bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Topology optimized gold nanostrips for enhanced near-infrared photon upconversion
Authors: Vester-Petersen Joakim , Christiansen Rasmus E. , Julsgaard Brian , Balling Peter , Sigmund Ole , Madsen Søren P.
Published: September 2017

This letter presents a topology optimization study of metal nanostructures optimized for electric-field enhancement in the infrared spectrum. Coupling of such nanostructures with suitable ions allows for an increased photon-upconversion yield, with one application being an increased solar-cell efficiency by exploiting the long-wavelength part of the solar spectrum. In this work, topology optimization is used to design a periodic array of two-dimensional gold nanostrips for electric-field enhancements in a thin film doped with upconverting erbium ions. The infrared absorption band of erbium is utilized by simultaneously optimizing for two polarizations, up to three wavelengths, and three incident angles. Geometric robustness towards manufacturing variations is implemented considering three different design realizations simultaneously in the optimization. The polarization-averaged field enhancement for each design is evaluated over an 80 nm wavelength range and a ±15-degree incident angle span. The highest polarization-averaged field enhancement is 42.2 varying by maximally 2% under ±5 nm near-uniform design perturbations at three different wavelengths (1480 nm, 1520 nm, and 1560 nm). The proposed method is generally applicable to many optical systems and is therefore not limited to enhancing photon upconversion.
Influence of surface topography on three-dimensional fractal model of sliding friction
Authors: Pan Wujiu , Li Xiaopeng , Wang Linlin , Mu Jiaxin , Yang Zemin
Published: September 2017

The purpose of this paper is to establish a three-dimensional model of sliding friction and to study the influence of surface topography fractal parameters on the model. Firstly, the analysis of the contact between two asperities is completed, for according to the classical molecular-mechanical friction theory, the sliding friction among rough surfaces should be the sum of mechanical force and molecular adhesion. Then based on the fractal theory, the three-dimensional fractal model of sliding friction is deduced. Finally, the influence of the maximum contact area of asperity al, the fractal roughness G and the fractal dimension D on the sliding friction is analyzed by a simulation example, and the analysis results show that the sliding friction F has positive correlation with al and G, and there is an optimal fractal dimension D which minimizes F. The study of the paper can be used to explain the existing experimental results and the friction theory reasonably.
Spin transport properties based on spin gapless semiconductor CoFeMnSi
Authors: Han Jiangchao , Feng Yulin , Yao Kailun , Gao G. Y.
Published: September 2017

Spin gapless semiconductors have been regarded as the most promising candidates for spin injection materials due to the complete (100%) spin polarization and the conductivity between half-metals and semiconductors. To explore the potential spintronic applications of the quaternary Heusler alloy CoFeMnSi (CFMS), a recently fabricated spin gapless semiconductor with a high Curie temperature of 620 K, we design the GaAs/CFMS heterostructure and the CFMS/GaAs/CFMS magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). It is found from the first-principles calculations combined with nonequilibrium Green's function that the heterostructure exhibits an excellent spin filtering effect and spin diode effect and the MTJ has a large tunnel magnetoresistance ratio (up to 2 × 103), which are explained from the calculated spin-dependent band structure and transmission spectrum. These perfect spin transport characteristics make CFMS a promising candidate for spintronic applications.
Estimation of Solvation Quantities from Experimental Thermodynamic Data: Development of the Comprehensive CompSol Databank for Pure and Mixed Solutes
Authors: Moine Edouard , Privat Romain , Sirjean Baptiste , Jaubert Jean-Noël
Published: September 2017

The Gibbs energy of solvation measures the affinity of a solute for its solvent and is thus a key property for the selection of an appropriate solvent for a chemical synthesis or a separation process. More fundamentally, Gibbs energies of solvation are choice data for developing and benchmarking molecular models predicting solvation effects. The Comprehensive Solvation—CompSol—database was developed with the ambition to propose very large sets of new experimental solvation chemical-potential, solvation entropy, and solvation enthalpy data of pure and mixed components, covering extended temperature ranges. For mixed compounds, the solvation quantities were generated in infinite-dilution conditions by combining experimental values of pure-component and binary-mixture thermodynamic properties. Three types of binary-mixture properties were considered: partition coefficients, activity coefficients at infinite dilution, and Henry’s-law constants. A rigorous methodology was implemented with the aim to select data at appropriate conditions of temperature, pressure, and concentration for the estimation of solvation data. Finally, our comprehensive CompSol database contains 21 671 data associated with 1969 pure species and 70 062 data associated with 14 102 binary mixtures (including 760 solvation data related to the ionic-liquid class of solvents). On the basis of the very large amount of experimental data contained in the CompSol database, it is finally discussed how solvation energies are influenced by hydrogen-bonding association effects.
From time-series to complex networks: Application to the cerebrovascular flow patterns in atrial fibrillation
Authors: Scarsoglio Stefania , Cazzato Fabio , Ridolfi Luca
Published: September 2017

A network-based approach is presented to investigate the cerebrovascular flow patterns during atrial fibrillation (AF) with respect to normal sinus rhythm (NSR). AF, the most common cardiac arrhythmia with faster and irregular beating, has been recently and independently associated with the increased risk of dementia. However, the underlying hemodynamic mechanisms relating the two pathologies remain mainly undetermined so far; thus, the contribution of modeling and refined statistical tools is valuable. Pressure and flow rate temporal series in NSR and AF are here evaluated along representative cerebral sites (from carotid arteries to capillary brain circulation), exploiting reliable artificially built signals recently obtained from an in silico approach. The complex network analysis evidences, in a synthetic and original way, a dramatic signal variation towards the distal/capillary cerebral regions during AF, which has no counterpart in NSR conditions. At the large artery level, networks obtained from both AF and NSR hemodynamic signals exhibit elongated and chained features, which are typical of pseudo-periodic series. These aspects are almost completely lost towards the microcirculation during AF, where the networks are topologically more circular and present random-like characteristics. As a consequence, all the physiological phenomena at the microcerebral level ruled by periodicity—such as regular perfusion, mean pressure per beat, and average nutrient supply at the cellular level—can be strongly compromised, since the AF hemodynamic signals assume irregular behaviour and random-like features. Through a powerful approach which is complementary to the classical statistical tools, the present findings further strengthen the potential link between AF hemodynamic and cognitive decline.
Inhibition of EBV-mediated membrane fusion by anti-gHgL antibodies
Authors: Sathiyamoorthy Karthik , Jiang Jiansen , Möhl Britta S. , Chen Jia , Zhou Z. Hong , Longnecker Richard , Jardetzky Theodore S.
Published: September 2017

Significance

Herpesviruses infect a large percentage of the human population and are responsible for a significant human health disease burden. EBV, like other herpesviruses, expresses a set of glycoproteins—gH, gL, and gB—responsible for virus entry into cells, which are targets of protective antibody responses and potential candidates for vaccine development. Here we study the interactions and mechanisms of two anti-EBV antibodies that recognize the gHgL complex, providing a foundation for understanding herpesvirus neutralization.
Graphs in kinematics—a need for adherence to principles of algebraic functions
Authors: Sokolowski Andrzej
Published: September 2017

Graphs in physics are central to the analysis of phenomena and to learning about a system’s behavior. The ways students handle graphs are frequently researched. Students’ misconceptions are highlighted, and methods of improvement suggested. While kinematics graphs are to represent a real motion, they are also algebraic entities that must satisfy conditions for being algebraic functions. To be algebraic functions, they must pass certain tests before they can be used to infer more about motion. A preliminary survey of some physics resources has revealed that little attention is paid to verifying if the position, velocity and acceleration versus time graphs, that are to depict real motion, satisfy the most critical condition for being an algebraic function; the vertical line test. The lack of attention to this adherence shows as vertical segments in piecewise graphs. Such graphs generate unrealistic interpretations and may confuse students. A group of 25 college physics students was provided with such a graph and asked to analyse its adherence to reality. The majority of the students (N  =  16, 64%) questioned the graph’s validity. It is inferred that such graphs might not only jeopardize the function principles studied in mathematics but also undermine the purpose of studying these principles. The aim of this study was to bring this idea forth and suggest a better alignment of physics and mathematics methods.
Laughter
Authors: Parvulescu Anca
Published: September 2017

Following Mikhail Bakhtin’s influential study Rabelais and His World, a generation of scholars have thought of laughter as subversive—of norms, institutions, religion, gender. The literary canon, however, is ripe with situations in which characters refrain from laughing at certain objects.
Micropoetries
Authors: Damon Maria
Published: September 2017

“Micropoetries” is a self-eroding category initiated in academic poetry scholarship in the 1990s to address a perceived crisis in poetry audiences, with an implicit argument that the term “poetry” needed to be widened to account for phenomena beyond the poetry found in academic and writerly, high-literary discourse. While the referents of the term may shift over time and in response to cultural and social change, and while the term itself was intended somewhat provisionally, it can still open up the possibility for discussing para-literary materials as poetry, that is, aesthetically and socially meaningful artifacts. It refers positively to half-formed, degraded, or ephemeral verbal phenomena, or writing produced by abjected persons—for example, “outsider writing,” prison or other poetry arising from incarcerated subjects, writing by children—or poetry by non-poets. The concept is indebted to multiple intellectual traditions, but primarily those of the Russian formalists, the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies, Walter Benjamin as a kind of outlier Frankfurt School philosopher, cultural ethnographers such as Mark Slobin and Lila Abu-Lughod, and poets as well as poetry scholars working at the limits of their disciplines. Phenomena such as “outsider writing,” ecopoetics, the Human Microphone (the oral relay system that characterized communication at the Occupy movement sites in 2011–2012), and Scottish insults directed at Donald Trump via Twitter are explored as examples. Pedagogical use can be made of the concept to both widen students’ opportunities for encountering “the poetic” in everyday life and to pressure them to clarify and revise what they consider poetry to be. Contemplation of the category “micropoetries” gives rise to contemplation of its complement, “macropoetries,” or phenomena that, because of their durational properties, challenge the notion of mastery through analysis, forcing the consideration that poetry and poetics reside at the breakdown seam of analysis and experience, or where “the beautiful” meets “the sublime.”
Diffusion Theory in Integrative Approaches
Authors: Kreps Gary L.
Published: September 2017

Diffusion is the process through which new ideas, technologies, products, or processes are spread through communication among members of a social system via communication channels over time. Diffusion is a specialized form of communication that focuses on disseminating information about new ideas, products, technologies, services, or regulations. It is an especially important form of communication because it promotes social progress in the evaluation and adoption of important new ideas to address social issues. Diffusion helps to reduce uncertainty about how to address difficult issues and provides direction for achieving social goals.

A large body of research has been conducted from many disciplines on the diffusion of innovations since the original publication of Everett M. Rogers’ seminal book The Diffusion of Innovations in 1962, which is now in its fifth edition (2003). In this book, he introduced the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) model, which describes a general process of adopting new ideas across multiple populations, cultures, and applications. This research has examined innovations in fields such as agriculture, engineering, sales, education, architecture, technology, public policy, and health care, and has been applied to a range of different issues, such as the adoption of new technologies, consumer purchasing behaviors, and public support for political issues and candidates, but has been especially influential in guiding strategic health promotion. The DOI model has contributed to a greater understanding of health behavior change, including adoption of health promotion recommendations. The model has led to a broad scope of practical applications for promoting public health.
Formation and Development of Convective Storms
Authors: Trapp R. J.
Published: September 2017

Cumulus clouds are pervasive on earth, and play important roles in the transfer of energy through the atmosphere. Under certain conditions, shallow, nonprecipitating cumuli may grow vertically to occupy a significant depth of the troposphere, and subsequently may evolve into convective storms.

The qualifier “convective” implies that the storms have vertical accelerations that are driven primarily, though not exclusively, by buoyancy over a deep layer. Such buoyancy in the atmosphere arises from local density variations relative to some base state density; the base state is typically idealized as a horizontal average over a large area, which is also considered the environment. Quantifications of atmospheric buoyancy are typically expressed in terms of temperature and humidity, and allow for an assessment of the likelihood that convective clouds will form or initiate. Convection initiation is intimately linked to existence of a mechanism by which air is vertically lifted to realize this buoyancy and thus accelerations. Weather fronts and orography are the canonical lifting mechanisms.

As modulated by an ambient or environmental distribution of temperature, humidity, and wind, weather fronts also facilitate the transition of convective clouds into storms with locally heavy rain, lightning, and other possible hazards. For example, in an environment characterized by winds that are weak and change little with distance above the ground, the storms tend to be short lived and benign. The structure of the vertical drafts and other internal storm processes under weak wind shear—i.e., a small change in the horizontal wind over some vertical distance—are distinct relative to those when the environmental wind shear is strong. In particular, strong wind shear in combination with large buoyancy favors the development of squall lines and supercells, both of which are highly coherent storm types. Besides having durations that may exceed a few hours, both of these storm types tend to be particularly hazardous: squall lines are most apt to generate swaths of damaging “straight-line” winds, and supercells spawn the most intense tornadoes and are responsible for the largest hail. Methods used to predict convective-storm hazards capitalize on this knowledge of storm formation and development.
Climate Change and Geopolitics
Authors: Dalby Simon
Published: September 2017

Historic discussions of climate often suggested that it caused societies to have certain qualities. In the 19th-century, imperial representations of the world environment frequently “determined” the fate of peoples and places, a practice that has frequently been used to explain the largest patterns of political rivalry and the fates of empires and their struggles for dominance in world politics. In the 21st century, climate change has mostly reversed the causal logic in the reasoning about human–nature relationships and their geographies. The new thinking suggests that human decisions, at least those made by the rich and powerful with respect to the forms of energy that are used to power the global economy, are influencing future climate changes. Humans are now shaping the environment on a global scale, not the other way around. Despite the widespread acceptance of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate-change action, numerous arguments about who should act and how they should do so to deal with climate change shape international negotiations. Differing viewpoints are in part a matter of geographical location and whether an economy is dependent on fossil-fuels revenue or subject to increasingly severe storms, droughts, or rising sea levels. These differences have made climate negotiations very difficult in the last couple of decades. Partly in response to these differences, the Paris Agreement devolves primary responsibility for climate policy to individual states rather than establish any other geopolitical arrangement. Apart from the outright denial that humanity is a factor in climate change, arguments about whether climate change causes conflict and how security policies should engage climate change also partly shape contemporary geopolitical agendas. Despite climate-change deniers, in the Trump administration in particular, in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, climate change is understood increasingly as part of a planetary transformation that has been set in motion by industrial activity and the rise of a global fossil-fuel-powered economy. But this is about more than just climate change. The larger earth-system science discussion of transformation, which can be encapsulated in the use of the term “Anthropocene” for the new geological circumstances of the biosphere, is starting to shape the geopolitics of climate change just as new political actors are beginning to have an influence on climate politics.
Political Narratives and "Abraham Obama"
Authors: Andrews Molly
Published: September 2017

Political narratives examine the ways in which stories, or narratives, are used to investigate the political world. Historically, stories have not been regarded as legitimate sources of data for such explorations. In recent years, however, this has changed, as “the narrative turn” hit the social sciences; still, while disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology were more amenable to this alteration—representing, as it does, not only different methodologies, but also a different epistemological framework—many political scientists continue to resist the idea that political narratives can offer a very particular, and almost unique, perspective on how individuals and groups construct the political world and are constructed by it. One of the most dramatic uses of highly effective political narratives, which blurs the boundaries between the personal and public, is that of Barack Obama, which is used as a central case study in this article.
Electoral Systems and Policy Outcomes
Authors: Rickard Stephanie J.
Published: September 2017

Policies as diverse as tariffs, exchange rates, and unemployment insurance vary across democratic countries. In an attempt to explain this cross-national variation, scholars have turned to the institutions that govern countries’ elections. The institutions that regulate elections, also known as an electoral system, vary significantly across democracies. Can these varied electoral institutions explain the diversity of policies observed? This question remains unanswered. Despite a growing body of research, little consensus exists as to precisely how electoral institutions affect policy. Why is it so difficult to untangle the effects of electoral institutions on economic policy? One reason for the confusion may be the imprecise manner in which electoral institutions are often measured. Better measures of electoral systems may improve our understanding of their policy effects. Improved theories that clarify the causal mechanism(s) linking electoral systems to policy outcomes will also help to clarify the relationship between electoral systems and policies. To better understand the policy effects of electoral institutions, both theoretical and empirical work must take seriously contextual factors, such as geography, which likely mediate the effects of electoral institutions. Finally, different types of empirical evidence are needed to shed new light on the policy effects of electoral institutions. It is difficult to identify the effects of electoral systems in cross-national studies because of the many other factors that vary across countries. Examining within-country variations, such as changes in district magnitude, may provide useful new insights regarding the effects of electoral institutions on policy.
Comparative and International Political Economy and the Global Financial Crisis
Authors: Johnston Alison
Published: September 2017

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and subsequent European Debt Crisis had wide-sweeping consequences for global economic and political stability. Yet while these twin crises have prompted soul searching within the economics profession, international political economy (IPE) has been relatively ineffective in accounting for variation in crisis exposure across the developed world. The GFC and European Debt Crisis present the opportunity to link IPE and comparative political economy (CPE) together in the study of international economic and financial turmoil. While the GFC was prompted by the inter-connectedness of global financial markets, its instigators were largely domestic in nature and were reflective of negative externalities that stemmed from unsustainable national policies, especially those related to financial regulation and household debt accumulation. Many in IPE take an “outward looking in” approach to the examination of international economic developments and domestic politics; analysis rests on how the former impacts the latter. The GFC and European Debt Crisis, however, demonstrate the importance of a (CPE-based) “inward looking out” approach, analyzing how unique policy and political features (and failures) of individual nation states can unleash economic and financial instability at the global level amidst deepened economic and financial integration. IPE not only needs to grant greater attention to variation in domestic politics and policies in a time of closely integrated financial markets, but also should acknowledge the impact of a wider array of actors beyond banks and financial institutions (specifically more domestically rooted actors like households) on cross-national variation in the consumption of foreign credit.
Social Identity Theory: Status and Identity in International Relations
Authors: Larson Deborah Welch
Published: September 2017

Social identity theory (SIT) from social psychology provides a means to explore the influence of identity and status concerns on foreign policy. The theory argues that groups are motivated to achieve a positively distinctive identity. Groups compare themselves to a similar but slightly higher reference group. Inferiority on important dimensions may lead to the adoption of an identity management strategy: social mobility (emulating the higher-status group to gain admission), social competition (striving to equal or surpass the dominant group), or social creativity (revaluing an ostensibly negative characteristic as positive or identifying an alternative dimension on which the group is superior).

Applied to international relations, states may pursue social mobility by emulating the values and practices of higher-status states in order to be admitted to a higher standing, much as Eastern Europe did in seeking admission into the European Union after the end of the Cold War. If elite groups are impermeable to new members, and the status hierarchy is perceived to be unstable or illegitimate, aspiring powers may engage in social competition, which usually entails territorial conquest and military displays. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to catch up with and surpass the capitalist states. If elite clubs are not permeable, but the status hierarchy is stable, states may seek status through social creativity—either reframing a negative trait as positive or seeking preeminence in a domain apart from geopolitical competition. Social creativity may entail creating new international institutions, promoting new norms, or engaging in major diplomatic initiatives in order to increase the state’s prestige.

Research applying SIT to international relations has addressed the question of whether anarchy necessarily leads to conflict between states, the diffusion of values, the selection of an identity discourse on the domestic level, and state efforts at moral leadership.

Critics have charged that SIT does not clearly predict which identity management strategy will be chosen in a given situation. From a realist perspective, the selection of a strategy for enhancing a state’s status is constrained by geographic position, size, and natural endowments. But this argument does not consider the availability of social mobility and social creativity as ways to achieve status that do not depend on relative military power.
Unipolarity: The Shaky Foundation of a Fashionable Concept
Authors: Lebovic James H.
Published: September 2017

Since the Cold War’s end, academics and policy analysts alike have described the international system as unipolar. The term’s use appears well grounded. The United States possesses exceptional relative capabilities by historical standards, with capabilities—including control of the skies—that were unimaginable under British, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese hegemony. The system seems unipolar then when assessed using a common method for discerning polarity: counting the number of unusually powerful countries in the system. But the numerical case for U.S. preeminence is far easier to make than a logical argument for judging the number of poles in the system. Logic actually suffers considerably when analysts base their thinking about unipolarity on the common assumptions that (a) the Cold War-era international system was bipolar, (b) the current system is unipolar, (c) polarity is discernable from aggregate capabilities, and (d) polarity is detectable in interstate behavior.
International Law and Foreign Policy
Authors: Westra Joel H.
Published: September 2017

Policymakers regularly face decisions pertaining to the making of international law and compliance with international law. International relations scholars have attempted to explain the broad patterns of state behavior that emerge from such decisions by approaching international lawmaking and international legal compliance from the perspectives of state power, interests, and identity. These explanations reflect the growing interdisciplinary connections between the study of international law and the study of international relations. Although there have been fewer interdisciplinary connections between the study of international law and models of foreign policy decision-making, closer examination of each of the main international relations approaches to international lawmaking and international legal compliance suggests corresponding models of foreign policy decision-making. Further work remains to develop these connections and to incorporate transnational actors and processes into the analysis of foreign policy decision-making. Such work has both scholarly and practical relevance, insofar as foreign policy decision-making takes place in an increasingly legalized international environment even as the existing, post–World War II international order faces increasing challenges from nonliberal states.
Foundations of Rivalry Research
Authors: Dreyer David R.
Published: September 2017

Though rivalry is not isolated to international politics, interstate rivalries are particularly important given their conflict propensities and destructiveness. Tremendous progress has been made in determining the causes of rivalry initiation, maintenance, escalation, and termination. The empirical results of such research rest on how rivalry has been conceptualized and operationalized.

There are several approaches to conceptualizing and operationalizing rivalry. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses. Dispute density approaches, which identify rivals as states that engage in repeated instances of militarized conflict over time, have higher levels of measurement reliability than validity. The strategic rivalry approach, on the other hand, which identifies rivals as states that view one another as threatening competitors and enemies, has a higher level of measurement validity than reliability. This review provides an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of scholarly approaches used for identifying cases of rivalry.

Existing rivalry research provides a foundation from which to further develop rivalry approaches. Given that the concept of rivalry has only recently been applied outside of the dyadic interstate context, intrastate and complex rivalry conceptualization and operationalization warrants further exploration. Due to the existence of several mature dyadic interstate rivalry approaches, developing additional distinct approaches for the dyadic interstate context is less imperative than integrating existing approaches. There are several ways this can potentially be done, such as by combining elements of multiple perspectives in ways that minimize weaknesses, through conceptual mapping, or by developing an ordinal measure of rivalry.
National Secession
Authors: Roeder Philip G.
Published: September 2017

National secession seeks to create a new sovereign state for a nation residing on its homeland that is currently located inside another sovereign state. This goal distinguishes national secession from regional secession, autonomy, and decolonization and shapes the strategies, operational objectives, and tactical choices of the leaders of national-secession campaigns. Explanations for the success of some campaigns—particularly, success at getting on the global agenda—have focused on the identities, grievances, or greed of their members. Explanations for why some campaigns have turned to protracted intense violence have focused on these motivations and on tactical-logistical opportunities.

The existing literature suffers from its failure to agree on theoretical and conceptual fundamentals. As a consequence, empirical studies focus on very different universes of cases and operationalize key variables in diverging ways. The existing literature frequently does not consider how the goal of national secession constrains the strategies, operations, and tactics of such campaigns. And so, it often fails to consider whether studies with another dependent variable can be extended to the study of national secession. Explanations stress indeterminate or substitutable causes and remote constraints on most national-secession campaigns—causes and constraints taken “off the shelf” from theories about conflicts operating under very different strategic and operational constraints. Missing from these explanations is the authenticity and realism of the programs for national secession in the assessments of the populations that each program presents as a nation with a right to a sovereign state of its own. Explanations and recommendations for responses by common-state governments, their allies, and the international community often fail to understand the centrality of the war of programs between national secessionists and common-state governments and the ways this constrains what compromises are possible and what responses are most likely to lead to domestic and international peace in such conflicts.
Psychological Responses to Sport Injury
Authors: Brewer Britton W.
Published: September 2017

In addition to the disruptive impact of sport injury on physical functioning, injury can have psychological effects on athletes. Consistent with contemporary models of psychological response to sport injury, aspects of psychological functioning that can be affected by sport injury include pain, cognition, emotion, and behavior. Part of the fabric of sport and ubiquitous even among “healthy” athletes, pain is a common consequence of sport injury. Postinjury pain is typically of the acute variety and can be exacerbated, at least temporarily, by surgery and some rehabilitation activities. Cognitive responses to sport injury include appraising the implications of the injury for one’s well-being and ability to manage the injury, making attributions for injury occurrence, using cognitive coping strategies, perceiving benefits of injury, and experiencing intrusive injury-related thoughts and images, increased perception of injury risk, reduced self-esteem and self-confidence, and diminished neurocognitive performance. Emotional responses to sport injury tend to progress from a preponderance of negative emotions (e.g., anger, confusion, depression, disappointment, fear, frustration) shortly after injury occurrence to a more positive emotional profile over the course of rehabilitation. A wide variety of personal and situational factors have been found to predict postinjury emotions. In terms of postinjury behavior, athletes have reported initiating coping strategies such as living their lives as normally as possible, distracting themselves, seeking social support, isolating themselves from others, learning about their injuries, adhering to the rehabilitation program, pursuing interests outside sport, consuming alcohol, taking recreational and/or performance-enhancing substances, and, in rare cases, attempting suicide. Psychological readiness to return to sport after injury is an emerging concept that cuts across cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to sport injury.
Children’s Literature in Education
Authors: Mallan Kerry
Published: September 2017

Children’s literature is a dynamic entity in its own right that offers its readers many avenues for pleasure, reflection, and emotional engagement. As this article argues, its place in education was established centuries ago, but this association continues today in ways that are both similar and different from its beginnings. The irony of children’s literature is that, while it is ostensibly for children, it relies on adults for its existence. This reciprocal relationship between adult and child is, however, at the heart of education. Drawing on a range of scholars and children’s texts from Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this discussion canvasses some of the many ways in which children’s literature, and the research that it inspires, can be a productive and valuable asset to education, in that its imaginative storytelling is the means by which it brings the world into the classroom and takes the classroom out into the world.
Translanguaging
Authors: Vogel Sara , García Ofelia
Published: September 2017

Translanguaging is a theoretical lens that offers a different view of bilingualism and multilingualism. The theory posits that rather than possessing two or more autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally thought, bilinguals, multilinguals, and indeed, all users of language, select and deploy particular features from a unitary linguistic repertoire to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative contexts. Translanguaging also represents an approach to language pedagogy that affirms and leverages students’ diverse and dynamic language practices in teaching and learning.

Translanguaging theory builds on scholarly work that has demonstrated how colonial and modernist-era language ideologies created and maintained linguistic, cultural, and racial hierarchies in society. It challenges prevailing theories of bilingualism/multilingualism and bilingual development in order to disrupt the hierarchies that have delegitimized the language practices of those who are minoritized.

Translanguaging concepts have been deepened, built upon, or clarified as scholars have compared and contrasted them with competing and complementary theories of bilingualism. Scholars debate aspects of the theory’s definition and epistemological foundations. There are also continued debates between scholars who have largely embraced translanguaging and those who resist the theory’s premises or have accepted them only partially.

The use of translanguaging in education has created the most interest, and yet the most disagreement. Many educators working on issues of language education—the development of additional languages for all, as well as minoritized languages—have embraced translanguaging theory and pedagogy. Other educators are weary of the work on translanguaging. Some claim that translanguaging pedagogy pays too much attention to the students’ bilingualism; others worry that it could threaten the diglossic arrangements and language separation traditionally posited as necessary for language maintenance and development.

Translanguaging as a sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic theory has much to offer to our understandings of the languaging of bilinguals because it privileges bilingual performances and not just monolingual ones. As a pedagogical practice, translanguaging leverages the fluid languaging of learners in ways that deepen their engagement and comprehension of complex content and texts. In addition, translanguaging pedagogy develops both of the named languages that are the object of bilingual instruction precisely because it considers them in a horizontal continua as part of the learners’ linguistic repertoire, rather than as separate compartments in a hierarchical relationship.
Common Core Standards (U.S.)
Authors: Shannon Patrick
Published: September 2017

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are part of a third wave of school reform in the United States. With accompanying tests, these standards combine calls for increased academic rigor, beginning in the 1980s, with more recent efforts to hold schools, teachers, and students accountable for learning outcomes in publicly funded schools. Origins of CCSS can be traced to the 1996 National Education Summit where the National Governors Association (NGA), philanthropic foundations, and business leaders founded Achieve to broker rigorous high school graduation requirements. In 2009, Achieve became the project manager for the construction of CCSS. In 2010, implementation began with incentives from the Obama administration and funding from the Gates Foundation.

Advocates choose among a variety of rationales: faltering American economic competitiveness, wide variability among state standards and educational outcomes, highly mobile student populations, and/or a growing income achievement gap. Critics cite federal intrusion in states’ rights, a lack of an evidentiary base, an autocratic process of CCSS production, and/or a mis-framing of problems facing public schools. With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, federal advocacy of CCSS ended officially.
Christian Missions and the State in 19th and 20th Century Angola and Mozambique
Authors: Cruz e Silva Teresa
Published: September 2017

Christian missionary work in Angola and Mozambique during the colonial and postcolonial eras was shaped by a complex of factors related to religion, education, and politics. Missionaries’ networks of local support played an outstanding role in their humanitarian work, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries.

By the end of the 19th century, Catholic and Protestant missions had established themselves in Angola and Mozambique. Until 1974, Protestants had a tense relationship with the Portuguese authorities, as they were suspected of serving the political interests of some European countries against Portugal, and later of supporting African opposition to colonial domination. Unlike the Protestants, the Catholic Church enjoyed a close collaboration with the ruling regime. Under the Concordat and the Missionary Accord of 1940 and the Missionary Statute of 1941, which were agreed between the Vatican and Portugal, Catholic missions enjoyed a privileged position to the detriment of Protestants, whose activities were severely restricted.

The years that followed the independences of Angola and Mozambique in 1975 were characterized by open hostility to religion, aggravated by the nationalization of missions’ assets and properties in both countries. Mission activities related to education and health became hard to carry out. With the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, warfare and dislocation gave a new social role to the churches. Between the mid-1980s and 1990 the first signs of new policies emerged. While in Angola the relationship between church and state was marked by ambiguity and mistrust, cooperation and collaboration prevailed in Mozambique, where the 1980s saw a rapprochement and constructive dialogue between the two institutions. This was sealed by the roles both Protestants and Catholics played in the peace and democratization processes.

The political opening that characterized the 1990s and 2000s brought significant changes for both countries including the presence in the public space of new churches, especially those of Pentecostal denominations. The new sociopolitical contexts in Angola and Mozambique between the late 20th and early 21st centuries shaped the new roles of the missions, which remain more focused on social, rather than political, activities.
Space Commercialization and the Development of Space Law
Authors: Zhao Yun
Published: September 2017

Shortly after the launch of the first manmade satellite in 1957, the United Nations (UN) took the lead in formulating international rules governing space activities. The five international conventions (the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1968 Rescue Agreement, the 1972 Liability Convention, the 1975 Registration Convention, and the 1979 Moon Agreement) within the UN framework constitute the nucleus of space law, which laid a solid legal foundation securing the smooth development of space activities in the next few decades. Outer space was soon found to be a place with abundant opportunities for commercialization. Telecommunications services proved to be the first successful space commercial application, to be followed by remote sensing and global navigation services. In the last decade, the rapid development of space technologies has brought space tourism and space mining to the forefront of space commercialization. With more and more commercial activities taking place on a daily basis from the 1980s, the existing space law faces severe challenges. The five conventions, enacted in a time when space was monopolized by two superpowers, failed to take into account the commercial aspect of space activities. While there is an urgent need for new rules to deal with the ongoing trend of space commercialization, international society faces difficulties in adopting new rules due to diversified concerns over national interests and adjusts the legislative strategies by enacting soft laws. In view of the difficulty in adopting legally binding rules at the international level, states are encouraged to enact their own national space legislation providing sufficient guidance for their domestic space commercial activities. In the foreseeable future, it is expected that the development of soft laws and national space legislation will be the mainstream regulatory activities in the space field, especially for commercial space activities.
Universities in America since 1945
Authors: Loss Christopher P.
Published: September 2017

Until World War II, American universities were widely regarded as good but not great centers of research and learning. This changed completely in the press of wartime, when the federal government pumped billions into military research, anchored by the development of the atomic bomb and radar, and into the education of returning veterans under the GI Bill of 1944. The abandonment of decentralized federal–academic relations marked the single most important development in the history of the modern American university. While it is true that the government had helped to coordinate and fund the university system prior to the war—most notably the country’s network of public land-grant colleges and universities—government involvement after the war became much more hands-on, eventually leading to direct financial support to and legislative interventions on behalf of core institutional activities, not only the public land grants but the nation’s mix of private institutions as well. However, the reliance on public subsidies and legislative and judicial interventions of one kind or another ended up being a double-edged sword: state action made possible the expansion in research and in student access that became the hallmarks of the post-1945 American university; but it also created a rising tide of expectations for continued support that has proven challenging in fiscally stringent times and in the face of ongoing political fights over the government’s proper role in supporting the sector.
Visualization in Hindu Practice
Authors: Timalsina Sthaneshwar
Published: September 2017

Broadly, visualization stands for a specific mode of imagination in which certain objects or concepts are “viewed as” or “viewed in light of” something else. In the religious context, something is “discovered” as the sacred in the process of visualization. In essence, what constitutes an object or image as sacred is the way this entity is encountered through visualization: it is this act that provides a surplus of value to the entity. When we visualize something, we activate multiple cognitive mechanisms and the added meaning is gained through metonymic and metaphoric structures. The new value of an entity or the discovery of new meaning is often a consequence of the blend of the existing inputs. Historically, ritualized visualization evolved in the Hindu context alongside the Vedic rituals and later became a central feature of everyday Hinduism. Tantric traditions in particular utilize visualization to gain greater access to the mechanism of the mind. Studying visualization thus not only reveals how an imaginative life meshes with reality in constituting the sacred, but it also demonstrates the power of imagination in transforming everyday reality.