bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Icon and Visual Arts During the Russian Religious Renaissance
Authors: Antonova Clemena
Published: September 2020

This chapter begins from a simple observation, namely, that what has been called ‘the Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century’ coincided in time with two important movements in the sphere of the visual arts. On the one hand, there was a sweeping revival of interest in the medieval icon at the beginning of the twentieth century, which left almost no sphere of cultural life untouched. On the other, in artistic terms, the whole period was largely defined by the advent of the Russian avant-garde. I would like to consider the junction at which these three developments overlapped, informed, influenced, even opposed and clashed with one another. According to the interpretation proposed here, it is the mixture and the coexistence of a revived Orthodoxy, a reawakened focus on the medieval artistic tradition, and the rise of avant-garde modernism that gave a unique flavour to early twentieth-century Russian culture. The debates on the function and the meaning of the icon in the period between the 1910s and the early 1920s ultimately suggested different answers to the problem of the role of religion in modernity.
Nihilism
Authors: Frede Victoria
Published: September 2020

Russian nihilism entailed the rejection of good and evil as transcendent concepts that structure moral decision-making, calling the value of moral judgement into question. It also denied historical events an underlying logic that would lend them meaning. Vissarion Belinsky, Alexander Herzen, and Ivan Turgenev first experimented with these views in the 1840s, in reaction against dogmatic theology as taught at Moscow University and against the logic of Hegelian philosophy, which had once held sway over them. In the 1860s, Dmitrii Pisarev developed their ideas into a more strident, consistent worldview and accepted the designation, nihilist. Contemporaries, young radicals, developed them into a defiant set of gestural practices, forgetting the intellectual roots from which they grew. Not all radicals were nihilists however: the label should not apply to Nikolai Chernyshevsky and Nikolai Dobroliubov.
Ethical Importance of Psychotherapists’ Self-Care and When It Fails
Authors: Consoli Andrés J. , Zetzer Heidi A. , Sharma Himadhari
Published: September 2020

The practice of psychotherapy can be as rewarding as challenging. Psychotherapists are likely to find themselves inspired by their work at times, while at others, demoralized. The clients they serve can be a source of encouragement, even admiration in their abilities to overcome their difficulties; they can also be a source of great stress and discouragement. Considering the sizable range of emotions psychotherapists will experience in their daily practice, the ability of providers to proactively engage in self-care while striving towards congruence is paramount. In this chapter, the authors elaborate on the constructs of personal and professional self-care as meaningful ways to cope with, if not right out prevent, distress, burnout, and impairment. Moreover, the chapter advances an institutional, organizational, and communitarian view of self-care that acknowledges psychotherapists as members of a socially needed workforce, with their own rights to associate and unionize, while affirming their well-being.
Elections and Electoral Systems
Authors: Mitchell James , Henderson Ailsa
Published: September 2020

Research on voting and political engagement suggests that structural features of political life can affect whether and how individuals participate. This includes the administration of elections, the ease with which one can cast a ballot, the opportunities for deliberation and engagement during election campaigns as well as the ways in which votes are translated into seats. Key here are the costs for voters—costs of time often chief amongst them—of getting involved, staying informed, reaching decisions, and casting a ballot. Scots have multiple electoral worlds to navigate, each of which has the capacity to alter the incentive structures for engagement for voters. This chapter explores these variations—focusing on the diversity of electoral experience in Scotland as well as frequent, recent, changes to elections—before focusing in greater detail on electoral systems, why they have been adopted and their implications for electoral outcomes in Scotland.
Political Behaviour in Scotland
Authors: Henderson Ailsa , Johns Robert , Carman Christopher , Mitchell James
Published: September 2020

This chapter pursues three tasks. We begin with the multilevel political context in which Scottish political behaviour in Scotland takes place and review some of the main ways researchers have sought to understand how citizen evaluations, attitudes, and behaviour change across the different political arenas in which they might participate. Second, we explore historical trends in Scottish voting at the local, Scottish, UK, and European levels before focusing in greater depth on devolved and UK voting. Third, we focus on two research questions currently occupying researchers of voting behaviour in Scotland. We examine claims about voting in sub-state elections and explore whether Scots tend to treat devolved elections as second-order contests and Westminster elections as first-order contests. We then ask whether the 2014 referendum appears to have had an impact on political engagement in Scotland.
The Scottish National Party
Authors: Bennie Lynn , McAngus Craig
Published: September 2020

The SNP has moved from the fringes of Scottish politics to being a strikingly successful electoral force, keeping the constitutional status of Scotland at the top of the political agenda. In the twenty-first century, the SNP has been a long-term party of government but one of opposition in the UK, balancing the different facets of its identity as a political party seeking governmental office and as an important actor in a wider movement for Scottish independence. The SNP’s ability to adapt to devolution has been key to its success, and has involved transformation of the party on a scale few political organizations experience. Yet success brings new challenges and dilemmas, related to the straddling of governance and campaigning for Scottish independence. Enhanced powers for the Scottish Parliament increase the stakes for SNP governments—public policy problems cannot easily be blamed on state-wide governments—and being situated within a movement for change creates opportunities to build support for independence but the SNP’s vision of an independent Scotland is contested by others.
Interest Groups and Policy Communities
Authors: MacLeod Iain , Halpin Darren
Published: September 2020

Devolution brought the potential for change in the way interest groups operated, the structure of policy communities, and the pattern of interaction with government. The creation of a Scottish Government represented a new site for lobbying and policy engagement. However, this change would not have a uniform effect across the board. This chapter examines the so-called ‘rise of the meso’ by comparing Scotland before and after devolution, but also comparing Scotland to other sub-state institutions around the world. We find that, whilst devolution certainly had an impact on how interest groups operate in Scotland, it is important not to overstate it. Indeed, the so-called ‘new politics’ that devolution was meant to espouse has to be used cautiously given the continued dominance of traditionally privileged groups to the policymaking process.
The Independence Referendum of 2014
Authors: Keating Michael , McEwen Nicola
Published: September 2020

The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 was a rare event in an advanced democracy. Under the Edinburgh Agreement between the UK and Scottish governments, both sides accepted the process and the question and pledged to respect the result. The debate revolved around the meaning of Scottish and British identities; the economic consequences of each option; welfare; and Scotland’s place in Europe and the world. Risk and uncertainty were key factors. During the campaign, both sides sought the middle ground of ‘devolution-max’ and ‘independence-lite’ respectively. Over the campaign, there was a substantial shift of voters from No to Yes, but on a five-point scale of constitutional preferences there was less movement. Following the referendum, it was the losing Yes side that made the political advance in the subsequent election, ensuring that the independence question would remain open.
Multicultural Scotland
Authors: Bond Ross
Published: September 2020

This chapter examines demographic data relating to migration and ethnicity, comparing Scotland with other parts of Britain. It then examines sociological evidence concerning attitudes to immigration and national identities in Scotland, and the ways in which such identities are expressed and experienced. These dimensions are discussed in relation to political discourse, in particular to address the question of why, although there is widespread evidence of racism in Scotland, Scottish politics is not racialized to the same extent as in some other parts of the UK. Overall, it argues that Scotland’s demographic structure and the particular migration histories which underpin it contrast in some important respects with other parts of the UK, and that this in turn shapes distinctive attitudes, experiences, and identities which both inform, and are informed by, the political discourses and structures that are most relevant to multiculturalism.
The Scottish Constitution
Authors: Page Alan
Published: September 2020

Devolution has made it meaningful to talk of a Scottish constitution in the ‘unwritten’ Westminster tradition. It is not set out in a comprehensive written statement but in a mixture of statutes, judicial decisions, constitutional conventions, and ‘soft law’. Its primary source is the Scotland Act 1998, which established the legislative and executive institutions of devolved government, but not the judicial institutions already guaranteed by the Acts of Union three centuries before. Competence over the Scottish constitution for the most part lies with the UK Parliament. Attempts were made to entrench the devolution settlement following the No vote in the 2014 independence referendum. An ‘interim constitution’ would have replaced it had Scotland voted Yes. The current constitution may not have been ‘made in Scotland’ but it incorporates important safeguards against the abuse of state power which ought not to be lost sight of in consideration of what might replace it. The chapter concludes by indicating some of the possible directions of reform that might be pursued by the Scottish Parliament in the exercise of its as yet limited legislative competence over the constitution.
Attention biases in children and adolescents
Authors: Elvin Olivia M. , Ryan Katherine M. , Modecki Kathryn , Waters Allison M.
Published: September 2020

Biases in selective attention arise as a result of imbalance or disruption in voluntary and involuntary attention systems. This chapter reviews the evidence on attention biases and their role in the development of internalizing and exsternalizing psychopathology in children and adolescents. Specifically, differences in the expression of, and risk factors for, the development of attention biases is reviewed in relation to domains of psychopathology, as well as the emerging evidence on the extent to which attention biases improve with established treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, as well as novel treatments such as attention bias modification training. This chapter concludes with a discussion of issues for further research, including the developmental sequelae of attention biases and psychopathology and the importance of understanding links between laboratory assessments of attention biases and day-to-day emotional reactivity.
Introduction
Authors: Akbari Suzanne Conklin
Published: September 2020

This Handbook produces a stereoscopic view of Chaucer’s works. Juxtaposing chapters by Middle English scholars with chapters by specialists in other fields – Latin and vernacular literature, philosophy, theology, and history of science – it offers a new perspective that uses the works of Chaucer to look out upon the wider world. Clusters of essays that place Chaucer’s works in “the Mediterranean Frame” and “the European Frame” are bracketed by groupings on “Biography and Circumstances of Daily Life” and “The Chaucerian Afterlife,” while a cluster on “Christian Doctrine and Religious Heterodoxy” foregrounds the role of confessional identities in the emergence of Middle English literary authority. The Handbook’s scope addresses the claim of universality that is often implicit in the study of Chaucer’s works. Chapters on anti-Judaism in the Canterbury Tales and on Hebrew literature reveal what has been suppressed or elided in the construction of English literary history, while studying the Arabic sources and analogues of the frame tale tradition reveals the patterns of circulation that lie behind the early modern emergence of national literatures. Chapters on French, Italian, and Latin literature address the linguistic context of late fourteenth-century Europe, while chapters on philosophy, history of science, and theology spur on new areas of development within Chaucer studies. Pushing at the disciplinary boundaries of Chaucer Studies, this Handbook maps out how we might develop our field with greater awareness of the interconnected world of the fourteenth century, and the increasingly interconnected – and divided – world we inhabit today.
Boccaccio’s Early Romances
Authors: Ginsberg Warren
Published: September 2020

Ginsberg adapts Walter Benjamin’s idea of mode of meaning to read Boccaccio’s early romances, the Filostrato, the Teseida, and, to a lesser extent, the Filocolo, as intra-lingual translations; the prefaces to each work, which are personal and rhetorical, simultaneously follow and disarticulate the universalizing and allegorical impetus of the tales they frame. The mode of meaning in the Filostrato is the ‘the orality of writing’—the ways, that is, in which writing tries to voice itself throughout the poem. In Chaucer’s reworking, the Troilus, recitation as such, and prayer in particular, translate Filostrato’s self-absorption into ethical concern for others. In the Teseida, textuality, writing that addresses itself to readers and to other texts, translates the ways in which writing in the Filostrato tries to speak. Here Boccaccio equated epic and romance with the disposition of the heroes; Chaucer reinvented the merger in ‘The Knight’s Tale’, when he created the character of the Knight.
Chaucer’s Petrarch
Authors: Martinez Ronald L.
Published: September 2020

While Geoffrey Chaucer’s reception of Petrarch was limited in terms of direct textual contact, his absorption of Petrarch’s reputation—his fama—was more extensive, indeed thematic. As the chief contemporary giver and claimer of fame, Petrarch stoked Chaucer’s desire to be more than a mere courtly maker. Petrarch’s influence reaches the Monk’s Tale mediated by works of both Boccaccio and Dante, an entanglement of the three crowns of Florence characteristic of Chaucer’s use of them. Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s amplification of Boccaccio’s Filostrato, includes passages derived from Petrarchan lyric that make of Troilus perhaps the first ‘Petrarchan’, lover in European heroic narrative. With the Clerk’s Tale, Boccaccio’s final novella emerges in an English vernacular that distances it from the high Latin style of Petrarch’s source epistle, but that seconds Petrarch in erasing Boccaccio as the tale’s origin—while praising Petrarch with language borrowed in part from Dante.
Ovid
Authors: Fumo Jamie C.
Published: September 2020

Ovid offered Chaucer more than a repository of myths or a toolkit of poetic techniques: he facilitated ways of thinking about poetic identity, the nature of storytelling, and the permeability of texts. This chapter situates Chaucer as a dynamic partner in and active contributor to Ovidian intertextuality. The textual collisions, ethical calibrations, and reciprocal metamorphoses that characterize the intertextual relationship between these two poets distinguish Chaucer not simply as a conveyor of or apprentice to Ovid, but as a collaborator in an Ovidian poetic. Ovid configures for Chaucer the radical permeability of texts. Furthermore, Ovidian encounters in Chaucer’s poetry often coincide with the portrayal of books in a state of formation or contestation. This chapter focuses on both poets’ representations of temporality, the multiform Ovidianisms that have been attributed to Chaucer, and the pertinence of Ovid to a view of Chaucer as a self-conscious and intertextually adept vernacular poet.
Wycliffism and its After-Effects
Authors: Lahey Stephen E.
Published: September 2020

Wyclif was more than simply a critic of the state of the church in the fourteenth century. The appeal of this thought was based in the alternative view of the Christian life it offered to clergy and laity, one without reference to social class, ecclesiastical hierarchy, or material success. The core of Wyclif’s moral theology is contained in a set of four texts he assembled during his later years at Lutterworth, and provides a biblically-grounded prescription for daily life that he, and his followers, believed to be the realization of the ideal provided by the Book of Acts. This life according to lex Christi, rather than simply the denial of transubstantiation, the anti-fraternal and anti-papal criticisms, and the attacks on clerical abuses, was what appealed to many in England, and to many more in Bohemia, where Wyclif’s thought would help to catalyse the Hussite movement.
‘O Hebraic People!’
Authors: Nisse Ruth
Published: September 2020

When Chaucer wrote his anti-Judaic Prioress’s Tale, there had been no Jews in England for roughly a century. Nevertheless, the loss of the small but vital twelfth and thirteenth-century Jewish community—and with it Hebrew as a literary language—has implications for Chaucer’s place in a polyglot England. This chapter concerns the Anglo-Hebrew grammarian and poet Berekhiah ha-Nakdan, who composed, among other works, a translation of Adelard of Bath’s Natural Questions and a collection of beast fables, translated from Latin and French sources. The Fox Fables, a Hebrew text from the Angevin cultural moment of the twelfth century, touches on many of the themes of language, literary transmission, and social injustice that later interested Chaucer.
The Hazards of Narration
Authors: Mallette Karla
Published: September 2020

This chapter surveys framed narratives known in the late medieval Mediterranean, with an emphasis on tales in Arabic and Italian that share in common a short list of narrative devices: the movement of character-narrators through space in order to flee danger; the measuring out of story-telling through a determined number of days (or years); storytelling as a strategy to save a populace at risk. Some of these works—the Seven Sages of Rome, the Thousand and One Nights, Bosone da Gubbio’s Avventuroso Siciliano, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Giovanni Sercambi’s Novelliere, and Giovanni Fiorentino’s Pecorone—were translated into and known in multiple languages between Central Asia and western Europe. All left traces of themselves in late medieval Italy, in the form of manuscripts or cognate tales in other collections. Thus they provide a literary context for Chaucer’s narrative decisions and achievements.
Dialogism in Hoccleve
Authors: Newman Jonathan M.
Published: September 2020

Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1368–1426), a declared admirer of Chaucer, resembles the elder poet in making his narrative frames as rich as the stories they contain. In the frames to his three major works La Male Regle, The Regiment of Princes, and The Series, Hoccleve makes his own persona a focal point for ethical, political, and artistic inquiry. Through the dialogue which Hoccleve enacts between his persona and other figures, historical and allegorical, he makes dialogue itself the topic of his poetry, both its potential for meaningful communication and for dangerous self-exposure. The depicted encounters between him and others call attention to the properties of dialogue itself by virtue of their polyphonic mixture of genres, social roles, and situations drawn from his experience as a clerk in the King’s Office of the Privy Seal and as one stigmatized by an episode of mental illness. Neither a political mouthpiece nor an autonomous humanistic artist, Hoccleve seeks reciprocal communication; his self-performance urges an ethics of listening, a principle of charity that suspends judgment in order to seek understanding.
Free as a Bird? Thinking with the Grain of Meshell Ndegeocello’s Butch Voice
Authors: Nyong’o Tavia
Published: September 2020

Across a prolific, genre-spanning career, Meshell Ndegeocello has persistently avoided music industry labeling. This chapter considers the adequacy of conceptions of the butch voice and female masculinity as modalities for summing up her aesthetic strategy. More central than her transgression of customary modalities of history and memory, the chapter suggests, is the persistent quest for freedom in Black music by any means musically necessary. Suggesting that the butch voice is both heard and silent, the chapter moves toward an aesthetics of redaction in her most recent music, especially in albums devoted to cover songs.
Musical Abjects Sounds and Objectionable Sexualities
Authors: Johnson Jenny Olivia
Published: September 2020

This discussion examines two musical situations involving sexual impulses and behaviors that are widely deemed unacceptable: the pedophilia of composer Benjamin Britten and the sexual abuse of choirboys at the Columbus Boychoir School in the 1970s. The aim is to consider whether an examination of the music created within these contexts might contribute to a more nuanced understanding of trauma, sexual abuse, and dangerous forms of desire; and whether a queer theory-inspired approach to these “abject” musical objects might encourage the development of more substantive and meaningful ethical positions toward people currently labeled as sexual deviants or perpetrators of sexual violence.
Marketplace Lending, Information Aggregation, and Liquidity
Authors: Franks Julian , Serrano-Velarde Nicolas , Sussman Oren
Published: September 2020

Lending marketplaces aimed at directly connecting retail lenders and borrowers retreat from auctions and, instead, set prices and allocate credit on their own, despite evidence that retail investors possess valuable soft and nonstandard information. We investigate this puzzle by analyzing a unique data set of 7,455 auctions and 34 million bids from a leading British peer-to-business platform. We find that the platform was vulnerable to liquidity shocks, resulting in sizable deviations from information efficiency. Deviations increased over time because of a growing role played by noncrowd players, particularly large investors and algorithms.
Functional procurement for innovation, welfare, and the environment
Authors: Edquist Charles , Zabala-Iturriagagoitia Jon Mikel
Published: September 2020

Public procurement accounts for a very large share of most economies worldwide. This conceptual article argues that the key to achieving more innovations when pursuing public procurement is to describe problems to be solved or functions to be fulfilled (functional procurement) instead of describing the products to be bought (product procurement). Contracting authorities need to identify the problems that policy should address. The new products (innovations) solving the problems are to be designed by the potential innovators/suppliers, not by public procurers. Hence, the societal needs and problems must be translated and transformed into functional requirements. Functional procurement is allowed in European regulations, and therefore, there are no legal obstacles to use it for innovation policy purposes. Furthermore, it leads to increased competition not only among potential suppliers of similar products, but also among different products that solve the same problem.
Does the high-tech enterprise certification policy promote innovation in China?
Authors: Liu Huiling , Xing Fei , Li Bo , Yakshtas Kseniya
Published: September 2020

This study investigates the impacts of the high-tech enterprise certification policy on corporate innovation in China, by analyzing a unique dataset of listed companies and their affiliates from 2006 to 2015. We exclude firms certified after year 2009 from the sample, because they may have engaged in R&D manipulation. The findings show that the high-tech enterprise certification can promote corporate innovation in China, especially the innovation captured by invention patents and the intensity of policy matters. The study also concludes that the high-tech enterprise certification can influence enterprise innovation through ‘physical’ and ‘tacit’ channels. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that private enterprises, enterprises in more competitive industries, and equity-inspired enterprises benefit most from high-tech enterprise certification. This article helps understand the validity of innovation policies and driving forces of innovation.
Retrospective Hospital-Based Cohort Study on Risk Factors of Poor Outcome in Pediatric Snake Envenomation
Authors: Suryanarayana Ganapathi , Rameshkumar Ramachandran , Mahadevan Subramanian
Published: September 2020

Background and Objectives

Among Southeast Asian countries, India has reported the highest mortality due to snakebite envenomation. To identify the risk factors of poor outcome (mortality/mechanical ventilation/renal replacement therapy—RRT) in pediatric snakebite envenomation.

Method

Case records of children aged less than 13 years with snakebite envenomation admitted between June 2009 and July 2015 were reviewed retrospectively. Medical records of the patient died within 6 h, those required RRT before administration of antisnake venom (ASV), and those with unknown bites were excluded.

Results

A total of 308 patients were included. One hundred eighty (58.4%) had hemotoxic, and 128 (41.6%) had neuroparalytic envenomation. Median (interquartile range) bite to ASV time was 3 (2–6) h. Seventy-five (24.4%) patients received ASV within 6 h of bite. Poor outcomes occurred in 128 (41.6%), and 36 (11.7%) patients died. On binary logistic analysis (adjusted odds ratio, 95% confidence interval), age ≤5 years (2.97, 1.28–6.90), walking (6.15, 2.88–13.17), playing (3.36, 1.64–6.88), no tourniquet (2.39, 1.25–4.57), time to ASV more than 6 h (2.71, 1.45–5.06), fang marks (2.22, 1.21–4.07), neurotoxic envenomation (3.01, 1.11–8.13) and additional ASV dose (8.41, 2.99–23.60) were independently predicted the poor outcome (Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness of fit model p = 0.135; overall percentage of the model is 72.2% and R-square = 0.28).

Conclusion

Age below 5 years, activity at/after the bite (playing/walking), no tourniquet, a longer bite to ASV time, presence of fang marks, neurotoxic envenomation and need for additional ASV dose were independent predictors of poor outcome in pediatric snakebite envenomation.
Lumi-Map, a Real-Time Luciferase Bioluminescence Screen of Mutants Combined with MutMap, Reveals Arabidopsis Genes Involved in PAMP-Triggered Immunity
Authors: Kato Hiroaki , Onai Kiyoshi , Abe Akira , Shimizu Motoki , Takagi Hiroki , Tateda Chika , Utsushi Hiroe , Singkarabanit-Ogawa Suthitar , Kitakura Saeko , Ono Erika , Zipfel Cyril , Takano Yoshitaka , Ishiura Masahiro , Terauchi Ryohei
Published: September 2020

Plants recognize pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) to activate PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI). However, our knowledge of PTI signaling remains limited. In this report, we introduce Lumi-Map, a high-throughput platform for identifying causative single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for studying PTI signaling components. In Lumi-Map, a transgenic reporter plant line is produced that contains a firefly luciferase (LUC) gene driven by a defense gene promoter, which generates luminescence upon PAMP treatment. The line is mutagenized and the mutants with altered luminescence patterns are screened by a high-throughput real-time bioluminescence monitoring system. Selected mutants are subjected to MutMap analysis, a whole-genome sequencing-based method of rapid mutation identification, to identify the causative SNP responsible for the luminescence pattern change. We generated nine transgenic Arabidopsis reporter lines expressing the LUC gene fused to multiple promoter sequences of defense-related genes. These lines generate luminescence upon activation of FLAGELLIN-SENSING 2 (FLS2) by flg22, a PAMP derived from bacterial flagellin. We selected the WRKY29-promoter reporter line to identify mutants in the signaling pathway downstream of FLS2. After screening 24,000 ethylmethanesulfonate-induced mutants of the reporter line, we isolated 22 mutants with altered WRKY29 expression upon flg22 treatment (abbreviated as awf mutants). Although five flg22-insensitive awf mutants harbored mutations in FLS2 itself, Lumi-Map revealed three genes not previously associated with PTI. Lumi-Map has the potential to identify novel PAMPs and their receptors as well as signaling components downstream of the receptors.

[Formula: see text] Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .
Rhodopseudomonas palustris Quorum Sensing Molecule pC-HSL Induces Systemic Resistance to TMV Infection via Upregulation of NbSIPK/NbWIPK Expressions in Nicotiana benthamiana
Authors: Du Xiaohua , Huang Renyan , Zhang Zhuo , Zhang Deyong , Cheng Ju’e , Tian Peijie , Wang Yanqi , Zhai Zhongying , Chen Lijie , Kong Xiaoting , Liu Yong , Su Pin
Published: September 2020

G-negative bacteria produce myriad N-acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs) that can function as quorum sensing (QS) signaling molecules. AHLs are also known to regulate various plant biological activities. p-Coumaroyl-homoserine lactone (pC-HSL) is the only QS molecule produced by a photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris. The role of pC-HSL in the interaction between R. palustris and plant has not been investigated. In this study, we investigated the effect of pC-HSL on plant immunity and found that this QS molecule can induce a systemic resistance to Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) infection in Nicotiana benthamiana. The results show that pC-HSL treatment can prolong the activation of two mitogen-associated protein kinase genes (i.e., NbSIPK and NbWIPK) and increase the expression of transcription factor WRKY8 as well as immune response marker genes NbPR1 and NbPR10, leading to an increased accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the TMV-infected plants. Our results also show that pC-HSL treatment can increase activities of two ROS-scavenging enzymes, peroxidase and superoxide dismutase. Knockdown of NbSIPK or NbWIPK expression in N. benthamiana plants through virus-induced gene silencing nullified or attenuated pC-HSL–induced systemic resistance, indicating that the functioning of pC-HSL relies on the activity of those two kinases. Meanwhile, pC-HSL–pretreated plants also showed a strong induction of kinase activities of NbSIPK and NbWIPK after TMV inoculation. Taken together, our results demonstrate that pC-HSL treatment increases plant resistance to TMV infection, which is helpful to uncover the outcome of interaction between R. palustris and its host plants.
More Than Words: A Vision to Address Bias and Reduce Discrimination in the Health Professions Learning Environment
Authors: Mateo Camila M. , Williams David R.
Published: September 2020

Bias and discrimination are embedded within the history, norms, and practices of the health professions institution, and their negative impacts are pervasive in the health professions learning environment. These forces impair the ability to take care of patients, recruit and support diverse health care providers, and prepare the next generation of clinicians for practice. Fortunately, there are effective interventions and strategies for addressing bias and discrimination within learning environments and to both prevent and ameliorate their negative effects. This Perspective lays out a vision for health professions learning environments that are free from bias and discrimination and makes 5 recommendations, with supporting actions, that will help the leaders of health care institutions achieve this goal.
The University of Cincinnati College of Nursing Case Study: Bias and Discrimination in the Nursing Learning Environment
Authors: Glazer Greer , Bankston Karen , Stacy Kelly
Published: September 2020

The purpose of this case study is to outline strategies employed by the University of Cincinnati’s College of Nursing (CoN) to increase underrepresented racial and ethnic (URE), and economically and educationally disadvantaged student acceptance, presence, inclusion, and success. The case study method was used to examine strategies used at the CoN to address bias and discrimination, identify student success strategies for URE students, and outline college initiatives to facilitate an inclusive environment. CoN leadership has instituted several programs involving faculty and students in efforts to decrease bias and discrimination and promote inclusion. They continue to engage faculty and others in adding to and improving their efforts. This is a process of culture change and must involve everyone. CoN leadership is committed to both demonstrating by example and holding all accountable for progressively improved continued efforts to create a more inclusive environment.
International Medical Graduates: Promoting Equity and Belonging
Authors: Zaidi Zareen , Dewan Mantosh , Norcini John
Published: September 2020

International medical school graduates (IMGs) play a vital role in the health care system of the United States. They constitute roughly one-quarter of the physician workforce, comprising a significant proportion of the primary care providers in high-need rural and urban areas, where they provide equal and, in some instances, better care than U.S. graduates. Nonetheless, they face a series of hurdles in entering U.S. residency programs and throughout their training experiences.

IMGs must expend significant resources to obtain Education Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates certification, which includes Steps 1, 2 Clinical Knowledge and 2 Clinical Skills of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. They encounter the uncertainty of matching and, if successful, obtaining a visa to enter the United States. Once here, they need to adapt to the complexities of the health care system and familiarize themselves with the cultural nuances, professional behaviors, and communication skills of another country. They encounter biases and microaggressions and lack support groups and mentors. Those who choose an academic career are less likely to obtain leadership positions.

This Perspective provides an overview of these challenges and highlights opportunities for change at local and national levels. Specifically, it identifies strategies that would assist IMGs before entry, at entry, during training, at the transition to practice, and in practice. The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the shortage of physicians in the United States and illustrates the importance of ensuring that IMGs, who are essential health care workers, feel welcome, valued, and recognized for their contributions.
Building Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Into the Fabric of a New Medical School: Early Experiences of the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine
Authors: Schuster Mark A. , Conwell Walter D. , Connelly Maureen T. , Humphrey Holly J.
Published: September 2020

In July 2020, the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine opened in Pasadena, California, with an inaugural class of 50 students. The school endeavors to address systemic barriers that have contributed to health care and educational disparities in the United States. To realize its vision for change, equity, inclusion, and diversity (EID) have been woven throughout the school. Board members were chosen in part based on their commitment to the core values of EID. The board developed mission, vision, and values statements that explicitly avow a commitment to EID and recruited a dean (and the dean recruited leaders) who espoused and evinced these values. Leaders, faculty, and staff received training to foster an inclusive environment and ensure accountability. The school developed a curriculum that has been thoroughly evaluated for its representative and inclusive content by a team drawn from all departments. The diverse first class, selected through a holistic admissions approach, has access to student support systems that emphasize an appreciation of the distinct experiences and context of each student. The school plans a rigorous evaluation program to assess its performance in EID. Although the school may well fall short of achieving all of its EID objectives, by learning from its experiences and from evidence of others in academic medicine, the school recognizes its opportunity to continue to come closer to achieving its goals and to help shape and contribute to the national and international discourse on EID.
It Can Be Done! A Skills-Based Elective in Implicit Bias Recognition and Management for Preclinical Medical Students
Authors: Gonzalez Cristina M. , Walker Sydney A. , Rodriguez Natalia , Karp Elisa , Marantz Paul R.
Published: September 2020

Purpose

Students perceive bias in learning environments. Curricula targeting implicit bias recognition and management increase student awareness and achieve strategy identification, but fall short of actual skill development to address bias. In light of this gap, the authors developed and evaluated a skills-based elective to recognize and manage implicit bias in the learning environment.

Method

Nine 1.5-hour sessions were delivered to 15 first-year medical students from 2017 to 2019. An evidence-based conceptual framework and transformative learning theory informed the instructional design; it incorporated active learning exercises. Skills assessment occurred through direct observation of student performances in role-play exercises. Using thematic analysis, the authors conducted a program evaluation based on focus groups with students and data from notes taken by the investigative team.

Results

Students engaged with all aspects of instruction, including role-plays. Authors identified 3 themes from the program evaluation: (1) Student engagement can be enhanced, (2) Instruction is empowering, and (3) It (addressing bias in one’s own and witnessed encounters) can be done! Analysis additionally highlighted opportunities for improvement and lessons learned.

Conclusions

This innovative course achieved skill development and practice for medical students in implicit bias recognition and management as it pertains to 3 facets of clinical care present at every stage of a health professional’s career. These include interpersonal encounters, advocating for patients when bias is perceived in witnessed encounters with peers and supervisors, and addressing comments made by others within the learning environment. Outcomes could inform novel, skills-based curricula across the spectrum of health professions training and practice.
Acting Wisely: Eliminating Negative Bias in Medical Education—Part 1: The Fundamentals
Authors: Plews-Ogan Margaret L. , Bell Taison D. , Townsend Gregory , Canterbury Randolph J. , Wilkes David S.
Published: September 2020

Bias is a ubiquitous problem in human functioning. It has plagued medical decision making, making physicians prone to errors of perception and judgment. Racial, gender, ethnic, and religious negative biases infest physicians’ perception and cognition, causing errors of judgment and behavior that are damaging. In Part 1 of this series of 2 papers, the authors address the problem of harmful bias, the science of cognition, and what is known about how bias functions in human perception and information processing. They lay the groundwork for an approach to reducing negative bias through awareness, reflection, and bias mitigation, an approach in which negative biases can be transformed—by education, experience, practice, and relationships—into positive biases toward one another. The authors propose wisdom as a conceptual framework for imagining a different way of educating medical students. They discuss fundamental cognitive, affective, and reflective components of wisdom-based education. They also review the skills of awareness, using debiasing strategies, compassion, fostering positive emotion, and reflection that are inherent to a wisdom-based approach to eliminating the negative effects of bias in medical education. In Part 2, the authors answer a key question: How can medical educators do better? They describe the interpersonal, structural, and cultural elements supportive of a wisdom-based learning environment, a culture of respect and inclusion in medical education.
Toward a Bias-Free and Inclusive Medical Curriculum: Development and Implementation of Student-Initiated Guidelines and Monitoring Mechanisms at One Institution
Authors: Benoit Laura J. , Travis Christopher , Swan Sein Aubrie , Quiah Samuel C. , Amiel Jonathan , Gowda Deepthiman
Published: September 2020

As research and attention on implicit bias and inclusiveness in medical school is expanding, institutions need mechanisms for recognizing, reporting, and addressing instances of implicit bias and lack of inclusiveness in medical school curricular structures. These instances can come as a result of a lack of both awareness and communication around these sensitive issues. To identify and address cases of implicit bias in the medical school curriculum, a student-led initiative at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S) developed guidelines and a bias-reporting process for educators and students. The guidelines, co-created by students and faculty, help educators identify and address implicit bias in the curriculum. Furthermore, to allow for continued development of the curriculum and the guidelines themselves, the group adapted an existing learning environment reporting and review process to identify and address instances of implicit bias. In the first year since their implementation, these tools have already had an impact on the learning climate at VP&S. They have led to enhanced identification of implicit bias in the curriculum and changes in instructional materials. The courage and inspiration of the students and the initial investment and commitment from the administration and faculty were crucial to this rapid effect. The authors present an approach and resources from which other institutions can learn, with the goal of reducing implicit bias and improving inclusiveness throughout medical education. In the long run, the authors hope that these interventions will contribute to better preparing future providers to care for all patients equitably.
Liquid crystals on deformable surfaces
Authors: Nitschke Ingo , Reuther Sebastian , Voigt Axel
Published: September 2020

Liquid crystals with molecules constrained to the tangent bundle of a curved surface show interesting phenomena resulting from the tight coupling of the elastic and bulk-free energies of the liquid crystal with geometric properties of the surface. We derive a thermodynamically consistent Landau-de Gennes-Helfrich model which considers the simultaneous relaxation of the
Q
-tensor field and the surface. The resulting system of tensor-valued surface partial differential equation and geometric evolution laws is numerically solved to tackle the rich dynamics of this system and to compute the resulting equilibrium shape. The results strongly depend on the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature contributions and lead to unexpected asymmetric shapes.
Polyploids increase overall diversity despite higher turnover than diploids in the Brassicaceae
Authors: Román-Palacios Cristian , Molina-Henao Y. Franchesco , Barker Michael S.
Published: September 2020

Although polyploidy is widespread across the plant Tree of Life, its long-term evolutionary significance is still poorly understood. Here, we examine the effects of polyploidy in explaining the large-scale evolutionary patterns within angiosperms by focusing on a single family exhibiting extensive interspecific variation in chromosome numbers. We inferred ploidy from haploid chromosome numbers for 80% of species in the most comprehensive species-level chronogram for the Brassicaceae. After evaluating a total of 94 phylogenetic models of diversification, we found that ploidy influences diversification rates across the Brassicaceae. We also found that despite diversifying at a similar rate to diploids, polyploids have played a significant role in driving present-day differences in species richness among clades. Overall, in addition to highlighting the complexity in the evolutionary consequences of polyploidy, our results suggest that rare successful polyploids persist while significantly contributing to the long-term evolution of clades. Our findings further indicate that polyploidy has played a major role in driving the long-term evolution of the Brassicaceae and highlight the potential of polyploidy in shaping present-day diversity patterns across the plant Tree of Life.
Barthelonids represent a deep-branching metamonad clade with mitochondrion-related organelles predicted to generate no ATP
Authors: Yazaki Euki , Kume Keitaro , Shiratori Takashi , Eglit Yana , Tanifuji Goro , Harada Ryo , Simpson Alastair G. B. , Ishida Ken-ichiro , Hashimoto Tetsuo , Inagaki Yuji
Published: September 2020

We here report the phylogenetic position of barthelonids, small anaerobic flagellates previously examined using light microscopy alone.Barthelonaspp. were isolated from geographically distinct regions and we established five laboratory strains. Transcriptomic data generated from oneBarthelonastrain (PAP020) were used for large-scale, multi-gene phylogenetic (phylogenomic) analyses. Our analyses robustly placed strain PAP020 at the base of the Fornicata clade, indicating that barthelonids represent a deep-branching metamonad clade. Considering the anaerobic/microaerophilic nature of barthelonids and preliminary electron microscopy observations on strain PAP020, we suspected that barthelonids possess functionally and structurally reduced mitochondria (i.e. mitochondrion-related organelles or MROs). The metabolic pathways localized in the MRO of strain PAP020 were predicted based on its transcriptomic data and compared with those in the MROs of fornicates. We here propose that strain PAP020 is incapable of generating ATP in the MRO, as no mitochondrial/MRO enzymes involved in substrate-level phosphorylation were detected. Instead, we detected a putative cytosolic ATP-generating enzyme (acetyl-CoA synthetase), suggesting that strain PAP020 depends on ATP generated in the cytosol. We propose two separate losses of substrate-level phosphorylation from the MRO in the clade containing barthelonids and (other) fornicates.