practices and ensuring the resilience of global potato food production.