bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Future Fertility in Low Fertility Countries
Authors: Gietel-Basten Stuart , Sobotka Tomáš
Published: November 2020

The ongoing transition to low fertility is, alongside the long-term expansion of life expectancy, the key force reshaping populations around the world. It has sweeping economic and social repercussions as it affects labour markets, intergenerational ties, gender relations, and public policies. Many middle-income countries, including China, Brazil, Iran, and Turkey, have joined the expanding list of low fertility countries. Consequently, low fertility is no longer an exclusive feature of rich Western societies. As close to half of the global population now lives in regions with below replacement fertility, low fertility has become a truly global phenomenon. What are the key ingredients of this ‘revolutionary’ change? Expanding education, rising income, the rise of gender equality, female labour force participation, ideational changes, consumerism, urbanization, family disintegration, economic uncertainty, globalization, modern contraception, and many other complementary or contrasting forces are often highlighted. But how will these drivers shape the long-term future of fertility? Will fertility in most countries stabilize at around the replacement level threshold, as implied by the demographic transition theory, or will it decline below this level? Is very low fertility merely a ‘passing phenomenon’, a sign of a temporary imbalance between rapid social and economic changes and opportunities on the one hand, and family, gender relations, and reproduction on the other? This chapter aims to present both a comprehensive overview of the forces shaping contemporary reproductive behaviour in low fertility countries and an exploration of possible future scenarios based upon a new IIASA–Oxford survey of international experts introduced in Chapter 2 of this volume. We begin with a presentation of recent trends in fertility in low fertility settings followed by a review of the particular recent histories of fertility change in North America, Europe, and the emerging low fertility settings in East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. We then explore the theoretical and empirical evidence that has been cited in the literature as underpinning these past trends and possible future scenarios. As well as ‘meta-theories’ such as the Second Demographic Transition (SDT), section 3.2 considers the roles played by cultural, biomedical, and economic factors, family policies, economic uncertainty, education, and the contribution of migrants’ fertility.
Future Fertility in High Fertility Countries
Authors: Fuchs Regina , Goujon Anne
Published: November 2020

Beginning in 1960, a phenomenon occurred that John Caldwell named the ‘global fertility transition’ (Caldwell, 1997), in which fertility declines have become the general rule throughout the world, including in the majority of the less developed countries. This is important partly because fertility is in many circumstances negatively associated with socio-economic development (Bryant, 2007). From 1970–75 to 2005–10, the average total fertility rate (TFR) for the developing world fell by half, from 5.4 to 2.7 births per woman on average (United Nations, 2011). However, global figures hide important differences in fertility levels among the different regions. In Asia and Latin America, the reproductive behaviour of women reflected the pattern of change noted by Caldwell, halving the TFR in the last 35 years. In Africa, on the contrary, fertility stagnated at 6.2–6.4 from 1950 to 1985, and then began a decline that was much slower than in other developing regions. As a whole, the TFR of sub-Saharan Africa has, for decades, been higher than the fertility levels elsewhere. This was the case in 1950 and 1975, and remains so today. Fertility differences among countries are now larger than ever because transitions to replacement fertility have not yet started in some subpopulations of Western and Middle Africa, but have already been completed in others (e.g. in the economically most advanced countries of Asia, especially East Asia, as well as in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean). As a result, the observed TFRs of (former) developing countries in 2005–10 range from a high of 7.1 in Niger to a low of 1.0 in Hong Kong. All regions of the world experience wide variations in their TFRs. For instance, East Asia has experienced a faster fertility decline than countries like Pakistan in south-central Asia. Moreover, fertility levels can show significant variations within a single country. This is the case in India, where Northern and Southern patterns of fertility are very different. Overall, regional variations are most apparent in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Future of International Migration
Authors: Sander Nikola , Abel Guy J.
Published: November 2020

Migration is a key means by which human beings act to preserve or enhance their well-being. Since Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa about 200,000 years ago, geographic mobility has been a prominent strategy for human adaptation and improvement (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994). In modern societies, people most commonly migrate to further their economic position or to join family members who migrated before them (Massey et al., 1993). Yet, many others move, both temporarily and permanently, with the more explicit purpose of reducing social, economic, political, or environmental vulnerability (Bardsley and Hugo, 2010; Hunter, 2005; Lundquist and Massey, 2005). All of these forms of human mobility frequently span international borders, oftentimes despite substantial barriers to transborder movement. Estimates of migration flows are the expression of these heterogeneous motivations. As the drivers of migration also vary conspicuously across nations (Clark et al., 2004; Massey and Sana, 2003) and evolve over time within countries (Lindstrom and Ramírez, 2010; Massey, 1990; Massey et al., 1994), they are particularly difficult to forecast. As we show in this chapter, even developing a homogeneous series of baseline estimates at a global level is very complex (Abel, 2013a), further complicating forecasting efforts. Reliable baseline estimates are hard to obtain, for instance, given differences in the definitions across countries of what is an international migrant (Kupiszewska and Nowok, 2008) and owing to the presence of sizable irregular or unauthorized flows in some nations (e.g. Passel et al., 2009). Notwithstanding these difficulties, international migration has increasingly become, and will remain, a crucial component of the population dynamics of many sending and receiving nations. While only 2 per cent of the world’s population lives outside of their country of birth, this figure is above 10 per cent for nationals of countries like Mexico and El Salvador. Foreign-born shares are also substantial relative to the population of many migrant-receiving countries, with levels above 10 per cent (in some cases well above) in North America, most of Western Europe and Oceania, and parts of South East Asia. At the extreme, this share has reached levels of 60–80 per cent in some age groups in the oil-producing nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Re-measuring Twenty-first Century Population Ageing
Authors: Scherbov Sergei , Sanderson Warren C.
Published: November 2020

Probably the most famous demographic riddle of all time is the one that the Sphinx was said to have posed to travellers outside the Greek city of Thebes: ‘Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?’ Unfortunate travellers who could not answer the riddle correctly were immediately devoured. Oedipus, fresh from killing his father, was the first to have got the answer right. The correct answer was ‘humans’. People crawl on their hands and knees as infants, walk on two feet in adulthood, and walk with a cane in old age. We easily recognize the three ages of humans. Humans are born dependent on the care of others. As they grow, their capacities and productivities generally increase, but eventually these reach a peak. After a while, capacities and productivities decline and, eventually, if they are lucky enough to survive, people become elderly, often again requiring transfers and care from others. The human life cycle is the basis of all studies of population ageing, and so we cannot begin to study population ageing without first answering the Sphinx’s riddle. However, answering the Sphinx’s riddle is not enough to get us started on a study of population ageing. We must take two more steps before we begin. First, we must recognize that not all people age at the same rate. As seen in Chapter 5, nowadays more educated people tend to have longer life expectancies than less educated people. Second, we must realize that there is no natural generalization of the Sphinx’s riddle to whole populations. Populations cannot be categorized into the stages of infancy, adulthood, and old age. Indeed, if the Sphinx was reborn today, we might find her sitting near another city and posing an equally perplexing riddle, one especially relevant for our times: ‘What can grow younger as it grows older?’ Answering this riddle correctly is the central challenge of this chapter and the key to understanding population ageing in the twenty-first century.
What is Schizophrenia?
Authors: Glatt Stephen J. , Faraone Stephen V. , Tsuang Ming T.
Published: November 2020

Many who pick up this book will be learning about schizophrenia for the first time, either because someone they care about has recently been diagnosed, or purely out of academic interest. As such, we aim to paint a very clear and basic picture of the disorder, and avoid jargon as much as possible (though sometimes this cannot be avoided). The first impression many people get about schizo­phrenia, however, is formed before they ever meet someone with the disorder, through exposure in films, television, or literature. Some of these portrayals are fair and accurate depictions of particular aspects of schizophrenia, and may be useful to review in combination with this book to help the reader develop a fuller picture of the disorder (though none is perfect in all regards). For ex­ample, some aspects of John Nash’s struggles with schizophrenia in the film A Beautiful Mind, and those of Nathaniel Ayers in The Soloist, ring true with these individuals’ first- person accounts of the disorder. The reality of schizophrenia has also been reasonably well captured in fictional films such as Clean, Shaven; Donnie Darko; and The Fisher King. Yet, far more commonly schizophrenia is portrayed in an unrealistic and unflattering light by authors and screenwriters, which adds to the stigma and negative views of the disorder held by many who have no first- hand experience of the illness. We will cover some examples of these faulty depictions later in the chapter ‘What is not schizophrenia’, but here, let us continue to describe the main facts about the disorder. Please keep in mind that schizophrenia is one of the most complicated and variable human disorders. Although this is a textbook on schizophrenia, there are no ‘textbook cases’ of schizophrenia. As such, you may sometimes find your­self reading these facts and thinking, ‘that doesn’t sound like what I’ve seen or experienced’. We try to paint as broad a picture of schizophrenia as possible to provide the reader with the best chance of recognizing and understanding schizophrenia when they see it. We use anecdotes about cases to illustrate fea­tures of the disorder, but these may not be relevant to the schizophrenia that you have seen.
Sand Reckoning: Whose Information is It, Anyway?
Authors: Vedral Vlatko
Published: November 2020

In Chapter 9 we discussed the idea of a universal Turing machine. This machine is capable of simulating any other machine given sufficient time and energy. For example, we discussed how your fridge microprocessor could be programmed to run Microsoft Windows, then we described Moore’s logic, that computers are becoming faster and smaller. Therefore, one day, a single atom may be able to simulate fully what a present day PC can do. This leads us to the fascinating possibility that every little constituent of our Universe may be able to simulate any other, given enough time and energy. The Universe therefore consists of a great number of little universal quantum computers. But this surely makes the Universe itself the largest quantum computer. So how powerful is our largest quantum computer? How many bits, how many computational steps? What is the total amount of information that the computer can hold? Since our view is that everything in reality is composed of information, it would be useful to know how much information there is in total and whether this total amount is growing or shrinking. The Second Law already tells us that the physical entropy in the Universe is always increasing. Since physical entropy has the same form as Shannon’s information, the Second Law also tells us that the information content of the Universe can only ever increase too. But what does this mean for us? If we consider our objective to be a full understanding of the Universe then we have to accept that the finish line is always moving further and further away from us. We define our reality through the laws and principles that we establish from the information that we gather. Quantum mechanics, for example, gives us a very different reality to what classical mechanics told us. In the Stone Age, the caveman’s perception of reality and what was possible was also markedly different from what Newton would have understood. In this way we process information from the Universe to create our reality. We can think of the Universe as a large balloon, within which there is a smaller balloon, our reality.
‘Ruins’ of the Forest Social Complexity and Tropical Cities
Authors: Roberts Patrick
Published: November 2020

The above quote from a recent Hollywood film presentation of Colonel Percival Fawcett’s obsessive early twentieth-century search for the remains of the Lost City of Z (Gray, 2016) highlights the effort that it has taken to convince the academic world and the public alike that large urban forms can be developed in tropical forest settings. While the film, and the book by David Grann (2009) upon which it was based, grossly overplay the exploration credentials, respect for Indigenous peoples, and scientific abilities of Colonel Fawcett (Hemming, 2017), this quote encapsulates the difficult working conditions and environmental determinism in western thought that have led to perceptions of ‘impossibility’ of extensive settlements and social complexity in tropical forests. Beyond searches for debated ‘lost’ cities, even where the clear ruins of ancient urban sites have been found in tropical forests, as with the Classic Maya in North and Central America and the Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia, their collapse has been seen as almost inevitable given necessary forest clearance, soil erosion, and population pressure on these delicate environments (Webster, 2002; Diamond, 2005; Chen et al., 2014; Lentz et al., 2014). In particular, the intensive agriculture seen as necessary to fuel the ‘urban revolution’ (Childe, 1950) and the development of cities and elite structures familiar to most archaeological definitions of cities (Adams, 1981; Postgate, 1992), has been considered impossible on the fragile, low nutrient soils of tropical forest habitats (Meggers, 1954, 1971, 1977, 1987). Other, less-discussed threats include natural disasters, such as mudslides and mass-flooding, that continue to trouble tropical regions prone to high annual or seasonal rainfall (Larsen, 2017). Nevertheless, new methodologies and theoretical shifts are highlighting the clear emergence of social complexity and extensive human populations prior to the arrival of European settlers in many of the world’s tropical forest settings. Here, I review the growing dataset of past ‘urban’ forms in tropical forests. As with ‘the origins of agriculture’ in Chapter 5, tropical forests have been crucial in demonstrating that traditional ideas of ‘urbanism’ in archaeology–namely ‘compact’, bounded, and dense populations documented in early Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, and that dominate European thought—do not capture the whole wealth of ‘urban’ diversity and settlement networks that began to develop from the Middle Holocene.
Introduction: Neolithic Britain—encounters and reflections
Authors: Ray Keith , Thomas Julian
Published: November 2020

Is it possible to experience the Neolithic period (c.4000—c.2400 BCE) in Britain today? Of course not, or not in any literal sense. And yet, there are devices that we can create, and places that we can visit, that can to some extent stand in for that experience. These enable us, however fleetingly, to bridge the gulf of time that separates us from the distant world of thousands of years ago. One new way of traversing this chasm became available to us in 2013, when English Heritage opened a new visitor centre at Stonehenge. Inside the airy modern structure the latest audio-visual technology introduces visitors to the site and its surrounding prehistoric landscape. Remarkably, before the year was out, that centre had hosted a visit by the then President of the United States of America. Barack Obama made an unscheduled stop at the World Heritage Site en route from a NATO summit in Wales on 5 September 2014. Apparently, visiting Stonehenge, widely regarded as the most extraordinary of all prehistoric sites in Europe, was on the personal ‘bucket list’ of that recent incumbent of the White House. Among the things that the US President would have seen at the Stonehenge centre were reconstructed Late Neolithic houses from the area, and the visitor can now enter and walk around in these buildings, made using authentic materials. These newly constructed timber and daub buildings had been created on the basis of evidence recovered from Durrington Walls, a colossal Late Neolithic complex 2 miles from Stonehenge, where settings of concentric rings of massive posts were contained within an embanked enclosure half a kilometre across. Surprisingly, if the visitor centre had been built when it had originally been planned a decade earlier, it would not have been possible to recreate these 4,500-year-old houses, with their square ground plans and central hearths. This is because the excavations that would reveal these striking vestiges of the Stonehenge people were then only just beginning. This is an indication of the pace of discovery in the study of Neolithic Britain, and the immediacy of this process is one of the things that we would like to convey in this book.
Social being and cultural practices
Authors: Ray Keith , Thomas Julian
Published: November 2020

Human societies are held together by relationships, conventions, traditions, institutions, and tacit understandings. These things are intangible, and while humans themselves are reproduced as corporeal beings, their societies are sustained by practical activities that continually recreate knowledge, customs, and interpersonal bonds. Just as a language would ultimately disappear if it ceased to be used as a means of communication, so the rules and routines of social life are maintained only if they are practised. The corollary of this is that societies are not fixed and bounded entities as much as arrangements that are continually coming into existence, works (if you like) that are never completed. But material things are also in flux, constantly ripening, maturing, being made, being used consecutively in different ways through their ‘lifespans’, eroding and decaying: so that the social and substantial worlds are as one in being in an unending state of becoming. Nonetheless, objects often have the capacity to endure longer than habits, rules, or affiliations. They continue to exist independently of human beings and their actions. As a result, old artefacts and places occupied in the past can serve to give structure to current practices and transactions, providing cues and prompts, or reminding us of past events and appropriate modes of conduct. Hunter-gatherers have generally lived a way of life that involves making continual reference to natural features and landmarks. Certain distinctive cliffs, hills, islands, trees, and lakes have represented places to return to, or at which to arrange meetings or encounter game. As such they will have been places of periodic resort, and were incorporated into collective history and mythology. Meanwhile, other places acquired a meaning simply because specific people camped there, or met there, or died there. During the Mesolithic in Britain, some locations seem to have been persistently returned to over very long periods of time. One example is the site at North Park Farm, Bletchingley in Surrey, which appears to have been visited sporadically over hundreds of years, although the structural evidence for this at the site was sparse, being limited to a group of fireplaces.
Symbols Without Context
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: November 2020

Humans have invaluable real-world knowledge because we have accumulated a lifetime of experiences that help us recognize, understand, and anticipate. Computers do not have real-world experiences to guide them, so they must rely on statistical patterns in their digital data base—which may be helpful, but is certainly fallible. We use emotions as well as logic to construct concepts that help us understand what we see and hear. When we see a dog, we may visualize other dogs, think about the similarities and differences between dogs and cats, or expect the dog to chase after a cat we see nearby. We may remember a childhood pet or recall past encounters with dogs. Remembering that dogs are friendly and loyal, we might smile and want to pet the dog or throw a stick for the dog to fetch. Remembering once being scared by an aggressive dog, we might pull back to a safe distance. A computer does none of this. For a computer, there is no meaningful difference between dog, tiger, and XyB3c, other than the fact that they use different symbols. A computer can count the number of times the word dog is used in a story and retrieve facts about dogs (such as how many legs they have), but computers do not understand words the way humans do, and will not respond to the word dog the way humans do. The lack of real world knowledge is often revealed in software that attempts to interpret words and images. Language translation software programs are designed to convert sentences written or spoken in one language into equivalent sentences in another language. In the 1950s, a Georgetown–IBM team demonstrated the machine translation of 60 sentences from Russian to English using a 250-word vocabulary and six grammatical rules. The lead scientist predicted that, with a larger vocabulary and more rules, translation programs would be perfected in three to five years. Little did he know! He had far too much faith in computers. It has now been more than 60 years and, while translation software is impressive, it is far from perfect. The stumbling blocks are instructive. Humans translate passages by thinking about the content—what the author means—and then expressing that content in another language.
Beat the Market II
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: November 2020

Nowadays, technical analysts are called quants. Being overly impressed by computers, we are overly impressed by quants using computers instead of pencils and graph paper. Quants do not think about whether the patterns they discover make sense. Their mantra is, “Just show me the data.” Indeed, many quants have PhDs in physics or mathematics and only the most rudimentary knowledge of economics or finance. That does not deter them. If anything, their ignorance encourages them to search for patterns in the most unlikely places. The logical conclusion of moving from technical analysts using pencils to quants using computers is to eliminate humans entirely. Just turn the technical analysis over to computers. A 2011 article in the wonderful technology magazine Wired was filled with awe and admiration for computerized stock trading systems. These black-box systems are called algorithmic traders (algos) because the computers decide to buy and sell using computer algorithms in place of human judgment. Humans write the algorithms that guide the computers but, after that, the computers are on their own. Some humans are dumbstruck. After Pepperdine University invested 10 percent of its portfolio in quant funds in 2016, the director of investments argued that, “Finding a company with good prospects makes sense, since we look for under valued things in our daily lives, but quant strategies have nothing to do with our lives.” He thinks that not having the wisdom and common sense acquired by being alive is an argument for computers. He is not alone. Black-box investment algorithms now account for nearly a third of all U.S. stock trades. Some of these systems track stock prices; others look at economic and noneconomic data and dissect news stories. They all look for patterns. A momentum algorithm might notice that when a particular stock trades at a higher price for five straight days, the price is usually higher on the sixth day. A mean-reversion algorithm might notice that when a stock trades at a higher price for eight straight days, the price is usually lower on the ninth day. A pairs-trading algorithm might notice that two stock prices usually move up and down together, suggesting an opportunity when one price moves up and the other doesn’t.
Orthodontics
Authors: Longridge Nicholas , Clarke Pete , Aftab Raheel , Ali Tariq
Published: November 2020

Orthodontics is ‘the specialty of dentistry concerned with growth of the face, the development of dentition, and the prevention and correction of occlusal anomalies. A malocclusion can be defined as ‘a deviation from the ideal that may be aesthetically or functionally unsatisfactory, with a wide range of occlusal traits’. Orthodontics is a constantly evolving specialty, with ever changing principles and techniques continuing to be developed. There has been huge progress in orthodontics in recent times, with changes in the types of brackets, archwire materials, and appliance systems (such as tem­porary anchorage devices and aligner technology). The key principles of orthodontics date back to 1899 when Edward Angle described ‘the key to a normal occlusion as the anteropos­terior relationship between the upper and lower first molars’. In 1972, Lawrence Andrews described ‘six keys to an ideal static occlusion’. This was the basis of early orthodontic treatment planning. Knowledge of craniofacial development and growth is required as a foundation for understanding the aetiology of a patient’s malocclusion, to reach a diagnosis, and to plan orthodontic treatment. A basic under­standing of the types of orthodontic appliances is beneficial (mainly fixed appliances, functional appliances, some use of removable appliances, and retainers). In addition to the management of a malocclusion, orthodontic treat­ment is often required in conjunction with other specialties, including oral and maxillofacial surgery, paediatric and restorative dentistry Key topics discussed in this chapter include: ● Fixed appliances ● Functional appliances ● Removable appliances ● Retention ● Index of treatment need ● Orthodontic assessment and diagnosis ● Cephalometric analysis ● Malocclusion ● Ectopic canines ● Dental anomalies.
Endodontics
Authors: Longridge Nicholas , Clarke Pete , Aftab Raheel , Ali Tariq
Published: November 2020

Endodontics remains a rapidly advancing branch of restorative dentistry. It is highly likely that, by the time this book is published, several new or updated endodontic file systems will have been released. Despite the fairly rapid technological advances that the profession has seen, the key principles of endodontic treatment remain the same: 1. Eliminate microorganisms from the root canal system 2. Prevent reinfection of the root canal system 3. Retain a functional natural tooth. Whilst these principles are easy to discuss, they are consistently diffi­cult to perform, due, in large part, to the complexity of the root canal system. Multiple theories, principles, and approaches have been discussed to help achieve an optimal technical and clinical outcome. However, evi­dence to favour one specific stage or system over another is lacking, and as such, a large degree of operator preference and experience will ultimately influence the treatment planning and technical strategy. Much like baking a cake, endodontic treatment relies upon a series of proced­ural steps to achieve a desirable outcome, which, for the patient, often equates to a functional, pain-free natural tooth. Good- quality magnification remains a key component of an endodontist’s armamentarium, and dental loupes or a dental operating microscope could not be recommended more highly. Key topics include: ● Endodontic case assessment, including root canal anatomy ● Pain management, including local anaesthesia ● Access and canal identification ● Vital pulp therapy, including caries management ● Canal negotiation and instrumentation ● Root canal irrigation ● Root canal obturation ● Restoration of the endodontically treated tooth.
Prosthodontics
Authors: Longridge Nicholas , Clarke Pete , Aftab Raheel , Ali Tariq
Published: November 2020

Prosthodontics comprises most of the routine restorative treatments that practitioners perform on a daily basis. Much restorative work re¬sults from the impact of caries and periodontal disease. However, the prevalence of toothwear is dramatically increasing and can be expected to form a more prominent feature of the modern practitioner’s work¬load. There is a considerable theory base in prosthodontics, covering all aspects of fixed and removable treatments, both conventional and contemporary. Although the individual management of teeth can be tricky, a challenge many new practitioners struggle with is treatment planning on a patient level. Treatment planning is rarely black and white, with considerable variations in opinion among clinicians, even for more simple cases. The staging of treatment planning is fairly consistent across the profession (e.g. relief of pain first, then investigatory phase, etc.), but in complex cases, a second opinion may be warranted. Not only is treatment plan¬ning a difficult skill, but so is the execution. It takes practice to become adept at the variety of clinical skills in prosthodontics and the staging of treatment, but this makes for a rewarding and fascinating discipline. Modern dentistry has a much greater focus on minimal invasive treat-ment, relying on dentine bonding and adhesive dentistry to limit the need for aggressive preparations of teeth and protect the vitality of the pulp. Moreover, the progression in digital dentistry is exponential, with newer production methods and clinical techniques becoming increasingly accurate and ever more accessible. As such, the modern practitioner needs to have a good understanding of both conventional concepts and modern alternatives in order to be able to apply the material and tech¬nique of choice to achieve an optimal outcome. The questions in the chapter aim to cover a wide range of topics, testing conventional concepts in both fixed and removable prostho¬dontics, whilst touching on contemporary materials and production methods. It is hoped that the reader will be challenged and the more difficult questions will promote wider reading. Key topics include: ● Diagnosis and treatment planning ● Occlusion ● Toothwear ● Complete dentures ● Removable dentures (including denture design principles) ● Direct restorations ● Crown and bridge ● Implant restorations ● Laboratory processes ● Digital dentistry.
Computers in education and learning
Authors: Baecker Ronald M.
Published: November 2020

As we have already hinted, computers and the internet have made profound changes in how we learn. We begin this topic by reviewing influential visions and early prototypes suggesting how technology could revolutionize education. Early on, computers were used by educators to deliver online tutorials about subject material, administer drill-and-practice exercises on rote skills, act as supportive environ­ments for creatively exploring ideas through programming in English-like languages, and function as inexpensive, ubiquitous, and dynamic audio-visual resources. We shall then discuss other newer methods for using digital technologies to transform how students approach subject matter and how classrooms are organized. By using interactive simulation games, students learn by taking actions with respect to certain scenarios. Presentation aids such as PowerPoint and Prezi have replaced blackboards to present and elucidate concepts. Smart classrooms allow instructors and students access to technology that facilitates learning; inverted classrooms allow more effective use of class­room time by enabling students to prepare for lectures in advance and focus on working together with their teachers in class. Intelligent tutors are artificial intelligence (AI) programs that actively support student learning, diagnose student difficulties with the material, and then adapt tutoring strategies based on these findings. Next, we shall review how online learning has opened up new opportunities for adult and continuing education, whereby students can learn in their own time and at their own pace. The challenge online learning technology developers now face is to provide discussion forums, real-time chat capabilities, and methods for instructor feedback so that advantages of face-to-face interaction are not lost in web-based learning. Particularly exciting is the growth of worldwide learning communities via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), an area of current expansion and creativity. While technology is now seen as instrumental in learning, there are still debates on the extent to which it should be used and how it should be used in education. A particularly prevalent dilemma is in middle and secondary schools. The issue is whether or not and how to encourage or disallow the use of mobile phones and other devices in classrooms.
Lifestyle
Authors: Baecker Ronald M.
Published: November 2020

The widespread digitization of technologies, materials, and processes, and the constant use of the internet for communication and consumption, have led to dramatic changes in our lifestyle. We begin Chapter 12 with the internet and social media’s enabling people to better connect with family, friends, acquaintances, and communities. There can be more mutual awareness and closeness. Yet we may never be able to ‘unplug’; the line between work and play can become increasingly blurred. Having no down time is one manifestation of a broader corrosive phenomenon—technology or social media addiction. We shall see how a battle is being waged between those who want to engage us with more seductive user experiences, and those who would counsel a saner life in which technology and media play a more modest role. We then move from electronic communications to the physical world. We shall consider the effect of ubiquitous digital media, especially the so-called Internet of Things, in which almost all objects become digital. Such objects can sense people near them and general aspects of the world. They behave based on what they sense. One form of this is the rapid integration of voice assistants in everyday objects such as speakers and lamps. People can also transcend the real world by moving into virtual worlds, via augmented reality and virtual reality. The former allows the world to be enhanced with computer-generated visuals and sounds, while the latter allows immersion into worlds that are totally synthetic. We look at how people meet one another nowadays, and the increasingly important role of internet dating. For those who find intimacy or romance with people too challenging or insufficiently satisfying, and as robots become more and more lifelike, there are new opportunities for intimacy and for sexual satisfaction using sex robots, a development in which there are passionate advocates on both sides. How we do financial transactions is also changing. Cash is disappearing; money is becoming increasingly digital and intangible. Investors speculate in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which are implemented with an ingenious secure networked digital ledger known as blockchain.
Ancient Greek Vessels between Sea, Earth, and Clouds
Authors: Neer Richard
Published: November 2020

What is a vessel? It is, first and foremost, a tool. It is a tool historically, in the prosaic sense of an item manufactured in the more or less distant past for the purpose of containing something. But a vessel is also a tool for historians: vessel is a taxonomic term, naming a category of data that we use to build arguments. An animating idea of the present volume is that these two tools may not be identical. It is for this reason that it makes sense to ask: What is, what counts as, a vessel? One might rephrase this question more precisely to say: What are the necessary and/or sufficient conditions of being a vessel? This way of putting it is very Greek, even Socratic. But what if there are no such conditions, nothing that does the work of essence when it comes to vessels? That seems, in fact, to be the case when it comes to Archaic and Classical Greek materials. This is not to say that ancient Greek vessels had nothing in common beyond the fact that they were called vessels (angeia, skeuē). What these objects had in common is that they were vessels, which is to say that they answered to a certain use. In early Greece, the application of a term like vessel was arbitrary, not random, and could be projected into new and unexpected contexts. There is no answer to the question, What is a vessel? if, like Socrates, we take it to request a definition; the demand for a definition only leads to problems. I will make this point informally, by demonstration and reductio. It may be tempting to identify the two ways of using the word vessel that I have just described with the anthropologist’s distinction between emic and etic categories. How does the “insider’s view,” the emic category, of a given type-concept relate to the “outsider’s perspective,” the etic one? This way of putting the matter begs the question in at least two ways. The first way has to with the distinction itself, the second, with the notion of category that it implies.
Concealment and Revelation: The Pola Casket and the Visuality of Early Christian Relics
Authors: Elsner Jaś
Published: November 2020

The archaeological artefact is typically unearthed. It comes to us marked by the depredations of time, tarnished by burial, reclaimed from loss. Yet the perspective of excavation, according to which all objects are disinterred and salvaged for the collection or the museum, with more or less of a contextual history arising from their unearthing, may risk simplifying or ignoring the conditions of their original interment. The differences between the kinds of burial, between the multiple processes at stake in the loss of objects to the earth in the past—insofar as they can be reconstructed—are interesting. For example, the amazingly well-preserved statue of Flavius Palmatus, Consular Governor of Caria and acting Vicar of Asiana at some point before 536 CE, was discovered toppled beside its inscribed base at the west colonnade of the square adjoining the theater of the city of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, in the mid-twentieth century. It fell in the course of time, we have no idea when—probably as the result of an earthquake—in a city virtually abandoned after the seventh century and was subsequently covered by debris and soil until its excavation in modernity. By contrast, the Meroe head, an over-life-size bronze head of Augustus, which was excavated by the British in Sudan in the teens of the twentieth century, was probably cut from the statue of which it was part and buried by barbarian tribesmen beneath steps leading to the native temple of Victory in the Kushite capital of Meroe in the Sudan. Far from falling where it stood, it was the victim of deliberate iconoclasm and burial by the enemies of the Roman empire, probably shortly after its erection when the Kushites invaded Roman Egypt in 25 BCE. In its buried form it lay as a hidden trophy permanently trampled by the Kushites—a sign of independence from Rome, autonomy, and hatred of the Roman emperor even when the tribesmen had forgotten that it was hidden there. Other kinds of deliberate burial, however, were made by those who owned the objects interred, rather than thieves or rampagers.
Methods in Short-Term Climate Prediction
Authors: van den Dool Huug
Published: November 2020

The purpose of this chapter is to list the more common accepted methods used in short-term climate prediction, explain how they are designed, how they are supposed to work, what level of skill can be expected and the references to find more about them. The emphasis is on methodology but aspects of verification and cross-validation will be mentioned as well. Most methods will be accompanied by an example. We will also mention some of the less common methods, but with less detail. We even list some methods that are not used, to delineate which are acceptable and which are not. Sections 8.1–8.6 and 8.8 are easy to read, but Sections 8.7 and 8.9 are more difficult. It will become clear by the end of the climatology section (8.1), that only the departure from climatology, the so-called anomalies, are considered worthy forecast targets. The climatology itself, including such empirically established facts as “days are warmer than nights”, and “winters are colder than summer”, is considered too obvious to be a forecast target. This is not to say that a quantitative explanation of the Earth’s climate, including daily and annual cycle, is easy. But in professionally honest verification no points are given for forecasting a correct climatology. This chapter is thus about forecasting aspects of the geophysical system that are not so obvious and more difficult. The daily and annual cycle are periodic variations controlled by external forcings such as the solar heating. Implicit in identifying a periodic phenomenon as such is that the forecast of the phenomenon is easy out to infinity. This explains a widespread search for “cycles” in early meteorological research, but very little has been found other than the obvious daily and annual cycles. By removing a climatology that accounts for daily and annual variations we in effect remove the known easy periodic part of the system. In the absence of any other information climatology is the best information available. As many travelers can attest, somebody visiting an unfamiliar location 6 months from now is well served by inspecting climatological tables.
A Tale of Two Cities
Authors: Hauser Kitty
Published: November 2020

In the summer of 1943, a year after the Baedeker raids on Canterbury that devastated large sections of the historic city, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger began to film A Canterbury Tale on location in wartime Kent. Its plot was curious: three individuals find themselves on the railway station of Chillingbourne, a fictitious village in Kent, during a blackout. Bob Johnson, an American GI on leave, is heading for Canterbury, but has got off at the wrong stop. Alison Smith has come to Chillingbourne to work as a land girl. Sergeant Peter Gibbs is based at an army camp nearby. As these three head into the village, Alison is ambushed by an assailant who leaves some sticky stuff in her hair. They give chase, but the stranger disappears. Arriving at the town hall, they are told that Alison has been the latest victim of a local troublemaker dubbed the ‘Glue-Man’, believed to be a soldier, who pours glue onto the heads of young women, making them scared to go out with the soldiers stationed near the village. Alison, Bob, and Peter eventually deduce that the ‘Glue-Man’ is the local magistrate, Thomas Colpeper. Colpeper runs lectures on the beauties of the English countryside for (male) members of His Majesty’s Forces. Disappointed by small audiences, he comes up with the idea of pouring glue on young women to stop them from dallying with the soldiers who would otherwise be learning about the Old Road that runs by the village, and other matters of local interest. When all four—Alison, Bob, Peter, and Colpeper— travel to Canterbury at the end of the film, Peter intends to report Colpeper to the police, but other events intervene, and each of the three central characters receives an unexpected blessing. This detective story, of sorts, in which the perpetrator of a bizarre crime is unmasked less than halfway through the film, where the criminal goes unpunished, and where his motives stretch credibility, was bound to confuse contemporary audiences when the film was released in 1944. As Ian Christie notes, A Canterbury Tale ‘perplexed even the film’s relatively few admirers’.
Current views on Sus phylogeography and pig domestication as seen through modern mtDNA studies
Authors: Larson Greger , Albarella Umberto
Published: November 2020

The history of pig domestication is also the history of the beginnings of Eurasian agricultural civilization. Wild boar were an important hunted resource for many millennia before the domestication process significantly altered this relationship between pigs and humans. The end result of this process (involving not just pigs but all other farm animals and pets) has led not only to the development of a staggering number of breeds and variations of what were once solely wild animals, but also to the intensification of the relationship between human beings and domestic animals, to the point of near total dependence of each upon the other. By investigating when, where, and how many times pigs (and other animals) were domesticated, we not only gain an insight into the process of domestication, itself, but also (by extension) a deeper understanding of human history, evolutionary biology, biogeography, and a host of other disciplines. The beginnings of pig management and domestication probably began sometime between the 10th to 8th millennium BP. In western Eurasia, the earliest archaeological evidence for pig domestication comes from a number of sites in Eastern and central Anatolia: Çayönü Tepesi (Ervynck et al. 2001), Hallan Çemi (Redding & Rosenberg 1998; Redding 2005), and Gürcütepe (Peters et al. 2005). At Çayönü Tepesi, a unique 2,000-year stratigraphic sequence, spanning the 9th to 7th millennia BP, has provided perhaps one of the best opportunities to observe the actual process of domestication for pigs. Thus, biometrical and age-at-death data led Ervynck et al. (2001) to postulate several shifts in the intensity of pig–human relationships, not necessarily directly driven by humans in its initial stages. Active involvement of humans in this process, it was argued, took place much later. However the process is specifically defined, the evidence from Çayönü Tepesi clearly reflects an intensification of the relationship between people and pigs over two millennia, and points to eastern Turkey as a centre of early pig domestication. Unfortunately, most early archaeological sites do not possess such long, continuous, or reliably dated occupation sequences, which has made the identification of other centres of animal domestication difficult at best.