bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genetic Diversity and Connectivity of Southern Right Whales (Eubalaena australis) Found in the Brazil and Chile–Peru Wintering Grounds and the South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur) Feeding Ground
Authors: Carroll Emma L , Ott Paulo H , McMillan Louise F , Galletti Vernazzani Bárbara , Neveceralova Petra , Vermeulen Els , Gaggiotti Oscar E , Andriolo Artur , Baker C Scott , Bamford Connor , Best Peter , Cabrera Elsa , Calderan Susannah , Chirife Andrea , Fewster Rachel M , Flores Paulo A C , Frasier Timothy , Freitas Thales R O , Groch Karina , Hulva Pavel , Kennedy Amy , Leaper Russell , Leslie Matthew S , Moore Michael , Oliveira Larissa , Seger Jon , Stepien Emilie N , Valenzuela Luciano O , Zerbini Alexandre , Jackson Jennifer A
Published: April 2020

As species recover from exploitation, continued assessments of connectivity and population structure are warranted to provide information for conservation and management. This is particularly true in species with high dispersal capacity, such as migratory whales, where patterns of connectivity could change rapidly. Here we build on a previous long-term, large-scale collaboration on southern right whales (Eubalaena australis) to combine new (nnew) and published (npub) mitochondrial (mtDNA) and microsatellite genetic data from all major wintering grounds and, uniquely, the South Georgia (Islas Georgias del Sur: SG) feeding grounds. Specifically, we include data from Argentina (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 208/46), Brazil (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 50/50), South Africa (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 66/77, npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 350/47), Chile–Peru (nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 1/1), the Indo-Pacific (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 769/126), and SG (npub mtDNA/microsatellite = 8/0, nnew mtDNA/microsatellite = 3/11) to investigate the position of previously unstudied habitats in the migratory network: Brazil, SG, and Chile–Peru. These new genetic data show connectivity between Brazil and Argentina, exemplified by weak genetic differentiation and the movement of 1 genetically identified individual between the South American grounds. The single sample from Chile–Peru had an mtDNA haplotype previously only observed in the Indo-Pacific and had a nuclear genotype that appeared admixed between the Indo-Pacific and South Atlantic, based on genetic clustering and assignment algorithms. The SG samples were clearly South Atlantic and were more similar to the South American than the South African wintering grounds. This study highlights how international collaborations are critical to provide context for emerging or recovering regions, like the SG feeding ground, as well as those that remain critically endangered, such as Chile–Peru.
A new method to estimate hair density of small mammal pelage
Authors: Cui Liang Yu , Liu Wei , Xu Yan Chun , Yang Shu Hui , Dahmer Thomas D
Published: April 2020

Hair density is the most important structural parameter contributing to insulation performance of mammalian pelage, and often is measured in ecophysiological, thermal biological, and evolutionary studies. To date, hair density has been measured using invasive methods on research objects; however, such methods remain challenging despite efforts to increase their ease of use. In this paper, we develop a new method to estimate hair density without skin sampling. We expressed hair density as the inverse of the number of hairs per unit area, that is, the surface area occupied by a single hair (Ah). This area could be further estimated by measuring distances between nearest neighboring hairs (Ln) and calculating the areas of triangles (A) defined by three randomly selected nearest neighboring hairs and representing half of Ah. Empirical tests using 11 skin samples from specimens of six small mammal species showed this to be a simple, lightly invasive, but accurate and widely applicable method.
Determining sex of adult Pacific walruses from mandible measurements
Authors: Taylor Nathan , Clark Casey T , Misarti Nicole , Horstmann Lara
Published: April 2020

Pacific walruses (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) play a vital role in Arctic marine ecosystems and the subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Native communities. Museum collections contain numerous archaeological and historic walrus specimens that have proven useful in a variety of studies; however, for many cases, the sex of these specimens is unknown. Sexes of adult (> 5 years determined by tooth aging) Atlantic walruses (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) have been accurately determined in previous studies using mandible measurements. We tested the validity of this approach for Pacific walruses, and used full fusion of the mandibular symphysis to define adults. Using high precision digital calipers (± 0.01 mm), four measurements were taken either on the left or right side of 91 walrus mandibles: 80 modern mandibles (70 known-sex specimens; 10 unknown-sex specimens) and 11 archaeological mandibles of unknown sex. We used linear discriminant function analysis (LDFA) to determine what measurements best distinguished Pacific walrus males from females. Minimum mandible thickness had the most predictive power, whereas mandible length, height, and depth, were less predictive. Posterior probabilities indicated that LDFA classified the known-sex Pacific walruses with 100% accuracy, and unknown sex with ≥ 90% probability. The ability to define the sex of unknown individuals accurately could greatly increase the sample size of future projects dealing with skeletal remains, and will improve future research efforts.
Dominance hierarchy on palm resource partitioning among Neotropical frugivorous mammals
Authors: Akkawi Paula , Villar Nacho , Mendes Calebe P , Galetti Mauro
Published: April 2020

In tropical forests, the diets of many frugivorous mammals overlap, yet how hyper-diverse assemblages of consumers exploit resources and coexist remains poorly understood. We evaluated competitive interactions among three species of terrestrial frugivorous mammals, the ungulate Tayassu pecari (white-lipped peccary), its close relative Pecari tajacu (collared peccary), and a large rodent (Dasyprocta azarae, agouti), in their exploitation strategies of palm resources of different quality. We conducted the study in a large isolated fragment at the tropical Atlantic Forest of Brazil, where these mammal species show high spatial and temporal overlap. We evaluated if body mass and foraging group size define a hierarchy in exploitation of preferentially richer palm resources. We used camera traps and two-species occupancy models to examine patterns of co-occurrence and variable interaction strength between these consumers and three species of palms. Our analyses supported the hypothesis of partial resource overlap but no competition among frugivores, and a body mass dominance hierarchical exploitation of resources. The larger frugivore (white-lipped peccary) dominated patches of the lipid-rich palm Euterpe edulis, where the smallest frugivore (agouti) was absent. Instead, the smallest frugivore concentrated its foraging in areas with the poorest palm resource, Syagrus oleracea. Collared peccaries preferred areas of high abundance of Syagrus romanzoffiana when the other two mammal species were rarely detected or absent, strongly avoided patches of E. edulis, and showed higher average detection probabilities when agoutis were present. Our study highlights the important role of behavioral plasticity in promoting coexistence and indicates that through context-dependent interactions and hierarchical partitioning of resources, consumers can avoid strong competition, even under conditions of high spatial and temporal overlap and high levels of habitat fragmentation and isolation.
Understanding the Meaning of Concepts Across Domains Through Collocation Analysis: An Application to the Study of Red Tape
Authors: Kaufmann Wesley , Haans Richard F J
Published: April 2020

Public administration scholarship is facing a crisis of legitimacy, as academic research is viewed as both increasingly irrelevant for practice and methodologically underdeveloped. In this study, we put forward a so-called collocation analysis approach, which is a useful tool for studying the meaning of key concepts in public administration and (re)focusing academic research agendas to salient societal problems by identifying how concepts are talked about in different domains. To illustrate our approach, we assess the meaning of red tape in academia, policy-making, and the media. Our dataset consists of 255 academic articles, 2,179 US Congressional Records, and 37,207 US newspaper articles mentioning red tape. We find that red tape has specific connotations in each domain, which limits the extent to which these domains are being bridged. Using the insights from our analysis, we develop a red tape research agenda that aims for more relevant and rigorous knowledge generation and conclude by setting out implications and ways forward for public administration research at large.
Linking signaling pathways to histone acetylation dynamics in plants
Authors: Jiang Jianjun , Ding Adeline B , Liu Fengquan , Zhong Xuehua
Published: April 2020

As sessile organisms, plants face versatile environmental challenges and require proper responses at multiple levels for survival. Epigenetic modification of DNA and histones is a conserved gene-regulatory mechanism and plays critical roles in diverse aspects of biological processes, ranging from genome defense and imprinting to development and physiology. In recent years, emerging studies have revealed the interplay between signaling transduction pathways, epigenetic modifications, and chromatin cascades. Specifically, histone acetylation and deacetylation dictate plant responses to environmental cues by modulating chromatin dynamics to regulate downstream gene expression as signaling outputs. In this review, we summarize current understandings of the link between plant signaling pathways and epigenetic modifications with a focus on histone acetylation and deacetylation.
Suberized transport barriers in plant roots: the effect of silicon
Authors: Kreszies Tino , Kreszies Victoria , Ly Falko , Thangamani Priya Dharshini , Shellakkutti Nandhini , Schreiber Lukas
Published: April 2020

Plant roots are the major organs that take up water and dissolved nutrients. It has been widely shown that apoplastic barriers such as Casparian bands and suberin lamellae in the endo- and exodermis of roots have an important effect on regulating radial water and nutrient transport. Furthermore, it has been described that silicon can promote plant growth and survival under different conditions. However, the potential effects of silicon on the formation and structure of apoplastic barriers are controversial. A delayed as well as an enhanced suberization of root apoplastic barriers with silicon has been described in the literature. Here we review the effects of silicon on the formation of suberized apoplastic barriers in roots, and present results of the effect of silicon treatment on the formation of endodermal suberized barriers on barley seminal roots under control conditions and when exposed to osmotic stress. Chemical analysis confirmed that osmotic stress enhanced barley root suberization. While a supplementation with silicon in both, control conditions and osmotic stress, did not enhanced barley root suberization. These results suggest that enhanced stress tolerance of plants after silicon treatment is due to other responses.
Study of recent outburst in the Be/X-ray binary RX J0209.6−7427 with AstroSat: a new ultraluminous X-ray pulsar in the Magellanic Bridge?
Authors: Chandra Amar Deo , Roy Jayashree , Agrawal P C , Choudhury Manojendu
Published: April 2020

We present the timing and spectral studies of RX J0209.6–7427 during its rare 2019 outburst using observations with the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) and Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) instruments on the AstroSat satellite. Pulsations having a periodicity of 9.29 s were detected for the first time by the NICER mission in the 0.2–10 keV energy band and, as reported here, by AstroSat over a broad energy band covering 0.3–80 keV. The pulsar exhibits a rapid spin-up during the outburst. Energy resolved folded pulse profiles are generated in several energy bands in 3–80 keV. To the best of our knowledge this is the first report of the timing and spectral characteristics of this Be binary pulsar in hard X-rays. There is suggestion of evolution of the pulse profile with energy. The energy spectrum of the pulsar is determined and from the best-fitting spectral values, the X-ray luminosity of RX J0209.6−7427 is inferred to be 1.6 × 1039 erg s−1. Our timing and spectral studies suggest that this source has features of an ultraluminous X-ray pulsar in the Magellanic Bridge. Details of the results are presented and discussed in terms of the current ideas.
Simultaneous TESS and NGTS transit observations of WASP-166 b
Authors: Bryant Edward M , Bayliss Daniel , McCormac James , Wheatley Peter J , Acton Jack S , Anderson David R , Armstrong David J , Bouchy François , Belardi Claudia , Burleigh Matthew R , Tilbrook Rosie H , Casewell Sarah L , Cooke Benjamin F , Gill Samuel , Goad Michael R , Jenkins James S , Lendl Monika , Pollacco Don , Queloz Didier , Raynard Liam , Smith Alexis M S , Vines Jose I , West Richard G , Udry Stephane
Published: April 2020

We observed a transit of WASP-166 b using nine Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) telescopes simultaneously with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observations of the same transit. We achieved a photometric precision of 152 ppm per 30 min with the nine NGTS telescopes combined, matching the precision reached by TESS for the transit event around this bright (T = 8.87) star. The individual NGTS light-curve noise is found to be dominated by scintillation noise and appears free from any time-correlated noise or any correlation between telescope systems. We fit the NGTS data for TC and Rp/R*. We find TC to be consistent to within 0.25σ of the result from the TESS data, and the difference between the TESS and NGTS measured Rp/R* values is 0.9σ. This experiment shows that multitelescope NGTS photometry can match the precision of TESS for bright stars, and will be a valuable tool in refining the radii and ephemerides for bright TESS candidates and planets. The transit timing achieved will also enable NGTS to measure significant transit timing variations in multiplanet systems.
Performing Highly Efficient Genome Scans for Local Adaptation with R Package pcadapt Version 4
Authors: Privé Florian , Luu Keurcien , Vilhjálmsson Bjarni J , Blum Michael G B
Published: April 2020

R package pcadapt is a user-friendly R package for performing genome scans for local adaptation. Here, we present version 4 of pcadapt which substantially improves computational efficiency while providing similar results. This improvement is made possible by using a different format for storing genotypes and a different algorithm for computing principal components of the genotype matrix, which is the most computationally demanding step in method pcadapt. These changes are seamlessly integrated into the existing pcadapt package, and users will experience a large reduction in computation time (by a factor of 20–60 in our analyses) as compared with previous versions.
Alternative proteins are functional regulators in cell reprogramming by PKA activation
Authors: Cardon Tristan , Franck Julien , Coyaud Etienne , Laurent Estelle M N , Damato Marina , Maffia Michele , Vergara Daniele , Fournier Isabelle , Salzet Michel
Published: April 2020

It has been recently shown that many proteins are lacking from reference databases used in mass spectrometry analysis, due to their translation templated on alternative open reading frames. This questions our current understanding of gene annotation and drastically expands the theoretical proteome complexity. The functions of these alternative proteins (AltProts) still remain largely unknown. We have developed a large-scale and unsupervised approach based on cross-linking mass spectrometry (XL-MS) followed by shotgun proteomics to gather information on the functional role of AltProts by mapping them back into known signalling pathways through the identification of their reference protein (RefProt) interactors. We have identified and profiled AltProts in a cancer cell reprogramming system: NCH82 human glioma cells after 0, 16, 24 and 48 h Forskolin stimulation. Forskolin is a protein kinase A activator inducing cell differentiation and epithelial–mesenchymal transition. Our data show that AltMAP2, AltTRNAU1AP and AltEPHA5 interactions with tropomyosin 4 are downregulated under Forskolin treatment. In a wider perspective, Gene Ontology and pathway enrichment analysis (STRING) revealed that RefProts associated with AltProts are enriched in cellular mobility and transfer RNA regulation. This study strongly suggests novel roles of AltProts in multiple essential cellular functions and supports the importance of considering them in future biological studies.
miEAA 2.0: integrating multi-species microRNA enrichment analysis and workflow management systems
Authors: Kern Fabian , Fehlmann Tobias , Solomon Jeffrey , Schwed Louisa , Grammes Nadja , Backes Christina , Van Keuren-Jensen Kendall , Craig David Wesley , Meese Eckart , Keller Andreas
Published: April 2020

Gene set enrichment analysis has become one of the most frequently used applications in molecular biology research. Originally developed for gene sets, the same statistical principles are now available for all omics types. In 2016, we published the miRNA enrichment analysis and annotation tool (miEAA) for human precursor and mature miRNAs. Here, we present miEAA 2.0, supporting miRNA input from ten frequently investigated organisms. To facilitate inclusion of miEAA in workflow systems, we implemented an Application Programming Interface (API). Users can perform miRNA set enrichment analysis using either the web-interface, a dedicated Python package, or custom remote clients. Moreover, the number of category sets was raised by an order of magnitude. We implemented novel categories like annotation confidence level or localisation in biological compartments. In combination with the miRBase miRNA-version and miRNA-to-precursor converters, miEAA supports research settings where older releases of miRBase are in use. The web server also offers novel comprehensive visualizations such as heatmaps and running sum curves with background distributions. We demonstrate the new features with case studies for human kidney cancer, a biomarker study on Parkinson’s disease from the PPMI cohort, and a mouse model for breast cancer. The tool is freely accessible at: https://www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/mieaa2.
miRSwitch: detecting microRNA arm shift and switch events
Authors: Kern Fabian , Amand Jeremy , Senatorov Ilya , Isakova Alina , Backes Christina , Meese Eckart , Keller Andreas , Fehlmann Tobias
Published: April 2020

Arm selection, the preferential expression of a 3′ or 5′ mature microRNA (miRNA), is a highly dynamic and tissue-specific process. Time-dependent expression shifts or switches between the arms are also relevant for human diseases. We present miRSwitch, a web server to facilitate the analysis and interpretation of arm selection events. Our species-independent tool evaluates pre-processed small non-coding RNA sequencing (sncRNA-seq) data, i.e. expression matrices or output files from miRNA quantification tools (miRDeep2, miRMaster, sRNAbench). miRSwitch highlights potential changes in the distribution of mature miRNAs from the same precursor. Group comparisons from one or several user-provided annotations (e.g. disease states) are possible. Results can be dynamically adjusted by choosing from a continuous range of highly specific to very sensitive parameters. Users can compare potential arm shifts in the provided data to a human reference map of pre-computed arm shift frequencies. We created this map from 46 tissues and 30 521 samples. As case studies we present novel arm shift information in a Alzheimer’s disease biomarker data set and from a comparison of tissues in Homo sapiens and Mus musculus. In summary, miRSwitch offers a broad range of customized arm switch analyses along with comprehensive visualizations, and is freely available at: https://www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/mirswitch/.
SIB Literature Services: RESTful customizable search engines in biomedical literature, enriched with automatically mapped biomedical concepts
Authors: Gobeill Julien , Caucheteur Déborah , Michel Pierre-André , Mottin Luc , Pasche Emilie , Ruch Patrick
Published: April 2020

Thanks to recent efforts by the text mining community, biocurators have now access to plenty of good tools and Web interfaces for identifying and visualizing biomedical entities in literature. Yet, many of these systems start with a PubMed query, which is limited by strong Boolean constraints. Some semantic search engines exploit entities for Information Retrieval, and/or deliver relevance-based ranked results. Yet, they are not designed for supporting a specific curation workflow, and allow very limited control on the search process. The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Literature Services (SIBiLS) provide personalized Information Retrieval in the biological literature. Indeed, SIBiLS allow fully customizable search in semantically enriched contents, based on keywords and/or mapped biomedical entities from a growing set of standardized and legacy vocabularies. The services have been used and favourably evaluated to assist the curation of genes and gene products, by delivering customized literature triage engines to different curation teams. SIBiLS (https://candy.hesge.ch/SIBiLS) are freely accessible via REST APIs and are ready to empower any curation workflow, built on modern technologies scalable with big data: MongoDB and Elasticsearch. They cover MEDLINE and PubMed Central Open Access enriched by nearly 2 billion of mapped biomedical entities, and are daily updated.
AlloSigMA 2: paving the way to designing allosteric effectors and to exploring allosteric effects of mutations
Authors: Tan Zhen Wah , Guarnera Enrico , Tee Wei-Ven , Berezovsky Igor N
Published: April 2020

The AlloSigMA 2 server provides an interactive platform for exploring the allosteric signaling caused by ligand binding and/or mutations, for analyzing the allosteric effects of mutations and for detecting potential cancer drivers and pathogenic nsSNPs. It can also be used for searching latent allosteric sites and for computationally designing allosteric effectors for these sites with required agonist/antagonist activity. The server is based on the implementation of the Structure-Based Statistical Mechanical Model of Allostery (SBSMMA), which allows one to evaluate the allosteric free energy as a result of the perturbation at per-residue resolution. The Allosteric Signaling Map (ASM) providing a comprehensive residue-by-residue allosteric control over the protein activity can be obtained for any structure of interest. The Allosteric Probing Map (APM), in turn, allows one to perform the fragment-based-like computational design experiment aimed at finding leads for potential allosteric effectors. The server can be instrumental in elucidating of allosteric mechanisms and actions of allosteric mutations, and in the efforts on design of new elements of allosteric control. The server is freely available at: http://allosigma.bii.a-star.edu.sg
Construction of hollow mesoporous silica nanoreactors for enhanced photo-oxidations over Au-Pt catalysts
Authors: Tian Hao , Zhao Jinhui , Wang Xinyao , Wang Lizhuo , Liu Hao , Wang Guoxiu , Huang Jun , Liu Jian , Lu G Q (Max)
Published: April 2020

It is highly desirable to design hollow structures with multi-scale functions by mimicking cells for the construction of micro/nanoreactors. Herein, we report the construction of hollow-structured submicrometer-photoreactors with bimetallic catalysts loaded within mesoporous silicas. The synthesis parameters are optimized to study the evolution of hollow structure through hydrothermal treatment and an ‘adhesive-contraction’ formation mechanism is proposed. AuPt@HMZS catalysts exhibited a broader absorbance region under visible light and the adsorption edge displayed a red-shift, indicating the strong metal–metal interactions at the alloy interface. The reaction performance of the coupled Au-Pt catalysts can be tuned to achieve excellent catalytic activity in cinnamyl alcohol oxidation to cinnamic acid for 3.1 mmol g−1 with 99% selectivity. The proposed strategy to build hollow structures as multifunctional micro/nanoreactors is promising for the design of high-performance and sustainable catalysts for chemical synthesis.
Equatorial aurora: the aurora-like airglow in the negative magnetic anomaly
Authors: He Fei , Wei Yong , Wan Weixing
Published: April 2020

The most fantastic optical phenomena in the Earth's upper atmosphere are the auroras. They are highly informative indicators of solar activity, geomagnetic activity, upper atmospheric structures and dynamics, and magnetospheric energetic particles. An area where the geomagnetic field differs significantly from the expected symmetric dipole, such as at the South Atlantic Anomaly, where the magnetic field intensity is low, gives rise to stronger precipitation of energetic particles into the upper atmosphere. Impact excitation and the subsequent airglow emissions exhibit aurora-like dynamic signatures. Nomenclatures of nonpolar aurora or equatorial auroras are similar to those used with the polar auroras owing to their similar excitation mechanisms. This paper provides an overview of the knowledge and the challenges concerning auroral activity at the South Atlantic Anomaly, or more generally, at the negative magnetic anomaly. We emphasize systematic investigation of the equatorial auroras to reveal the temporal and spatial evolution of the magnetic anomaly and the behaviour of energetic particles in near-Earth space.
The Philosophy of Theater
Authors: Bennett Michael Y.
Published: April 2020

Theater—i.e., traditional text-based theater—is often considered the art form that most closely resembles lived life: real bodies in space play out a story through the passage of time. Because of this, theater (or theatre) has long been a laboratory of, and for, philosophical thought and reflection. The study of philosophy and theater has a history that dates back to, and flourished in, ancient Greece and Rome. While philosophers over the centuries have revisited the study of theater, the past four decades in particular have seen a noted and substantial increase of scholarship investigating this intersection between philosophy and theater. “Philosophy of theater” is, on one hand, a “field” that is just starting to take shape and is barely over a decade old; on another hand, it is a recognized subfield both of aesthetics and of theater and performance studies. And finally, it is also an amorphous concept, either not yet fleshed out, or intentionally amorphous and proudly organic. Philosophy of theater is also sometimes referred to—or is argued to be subsumed, more broadly, in—“performance philosophy,” which also refers to a network of academics and practitioners that publishes a book series and a journal of the same name. Regardless of what it is called or how it is classified, scholarship has coalesced around some fundamental preoccupations, which are not too dissimilar to questions that arise in other philosophies of. . . (e.g., art, film, dance, etc.). The debates in philosophy of theater mostly fall into three of the main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. The major metaphysical debates center on an ontological question: What is theater? Epistemological studies tend to focus on audience reception and/or how meaning is made and/or transmitted. Finally, studies in aesthetics focus on two main questions: (1) What is theater as an art form? (2) What is the relationship between dramatic text and theatrical performance? This article is intentionally narrow in its scope, focusing on philosophy and theater traditions that came out of Greek theater and philosophy, in order to ensure a sufficient amount of depth, not (merely) breadth.
Workforce Development of Social Workers Pre- and Post-Employment
Authors: Barbee Anita , Paul Megan
Published: April 2020

The social work profession is facing many issues with regards to the workplace. In the United States and other countries, there is either a current or pending workforce shortage. While most solutions focus on how to best recruit, educate, and graduate a large group of culturally and economically diverse students who are dedicated to social justice as much as they are to directly serving needy populations such as children, the elderly, the poor, and those with mental health, health, or social challenges in many settings (e.g., schools, hospitals, community-based agencies, governmental agencies), another approach has been and will need to continue to be to ensure that social workers remain in their jobs and in the field itself. Thus, workforce studies tend to have a multipronged focus: (1) how to recruit diverse students with appropriate values into social work in general, and into specialized areas such as behavioral health, gerontology, and child welfare in particular, (2) how to best equip students through classroom and field education for the workplace and after graduation so that they remain and do high-quality work, and (3) what environmental, interactional, and individual factors such as minority status, personality, the necessity of interprofessional collaboration, actual and perceived stress, supervision, and organizational culture and climate affect outcomes such as worker thoughts and feelings about the job, worker behaviors on the job, turnover, and client outcomes. Workforce studies vary. Some effort has been made to assess and describe environmental and organizational conditions social workers work in; others seek to examine the impact of such organizational environments as well as interactions in the workplace and worker characteristics on worker thoughts and feelings such as satisfaction, secondary trauma symptoms, and behavior such as coping, turnover, and performance, as well as client outcomes. Very few interventions to affect outcomes have been developed or rigorously tested. The bulk of the research has focused on the child welfare workforce, but there is a growing literature examining workforce issues among social workers across sectors, in interdisciplinary settings, and, in particular, fields such as health, mental health, integrated care, and gerontology.
Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Authors: Cousland Robert
Published: April 2020

The so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) or Paidika is an apocryphal document that narrates episodes from Jesus’ youth from the age of five up until his twelfth year. With the exception of the Temple narrative based on Luke 2:41–52, the episodes are not found in the New Testament. While the deeds attributed to the youthful Jesus—such as healing—sometimes foreshadow those of the adult Jesus, they also include a number of curses and punishment miracles, where Jesus kills or harms those who thwart him. These punishment miracles tend to taper off as Jesus matures, but it is disputed among scholars whether this change reflects a transformation on the part of Jesus or on those around him. Also open to question is whether the IGT’s early audiences would have considered its picture of a punitive Jesus “unchristian” or whether this verdict reflects modern sensibilities. Whatever the case, the IGT proved to be highly popular with ancient audiences, and it was quickly disseminated across the empire and throughout the Christian world thereafter. Although scholars are not unanimous about its date, provenance, or original language, many would postulate that it was written in Greek sometime in the 2nd century ce in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire. Our earliest manuscripts are Syriac and Latin and date from the 5th or 6th century, but later forms of the IGT are attested in a host of other languages, including Greek, Slavonic, Ethiopian, Irish, Georgian, Latin, and Arabic. These versions show considerable variation within the narratives themselves. The earliest recensions tend to be shorter, and not all episodes are found in all versions. The version most commonly translated into modern languages is Tischendorf’s Greek A text, but it is based on late manuscripts that differ significantly from earlier versions of the IGT. It should also be kept in mind that the IGT’s associations with Thomas are tenuous at best; he is only mentioned in versions of the IGT dating from after the 8th or 9th centuries. Long-standing confusion between the IGT and the Gospel of Thomas has led some scholars to suppose that it might have gnostic features. Recent scholarship, however, has largely rejected this theory. It is now generally supposed that the work is proto-orthodox and was probably intended for the edification and entertainment of members—adults and children alike—of the emergent Christian church.
Archaeology and Material Culture of Judah and the Judeans (ca. 1000–586 bce)
Authors: Mowry Tyler , Fulton Deirdre
Published: April 2020

The kingdom of Judah was a small political state that arose in the southern Levantine hill country during the Iron Age and was eventually conquered by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 bce. While the precise boundaries of the territory of Judah are difficult to define and likely fluctuated considerably, the traditional heartland of Judah in the Iron II extended from the southern mountain range that emerged from the Jezreel Valley in the north, to the Northern Negev, located in the south. At the beginning of the Iron II period (ca. 1000 bce), there began a steady increase in the small, unwalled settlements typical of that area in the Iron I period. The population of Judah remained relatively small throughout the 10th and early 9th centuries, but grew substantially during the late 9th century and especially the 8th century, as evinced by the proliferation of fortified settlements. At some point during this development, the political organization of these settlements coalesced into a monarchic state, but the precise nature and date of this transition is debated. Some scholars argue for the essential veracity of the biblical narratives concerning the foundation of the state under David and Solomon in the early 10th century bce, while others argue there is little definitive and undisputed archaeological evidence pointing to a strong centralized government until the 9th century. Indeed, this complicated relationship between the biblical text and the material culture has defined the practice and prerogatives of Judahite archaeology from its inception. Modern, stratigraphic excavation in Judah began under the guidance of biblical scholars in the early 20th century and continued in this fashion through the mid-century “Biblical Archaeology” movement. In recent decades, however, the archaeology of Judah (often included within the category of Syro-Palestinian archaeology) has gained some degree of independence from the field of Biblical Studies. Following wider trends in world archaeology, scholars studying ancient Judah have begun incorporating data from ethnographic studies and archaeometric methods into the primarily tell-based excavation process that characterized Judahite archaeology in the past. Still, the influence of the biblical traditions is undeniably present in the archaeology of the Levant, and as a result, studies of Judah are often combined with those of the kingdom of Israel to the north. Readers will note that combined form “Israel/Judah” is used when little or no distinction is made between the cultures of the two kingdoms.
Donatello
Authors: Bloch Amy R.
Published: April 2020

Donatello, born Donato di Niccolò di Betto di Bardo (b. c. 1386–d. 1466) in Florence, was one of the most gifted and versatile sculptors working on the Italian peninsula during the Quattrocento. Reflecting his career, the scholarship on Donatello is vast and varied, and nearly all aspects of his life and works have received sustained attention. Though he trained in bronze casting and, apparently, in goldsmithery, his first documented works were in marble. From c. 1406 to 1440 he carved marble sculptures for Florence Cathedral and its Campanile. During the first three decades of the fifteenth century he fashioned statues for the exterior of the Florentine guild church of Orsanmichele (Sts. Mark, George, and Louis of Toulouse), as well as a variety of sculptures elsewhere. In the 1420s and 1430s he worked in Siena, carrying out a relief and statues for the font of the Baptistery and a tomb slab for Giovanni Pecci (Cathedral). Alongside Michelozzo, with whom he maintained a legal partnership (c. 1425–1434), he completed in the 1420s other tombs—one for Baldassare Cossa (the antipope John XXIII) in the Florence Baptistery and another for Rainaldo Brancacci in Sant’Angelo a Nilo in Naples—and, in the 1430s, a pulpit for Prato Cathedral. He spent two years in Rome—1432–1433—and made a number of sculptures there; he also worked for patrons in Mantua, Ferrara, and Modena. Though inspired by ancient and medieval art, Donatello was a relentlessly innovative sculptor whose approach was often experimental. He invented the schiacciato relief, demonstrating painterly effects in sculpture; he participated in the reinvention of the bronze statuette; and he was one of the first to fashion, after Antiquity, life-sized, freestanding statues. Examples include his extensively studied bronze David and Judith and Holofernes, both of which, along with relief sculptures at the church of San Lorenzo, he made for the Medici family, his enthusiastic patrons. From c. 1443 to 1453 he resided in Padua, where he made sculptures for the interior of the Basilica of Sant’Antonio, as well as the equestrian portrait of Gattamelata. He worked in Siena from 1457 to 1459 before returning to Florence, where he died. He utilized a wide range of media: stone of all types, metal (gilded and ungilded bronze), glass, fiber, wax, ceramic, polychromed wood (e.g., the St. John the Baptist in Venice; his haunting Mary Magdelene), terracotta, and stucco—the latter two used to craft inventive reliefs of the Virgin and Christ Child. He was especially attentive to the treatment of surface and often painted, carved, or scratched materials so they resembled other substances. Near-contemporary sources describe him as sarcastic, witty, and clever.
Currency
Authors: Barth Jonathan
Published: April 2020

Currency is among the most contested phenomena in economic history. Its tentacles extend well beyond the economic realm, influencing politics, war, and society. The reasons are several. Money, for one, is often the most coveted item in a trading community. Men and women, whether for good or for ill, understand that money is a vehicle to acquire things they need or desire: wealth, power, status, influence, or, in many or most cases, a plain and humble state of economic competency. Beyond individual aspirations, however, money serves many other purposes. It facilitates and makes possible economic exchange. Indeed, trade without money would prove so unbearably difficult in a complex marketplace that it would almost invariably result in a collapse of most trade. Finally, and of near or equal importance to its economic function, money and credit finance state action—most notably warfare, but also all other activities undertaken by government. Atlantic currencies, in particular, changed immensely across the 17th and 18th centuries. The outflow of silver and gold bullion and coin from Mexico, Peru, and other Spanish possessions was almost too great to quantify, effecting a global monetary revolution. Its principle coin, the piece-of-eight, was the most tangible symbol of the far reaches of Atlantic commerce. But many peripheral areas of the Atlantic economy did not obtain a suitable quantity of coin to support trade. This was especially true of England’s American colonies, where heavy reliance on imported goods continually drained them of specie. Beginning in 1690 in Massachusetts, and continuing through the rest of the colonial period, England’s colonies in America embarked on an unprecedented experiment in fiat paper currency, known as “bills of credit”: paper currency backed by nothing but the government’s promise to accept it as legal tender. Paper currency became one of the most divisive political issues in colonial British America, with the Crown and then Parliament acting increasingly against it, culminating in the Currency Act of 1764. The paper Continental dollar helped the Patriots win American independence from Britain, but the infamous hyperinflation of the Continental dollar, and the chaos of competing state paper currencies in the 1780s, influenced the delegates to the Constitutional Convention to prohibit states from emitting bills of credit, so that nothing other than gold and silver coin could be legal tender in payment of debts, thus setting the stage for a new and further contested era of American currency and finance in the 19th century.
Latin American Theater and Performance
Authors: Lane Jill
Published: April 2020

Theatrical practice in Latin America predates the European conquest, and since the conquest has been a site for the expression of new cultural formations, often enacting or contesting prevailing systems of power. As in the field of theater studies generally, the term “theater” encompasses a range of performance practices, and overlaps in key periods with religious rites, political spectacle, festival, social and modern dance, performance art, and popular culture forms. Major concerns of the field include asking how European-based dramatic forms have been reinvented through their continuous interaction with indigenous and African cultural forms, and vice versa; what are the meanings of modernist and post-modernist dramatic forms in societies where modernity is an unstable context; how theater practitioners have transformed traditional forms of theater into an activist “Theatre of the Oppressed”; and what role theater plays in the contemporary neoliberal moment. While scholarship on theater in Latin America dates to the early 20th century, the field of Latin American theater studies—which defines its object of study as theater from the entire region—emerged alongside Popular Theater practice of the 1960s and 1970s, which similarly understood itself as a continental project. Both practice and scholarship, forged in the context of the Cold War, embraced a socially critical stance in favor of the working classes (the “popular” classes), understood theater as a vehicle for social change, and believed that shared Latin American aesthetics and methods were emerging. The field has retained this fundamental interest in the social and political dimensions of theater and has responded to the changing geopolitics of the region. A significant development in the field was the shift in the 1990s from a continental to a hemispheric frame. The hemispheric orientation sought, on one hand, to reshape disciplinary boundaries that rendered the formative, and often repressive, relation between the United States and its southern neighbors invisible; on the other, it affirms shared histories, culture, and aesthetics between US Latinx and Latin American communities and artists. This bibliography addresses the history, theories, and practices of Latin American theater studies and maps its changing disciplinary boundaries and thematic concerns over time. The periodization is intentionally loose. For example, works related to revolutionary aesthetics and the politics of the body are concentrated in the 1960s and 1990s respectively, but these represent threads in both practice and scholarship that continue well past those dates.
Bioaerosol Sampling at a Live Animal Market in Kunshan, China: A Noninvasive Approach for Detecting Emergent Viruses
Authors: Wang Xinye , Bailey Emily S , Qi Xian , Yu Huiyan , Bao Changjun , Gray Gregory C
Published: April 2020

From October to December 2018, periodic bioaerosol sampling was conducted at a live bird market in Kunshan, China. Sixty-six (55%) of 120 samples had molecular evidence of avian influenza viruses. Four yielded live H9N2 virus after egg culture.
The Possibility of Striving Play
Authors: Nguyen C. Thi
Published: April 2020

There are two sorts of play. In achievement play, we play for the sake of winning. In striving play we take up a temporary interest in winning for the sake of the activity of the pursuit. Striving play is a motivational inversion of ordinary practical life. In striving play, we take on disposable ends—temporary ends that guide our actions for a time, and then are discarded. But a skeptic might doubt the possibility of striving play. This chapter addresses the skeptic and argues for the possibility of striving play, using Bernard Suits’s insights into the motivational structure of game playing. The chapter considers a wide variety of game-playing phenomena, including silly party games, long-term game-playing relationships among friends and family, and the joys of comic failure in games. We learn that we can inhabit our agency with considerably more nimbleness and fluidity than we might have thought.
The Economic Origins of the “War on Terror”
Authors: Bapat Navin A.
Published: April 2020

The U.S. was in a position of economic and military hegemony after World War II. However, by the early 1970s, the U.S. dollar depreciated following President Richard Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard. To fight this problem, Nixon offered indefinite military protection from all of their enemies to all oil-producing states, if those states agreed to denominate their oil sales exclusively in U.S. dollars. This agreement reestablished the U.S. as the world’s sole superpower. At the turn of the millennium, U.S. dominance faced challenges from al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s decision to abandon the dollar in favor of the euro in oil sales. The war on terror began as an effort to eliminate each of these threats. Following the Iraq war, the U.S. seemed to establish control and alliances with all of the world’s key suppliers of energy, along with the states serving as transit routes.
Roman Seas
Authors: Leidwanger Justin
Published: April 2020

This book offers an archaeological analysis of maritime economy and connectivity in the Roman east. That seafaring was fundamental to prosperity under Rome is beyond doubt, but a tendency to view the grandest long-distance movements among major cities against a background noise of small-scale, short-haul activity has tended to flatten the finer and varied contours of maritime interaction and coastal life into a featureless blue Mediterranean. Drawing together maritime landscape studies and network analysis, this work takes a bottom-up view of the diverse socioeconomic conditions and seafaring logistics that generated multiple structures and scales of interaction. The material record of shipwrecks and ports along a vital corridor from the southeast Aegean across the northeast Mediterranean provides a case study of regional exchange and communication based on routine sails between simple coastal facilities. Rather than a single well-integrated and persistent Mediterranean network, multiple discrete and evolving regional and interregional systems emerge. This analysis sheds light on the cadence of economic life along the coast, the development of market institutions, and the regional continuities that underpinned integration—despite certain interregional disintegration—into Late Antiquity. Through this model of seaborne interaction, the study advances a new approach to the synthesis of shipwreck and other maritime archaeological and historical economic data, as well as a path through the stark dichotomies that inform most paradigms of Roman connectivity and trade.