bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Women and Migration in Africa
Authors: Braun Lesley Nicole
Published: May 2020

African women’s experiences of migration and transregional movements have long been eclipsed by men’s histories of travel and journeying. However, this certainly does not mean that women have not historically participated in geographical movement, both with their families and independently. Reasons for women’s migratory practices are divergent, and they are informed by a kaleidoscope of shifting historical internal and external sociopolitical forces. Some of these include escape from violent conflict and war, slavery, environmental and economic hardship, and oppressive family constraints. The colonial era marked a period of intense migration in which men were forcibly moved to labor within extractive economies. Women, for their part, sometimes migrated without the approval of their own families, and against the colonial administration’s sanctions. Their experiences were shaped by struggles against all forms of patriarchal authority. As a result of changing demographics and social roles, the colonial city also assumed a reputation among colonials and Africans as a space of moral depravity motivated by consumer culture. Consequently, migrant women often faced stigma when they entered cities, and sometimes when they returned home.

Women were attracted to towns and cities and what they came to represent—spaces where new opportunities could be explored. Opportunity came in the form of economic independence, marriage, romantic liaisons, and education. Most migrant women were confronted with being marginalized to the domestic sphere and informal sector. However, many women also acquired and honed their market acumen, amassing wealth which they often reinvested in family networks back in their natal villages, thus revealing circular modes of migration associated with multilocal networks.
Asantewa, Nana Yaa
Authors: Day Lynda
Published: May 2020

Yaa Asantewa, the female ruler of Ejisu, a town near the Asante capital of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of modern-day Ghana, inspired and led an armed resistance to British colonial rule of the Asante Kingdom from April 1900 until March 1901. The only female Asante ruler known to have commanded a national army, she assumed the mantle of responsibility to preserve the Asante kingdom when no male ruler would step forward. Under her leadership, Asante fighting forces developed the innovative technique of building stockades to block all the major roads and paths leading in and out of the kingdom, won numerous battles against British forces, and trapped the British Governor of the Gold Coast in the British fort in the Asante capital for nearly three months. Judged to be about sixty years old at the time she organized the war against British imperial forces, the elderly queen mother is credited with safeguarding the Golden Stool, the symbol of Asante unity, and fostering pride in the Asante nation. She is an international symbol of dynamic female leadership in a bloody struggle against colonial rule.
Haile Selassie
Authors: Tibebe Eshete
Published: May 2020

Emperor Haile Selassie I is a household name in Africa and across the globe. His name evokes a variety of feelings in people. To the radical elite of the 1970s he was seen as despot; for the older generation of the same period, he was a redeemer who restored the nation’s independence. For people of African descent Haile Selassie echoes an iconic significance of pride and black identity. The Emperor was a complex personality, preventing anyone from viewing him from a singular optic. No single conceptual category can encapsulate Haile Selassie; not facile Western constructs such as absolutist, reformer, or modernizer or autocrat. All constructs touch aspects of his many-ness, and none wholly reflect the complexity and multiplicity of his character and actions. His life and political career were shaped by various domestic and external circumstances. Changing local and global dynamics molded his thoughts, actions, persona, and policies.

The Emperor presided for the most part of his reign over a nation whose state structure was, by and large, weak: hence the sense of incumbency he felt to guide the process of the nation’s progress under the care of a father figure. Managing the unity of a multiethnic and multireligious nation with a complex history was a political experiment entailing huge responsibilities and challenges. His story is not easy to tell since it is shrouded in paradoxes and ironies.

In understanding the Emperor and his leadership style, it is vital to put him in the context of the many-layered history of the nation and the changing political dynamics of Africa. Haile Selassie led a nation rapidly encountering social and political changes in the 20th century while at the same time championing pan-Africanism. Thus, there is a great need to present a full picture and a nuanced contribution to understanding this influential Emperor.
Women in Northern African History
Authors: Ait Mous Fadma , Bendana Kmar , Vince Natalya
Published: May 2020

The 20th century witnessed the emergence of individual women as political actors, women as a category of political and social actors, and women (or “the woman question”) as a theme for political action across North Africa. This history is both intertwined with, and for a long time has been overshadowed by, that of colonialism, nationalism, and postcolonial state-building. Without being linear or homogeneous, the stages and processes of making women visible and extending women’s rights have been similar across Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria: increasing access to education, the emergence of pioneering female “models,” the mobilization of women as a group in the anti-colonial struggle, postcolonial state feminism and then a shift towards women speaking, writing and organizing themselves as women. Specificities of Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan history have also given rise to distinctive features in the history of women and the writing of the history of women in each country. These include the long history of male feminist thought expressed in Arabic in Tunisia, the mass participation of women in armed struggle in Algeria, and the reformist feminism, based on women reinterpreting religious sources and history, which originated in Morocco.
The Making of the Maghrib: Morocco (1510-1822)
Authors: Cory Stephen
Published: May 2020

Between 1510–1822, Morocco went through significant changes that laid the foundation for its modern nation state. Most noteworthy among these changes was a shift from the Berber dynasties that had dominated the country for almost five hundred years to governments headed by shurafā’, Arab leaders who claimed lineal descent from the Prophet Muhammad. A combination of external threats (e.g., colonization from Portugal and Spain, and the threat of Ottoman expansion) and internal developments (e.g., the rising influence of murābitūn and shurafā’ within the country), along with the perceived inability of the Berber Wattasids to meet the Portuguese challenge, contributed to this dynastic change.

In the five hundred years leading up to the early 21st century, two separate sharifian dynasties have governed Morocco, and the country has vacillated between periods of strong central rule and times of unrest (fitna) and weak central government. However, since the rise of the ʿAlawi dynasty in the late 17th century, ʿAlawi supremacy has not been seriously challenged, even during extensive periods of fitna or foreign colonization. Although Morocco developed a flexible system of government that helped unify the country during this period, it still fell behind European states in terms of technology, science, economy, and military strength. A degree of intellectual and social stagnation set in, such that European visitors in the 19th century perceived Morocco to be a country stuck in its medieval past. This weakness vis-à-vis its near neighbors to the north (particularly England and France) eventually set the stage for the direct colonization of Morocco by Europeans in the early 20th century.
Measuring the Distributional Impact of Taxation and Public Spending: The Practice of Fiscal Incidence Analysis
Authors: Lustig Nora
Published: May 2020

Taxation and public spending are key policy levers the state has in its power to change the distribution of income determined both by market forces and institutions and the prevailing distribution of wealth and property. One of the most commonly used methods to measure the distributional impact of a country’s taxes and public spending is fiscal incidence analysis. Rooted in the field of public finance, fiscal incidence analysis is designed to measure who bears the burden of taxes and who receives the benefits of government spending, and who are the gainers and losers of particular tax reforms or changes to welfare programs.

Fiscal incidence analysis can be used to assess the redistributive impact of a fiscal system as a whole or changes of specific fiscal instruments. In particular, fiscal incidence analysis is used to address the following questions: Who bears the burden of taxation and who receives the benefits of public spending? How much income redistribution is being accomplished through taxation and public spending? What is the impact of taxation and public spending on poverty and the poor? How equalizing are specific taxes and government welfare programs? How progressive are spending on education and health? How effective are taxes and government spending in reducing inequality and poverty? Who are the losers and winners of tax and welfare programs reforms? A sample of key indicators meant to address these questions are discussed here. Real time analysis of winners and losers plays an important role in shaping the policy debate in a number of countries.

In practice, fiscal incidence analysis is the method utilized to allocate taxes and public spending to households so that one can compare incomes before taxes and transfers with incomes after them. Standard fiscal incidence analysis just looks at what is paid and what is received without assessing the behavioral responses that taxes and public spending may trigger on individuals or households. This is often referred to as the “accounting approach.” Although the theory is quite straightforward, its application can be fraught with complications. The salient ones are discussed here. While ignoring behavioral responses and general equilibrium effects is a limitation of the accounting approach, the effects calculated with this method are considered a reasonable approximation of the short-run welfare impact. Fiscal incidence analysis, however, can be designed to include behavioral responses as well as general equilibrium and intertemporal effects. This article focuses on the implementation of fiscal incidence analysis using the accounting approach.
The State of DSGE Modeling
Authors: Levine Paul
Published: May 2020

Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) modeling can be structured around six key criticisms leveled at the approach. The first is fundamental and common to macroeconomics and microeconomics alike—namely, problems with rationality and expected utility maximization (EUM). The second is that DSGE models examine fluctuations about an exogenous balanced growth path and there is no role for endogenous growth. The third consists of a number of concerns associated with estimation. The fourth is another fundamental problem with any micro-founded macro-model—that of heterogeneity and aggregation. The fifth and sixth concern focus on the rudimentary nature of earlier models that lacked unemployment and a banking sector.

A widely used and referenced example of DSGE modeling is the Smets-Wouters (SW) medium-sized NK model. The model features rational expectations and, in an environment of uncertainty, EUM by households and firms. Preferences are consistent with a nonstochastic exogenous balanced growth path about which the model is solved. The model can be estimated by a Bayesian systems estimation method that involves four types of representative agents (households, final goods producers, trade unions, and intermediate good producers). The latter two produce differentiated labor and goods, respectively, and, in each period of time, consist of a proportion locked into existing contracts and the rest that can reoptimize. There is underemployment but no unemployment. Finally, an arbitrage condition imposed on the return on capital and bonds rules out financial frictions. Thus the model, which has become the gold standard for DSGE macro-modeling, features all six areas of concern. The model can be used as a platform to examine how the current generation of DSGE models has developed in these six dimensions. This modeling framework has also used for macro-economic policy design.
An Assessment of the Widespread Use of Increasing Block Tariffs in the Municipal Water Supply Sector
Authors: Whittington Dale , Nauges Céline
Published: May 2020

The design of municipal water tariffs requires balancing multiple criteria such as financial self-sufficiency for the service provider, equity among customers, and economic efficiency for society. Globally, various forms of water tariffs are in use (e.g., tariffs based on fixed or volumetric charges, single and two-part tariffs, and increasing or decreasing block tariffs) but increasing block tariffs (IBTs) have become popular worldwide over the last few decades for two main reasons. Apart from the fact that IBTs incentivize households to save water by charging large volumes at a higher price, there is a widespread belief that IBTs are pro-poor. The latter would be the consequence of providing all households with a minimum amount of water at a low (subsidized) price while large water users pay higher prices. However cross-subsidization between wealthy and poor households will occur only if poor households’ consumption falls in the low (subsidized) block and if rich households consume in the higher block and pay a price that is above the average cost of supply. These two conditions are rarely met in reality and IBTs often fail to allocate subsidies to the poor effectively. There are a few examples of water utilities making adjustments to the tariff to take into account that poor households with large families are likely to be adversely affected by IBTs. However, the provision of a minimum amount of water for free (as in South Africa), the design of household-specific low-cost water allowances (as in California), or tariffs being adjusted based on household size do not usually improve the targeting of subsidies to the poorest households. The widespread use of IBTs is difficult to rationalize, in particular while knowing that the use of a (simple) uniform volumetric tariff where water provision is charged at its full cost could improve social welfare by removing price distortions and would be easier for households to understand than IBTs. This simple tariff could be combined with some consumer assistance programs to help the poorest households pay their bills.
Progressivism and US Power
Authors: Thompson John A.
Published: May 2020

Between the Spanish-American war of 1898 and World War I, a progressive movement, in which Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were rival leaders, greatly extended the authority of the federal government in the nation’s domestic life, and also to some extent equipped it better to conduct foreign relations. Conscious that its economic growth had made the United States a great power, policymakers sought to expand the scope of its influence, but their ability to do so was limited by the difficulty of obtaining domestic support for actions involving significant costs. In practice, the extent to which the United States was able to affect the course of events beyond its borders varied in different regions. It established its hegemony over the Caribbean and Central America, and strengthened its political as well as economic links with the other countries in the western hemisphere. In East Asia, where it fought a brutal three-year war in the Philippines to suppress native resistance to its rule, the principal policy objective was to establish equal access for all foreign interests in China. But Washington found it difficult to uphold this Open Door principle in the face of challenges from Russia and Japan. With regard to Europe, the traditional posture of non-involvement in its great power politics was maintained, although Theodore Roosevelt and other leaders did come to see the relations of the European powers as affecting US interests, which they defined in a way that brought their perspective close to Britain’s. The establishment of peaceful methods of resolving international disputes was a goal of successive administrations, but the arbitration treaties that were negotiated won Senate approval only with reservations that severely limited their scope and authority.
Tibetan Demonology
Authors: Bell Christopher
Published: May 2020

Tibetans engage with a panoply of divinities and spirits in their daily lives and ritual activities. The word “demon” does not capture the sheer breadth and diversity of these beings because there is a rich assortment of distinct spirit types that cause illnesses, guard against calamities, or possess human mediums to provide clairvoyant advice. While comprehensiveness is impossible, a representative demonology is valuable by offering a foundation for further exploration. Most Tibetan spirits are capricious or overtly pernicious and require oracles, diviners, tantrikas, and other religious specialists to ward off or harness their power. The gods and spirits of Tibet also fit loosely into ontological categories along a larger spectrum that includes enlightened beings, transcendent deities, worldly gods, and fierce demons. The boundaries between these categories are often porous, especially when it comes to aligning certain spirits with buddhas, bodhisattvas, or wrathful deities of the land. For Buddhism and Bön, the two major religious traditions of Tibet, there are specific protector deities with robust mythologies and liturgical corpora that are frequently propitiated and revered in order to maintain these religions both materially and spiritually. Interacting with such divinities often takes the form of oracular ceremonies or image consecrations and offerings. The practices may vary dramatically between spiritual lineages and regions, but the overall concept is rooted in interacting with these powerful forces to effect social, communal, and individual change. In Tibet, spirits are potentially dangerous, but they also offer diverse opportunities for personal advancement and religious enrichment.
El Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática: A History of Innovation Rooted in Tradition
Authors: Urquiza García J. Humberto
Published: May 2020

Since gaining independence, Mexico has consistently sought to improve and strengthen its official statistics collection process. This ongoing process of institutional continuity—beginning in the second half of the 19th century and continues into the first decades of the 21st century—can be divided into three discernible stages. The first stage lasted from 1882 to 1917 and was marked by the creation of a specialized government department that failed to provide cohesion to official statistics. During this stage, statistics were gathered only at a state level and through population censuses. The second stage began with the First Post-Revolutionary Statistics Act of 1922 and ended with the Statistics Act of 1983, which created the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Informatics (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática, or INEGI). This long second stage can be further divided into three sub-stages that directly influenced the development of official statistics: (a) 1917–1950: a time of simultaneous political instability and institutional strengthening; (b) 1950–1970: a period of economic stability known as the “Mexican miracle” that allowed for the fortification of official statistics; and (c) 1983–2008: a period when the official statistics system became integrated, which allowed for decentralization, and subsequently autonomous operation of the INEGI, an opening up of the economy, and a transition to democracy. The third stage is still a work in progress, but it has well-defined features: permanent coordination with regional and international statistics offices, statistical diversification, and the strengthening of the autonomy of the National Statistical and Geographic Information System (Sistema Nacional de Información Estadística y Geográfica, or SNIEG).
The Moche
Authors: Castillo Butters Luis Jaime , Patroni Castillo Karla Paola
Published: May 2020

The Moche developed in the north coastal valleys of Peru between 200 and 850 ad. These societies evolved from earlier regional civilizations like Cupisnique and Gallinazo thanks, in part, to their advances in irrigation agriculture and the extension of fields into the deserts, which permitted population increases never seen before in the Andean region of South America. The Moche were never organized as a single, centralized polity but rather constituted multiple interacting medium- and small-scale regional societies, possibly complex chiefdoms and early forms of archaeological states, with two large regional divisions in the northern and southern valleys. Due to their fragmentary nature, there were more aspects that were differences between these societies than those aspects that were common. They seem to have spoken two different languages, Muchik in the north and Quignam in the south. Religions and ritual practices; a shared pantheon of divinities; and mythical narratives expressed in their iconography and performed in monumental structures, locally called huacas, were shared among Moche polities. It is hypothesized that Moche elites were also moving between polities, due to marriage and political alliance. The Moche excelled in multiple crafts, particularly metallurgy and ceramics, and were responsible for the development of multiple technological innovations. During most of their history, the Moche were isolated from other Andean societies, interacting only between themselves. This isolation was permitted by a specialization in the agriculture of the coastal valleys and in the exploitation of marine resources. Between 800 and 850, and due to external and internal causes, the Moche polities experienced different processes of rapid decline that led to the formation of a new generation of civilizations, the Lambayeque in the northern region, and the Chimú in the southern.
Baseball in Mexico City during the Porfiriato, 1882–1910
Authors: Esparza Ontiveros Miguel Ángel
Published: May 2020

Although baseball is hugely popular in Mexico, little is known about its origins and development, as there are still large gaps in the history of Mexican baseball. Historiographical production contains references to only a few cities, states and regions, as the sources are considered insufficient to develop a history of baseball in some of the country’s regions or historical periods.

Analysis of numerous heretofore unused sources (primarily press reports) will significantly change the history of Mexican baseball with regard not only to its origins, but also to its causes and consequences. It will become clear that the emergence of Mexican baseball was not a homogeneous, linear, and intentional process; on the contrary, many individuals’ efforts to develop and establish the practice of baseball at different times and in a variety of places coalesced in an interdependent, co-produced, and unplanned process.
Biblical Archaeology
Authors: Maeir Aren
Published: May 2020

Biblical archaeology is defined as the study of the archaeological remains of the peoples, cultures, and periods in which the biblical texts were formed. While in the past biblical archaeology was often seen as an ideologically motivated field of inquiry, currently, a balanced and scientifically advanced approach is common among most practitioners. The large body of research in this field, continuing to the present, provides a broad range of finds, insights, and understanding of the relevant cultures, peoples and periods in which the biblical texts were formed.
Form and Meaning of (Indefinite) Pronouns
Authors: Koeneman Olaf , Zeijlstra Hedde
Published: May 2020

The relation between the morphological form of a pronoun and its semantic function is not always transparent, and syncretism abounds in natural languages. In a language like English, for instance, three types of indefinite pronouns can be identified, often grouped in series: the some-series, the any-series, and the no-series. However, this does not mean that there are also three semantic functions for indefinite pronouns. Haspelmath (1997), in fact distinguishes nine functions. Closer inspection shows that these nine functions must be reduced to four main functions of indefinites, each with a number of subfunctions: (i) Negative Polarity Items; (ii) Free-Choice Items; (iii) negative indefinites; and (iv) positive or existential indefinites. These functions and subfunctions can be morphologically realized differently across languages, but don’t have to. In English, functions (i) and (ii), unlike (iii) and (iv), may morphologically group together, both expressed by the any-series. Where morphological correspondences between the kinds of functions that indefinites may express call for a classification, such classifications turn out to be semantically well motivated too. Similar observations can be made for definite pronouns, where it turns out that various functions, such as the first person inclusive/exclusive distinction or dual number, are sometimes, but not always morphologically distinguished, showing that these may be subfunctions of higher, more general functions. The question as to how to demarcate the landscape of indefinite and definite pronouns thus does not depend on semantic differences alone: Morphological differences are at least as much telling. The interplay between morphological and semantic properties can provide serious answers to how to define indefinites and the various forms and functions that these may take on.
Negation in Morphology
Authors: De Clercq Karen
Published: May 2020

Negative markers are not a uniform category. They come in various types and, depending on their type, they take scope over a clause, a phrase, or just a word. Low scope negative markers (LSN) like de-, dis-, un-, iN-, non-, -less are bound morphemes and have therefore been mainly studied within morphology, focusing on the semantics of these markers (contradiction vs. contrariety), issues related to their productivity, and their combinability with certain categories. Wide scope negative markers (WSN), like not are often free morphemes and are usually treated within syntax. Thus there is a morphology-syntax divide when it comes to the treatment of negative markers.

However, there are reasons to give up this divide and to uniformly treat negative markers within one module of the grammar. First, from a typological point of view, the bound-free divide of negative markers does not correlate with their scope. For instance, agglutinative languages have WSN markers that are bound morphemes attaching to the verbal base. Second, morphological processes, like suppletion or other types of allomorphy, can be observed in markers that show properties of WSN markers. Third, independent negative particles, like for instance the Dutch free morpheme weinig ‘little, few’, shares stacking properties with other LSN markers like un- and iN-. Fourth, both LSN and WSN markers are subject to the same constraint concerning stacking scopally identical negative markers. Fifth, syncretisms have been found across languages between WSN and LSN, allowing negative markers to be ordered in such a way that no ABA patterns arise, suggesting that the morphology of negative markers reflects the natural scope of negation and that there is a continuum between LSN and WSN markers.
Combining Forms and Affixoids in Morphology
Authors: Amiot Dany , Dugas Edwige
Published: May 2020

Word-formation encompasses a wide range of processes, among which we find derivation and compounding, two processes yielding productive patterns which enable the speaker to understand and to coin new lexemes. This article draws a distinction between two types of constituents (suffixes, combining forms, splinters, affixoids, etc.) on the one hand and word-formation processes (derivation, compounding, blending, etc.) on the other hand but also shows that a given constituent can appear in different word-formation processes. First, it describes prototypical derivation and compounding in terms of word-formation processes and of their constituents: Prototypical derivation involves a base lexeme, that is, a free lexical elements belonging to a major part-of-speech category (noun, verb, or adjective) and, very often, an affix (e.g., Fr. laverV ‘to wash’ > lavableA ‘washable’), while prototypical compounding involves two lexemes (e.g., Eng. rainN + fallV > rainfallN).

The description of these prototypical phenomena provides a starting point for the description of other types of constituents and word-formation processes. There are indeed at least two phenomena which do not meet this description, namely, combining forms (henceforth CFs) and affixoids, and which therefore pose an interesting challenge to linguistic description, be it synchronic or diachronic. The distinction between combining forms and affixoids is not easy to establish and the definitions are often confusing, but productivity is a good criterion to distinguish them from each other, even if it does not answer all the questions raised by bound forms.

In the literature, the notions of CF and affixoid are not unanimously agreed upon, especially that of affixoid. Yet this article stresses that they enable us to highlight, and even conceptualize, the gradual nature of linguistic phenomena, whether from a synchronic or a diachronic point of view.
Network Morphology
Authors: Hippisley Andrew
Published: May 2020

The morphological machinery of a language is at the service of syntax, but the service can be poor. A request may result in the wrong item (deponency), or in an item the syntax already has (syncretism), or in an abundance of choices (inflectional classes or morphological allomorphy). Network Morphology regulates the service by recreating the morphosyntactic space as a network of information sharing nodes, where sharing is through inheritance, and inheritance can be overridden to allow for the regular, irregular, and, crucially, the semiregular. The network expresses the system; the way the network can be accessed expresses possible deviations from the systematic. And so Network Morphology captures the semi-systematic nature of morphology. The key data used to illustrate Network Morphology are noun inflections in the West Slavonic language Lower Sorbian, which has three genders, a rich case system and three numbers. These data allow us to observe how Network Morphology handles inflectional allomorphy, syncretism, feature neutralization, and irregularity. Latin deponent verbs are used to illustrate a Network Morphology account of morphological mismatch, where morphosyntactic features used in the syntax are expressed by morphology regularly used for different features. The analysis points to a separation of syntax and morphology in the architecture of the grammar. An account is given of Russian nominal derivation which assumes such a separation, and is based on viewing derivational morphology as lexical relatedness. Areas of the framework receiving special focus include default inheritance, global and local inheritance, default inference, and orthogonal multiple inheritance. The various accounts presented are expressed in the lexical knowledge representation language DATR, due to Roger Evans and Gerald Gazdar.
Agroforestry and Its Impact in Southeast Asia
Authors: Hunt Christopher
Published: May 2020

Research during the late 20th and early 21st centuries found that traces of human intervention in vegetation in Southeast Asian and Australasian forests started extremely early, quite probably close to the first colonization of the region by modern people around or before 50,000 years ago. It also identified what may be insubstantial evidence for the translocation of economically important plants during the latest Pleistocene and Early Holocene. These activities may reflect early experiments with plants which evolved into agroforestry. Early in the Holocene, land management/food procurement systems, in which trees were a very significant component, seem to have developed over very extensive areas, often underpinned by dispersal of starchy plants, some of which seem to show domesticated morphologies, although the evidence for this is still relatively insubstantial. These land management/food procurement systems might be regarded as a sort of precursor to agroforestry. Similar systems were reported historically during early Western contact, and some agroforest systems survive to this day, although they are threatened in many places by expansion of other types of land use. The wide range of recorded agroforestry makes categorizing impacts problematical, but widespread disruption of vegetational succession across the region during the Holocene can perhaps be ascribed to agroforestry or similar land-management systems, and in more recent times impacts on biodiversity and geomorphological systems can be distinguished. Impacts of these early interventions in forests seem to have been variable and locally contingent, but what seem to have been agroforestry systems have persisted for millennia, suggesting that some may offer long-term sustainability.
A Socio-Hydrological Perspective on the Economics of Water Resources Development and Management
Authors: Pande Saket , Roobavannan Mahendran , Kandasamy Jaya , Sivapalan Murugesu , Hombing Daniel , Lyu Haoyang , Rietveld Luuk
Published: May 2020

Water quantity and quality crises are emerging everywhere, and other crises of a similar nature are emerging at several locations. In spite of a long history of investing in sustainable solutions for environmental preservation and improved water supply, these phenomena continue to emerge, with serious economic consequences. Water footprint studies have found it hard to change culture, that is, values, beliefs, and norms, about water use in economic production. Consumption of water-intensive products such as livestock is seen as one main reason behind our degrading environment. Culture of water use is indeed one key challenge to water resource economics and development. Based on a review of socio-hydrology and of societies going all the way back to ancient civilizations, a narrative is developed to argue that population growth, migration, technology, and institutions characterize co-evolution in any water-dependent society (i.e., a society in a water-stressed environment). Culture is proposed as an emergent property of such dynamics, with institutions being the substance of culture. Inclusive institutions, strong diversified economies, and resilient societies go hand in hand and emerge alongside the culture of water use. Inclusive institutions, in contrast to extractive institutions, are the ones where no small group of agents is able to extract all the surplus from available resources at the cost of many. Just as values and norms are informed by changing conditions resulting from population and economic growth and climate, so too are economic, technological, and institutional changes shaped by prevailing culture. However, these feedbacks occur at different scales—cultural change being slower than economic development, often leading to “lock-ins” of decisions that are conditioned by prevailing culture. Evidence-based arguments are presented, which suggest that any attempt at water policy that ignores the key role that culture plays will struggle to be effective. In other words, interventions that are sustainable endogenize culture. For example, changing water policy, for example, by taking water away from agriculture and transferring it to the environment, at a time when an economy is not diversified enough to facilitate the needed change in culture, will backfire. Although the economic models (and policy based on them) are powerful in predicting actions, that is, how people make choices based on how humans value one good versus the other, they offer little on how preferences may change over time. The conceptualization of the dynamic role of values and norms remains weak. The socio-hydrological perspective emphasizes the need to acknowledge the often-ignored, central role of endogenous culture in water resource economics and development.
Interprofessional Collaborative Practice
Authors: Cohen Konrad Shelley
Published: May 2020

The World Health Organization defines interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) as when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds provide comprehensive health services working with patients/clients, families, caregivers, and communities to deliver quality health care across settings. IPCP has long been considered a best practice model to improve effective health-care delivery; however, implementation of collaborative practice models and evidence to support their efficacy have been relatively slow to develop. IPCP is inextricably linked to interprofessional education and practice (IPEP), which brings together students and practitioners across disciplines and practices, and includes direct care workforce, people/patients/clients, families, and communities to learn with, from, and about each other to prepare them for integrated workplace practice. The article will explore national and global interprofessional collaborative practice initiatives; outline core competencies and evidence for collaborative practice; provide examples of IPCP implementation; and discuss the role social work plays in the development and leadership of collaborative practice.
Gendlin, Eugene
Authors: Woods Brittany A.
Published: May 2020

Eugene T. Gendlin (1926–2017) was an Austro-American philosopher, psychotherapist, educator, and author who is best known for developing the therapeutic approach of focusing. Although Gendlin was a philosopher at heart, he devoted his life to working in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy.
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Authors: Magaña Sandy , Bishop Lauren
Published: May 2020

Autism spectrum disorder is a heritable, developmental disability that is characterized by challenges with social communication and the presence of restrictive and/or repetitive patterns of behavior. Autism spectrum disorder affects development and quality of life from very early development through old age. Social workers play a number of different roles in supporting and advocating for individuals on the autism spectrum and their families. It is important that social workers understand the etiology, diagnosis and treatment of autism spectrum disorder, how it manifests throughout the lifespan, and challenges faced by families affected by ASD.
Disability Rights
Authors: Findley Patricia
Published: May 2020

The role of disability rights has developed and evolved over the course of the United States’ history. The definition of disability has broadened as well as the pursuit for equal treatment, inclusion, and more accessible environments. Key pieces of legislation such as the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act demonstrate a course of steps toward these more empowering themes of independence for those with disabilities. Disability advocates are strong in their message of “nothing about us, without us.” The disability rights movement helped to propel culture shifts and has promoted inclusion of individuals with disabilities. Despite the intention of disability policy to move the nation to more accessible, inclusive, and less discriminatory environments, more work is still needed to support the rights of those with disabilities.
Frailty status predicts futility of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in older adults
Authors: Ibitoye Sarah E , Rawlinson Sadie , Cavanagh Andrew , Phillips Victoria , Shipway David J H
Published: May 2020

Aim

To determine if frailty is associated with poor outcome following in-hospital cardiac arrest; to find if there is a “frailty threshold” beyond which cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) becomes futile.

Methods

Retrospective review of patients aged over 60 years who received CPR between May 2017 and December 2018, in a tertiary referral hospital, which does not provide primary coronary revascularisation. Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and Charlson Comorbidity Index were retrospectively assigned.

Results

Data for 90 patients were analysed, the median age was 77 (IQR 70-83); 71% were male; 44% were frail (CFS > 4). Frailty was predictive of in-hospital mortality independent of age, comorbidity and cardiac arrest rhythm (OR 2.789 95% CI 1.145–6.795). No frail patients (CFS > 4) survived to hospital discharge, regardless of cardiac arrest rhythm, whilst 13 (26%) of the non-frail (CFS ≤ 4) patients survived to hospital discharge. Of the 13 survivors (Age 72; range 61–86), 12 were alive at 1 year and had a good neurological outcome, the outcome for the remaining patient was unknown.

Conclusion

Frail patients are unlikely to survive to hospital discharge following in-hospital cardiac arrest, these results may facilitate clinical decision making regarding whether CPR may be considered futile. The Clinical Frailty Scale is a simple bedside assessment that can provide invaluable information when considering treatment escalation plans, as it becomes more widespread, larger scale observations using prospective assessments of frailty may become feasible.
Detecting destabilizing species in the phylogenetic backbone of Potentilla (Rosaceae) using low-copy nuclear markers
Authors: Persson Nannie L , Toresen Ingrid , Andersen Heidi Lie , Smedmark Jenny E E , Eriksson Torsten
Published: May 2020

The genus Potentilla (Rosaceae) has been subjected to several phylogenetic studies, but resolving its evolutionary history has proven challenging. Previous analyses recovered six, informally named, groups: the Argentea, Ivesioid, Fragarioides, Reptans, Alba and Anserina clades, but the relationships among some of these clades differ between data sets. The Reptans clade, which includes the type species of Potentilla, has been noticed to shift position between plastid and nuclear ribosomal data sets. We studied this incongruence by analysing four low-copy nuclear markers, in addition to chloroplast and nuclear ribosomal data, with a set of Bayesian phylogenetic and Multispecies Coalescent (MSC) analyses. A selective taxon removal strategy demonstrated that the included representatives from the Fragarioides clade, P. dickinsii and P. fragarioides, were the main sources of the instability seen in the trees. The Fragarioides species showed different relationships in each gene tree, and were only supported as a monophyletic group in a single marker when the Reptans clade was excluded from the analysis. The incongruences could not be explained by allopolyploidy, but rather by homoploid hybridization, incomplete lineage sorting or taxon sampling effects. When P. dickinsii and P. fragarioides were removed from the data set, a fully resolved, supported backbone phylogeny of Potentilla was obtained in the MSC analysis. Additionally, indications of autopolyploid origins of the Reptans and Ivesioid clades were discovered in the low-copy gene trees.
Interactive visualization and analysis of morphological skeletons of brain vasculature networks with VessMorphoVis
Authors: Abdellah Marwan , Guerrero Nadir Román , Lapere Samuel , Coggan Jay S , Keller Daniel , Coste Benoit , Dagar Snigdha , Courcol Jean-Denis , Markram Henry , Schürmann Felix
Published: May 2020

Motivation

Accurate morphological models of brain vasculature are key to modeling and simulating cerebral blood flow in realistic vascular networks. This in silico approach is fundamental to revealing the principles of neurovascular coupling. Validating those vascular morphologies entails performing certain visual analysis tasks that cannot be accomplished with generic visualization frameworks. This limitation has a substantial impact on the accuracy of the vascular models employed in the simulation.

Results

We present VessMorphoVis, an integrated suite of toolboxes for interactive visualization and analysis of vast brain vascular networks represented by morphological graphs segmented originally from imaging or microscopy stacks. Our workflow leverages the outstanding potentials of Blender, aiming to establish an integrated, extensible and domain-specific framework capable of interactive visualization, analysis, repair, high-fidelity meshing and high-quality rendering of vascular morphologies. Based on the initial feedback of the users, we anticipate that our framework will be an essential component in vascular modeling and simulation in the future, filling a gap that is at present largely unfulfilled.

Availability and implementation

VessMorphoVis is freely available under the GNU public license on Github at https://github.com/BlueBrain/VessMorphoVis. The morphology analysis, visualization, meshing and rendering modules are implemented as an add-on for Blender 2.8 based on its Python API (application programming interface). The add-on functionality is made available to users through an intuitive graphical user interface, as well as through exhaustive configuration files calling the API via a feature-rich command line interface running Blender in background mode.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Finding the direct optimal RNA barrier energy and improving pathways with an arbitrary energy model
Authors: Takizawa Hiroki , Iwakiri Junichi , Terai Goro , Asai Kiyoshi
Published: May 2020

Motivation

RNA folding kinetics plays an important role in the biological functions of RNA molecules. An important goal in the investigation of the kinetic behavior of RNAs is to find the folding pathway with the lowest energy barrier. For this purpose, most of the existing methods use heuristics because the number of possible pathways is huge even if only the shortest (direct) folding pathways are considered.

Results

In this study, we propose a new method using a best-first search strategy to efficiently compute the exact solution of the minimum barrier energy of direct pathways. Using our method, we can find the exact direct pathways within a Hamming distance of 20, whereas the previous methods even miss the exact short pathways. Moreover, our method can be used to improve the pathways found by existing methods for exploring indirect pathways.

Availability and implementation

The source code and datasets created and used in this research are available at https://github.com/eukaryo/czno.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.