bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
ActA (Listeria monocytogenes)
Authors: Kocks C , Cossart P
Published: November 2023

ActA is a major surface protein of the Gram positive human bacterial pathogen L. monocytogenes. It is encoded by gene actA (Genebank accession number M82881 and EMBL Data library accession number X59723) whose sequence predicts a 639-amino-acid protein with an amino-terminal signal peptide and a C-terminal membrane anchor (Domann et al. 1992; Vazquez-Boland et al. 1992). The N-terminus is processed at the predicted site and the mature 610-amino-acid protein is expressed on the bacterial surface and anchored into the bacterial membrane via its hydrophobic C-terminal region (Domann et al. 1992; Kocks et al. 1992). ActA (predicted isoelectric point: 4.74) is rich in glutamic acid (12 per cent) and proline (9.2 per cent). The N-terminal domain of ActA is highly charged. Its central region contains a succession of proline/glutamic rich stretches. The C-terminal part is more hydrophobic. As shown by immunogold labelling, the two first parts of the protein protrude from the cell wall and are thus able to interact with cytoskeleton components. ActA displays a polar distribution on the bacterial body. It is highly expressed at one pole of the bacterium and its distribution gradually decreases towards the other (Kocks et al. 1993).
Tetanus neurotoxin (Clostridium tetani)
Authors: Pellizzari R , Rossetto O
Published: November 2023

Tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT) is the cause of the spastic paralysis of tetanus (van Heyningen 1968; Montecucco and Schiavo 1995). It is produced as a single polypeptide chain of 150 kDa (1315 amino acid residues, sequence accession number to the Swiss Prot data bank: P04958ITETX_CLOTE). As shown in Fig. 1, it consists of three 50 kDa domains. Selective proteolysis generates within the bacterial culture the active di-chain toxin with a single interchain disulfide bond, whose reduction leads to total loss of neurotoxicity (Schiavo et al. 1990). The dichain toxin is the commercially available form. The heavy chain (H, 100 kda) is composed of two domains. He is responsible for the neurospecific binding to a yet unknown presynaptic nerve terminal protein receptor. HN is involved in the membrane translocation of the L chain in the cytosol (L, 50 kDa). In the course of the pathogenesis of tetanus, TeNT is internalized at the presynaptic terminal of the neuromuscular junction and migrates retroaxonally, inside the motorneuron, to the spinal cord (Schwab et al. 1979). It is then released in the inter¬synaptic space between the motorneuron and the inhibitory interneuron (Renshaw cell), it penetrates this latter cell via intracellular acidic compartments (Williamson and Neale 1994) and blocks their neuro-exocytosis.
Introduction
Authors: Benson J A
Published: November 2023

For defence and offense in the natural world, evolution and human design have placed a high premium on rapid knock-down. Sedentary or slow animals which defend themselves from or prey upon faster animals, plants that produce chemical defences against herbivores, and farmers who wish to reduce to a minimum crop damage due to infestation with pest insects and other species, all utilize toxic substances that act on the nervous system (Benson 1992). The sodium channel is a primary site of action for these compounds because of its central role in action potential conduction and because it is apparently highly conserved in function, although less so in molecular structure, throughout the animal kingdom (Trimmer and Agnew 1989). For example, tetrodotoxin (TTX), a non-peptidergic component of puffer fish venom, is famous for the potent, rapid, and highly specific action in blocking axonal action potentials that has made it a favourite research tool among electrophysiologists. DDT, a compound of wholly chemical inspiration which was for forty years an inexpensive, safe, broad spectrum insecticide has its insecticidal effect by slowing sodium channel inactivation (Narahashi and Haas 1967). Taken off the market in recent years due to its persistence and consequent deleterious accumulation at the top of the food chain, DDT has been replaced in large part by the pyrethroids, which also have their site of action on the sodium channel.
α-Scorpion toxins
Authors: Martin-Eauclaire M -F , Bougis P E
Published: November 2023

α-Toxins can be considered as the cause of the scorpion venom toxicity for mammals and particularly human beings, in the ‘Old World’ (Miranda et al. 1970). For example, 90 per cent of the toxicity for the mouse in the venom of Androctonus australis from North Africa is due to only 2 per cent of the weight of the crude venom. The toxic fractions are α-toxins (named AaH I, AaH II, AaH Ill according to their chromatographic behaviour) (Martin and Rochat 1986). These toxins are constituted by a single polypeptide chain of 60 to 70 amino acid residues reticulated by four disulfide bridges (Miranda et al. 1970). Their three dimensional structure is well documented: the AaH II structure has been determined at high resolution by X-ray crystallography (Fontecilla-Camps et al. 1988) and AaH Ill by 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) (Mikou et al. 1992).
β-Scorpion toxins
Authors: Rochat H
Published: November 2023

β-Toxins are responsible for the life hazard constituted, in Central and South America, by scorpion stings. They are qualitatively and quantitatively the most important polypeptides of the venom. They are made of one single polypeptide chain of 60 to 66 amino acid residues crosslinked by four disulfide bridges (Possani et al. 1981; Bechis et al. 1984; Martin-Eauclaire et al. 1987; Ceard et al. 1992; Zamudio et al. 1992). The structure of variant 3 from Centruroides sculpturatus Ewing has been deter¬ mined at high resolution by X-ray crystallography (Fontecilla-Camps et al. 1980). This protein although poorly active on mouse has an amino acid sequence very close to that of the most potent β-toxins: it shows a common structure made up of one a-helix and one triple stranded β-sheet maintained in position by two conserved disulfide bridges (Cys-25 and Cys-51, Cys-29 and Cys-53). Two more disulfide bridges link in one hand loops protruding from this region (Cys-16 and Cys-41) and, on the other hand, the (-terminal end of the chain to the N-terminal region (Cys-12 and Cys-72). On one side of the molecule, a hydrophobic surface exists, which has been implicated in the high affinity binding of β-toxins to their pharmacological target (Fontecilla-Camps et al. 1980). β-Toxins were defined as those toxins which behave like toxin II of Centruroides Suffusus suffusus (Css II): they bind to site 4 of the voltage-dependent sodium channel present in rat brain synaptosomes (Jover et al. 1980) modifying the activation process and inducing repetitive firing on frog myelinated nerve on voltageclamp conditions (Couraud et al. 1982; Martin-Eauclaire and Couraud 1995).
Excitatory insect selective neurotoxins from scorpion venoms
Authors: Zlotkin E
Published: November 2023

The lethal and paralytic capacity of Buthinae scorpion venoms to insects can be attributed substantially to their inclusion of the excitatory insect selective neurotoxins (Zlotkin 1986).Four separate excitatory insect toxins have been isolated so far by conventional methods of column chromatography from the venoms of the following Buthinae scorpions: Androctonus australis Hector (AaH IT, Zlotkin et al. 1971a and b), Buhotus judaicus (BJ IT1, Lester et al. 1982), Androctonus mauretanicus (Am IT1, Zlotkin et al. 1979), and Leinrus quinguestriatus quinguestriatus (Lqq IT1, Zlotkin et al. 1985). AaH IT was the first insect selec¬ tive toxin to be identified and studied and its covalent structure is presented in Fig. 1 (Darbon et al. 1982).
Anthopleurin-A, -B, and -C (anemone toxin)
Authors: Shibata S
Published: November 2023

Table 1 summarizes the properties of the three anthopleurins. All three substances are very soluble in water and quite stable at pH 1.0-8.0, but lose positive inotropic activity increasingly fast as the pH rises above 8.0. Figure 1 indicates the amino acid sequences of AP-A (Tanaka et al. 1977) and AP-C, and the partial sequence of the major constituent of AP-8.The cysteine crosslinks in AP-A have been determined to be 4-46, 6-36, and 29-47 as shown in Fig. 2. Conformational studies have been carried out using laser Raman, circular dichroism, fluorescence spectral studies, and Chou-Fasman calculations (lshizaki et al. 1979) as well as carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry (Norton and Norton 1979).
Calitoxins
Authors: Cariello L
Published: November 2023

Sea anemones, in common with other members of the phylum Cnidaria (Coelenterata), possess numerous tentacles containing specialized stinging cells or cnidocytes. These stinging cells are equipped with organelles known as ‘nematocysts’ that contain small threads that are forcefully everted when stimulated mechanically or chemically. Anemones use this venom apparatus in the capture of prey, as well as for defence against predators.Peptides and proteins figure prominently amongst the various classes of sea anemone toxins isolated and characterized to date. It is now recognized that this group of toxins consists of three classes of polypeptides, two made up of molecules containing 46-49 AA residues (type 1), and one of shorter polypeptides containing 27-31 residues (type 2). All these polypeptides have a paralysing effect on the sodium channels exerted through a prolonged depolarization of the nerve terminals, thereby causing massive transmitter release.
Scyllatoxin (Leiurus quinquestriatus hebraeus)
Authors: Hugues M , Lazdunski M
Published: November 2023

Scyllatoxin (sequence accession number to the Swiss Prot databank: P16341 SCKL LEIQH) is a peptidic neurotoxin which specifically blocks low conductance Ca2+-dependent K+ channels (sK) (Chicchi et al. 1988; Auguste et al. 1990). These channels have previously been demonstrated to be associated with apamin receptors, another peptidic toxin with 18 amino acids purified from bee venom (Hugues et al. 1982a,b). Scyllatoxin is composed of 31 amino acids and is reticulated by three disulphide bridges. Structure-function studies have shown that Arg6, Arg13, and His31 are crucial for toxin/receptor interaction and for biological activity of the toxin. Chemical modification of Lys20, 25, 30 residues or Glu27 does not alter binding capacity but seriously alters biological activity (Auguste et al. 1992a). The spatial structure of scyllatoxin has been determined using 2D NMR and data obtained have shown that Arg6 and Arg13 were positioned in space in a way which mimics the active centre of apamin which is constituted of Arg13 and Arg14, two contiguous arginine residues (Martins et al. 1990). The brain distribution of scyllatoxin receptors is similar to that of apamin receptors, which is not surprising since both toxins have the same biological target. However, scyllatoxin is able to discriminate between three classes of receptors which it recognizes with different affinities: less than 70 pM for high affinity receptors; between 100 and 500 pM for medium affinity receptors; and more than 800 pM for low affinity receptors (Auguste et al. 1992a). An endogeneous equivalent of scyllatoxin exists in mammalian tissues (Auguste et al. 1992b).
Apamin (honey bee Apis mellifera)
Authors: Repp H , Dreyer F
Published: November 2023

Apamin was first purified by Habermann and Reiz (Habermann and Reiz 1965) using gel filtration followed by acidic ion exchange chromatography. Apamin can be purchased from Alomone Labs, Bachem, Calbiochem, Latoxan, and RBI. It is offered either as native or synthetic product. The central effects of apamin can be used as a test for its biological activity (Habermann 1972).Toxicity of apamin is tested by intravenous or intraventricular injection. After peripheral application of at least 0. 5 mg/kg, mice display the typical neurotoxic symptoms. Mouse LD50 is 4 mg/kg when administered intravenously but about 3000-fold lower for intraventricular application (Habermann 1972, 1977).
MCD peptide (honey bee Apis mellifera)
Authors: Repp H , Dreyer F
Published: November 2023

Like apamin, MCD peptide constitutes not more than 2 per cent of dry weight of honey bee crude venom (Habermann 1972). The MCD peptide molecule possesses two disulfide bridges between Cys3/Cys15 and Cys5/Cys19. NMR spectroscopy studies demonstrated that the N-terminal residues lle1-Cys5 form a /Hurn and the residues His13-Asn22 on the (-terminus are in an a-helical structure (Kumar et al. 1988). This conformation is very similar to that of apamin. In contrast to apamin, MCD peptide is barely neurotoxic when applied intravenously, but intraventricular injection results in arousal and, at higher concentrations, epileptiform seizures leading ultimately to death (Habermann 1977). These actions are brought about by the blockade of a subtype of the delayed outward rectifier K+ channel (Dreyer 1990; Strong 1990; Garcia et al. 1991). Distinct from its central action, MCD peptide causes degranulation of mast cells and subsequent histamine release. Furthermore, MCD peptide has been reported to possess anti-inflammatory activity in the carrageenin-induced oedema model of the rat hind paw (Ziai et al. 1990) but this effect arises from mast cell degranulation in vivo (Banks et al. 1990).
Introduction
Authors: Clementi F
Published: November 2023

The nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (AChRs) are the target of the toxins described in this chapter, which bind to them with high affinity. These toxins were instrumental in AChRs purification experiments in the early 1970s and allowed a comprehensive understanding of their biophysical and functional properties.AChRs are cationic ion channels whose probability of aperture is increased by acetylcholine (ACh). They belong to a super family of ligand-gated ion channels, which includes GABAA, glycine, and serotonin 5HT3 receptors (Stroud et al. 1990; Changeux 1993; Devillers-Thiery et al. 1993; Ortells and Lunt 1995).AChRs are key molecules in cholinergic transmission at the neuromuscular junction, the sympathetic ganglia, the retina, and various brain areas; they can be postsynaptic (muscle and ganglia) or presynaptic, as in a number of CNS nuclei (i.e. striatum).
α-Latroinsectotoxin (Latrodectus mactans tredecimguttatus)
Authors: Grishin E V , Khvotchev M V
Published: November 2023

The presynaptic receptor of α-LIT is not identified. Studies of the a-latrotoxin receptor reveal the functional importance of a new class of synapse-specific proteins, the neurexins (Petrenko, 1993). Characterization of the α-LIT receptor, which is likely to be an insect analogue of neurexins, will provide a useful model to study their role in maintenance and development of the nervous system. Of great interest is the nature of the tight and specific coupling of α-LIT to its receptor. This interaction can be mediated by Ank repeats that form a prominent motif of protein recognition. α-LIT can also be used as a selective marker of the active zone in insect presynaptic membranes.
Kinesin, C-terminal motor domain
Authors: Endow Sharyn A
Published: November 2023

Many of the kinesin microtubule motor proteins that have been identified over the past seven years have the conserved motor domain at the C terminus of the protein instead of the N terminus. Several of these proteins have been shown to move towards microtubule minus ends instead of plus ends, like the other kinesin proteins. This ‘backwards’ polarity of movement on microtubules is likely to be a general characteristic of this group of kinesin motor proteins. The C-terminal motor kinesins have been found in fungi, plants and animals, and perform diverse roles in the cell in spindle assembly and motility, and transport of vesicles/organelles along axonal microtubules.
Spectrins
Authors: Morrow Jon S
Published: November 2023

First identified in the mammalian erythrocyte, spectrins are now recognized as ubiquitous proteins present in all metazoan organisms including plants. Because of this great diversity, a bewildering array of names, such as fodrin, calspectin, brain spectrin, spectrin G, lung spectrin, γ spectrin, 1W260/240, and so on, have been applied to what are essentially the same or very similar molecules. Alternative mRNA splicing also generates additional isoform diversity. To resolve this confusion, mammalian spectrins are now named based on their gene of origin, and whether they are an ‘alpha’ or ‘beta’ spectrin.
Ancestral inference from gene trees
Authors: Griffiths R C
Published: November 2023

A sample of DNA sequences contains information about their ancestry. Under an assumption of nonrecurrent point mutations a unique gene tree can be constructed as a perfect phylogeny. There is much interest in thinking of the DNA sequence data as a tree. The likelihood of a gene tree under a coalescent model of evolution can be found by an importance sampling technique, thus allowing maximum likelihood estimation of parameters using the full information in the data. The distribution of the time to the most recent common ancestor and ages of mutations in the gene tree, conditional on its topology, can also be found by simulation. There are many questions of interest about ancestry that can be asked from sequences in a subdivided population. Explicit formulae are available for the marginal distribution of ages of single mutations.
Introduction
Authors: Pratt George
Published: November 2023

An alarmingly large proportion of musicians, questioned about their own experiences of aural training, admit that they disliked it, thought they were bad at it, and have found it largely irrelevant to their subsequent engagement in music. Something is clearly wrong. Aural perception is self-evidently indispensable in musical activity, in creating through composing, re-creating in performance, responding as a critical listener. Either many musicians should have taken up other careers, as brain-surgeons, say, or bookmakers, or else the content and methods of aural training and testing are inappropriate to their presumed purpose of developing musical perceptions.
Metre and rhythm
Authors: Pratt George
Published: November 2023

The aim of this chapter is to focus attention on metre and rhythm in the context of real musical activity, be it composing, performing or listening. Before reading further, look again at the definitions of ‘metre’ and ‘rhythm’ in section 2.2.
Numerical Analysis And Optimization
Authors: Allaire Gregoire
Published: November 2023

This text, based on the author's teaching at École Polytechnique, introduces the reader to the world of mathematical modelling and numerical simulation. Covering the finite difference method; variational formulation of elliptic problems; Sobolev spaces; elliptical problems; the finite element method; Eigenvalue problems; evolution problems; optimality conditions and algorithms and methods of operational research, and including a several exercises throughout, this is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate students and graduates in applied mathematics, engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences.
Milestones In Matrix Computation: Selected Works Of Gene H. Golub, With Commentaries
Authors: Chan Raymond H , Greif Chen , O’Leary Dianne P
Published: November 2023

The text presents and discusses some of the most influential papers in Matrix Computation authored by Gene H. Golub, one of the founding fathers of the field. The collection of 21 papers is divided into five main areas: iterative methods for linear systems, solution of least squares problems, matrix factorizations and applications, orthogonal polynomials and quadrature, and eigenvalue problems. Commentaries for each area are provided by leading experts: Anne Greenbaum, Ake Bjorck, Nicholas Higham, Walter Gautschi, and G. W. (Pete) Stewart. Comments on each paper are also included by the original authors, providing the reader with historical information on how the paper came to be written and under what circumstances the collaboration was undertaken. Including a brief biography and facsimiles of the original papers, this text will be of great interest to students and researchers in numerical analysis and scientific computation.
Interest Groups and the European Court of Justice
Authors: McCown Margaret
Published: November 2023

Court cases are effective if, often, expensive opportunities to strike down or rewrite legislation, from local regulations up to constitutional provisions. Moreover, winning before a court is not a matter of persuading officials of a majority preference or the representatives of a cause, so courts can be very appealing venues for minority interests to challenge rules. If the case is decided by a constitutional court, there are few means, besides the court overturning its own ruling, to change the decision, so successful litigants not only secure a desired change but one that is very insulated from other challenges. It is no surprise, then, that courts whose decisions have significant policy implications are the focus of interest group attention. European Union (EU) lobbyists have found that the supranational level of government is no exception – the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has proved to be a highly successful venue in which to seek policy change and many organized interests have long cultivated strategies for targeting it, albeit with varied success. This chapter will discuss the ECJ as a target of lobbying, the strategies developed by EU interest groups and the factors that shape selection of these strategies.
Politics of Food: Agro-Industry Lobbying in Brussels
Authors: Grant Wyn , Stocker Tim
Published: November 2023

The European agro-food industry is the third largest employer in Europe, with some 11 million still employed in agriculture and 4.1 million in the food and drink manufacturing industries. Food processing is the largest manufacturing sector in the European Union (EU). These figures do not encompass catering or food retailing. However, its interest in a volume of this kind does not arise primarily from its economic importance, but from the challenges it has faced in recent years and the ways in which it has responded to them.
Forced Oscillations: Harmonic And Subharmonic Response, Stability, And Entrainment
Authors: Jordan D W , Smith P
Published: November 2023

We consider second-order differential equations of the general form x f (x, x) F cos ωt, which have a periodic forcing term. When the equation is linear the structure of its solutions is very simple. There are two parts combined additively. One part, the ‘free oscillation ‘ is a linear combination of the solutions of the homogeneous equation and involves the initial conditions. The second part, the ‘forced solution ‘, is proportional to F and is independent of initial conditions. When damping is present the free oscillation dies away in time. This independence of the free and the forced components, and the ultimate independence of initial
Poets
Authors: Nettle Daniel
Published: November 2023

We have now reached the fifth and final big personality dimension. This is—perhaps fittingly, as we shall see—the most mysterious and difficult to pin down of the five. It is the dimension called variously ‘Culture’, ‘Intellect’, or, the label I prefer, ‘Openness to experience’. Early conceptions of the fifth factor had it running from ‘boorish’ at one extreme to ‘cultured’ or ‘sophisticated’ at the other. Clearly, culture and sophistication are partly the products of socioeconomic opportunity rather than temperament, and, as five-factor authorities Robert McCrae and Paul Costa wryly note, ‘if this characterization had been confirmed by subsequent research, the topic of Openness would perhaps have belonged in a handbook of sociology, not personality psychology’.
The Other Half
Authors: Nettle Daniel
Published: November 2023

Throughout this book, I have argued that natural selection maintains a range of different genetic variants relevant to personality traits in the human population, and that it does this because there is no ‘best-for-all-places-and times’ level of these traits. Thus, a big part of what determines the personality you have is which of these genetic variants you happen to be carrying. This view is well backed up by behaviour-genetic studies, which consistently show that personality traits have a heritable component. However, it cannot be all there is to the story. When behaviour geneticists estimate the size of this heritable component, they conclude that it is around 50 per cent.
What was mathematics in the ancient world? Greek and Chinese perspectives
Authors: Lloyd G E R
Published: November 2023

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Two types of approach can be suggested to the question posed by the title of this chapter. On the one hand we might attempt to settle a priori on the criteria for mathematics and then review how far what we find in different ancient cultures measures up to those criteria. Or we could proceed more empirically or inductively by studying those diverse traditions and then deriving an answer to our question on the basis of our findings. Both approaches are faced with dificulties.
A Balkan trilogy: mathematics in the Balkans before World War I
Authors: Lawrence Snezana
Published: November 2023

Ever since the invention of the term ‘the Balkans’, the area has attracted the attention of the international community for negative reasons: wars, atrocities, and incessant squabbling about the rightness or wrongness of ethnic or religious origin or denomination. An entirely different and more positive side to the people of the Balkans will be examined here: their efforts to introduce the pursuit of mathematics to the nations to which they belonged. The development of Balkan mathematics will be examined through the history of three national schools of mathematics.
The cognitive and cultural foundations of numbers
Authors: Chrisomalis Stephen
Published: November 2023

Every known human society has the capacity to manipulate quantity; in this sense, mathematics is panhuman. The extent to which any individual or group pays special attention to mathematical concepts, however, is crossculturally variable. The study of the cultural, (pre)historical, and social aspects of numeration and arithmetic—the foundations of mathematics—is preoccupied with the tension between the universal and specific aspects of the subject.
Writing the ultimate mathematical textbook: Nicolas Bourbaki’s Éléments de mathématique
Authors: Corry Leo
Published: November 2023

Mathematical textbooks have played a significant role in the history of mathematics. Still, with a few—if important—exceptions, and especially in the twentieth century, mathematical textbooks do not in general convey new results. Rather, they attempt to summarize and present an updated picture of a discipline. Such summaries can hardly be neutral with regard to the body of knowledge they present. Writing a textbook involves much more than simply putting together previously dispersed results.
Estimating the Integrated Likelihood via Posterior Simulation Using the Harmonic Mean Identity
Authors: Raftery Adrian E , Newton Michael A , Satagopan Jaya M , Krivitsky Pavel N
Published: November 2023

The integrated likelihood (also called the marginal likelihood or the normalizing constant) is a central quantity in Bayesian model selection and model averaging. It is defined as the integral over the parameter space of the likelihood times the prior density. The Bayes factor for model comparison and Bayesian testing is a ratio of integrated likelihoods, and the model weights in Bayesian model averaging are proportional to the integrated likelihoods. We consider the estimation of the integrated likelihood from posterior simulation output, aiming at a generic method that uses only the likelihoods from the posterior simulation iterations. The key is the harmonic mean identity, which says that the reciprocal of the integrated likelihood is equal to the posterior harmonic mean of the likelihood. The simplest estimator based on the identity is thus the harmonic mean of the likelihoods. While this is an unbiased and simulation-consistent estimator, its reciprocal can have infinite variance and so it is unstable in general.
Riemannian Holonomy Groups and Calibrated Geometry
Authors: Joyce Dominic D
Published: November 2023

This graduate level text covers an exciting and active area of research at the crossroads of several different fields in Mathematics and Physics. In Mathematics it involves Differential Geometry, Complex Algebraic Geometry, Symplectic Geometry, and in Physics String Theory and Mirror Symmetry. Drawing extensively on the author ‘s previous work, the text explains the advanced mathematics involved simply and clearly to both mathematicians and physicists. Starting with the basic geometry of connections, curvature, complex and Kähler structures suitable for beginning graduate students, the text covers seminal results such as Yau ‘s proof of the Calabi Conjecture, and takes the reader all the way to the frontiers of current research in calibrated geometry, giving many open problems.
The Accession of Latvia to the EU
Authors: Ķesteris Andris , Plamše Kristīne
Published: November 2023

The ten countries that joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 are seen today as a single group because they joined simultaneously—in the last wave of enlargement. This has not always been the case, although they all presented their candidacies to the EU almost simultaneously (around 1994–5), and free trade agreements, later replaced by association agreements, were concluded with one after the other. The division of the group occurred for the first time in July 1997 when the European Commission presented its opinions on the readiness of candidate countries to start accession negotiations.
The Accession of Malta to the EU
Authors: Caruana Richard Cachia
Published: November 2023

Alone among the ten countries that acceded to the European Union on 1 May 2004, Malta faced major internal political controversy over the decision.
Detection and early warning of invasive species
Authors: Holcombe Tracy , Stohlgren Thomas J
Published: November 2023

It is well known that invasive species are a problem of epidemic proportions around the world, causing economic losses of up to $120 billion per year in the USA alone (Pimentel et al. 2005). As trade and travel across international boundaries increase, so do invasions (Mack and Lonsdale 2001). Early detection and rapid assessment are effective strategies to minimize the impacts that invasive species have on economies and on ecosystems that they invade (Rejmanek and Pitcairn 2002).
Public participation in invasive species management
Authors: Boudjelas Souad
Published: November 2023

This chapter reviews public participation in invasive alien species (IAS) management. It explores why public participation is important, from ethical, legal, and practical standpoints. How the public engages in IAS management through different modes will be considered and related to the varying drivers of individual initiatives. Examples presented throughout the chapter and more detailed case studies will illustrate the value of public participation. The chapter concludes with a discussion on how to maximize public participation through the process of mainstreaming.
Marine biosecurity: management options and response tools
Authors: Piola Richard F , Denny Chris M , Forrest Barrie M , Taylor Michael D
Published: November 2023

Marine alien invasive species (AIS) are now considered a major threat to the diversity and health of coastal regions worldwide (Carlton and Geller 1993; Vitousek et al. 1997; Cohen and Carlton 1998; Mack et al. 2000), overshadowing even the threat from the excess of other human activities whose impacts have traditionally received considerably greater attention (e.g. waste discharge, habitat reclamation). Human-mediated transport vectors such as shipping, aquaculture, and fishing act as a continuous source for inoculation of AIS into new regions, with the rate of species movements between different regions at unprecedented levels (Mack et al. 2000).
Making History: European Integration and Institutional Change at Fifty
Authors: Meunier Sophie , Mcnamara Kathleen R
Published: November 2023

Fifty years ago, on March 25, 1957, the leaders of six European states signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community (EEC) and launching the process of European integration. Since then, this innovative institution has evolved to encompass a much broader array of responsibilities than originally planned, its membership has widened to twenty-seven countries through successive enlargements, and its legislation and jurisprudence has come to supersede national law. The European Union (EU) has now become the most successful example of voluntary, institutionalized political integration in the world.
The Theory and Reality of the European Coal and Steel Community
Authors: Alter Karen J , Steinberg David
Published: November 2023

European integration began in 1950 with the Schuman Plan, which launched the ECSC. The Schuman Plan was designed to alleviate concerns that Germany’s dominance in coal and steel could be used to harm European reconstruction efforts or to build another war machine. Jean Monnet, the Plan’s chief architect, also wanted to shore up the French planning process for reconstruction by Europeanizing the technocratic planning approach. Most supporters of the ECSC project expected integration to expand beyond Coal and Steel, and hoped that it would serve as a first step toward deeper European integration.
A Historical Institutionalist Analysis of the Road to Economic and Monetary Union: A Journey with Many Crossroads
Authors: Verdun Amy
Published: November 2023

Today, EMU is a key policy area in Europe, even though it was not even mentioned in the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Indeed, what is remarkable about the historical trajectory of EMU are its dramatic turnarounds: absent at the outset, EMU made considerable progress in the 1960s, failed in the 1970s despite being adopted by the Council as an objective in 1971, only to re-emerge onto the agenda in full force in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Created in 1999, and with euro banknotes and coins circulating in twelve member states since 2002, EMU can without doubt be seen as one of the greatest achievements of European integration. Yet, few could have predicted fifty years ago, at the signing of the Treaty of Rome, that it would ever come into being.
Invasion Biology
Authors: Davis Mark A
Published: November 2023

With the exception of climate change, biological invasions have probably received more attention during the past ten years than any other ecological topic. Yet this is the first synthetic, single-authored overview of the field since Williamson's 1996 book. Written fifty years after the publication of Elton's pioneering monograph on the subject, Invasion Biology provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the science of biological invasions while also offering new insights and perspectives relating to the processes of introduction, establishment, and spread. The book connects science with application by describing the health, economic, and ecological impacts of invasive species as well as the variety of management strategies developed to mitigate harmful impacts. The author critically evaluates the approaches, findings, and controversies that have characterized invasion biology in recent years, and suggests a variety of future research directions. Carefully balanced to avoid distinct taxonomic, ecosystem, and geographic (both investigator and species) biases, the book addresses a wide range of invasive species (including protists, invertebrates, vertebrates, fungi, and plants) which have been studied in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments throughout the world by investigators equally diverse in their origins. This accessible and thought-provoking text will be of particular interest to graduate level students and established researchers in the fields of invasion biology, community ecology, conservation biology, and restoration ecology. It will also be of value and use to land managers, policy makers, and other professionals charged with controlling the negative impacts associated with recently arrived species.
The Tenth Muse
Authors: Marcus Laura
Published: November 2023

The Tenth Muse explores writings on the cinema in the first decades of the twentieth century. Laura Marcus examines the impact of cinema on early twentieth-century literary and, more broadly, aesthetic and cultural consciousness, by bringing together the study of the terms and strategies of early writings about film with literary engagement with cinema in the same period. She gives a new understanding of the ways in which early writers about film - reviewers, critics, theorists - developed aesthetic categories to define and accommodate what was called 'the seventh art' or 'the tenth muse' and found discursive strategies adequate to the representation of the new art and technology of cinema, with its unprecedented powers of movement. In examining the writings of early film critics and commentators in tandem with those of more specifically literary figures, including H.G.Wells and Virginia Woolf, and in bringing literary texts into this field, Laura Marcus provides a new account of relationships between cinema and literature. Intertwining two major strands of research - the exploration of early film criticism and theory and cinema's presence in literary texts - The Tenth Muse shows how issues central to an understanding of cinema (including questions of time, repetition, movement, vision, sound and silence) are threaded through both kinds of writing, and the ways in which discursive and fictional writings overlapped. The movement that defined cinema was also perceived as a more fragile and unstable ephemerality that inhered at every level, from the fleeting nature of the projected images to the vagaries of cinematic exhibition. It was the anxiety over the mutability of the medium and its exhibition which, from the 1920s onwards, led to the establishment of such institutional spaces for cinema as the London-based Film Society, the new film journals, and, in the 1930s, the first film archives. The Tenth Muse explores the continuities between these sites of cinematic culture and the conceptual, literary and philosophical understandings of the filmic medium.
Do Voluntary Standards Work Among Governments? The Experience of International Financial Standards in East Asia
Authors: Walter Andrew
Published: November 2023

Can there be a worldwide ‘race to the top’ in financial regulatory practices? The G7 countries and the international financial institutions (IFIs) would seem to assume so. In recent years, they have actively promoted the adoption of a set of voluntary international standards and codes on the grounds that worldwide convergence on ‘best practice’ in macroeconomic policy and regulation is both possible and desirable. The Financial Stability Forum (FSF), established in the wake of the emerging market crises of the late 1990s, refers to the twelve ‘key standards’ listed on its website as ‘the various economic and financial standards that are internationally accepted as important for sound, stable and well functioning financial systems’.1
Yeats’s Poetic Codes
Authors: Grene Nicholas
Published: November 2023

Nicholas Grene explores Yeats’s poetic codes of practice, the key words and habits of speech that shape the reading experience of his poetry. Where previous studies have sought to decode his work, expounding its symbolic meanings by references to Yeats’s occult beliefs, philosophical ideas or political ideology, the focus here is on his poetic technique, its typical forms and their implications for the understanding of the poems. Grene is concerned with the distinctive stylistic signatures of the Collected Poems: the use of dates and place names within individual poems; the handling of demonstratives and of grammatical tense and mood; certain nodal Yeatsian words (‘dream’, ‘bitter’, ‘sweet’) and images (birds and beasts); dialogue and monologue as the voices of his dramatic lyrics. The aim throughout is to illustrate the shifting and unstable movement between lived reality and transcendental thought in Yeats, the embodied quality of his poetry between a phenomenal world of sight and an imagined world of vision.
The Colours of Animals: From Wallace to the Present Day II. Conspicuous Coloration
Authors: Caro Tim , Hill Geoffrey , Lindström Leena , Speed Michael
Published: November 2023

The second class—the warning colours—are exceedingly interesting, because the object and effect of these is, not to conceal the object, but to make it conspicuous. To these creatures it is useful to be seen and recognised.
Wallace in Wonderland*
Authors: Moore James
Published: November 2023

Today the world stands in awe of “Science” with a capital “S.” It towers above us, mighty and austere, a colossus of “unnatural” knowledge, our secular providence (Wolpert 1992; Midgley 1992). This is a chimera. Scientists may send us to Mars, scientific research may root out Aids, but Colossus Science dazzles and distracts, blinding us to debates about natural knowledge-claims—about what may count as science—that took place over time. Two centuries ago there were only small-”s” sciences, local knowledges claiming to be scientific. These raw materials were then
Functional and Spatial Structure of Investment Management
Authors: Clark Gordon L
Published: November 2023

It IS widely recognized that pension funds are major players in global financial markets. It is also recognized that Anglo-American pension funds, in particular, are essential to the rapidly growing international investment management industry which involves firms such as J. P. Morgan, State Street Global Advisors, Frank Russell & Company, and Merrill Lynch/Mercury Asset Management, as well as less well-known national and regional service firms. Useful discussions of the develop ment of the international and national money management industries, including reference to both the retail (mutual funds and the like) and wholesale (pension funds) sectors of the industry, can be found in Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny (1992) and Pryke (1994).
Manifesto-based Research: A Critical Review
Authors: Budge Ian , Bara Judith
Published: November 2023

The graphs of party policy movements presented in Chapter 1 demonstrate the range and flexibility of our policy estimates more dramatically than any detailed review. Similar ‘maps’ can be produced for specialized policy areas such as the ‘planning’ and ‘peace’ scales incorporated in the data-set, or for individual policy-variables such as attitudes to the EU (Evans and Norris (eds.) 1999:12–19).

A whole range of questions can be raised and answered on the basis of this information. We can start with simple descriptive concerns–for example, have parties become more or less distinct in policy terms over the post-war period?
Managing the Earth
Authors: Briden James C , Downing Thomes E
Published: November 2023

Although it is now widely recognized throughout societies around the world that humankind is straining the capacity of our planet, the responses of the many parties who need to come together to solve the myriad challenges have in general been sectoral in their approach. Yet the dangers presented by drawing successively on Earth's natural resources and exacerbating drought, water scarcity, hunger, health - indeed the viability of whol ecommunities and countries - coupled with the economic and social aspirations of the developed and developing world, clearly call for holistic vision leading to coordinated action. In this book, eight highly experienced authors from acaemia, intergovernmental negotiation, and diplomacy each present their own perspective and assess prospects for progress. the necessity for interdisciplinarity of approach, and for partnership and altruism on an unprecedented scale for solution, and for new negotiation and arbitration frameworks, emerge as inevitalbe conclusions.
Campaign Modernization and the West European Party
Authors: Farrell David M
Published: November 2023

The electoral process is central to the proper functioning of democracy. In his recent comprehensive study Democracy and Elections, Richard Katz poses the question: ‘What are elections supposed to do?’ (1997: 100). He suggests five main functions: (I) they provide legitimacy for the regime; (2) they determine which people fill which offices; (3) they provide voters with an opportunity to choose; (4) they facilitate the representative process; (5) they provide an occasion for popular involvement in politics. The smooth operation of the electoral process presupposes that appropriate institutions have been set in place: a constitution, a legitimate system of government, a series of electoral laws, and so on. It also requires the involvement of key sets of actors working according to agreed norms and rules. Prominent among these actors are the parties and their candidates who are chasing votes, the interest groups seeking to influence the campaign agenda, the media attempting to provide (balanced and not so balanced) coverage of the event, and the (often bewildered) voters trying to decide on whether and how to vote.
Parties and Government Formation, Portfolio Allocation, and Policy Definition
Authors: Winter Lieven De
Published: November 2023

The process of government formation translates the electoral and parliamentary power of political parties into executive power, and thereby provides political parties with the opportunity to implement policies that have been democratically endorsed and legitimized by the voters. Government formation thus comprises a crucial phase in the theory of democratic governance. Since a growing number of Western European governments are based on coalitions of political parties, government formation is also an increasingly important empirical phenomenon.
Parties and the Institutional Framework
Authors: Müller Wolfgang C
Published: November 2023

This chapter conceives political parties in the Schumpeterian tradition (Schumpeter 1950), namely, as groups of entrepreneurs who build up organizations to garner resources required to compete with other political entre preneurs/parties that play the political game. Once established, however, party organizations constrain their leaders. Activists need to be compensated for their contributions and, due to the problem of collective action, the promise of a collective good-public policy-will in many cases be insufficient (Schlesinger 1991: 16---19). Moreover, leaders tend to promise future compensation, but expect party activists to provide immediate financial or labour contributions.
Parties and Party Research in the New Europe
Authors: Luther Kurt Richard , Müller-Rommel Ferdinand
Published: November 2023

This volume has sought to evaluate the comparative literature on political parties in contemporary Western Europe. The individual chapters provide a concise, critical review of the empirical findings of that literature in respect of particular aspects of political parties, and also assess the theoretical and methodological ‘state-of-the-art’ in these areas. It is demonstrated that our knowledge of the nature and role of Western European political parties has increased significantly in recent years. Further, we can also observe that Western European party change is both ongoing and closely related to the rapid development of the wider societies in which those parties operate. That is not to suggest that political parties are wholly dependent upon their environment (a point we shall return to towards the end of this chapter). However, there is much to be said for the proposition that the comparative study of political parties in a liberal democracy may well constitute a ‘never ending story’ for political science.
Euroscepticism in the British Party System: ‘A Source of Fascination, Perplexity, and Sometimes Frustration’
Authors: Baker David , Gamble Andrew , Randall, Nick , Seawright David
Published: November 2023

In April 2002, in a speech at Oxford University, Romano Prodi, the then President of the European Commission, remarked, ‘Britain’s attitude to Europe contrasts with that of many of its EU partners. It is a source of fascination, perplexity, and sometimes frustration for your friends elsewhere in Europe’ (Prodi 2002).