bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Comics in Colonial Africa
Authors: Cassiau-Haurie Christophe
Published: May 2021

Comic books did not appear in Africa until the arrival of the Europeans and the methodical integration of their civilization at the expense of preexisting civilizations. However, prior to their arrival, there did exist, among many peoples—particularly the Bamum people—a culture of the image.

The end of the First World War corresponds to a stronger Western presence on the continent. Therefore, one finds some comic panels and strips in newspapers intended for an audience of literate Europeans and Africans. The 1940s and 1950s—and even earlier in South Africa and Madagascar—mark the appearance of some of the first publications aimed at youth on the continent. Many contained comic strips, but these were often reproductions of stories that had already appeared in Europe. Examples include Kisito, a Catholic youth magazine (1954), and Ibalita (1957).

Local missionaries also used graphic narratives to instruct, to arouse interest in particular vocations, and to evangelize. This is particularly true in the Belgian colonies. In fact, it was probably in the Belgian Congo that one of the first comic books appeared on the continent (Les 100 aventures de la famille Mbumbulu, 1956), while the first comic series (Matabaro) was born in 1954 in Ruanda-Urundi. The case of Egypt is of particular interest: it has an old tradition of publishing newspapers, magazines, and journals, including journals for children like Sindibad created in 1952.
Godinho, André do Couto
Authors: Reginaldo Lucilene
Published: May 2021

André do Couto Godinho was born in 1720 in the Brazilian captaincy of Minas Gerais, in the town of Mariana, and died in the Kingdom of Kongo, probably around 1790. Born not only a slave but the slave of a slave, he went on to obtain his freedom, becoming literate, later studying at a university, and finally going on to serve as a missionary in Africa. Between the beginning of his life, in Brazil, and its end, in Africa, he spent a number of years in Portugal, in the cities of Coimbra and Lisbon. While his life story is certainly extraordinary, it provides a window into the possibilities of, and strategies for, social and geographic mobility of free and freed black people in different parts of the Portuguese Empire during the second half of the 1700s. Retracing André Godinho’s footsteps is an exercise in micro-history, a technique that, when used as a counterpoint to a more global analysis, offers fresh insights into familiar subjects, with the seemingly insignificant details of an individual life raising questions that would have gone unnoticed in a strictly macroscopic analysis. André’s path in life, as a free man of color helps understand the larger historical contexts that defined the possibilities, choices, and limitations of his personal history. Godinho’s story provides insights into African descendants’ possibilities for social ascension, also clarifying the limitations imposed by emerging social hierarchies based on skin color and slave origin.
The Contribution of Vocational Education and Training to Innovation and Growth
Authors: Backes-Gellner Uschi , Lehnert Patrick
Published: May 2021

Despite the common view that innovation requires academically educated workers, some countries that strongly emphasize vocational education and training (VET) in their education systems—such as Switzerland and Germany—are highly competitive internationally in terms of innovation. These countries have dual VET programs, that is, upper-secondary-level apprenticeship programs, that combine about three quarters of workplace training with about one quarter of vocational schooling, and design them in such a way that their graduates (i.e., dual apprenticeship-graduates) play crucial roles in innovation processes. Regular updates of VET curricula incorporate the latest technological developments into these curricula, thereby ensuring that dual apprenticeship-graduates possess up-to-date, high-level skills in their chosen occupation. This process allows these graduates to contribute to innovation in firms. Moreover, these graduates acquire broad sets of technical and soft skills that enhance their job mobility and flexibility. Therefore, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, dual apprenticeship-graduates in such countries not only have broad skill sets that accelerate innovation in firms, but also willingly participate in innovation because of their high flexibility and employability.

Moreover, Switzerland and Germany have tertiary-level VET institutions that foster innovation. These are universities of applied sciences (UASs), which teach and conduct applied research, thereby helping build a bridge between different types of knowledge (vocational and academic). UAS students have prior vocational knowledge through their dual apprenticeship and acquire applied research skills from UAS professors who usually have both work experience and a doctoral degree from an academic university. Thus UAS graduates combine sound occupational knowledge with applied research knowledge inspired by input from the academic research frontier and from practical research and development (R & D) in firms. Firms employ UAS graduates with their knowledge combination as an important input for R & D. Consequently, regions with a UAS have higher levels of innovation than regions without one. This effect is particularly strong for regions outside major innovation centers and for regions with larger percentages of smaller firms.
Early Life Origins of ASD and ADHD
Authors: Ji Yuelong , Raghavan Ramkripa , Wang Xiaobin
Published: May 2021

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition characterized by impairments in social interaction and communication and by the presence of restrictive, repetitive behavior. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is another common lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by three major presentations: predominantly hyperactive/impulsive, predominantly inattentive, and combined. Although ASD and ADHD are different clinical diagnoses, they share various common characteristics, including male dominance, early childhood onset, links to prenatal and perinatal factors, common comorbidity for each other, and, often, persistence into adulthood. They also have both unique and shared risk factors, which originate in early life and have lifelong implications on the affected individuals and families and society. While genetic factors contribute to ASD and ADHD risk, the environmental contribution to ASD and ADHD has been recognized as having potentially equal importance, which raises the hope for early prevention and intervention. Maternal folate levels, maternal metabolic syndrome, and metabolic biomarkers have been associated with the risk of childhood ASD; while maternal high-density lipoprotein, maternal psychosocial stress, and in utero exposure to opioids have been associated with the risk of childhood ADHD. As for shared factors, male sex, preterm birth, placental pathology, and early life exposure to acetaminophen have been associated with both ASD and ADHD. The high rate of comorbidity of ASD and ADHD and their many shared early life risk factors suggest that early identification and intervention of common early life risk factors may be cost-effective to lower the risk of both conditions. Efforts to improve maternal preconception, prenatal, and perinatal health will not only help reduce adverse reproductive and birth outcomes but will also help mitigate the risk of ASD and ADHD associated with those adverse early life events.
Religion, Aging, and Public Health
Authors: Levin Jeff , Idler Ellen
Published: May 2021

Religion, in both its personal and institutional forms, is a significant force influencing the health of populations across the life course. Decades of research have documented that expressions of faith and the practice of spiritual pursuits exhibit significantly protective effects for physical and mental health, psychological well-being, and population rates of morbidity, mortality, and disability. This finding has been observed across sociodemographic categories, across nations and cultures, across specific disease outcomes, and regardless of one’s religious affiliation. A salutary religious effect on health and well-being is especially apparent among older adults, but is also observed across generations and age cohorts. Moreover, this association has been persistently found for various religious indicators, including attendance at worship services, prayer and other private practices, subjective feelings of religiosity, and numerous measures of religious behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and experiences. Finally, a protective or primary preventive effect of religion has been observed in clinical, epidemiologic, social, and behavioral studies, regardless of research design or methodology.

Faith-based organizations also have contributed to the health of populations, in partnerships or alliances with medical institutions and public health agencies, many of these dating back many decades. Examples include congregational health promotion and disease prevention programs and community-wide interventions, especially targeting the health and well-being of older congregants and those in less well-resourced communities, as well as faith–health partnerships in healthcare delivery, public health policymaking, and legislative advocacy for healthcare reform. Religious denominations and institutions also play a substantial role in global health development throughout the world, individually and in partnership with national health ministries, transnational medical mission organizations, and established nongovernmental agencies. These efforts focus on a wide range of goals and objectives, including building public health infrastructure, addressing ongoing environmental health needs, and responding to acute public health challenges and crises, such as infectious disease outbreaks. Constituencies include at-risk populations and cohorts throughout the life course, and programming ranges from perinatal care to maternal and child healthcare to geriatric medicine.
Legal, Regulatory, and Institutional Framework of Water and Sanitation Services in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region
Authors: Magawa Yvonne
Published: May 2021

Deteriorating quality of service provision and disease outbreaks (such as cholera) led to the institution of water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector reforms in Eastern and Southern Africa region in the 1990s. The realization of the urgent need to improve the performance of the sector, especially as related to health impacts, resulted in the formulation of new policy and legal and institutional frameworks to reorganize the sector and establish regulators who could address networked and nonnetworked WSS systems.

Regulators as policy implementers have the delicate role of balancing the interests of government, service providers, and consumers. Decision- makers continue to design, implement, and evaluate the outcomes associated with new frameworks. Regional regulatory cooperation can accelerate improvements in service provision to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through development of common frameworks and approaches for WSS that can be adapted to unique country situations.
Astrobiology (Overview)
Authors: McMahon Sean
Published: May 2021

Astrobiology seeks to understand the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe and thus to integrate biology with planetary science, astronomy, cosmology, and the other physical sciences. The discipline emerged in the late 20th century, partly in response to the development of space exploration programs in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere. Many astrobiologists are now involved in the search for life on Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and beyond. However, research in astrobiology does not presume the existence of extraterrestrial life, for which there is no compelling evidence; indeed, it includes the study of life on Earth in its astronomical and cosmic context. Moreover, the absence of observed life from all other planetary bodies requires a scientific explanation, and suggests several hypotheses amenable to further observational, theoretical, and experimental investigation under the aegis of astrobiology. Despite the apparent uniqueness of Earth’s biosphere— the “n = 1 problem”—astrobiology is increasingly driven by large quantities of data. Such data have been provided by the robotic exploration of the Solar System, the first observations of extrasolar planets, laboratory experiments into prebiotic chemistry, spectroscopic measurements of organic molecules in extraterrestrial environments, analytical advances in the biogeochemistry and paleobiology of very ancient rocks, surveys of Earth’s microbial diversity and ecology, and experiments to delimit the capacity of organisms to survive and thrive in extreme conditions.
Condensation Calculations in Planetary Science and Cosmochemistry
Authors: Ebel Denton S.
Published: May 2021

The Sun’s chemical and isotopic composition records the composition of the solar nebula from which the planets formed. If a piece of the Sun is cooled to 1,000 K at 1 mbar total pressure, a mineral assemblage is produced that is consistent with the minerals found in the least equilibrated (most chemically heterogeneous), oldest, and compositionally Sunlike (chondritic), hence most “primitive,” meteorites. This is an equilibrium or fractional condensation experiment. The result can be simulated by calculations using equations of state for hundreds of gaseous molecules, condensed mineral solids, and silicate liquids, the products of a century of experimental measurements and recent theoretical studies. Such calculations have revolutionized our understanding of the chemistry of the cosmos.

The mid-20th century realization that meteorites are fossil records of the early solar system made chemistry central to understanding the origin of the Earth, Moon, and other bodies. Thus “condensation,” more generally the distribution of elements and isotopes between vapor and condensed solids and/or liquids at or approaching chemical equilibrium, came to deeply inform discussion of how meteoritic and cometary compositions bear on the origins of atmospheres and oceans and the differences in composition among the planets. This expansion of thinking has had profound effects upon our thinking about the origin and evolution of Earth and the other worlds of our solar system.

Condensation calculations have also been more broadly applied to protoplanetary disks around young stars, to the mineral “rain” of mineral grains expected to form in cool dwarf star atmospheres, to the expanding circumstellar envelopes of giant stars, to the vapor plumes expected to form in giant planetary impacts, and to the chemically and isotopically distinct “shells” computed and observed to exist in supernovae. The beauty of equilibrium condensation calculations is that the distribution of elements between gaseous molecules, solids, and liquids is fixed by temperature, total pressure, and the overall elemental composition of the system. As with all sophisticated calculations, there are inherent caveats, subtleties, and computational difficulties.

In particular, local equilibrium chemistry has yet to be consistently integrated into gridded, dynamical astrophysical simulations so that effects like the blocking of light and heat by grains (opacity), absorption and re-emission of light by grains (radiative transfer), and buffering of heat by grain evaporation/condensation are fed back into the physics at each node or instance of a gridded calculation over time. A deeper integration of thermochemical computations of chemistry with physical models makes the prospect of a general protoplanetary disk model as hopeful in the 2020s as a general circulation model for global climate may have been in the early 1970s.
Terrorist Targeting in Theory and Practice
Authors: Abrahms Max , Mroszczyk Joseph
Published: May 2021

Terrorist groups exhibit wide variation in their targeting strategies, particularly the extent to which they engage in indiscriminate violence against civilian targets as opposed to more selective violence against military and other government targets. Differences in target selection are evident not only between militant groups but also within them over time. The academic literature on conflict primarily uses three lenses—the Strategic, Ideological, and Organizational Models—to explain terrorist targeting behavior. The Strategic Model views terrorist groups as rational actors that select targeting strategies based on their perceived ability to achieve desired political outcomes. The Ideological Model explains terrorist targeting strategies by examining a group’s political or religious foundation as the source of target selection decision-making. The Organizational Model attributes variation in targeting strategies to intra-organizational dynamics, namely the principal–agent problem, where terrorist operatives often engage targets in defiance of leadership preferences. Each approach has various benefits and drawbacks both theoretically and empirically. These three lenses of explaining terrorist targeting behavior suggest different counterterrorism approaches. The study of terrorist targeting strategies is complicated by multiple methodological limitations such as the availability of data, selection bias, and definitional challenges, all of which are common in the study of militant group dynamics more broadly.
Contract Archeology in South Africa
Authors: Ndlovu Ndukuyakhe
Published: May 2021

The roots of contract archeology were laid even before the development of a legislative framework that prescribed the processes to be followed. Contract archeology was being seen by the museums and universities as the best avenue to the subsidizing of archeological research. The increased research funding of the 1960s and 1970s was on the decline in the 1980s. Universities, therefore, were at a disadvantage and needed to explore other avenues of funding. Legislative changes over the years, which made it mandatory for developers to fund impact assessments to mitigate potential damage of valuable heritage resources from their proposed activities, have led to a significant proliferation of private archeological companies. These have been established to provide developers with the expertise they need to satisfy these legal requirements. The approach used in South Africa is that the developer must pay to assess the nature of the likely impact of their proposed activity. Government entities are then tasked with the responsibility of reviewing studies undertaken by specialists subcontracted by developers. The subdiscipline of archeology has grown significantly in South Africa, specifically enabled by legislative changes over the years requiring that predevelopment assessments of heritage sites be undertaken prior to approvals being made. However, archeology has continued to be defined as racially unrepresentative of the South African demography. In addition, the management of heritage resources through the use of contract archeology has been characterized by a variety of administrative challenges.
Water Infrastructures
Authors: Wells E. Christian , Wakhungu Mathews J. , Webb W. Alex
Published: May 2021

Water infrastructures have been central to anthropological theory and practice for many decades. Early research tended to focus on infrastructures related to agriculture, such as irrigation systems, and often emphasized their consequences for social and political organization. While these and other studies (e.g., on hydroelectric dams) continue, work since the early 2000s considers household and community plumbing networks for both potable water and wastewater (sanitation). These studies conceive of water infrastructures broadly—as social and technical assemblages of materials and matter as well as people and their behaviors—and examine them from sociotechnical, technopolitical, and phenomenological perspectives. Sociotechnical approaches emphasize the ways in which water infrastructures mediate the relationships between people and social institutions, and between people and the biophysical environment more generally. Technopolitical perspectives often focus on the bureaucratic and governance implications of water infrastructures, especially how states strategically deploy or withhold certain infrastructures to craft citizenship, for instance. Phenomenological approaches are widely varied, but tend to give the most agency, and sometimes animacy, to water infrastructures, and to consider the sensorial and emotional implications of human-nonhuman interactions. Future research will be facilitated by decolonizing studies of water infrastructure, incorporating other disciplinary approaches and perspectives such as engineering, and better articulating the policy implications of research findings.
The Development of Archaeology in Africa
Authors: Ndobochani Nonofho Mathibidi
Published: May 2021

Africa is the cradle of humankind, with the origin, evolution, and dispersal of hominids understood from this continent. It was not left out in the quest for knowledge on how human beings lived in the past, where they lived, what they used and ate, as well as changes that occurred through time.

The development of archaeology in Africa, as elsewhere, had two aspects to it—the volume and inclination of work done as evidenced by extensive fieldwork and publications, and the change in approach that saw a shift toward philosophical and methodological concerns. Terminology broadened as there was a shift from merely establishing evidence of occupation and the presence of material culture, to studying the subtleties and processes underlying the material culture.

The human mind is complex; it generated a dynamic material culture temporally and spatially, and notwithstanding the environmental impact on past cultures, humanity also colonized landscapes. Appreciation of an interchange between humanity and the environment became necessary to sync and contextualize the development of ideas, concepts, and worldviews, and whether they emerged from within societies or were externally influenced, they were shared across time and space—necessitating multidisciplinary approaches to studying the past.

To an archaeological scholar in Africa, the problem is compounded. The study of the past has always been from an observer’s point of view, resulting in the call to “decolonize archaeology”—Africans were alienated in studying the past and the tendency was to have them not see this past as their heritage. Archaeology must be relevant to Africa’s issues of environmental management, food security, and socioeconomic challenges such as youth and women’s empowerment. What can the discipline offer? Is the archaeology of Africa accessible to its population, and do we see possibilities for an intergenerational beneficiation of Africa’s past? Most importantly, Africa still has a wealth of knowledge to offer in the study of the paleoenvironment, human evolution, food production and processing, historical ecology, multidisciplinary approaches, and computer technology. Their contribution to a better understanding of the rich, complex, and dynamic African past is of utmost importance.
Turkey-United States Relations
Authors: Kayaoğlu Barin
Published: May 2021

Since the 1780s, the geographical, historical, cultural, and ideational chasm between Turkey and the United States has remained wide. The presence of US merchants, missionaries, and educators in Ottoman territories, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Ottoman subjects to the United States, the tens of thousands of US military personnel stationed in Turkey during the Cold War, and the thousands of Turkish citizens who continue to attend US universities every year have not been able to bridge that gap.

Aside from the cultural and geographical gap, much of the disconnect between Turkey and the United States came from Turkish and American leaders’ ignorance of the other side. From the 19th century onward, Ottoman and Turkish leaders hoped to use the United States as a counterweight in Europe’s great power games despite Washington’s lack of interest in such an outlook until 1945. Likewise, most US administrations after 1945 thought that Turkey’s national interests could be easily reconciled with US global security priorities.
The Information Economy
Authors: Pietruska Jamie L.
Published: May 2021

The term “information economy” first came into widespread usage during the 1960s and 1970s to identify a major transformation in the postwar American economy in which manufacturing had been eclipsed by the production and management of information. However, the information economy first identified in the mid-20th century was one of many information economies that have been central to American industrialization, business, and capitalism for over two centuries. The emergence of information economies can be understood in two ways: as a continuous process in which information itself became a commodity, as well as an uneven and contested—not inevitable—process in which economic life became dependent on various forms of information. The production, circulation, and commodification of information has historically been essential to the growth of American capitalism and to creating and perpetuating—and at times resisting—structural racial, gender, and class inequities in American economy and society. Yet information economies, while uneven and contested, also became more bureaucratized, quantified, and commodified from the 18th century to the 21st century.

The history of information economies in the United States is also characterized by the importance of systems, networks, and infrastructures that link people, information, capital, commodities, markets, bureaucracies, technologies, ideas, expertise, laws, and ideologies. The materiality of information economies is historically inextricable from production of knowledge about the economy, and the concepts of “information” and “economy” are themselves historical constructs that change over time. The history of information economies is not a teleological story of progress in which increasing bureaucratic rationality, efficiency, predictability, and profit inevitably led to the 21st-century age of Big Data. Nor is it a singular story of a single, coherent, uniform information economy. The creation of multiple information economies—at different scales in different regions—was a contingent, contested, often inequitable process that did not automatically democratize access to objective information.
Huineng
Authors: Jorgensen John
Published: May 2021

Huineng (d. 713), widely known as the 6th Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, was mostly an invented person, a symbol of the Sinification of Buddhism. The only reliable facts known about him were that he was a pupil of Hongren and taught “Chan” in the far south of China. A propaganda campaign elevating him to the 6th patriarch of Chan was launched in 730 by Shenhui, who almost alone fabricated “Huineng” out of a lack of information as the leader of the Chan School. However, Shenhui’s role was completely forgotten until the late 1920s when long-lost manuscripts from the caves of Dunhuang were discovered. Shenhui’s claim to being Huineng’s sole legitimate successor was overshadowed in the late 8th to 9th century by rivals claiming to be the only true disciples of Huineng. Thereafter, the Huineng legend became firmly fixed and gradually grew and remains popular. Huineng is seen as the founder of the Southern School of Chan, the only form of Chan to survive after the 10th century, and as the author of the Platform Sutra, a core Chan authority.
Gender and Sexuality in Colonial Brazil
Authors: Vainfas Ronaldo
Published: May 2021

The topics of gender and sexuality in Brazilian historiography, though available from colonial chroniclers to the present, were notably absent in 19th-century historiography, which was constrained by the moral taboos and racial prejudices of that age. This was true until the early 20th-century turning point represented by the works of Paulo Prado with regard to language, and of Gilberto Freyre with regard to content, in their pioneering attempts to address the issue, emphasizing how interracial procreation and sexual desires shaped Brazilian history. Historical research at universities began in the 1980s, based on unpublished sources and international scholarship on new topics. This resulted in studies on marital relations, misogynist patriarchalism, accepted models of licit sexuality, and various other transgressions such as adultery, concubinage, male and female homosexuality, sexual imagery, libidinous behavior by members of the clergy, and acts considered deviant behavior or associated with heresy. Recently, sources have come into use from the Ecclesiastical Court and the Portuguese Inquisition, which assumed jurisdiction over accusations of bigamy, sodomy, priests who took advantage of the confessional to molest their parishioners, and declarations that contradicted Catholic moral theology with regard to chastity, celibacy, and fornication or were suspected of being heretical due to their association with Protestant doctrines. Additionally, there are important works inspired by French scholarship on the history of mentalities and the historical and philosophical contributions of Michel Foucault.
Race and Social Inequality in 20th and 21st-Century Brazil
Authors: Paixão Marcelo
Published: May 2021

Several voices inside and outside Brazil define it as a racial democracy—that is, a nation without segregation or rigid boundaries separating the different groups of race and color. This understanding interacts with issues like nationality and a positive image that this nation conveys for itself worldwide as a land of cordiality, happiness, and racial integration. More than origin, personal appearance is the basis of social interactions. Society can identify a continuum of hues of skin color among its individuals who are racially classified according to their social class and the social spaces in which they interact. However, it does not mean that the social prestige assigned to an individual’s skin color is neutral. The literature shows that the pattern of race relations in Brazil is characteristically ambiguous, based on constant racial prejudice and discrimination against the Afro-Brazilian population while systematically denying its existence. As such, Brazil’s individuals have an asymmetrical standard of social acceptance and access to economic, political, and symbolic power, based on their physical features, including their skin color, their hair type, and the shape or size of their lips and nose. Despite methodological complexities, several research pieces from 1990–2020 confirm that a racial hierarchy system exists in Brazil and that racial injustice, violence, and inequality are prevalent. Since the beginning of the 21st century, Brazil has implemented comprehensive social policies to combat poverty and affirmative action policies that target Afro-Brazilian individuals in an effort to improve the quality of the lives of Brazil’s poorest citizens. Nevertheless, these endeavors were not enough to overcome the consequences of a long historical period of slavery, discrimination, and racial injustice.
Argentina’s Centro de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM), the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Cold War
Authors: Herrera Eduardo
Published: May 2021

Between 1962 and 1971, the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) of the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires became the central hub of Latin American avant-garde music. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and the wealthy Di Tella family, CLAEM offered two-year fellowships to some of the most recognized young composers of the region to undertake graduate studies in a unique privileged setting under the direction of Alberto Ginastera and with permanent and visiting faculty that included Gerardo Gandini, Francisco Kröpfl, Mario Davidovsky, Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono, Aaron Copland, Luigi Dallapiccola, Bruno Maderna, Riccardo Malipiero, Olivier Messiaen, Roger Sessions, and Earle Brown. Engrained in the history of CLAEM were elite worldviews about the role of philanthropy in society and deep Cold War ideologies that shaped US–Latin American foreign relations in the early 1960s such as Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress.”
The Hundred-Hour War, 1969: A Military History
Authors: Pineda Carlos Pérez
Published: May 2021

The 1969 conflict between Honduras and El Salvador signaled the weakening of the Central American economic integration process; marked an end to an era of economic growth, industrialization, and political openness; and inaugurated a new chapter, characterized by growing political polarization and violence. There is a prevailing consensus about the significance that this conflict had as a breaking point and historical turnaround. The roots of the crisis between both states, commercial partners and members of a regional political-military alliance, lie in the drastic changes introduced by the Honduran government in its migratory and agrarian policies. These changes sought to contain the massive migration from El Salvador and to reduce by all means necessary, including by violent dispossession, the Salvadoran presence in Honduras. A ferocious anti-Salvadoran media campaign preceded and accompanied the massive expulsion of Salvadorans. Alarmed by the destabilizing effect that a return en masse of poor Salvadoran peasants could bring to the country, and facing an intransigent Honduran government, the leadership in El Salvador decided to resolve the conflict through war. Once this began, both countries mobilized their military forces for over one hundred hours of bloody fighting in July 1969. Although neither country won a decisive victory on the battlefield, at the moment the ceasefire was imposed the military situation amply favored El Salvador. The political, economic, military, and diplomatic consequences of the war had a profound impact during the 1970s and beyond the signing of the peace agreement early in the 1980s. On the one hand, the recounting of the war, full of falsifications and half-truths, continues to play an important role in Honduran nationalism. On the other hand, for Salvadorans the war is an almost forgotten memory.
Populism in Brazil, 1930–1964
Authors: Gomes Angela de Castro
Published: May 2021

The first decades of the 21st century brought back to the international arena a family of terms well known in Latin America to designate both styles of politics and the leaders who embodied them: populism and populists. Brazil is seen as a paradigmatic example of this type of experience, called “classic populism,” for two periods of its history, corresponding to its process of transition from a “traditional” society to a “modern” economy and society. The first period ran from the 1930 revolution until 1945, with the fall of the Estado Novo and the removal of its “leader,” Getúlio Vargas. The latter period covered the 1950s, “the golden years of populism,” since, despite the socioeconomic development achieved, democracy did not manage to establish itself in the country.

The populist interpretation of this period of Brazilian history was formulated and shared by academia, essentially after the 1964 coup, and was dominant in the 1960s and 1970s. However, it extended these frontiers, using the language of the media, political conflicts, and the common sense of Brazilians. Widely used, the concepts of populism and populist were conflated with the events and characters they name, only being critiqued in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, the number of scholars seeking other references has grown, whether redrafting the meanings of the original proposal, the case of the “populist political system,” or abandoning it completely, in the example of the “trabalhista pact.” In this dense debate, one constant can be observed: in Brazil populism became a “category of accusation,” translating negative values present in the “other” to whom one is referring. Although many academic studies do not use this pejorative tone, it is so consolidated in Brazilian politics that it has become part of the political culture of parties and trade unions, circulating widely.
History of the Romanian Lexicon
Authors: Iliescu Maria
Published: May 2021

The history of the Romanian lexicon has been divided into periods in various ways: (a) the Latin of the Danubian provinces (from around the 2nd to around the 7th centuries); (b) common Romanian (româna comună, from 8th to 11th/12th centuries); and (c) preliterary Romanian (the centuries this period covers vary, from the 8th century at the earliest to the 14th century at the latest) and the rise of literary Romanian (start of the 16th century–1780). This latter period includes the most important stages in the process of unification and modernization of Romanian, and thus of its lexicon; (d) Modern Romanian (1780–1945); and (e) the contemporary era, including the socialist period (1945–1989) and current Romanian.

A stand-alone section 7 discusses the numerous external influences of varied and complex origin: geographic contact, bi- and multilingualism, foreign occupation and/or domination, and last but not least, the strengthening of national conscience followed or accompanied by a cultural and political paradigm shift.
Valuation of Species Preservation
Authors: Berrens Robert P. , Grijalva Therese
Published: May 2021

Against a backdrop of increasing species imperilment, there is considerable empirical evidence that preserving threatened, endangered, and rare (TER) species provides significant economic benefits to society. But efforts to measure these benefits has generated both strong methodological and philosophical criticisms. Since the 1960s, economists have developed a battery of nonmarket valuation approaches for estimating economic values associated with changes in the quantity or quality of environmental goods and services. This battery includes both revealed preference and stated preference (SP) approaches (including the contingent valuation [CV] method), with only the latter capable of providing willingness to pay (WTP) estimates for nonuse values. The total economic value of TER species preservation can include nonconsumptive use values (e.g., wildlife watching), and may be especially composed of nonuse values (e.g., based on existence value motivations).

By the early 1980s, applied CV studies focusing on TER species preservation had begun to accumulate. Early research centered in the United States. By the mid-1990s the first statistical meta-analysis of TER species NMV studies was completed, and was then updated a dozen years later. These metaregression functions facilitated potential benefit transfers, where the systematic structure of prior original studies could be used to estimate WTP values for a TER species in another setting (absent an original study). Since roughly 2010, the use of choice experiments as an alternative SP approach expanded rapidly. Likewise, the accumulation of additional SP studies generated new summary reviews and meta-analyses, including applications from both developed and developing countries, and expanded benefit transfer opportunities. Going forward, new studies will lead to updated meta-analyses, with additional statistical and theoretical sophistication. Critiques targeted to SP approaches (e.g., with respect to hypothetical bias and nonuse value motivations) will likely remain, and further validity testing and methods development are called for. However, from a pragmatic perspective, persistent efforts at quantification continue to help make the benefits of TER species preservation visible in the face of rapidly increasing species imperilment.
Economics of Water Security in India: Need for Strengthening Natural Capital
Authors: Reddy V. Ratna
Published: May 2021

Water security forms the basis for achieving multi-dimensional poverty alleviation. Water security is necessary for moving toward sustainable development. It reduces poverty and improves quality of life. Achieving water security is increasingly becoming a policy challenge in most of the developing countries like India. Water security is a comprehensive concept that comprises access to quantity and quality for different users and uses, ensuring environmental, economic, and social sustainability in the long run. It needs to be achieved at different scales (i.e., household, regional, and national levels). This calls for an integrated approach incorporating hydrological, socioeconomic, and ecosystem aspects. Water resources accounting is critical for ensuring water security. Resource accounting helps in identifying efficient and optimum allocation of resources to various components of water security. Integrating the costs of strengthening the natural resource base and environmental externalities is likely to help sustaining services in the long run. Integrating the economics of protecting the natural resource base into the planning and designing of service delivery is critical in this regard.
Economics of Ecological Restoration
Authors: Iftekhar Md Sayed , Polyakov Maksym
Published: May 2021

Ecological restoration is a complex activity that requires integrating biophysical, social, and economic factors. It requires the engagement of various stakeholders with potentially competing interests and goals. Economists have developed methods to elicit peoples’ values and preferences related to restoration. These economic tools provide information that allows decision makers to better understand how to best allocate scarce resources among alternative restoration projects and activities. The field of restoration economics can be traced back to the 1970s, but it did not gain popularity until the late 2000s. A review of the literature indicates that only about 6% of academic papers on ecological restoration have used economic tools and instruments.

Economic tools and instruments can be applied at five stages of a restoration project: (a) understanding the causes and processes of degradation, (b) setting restoration targets and policies, (c) project planning and prioritization, (d) project implementation, and (e) ex-post assessment and evaluation of restoration outcomes. Generally speaking, economic tools and analysis are not extensively applied in all five stages of a restoration project, which potentially limits the effectiveness of investment. Several strategies can be applied to strengthen restoration science and practices, which include the incorporation of economic analysis into the planning of ecological restoration projects, reducing the cost of economic data collection and analysis, addressing social values, establishing links between the causes of degradation and restoration outcomes, understanding of the alignment of incentives and motives, and assessment of large-scale and long-term impacts of restoration projects.
Evolution of gigantism in right and bowhead whales (Cetacea: Mysticeti: Balaenidae)
Authors: Bisconti Michelangelo , Pellegrino Luca , Carnevale Giorgio
Published: May 2021

The evolution of gigantic body size represents a key to understand the ecological role of baleen whales in oceanic ecosystems. Many efforts have been devoted to the formulation of equations relating different body parts to total body length and mass in living and fossil mysticetes, mainly focusing on balaenopterid and balaenopterid-like mysticetes. Right whales (family Balaenidae) have a unique head-to-body length ratio, suggesting that their body proportions cannot be predicted effectively using equations based primarily on non-balaenid mysticetes. A new morphometric dataset of living and fossil balaenids is provided herein, and new regression equations allow one to predict the body length and mass of extinct species based on the expected head-to-body length ratio of extant balaenids. The reconstructed values are mapped on a new phylogenetic analysis of the Balaenidae, inferring body size and mass at ancestral nodes. The variations of body size and mass in Balaenidae since the early Miocene are reconstructed, revealing that: (1) a reduction in total body length occurred in the early Pliocene; (2) the origin of the gigantic body size in the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is probably related to invasion of the Arctic Ocean in the last 3 Myr; and (3) the origin of the gigantic body size in the right whales (genus Eubalaena) occurred since the latest Miocene, probably concomitant with pulses of nutrients sustaining large zooplankton populations. We suggest that the evolution of gigantism in Balaenidae occurred independently in two lineages and, probably, in response to different palaeoenvironmental drivers.
Vernacular Discourses of Disruption in Alternative Digital Space
Authors: Das Purba
Published: May 2021

This article explores the discursive strategies employed by Dalits and other marginalized groups to highlight inspirational stories of bottom-up change across rural India. These agential narratives are featured in the community-run alternative digital media portal, Video Volunteer’s series, “Videos that Created Change.” I contend that marginalized groups’ articulation of structural change against systemic oppression takes the form of vernacular discursive practices, which foreground place-based identities and regional languages. Such newly emerging digital media practices have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic mainstream template of marginalized citizens’ abject victimhood.
Cortical Responses to Vowel Sequences in Awake and Anesthetized States: A Human Intracranial Electrophysiology Study
Authors: Nourski Kirill V , Steinschneider Mitchell , Rhone Ariane E , Krause Bryan M , Mueller Rashmi N , Kawasaki Hiroto , Banks Matthew I
Published: May 2021

Elucidating neural signatures of sensory processing across consciousness states is a major focus in neuroscience. Noninvasive human studies using the general anesthetic propofol reveal differential effects on auditory cortical activity, with a greater impact on nonprimary and auditory-related areas than primary auditory cortex. This study used intracranial electroencephalography to examine cortical responses to vowel sequences during induction of general anesthesia with propofol. Subjects were adult neurosurgical patients with intracranial electrodes placed to identify epileptic foci. Data were collected before electrode removal surgery. Stimuli were vowel sequences presented in a target detection task during awake, sedated, and unresponsive states. Averaged evoked potentials (AEPs) and high gamma (70–150 Hz) power were measured in auditory, auditory-related, and prefrontal cortex. In the awake state, AEPs were found throughout studied brain areas; high gamma activity was limited to canonical auditory cortex. Sedation led to a decrease in AEP magnitude. Upon LOC, there was a decrease in the superior temporal gyrus and adjacent auditory-related cortex and a further decrease in AEP magnitude in core auditory cortex, changes in the temporal structure and increased trial-to-trial variability of responses. The findings identify putative biomarkers of LOC and serve as a foundation for future investigations of altered sensory processing.