bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Teacher Preparation for Physical Education in an Increasingly Sedentary World in Singapore
Authors: Chia Michael , Teck Koh Koon
Published: July 2019

The Second World-Wide Survey of Physical Education in schools, published under the auspices of the International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education, identifies large gaps between the promise of positive outcomes of physical education and actual outcomes. The mismatch between the policy and practice of physical education stems from deep-seated disagreements about what the goals of physical education should be; the multifaceted nature of the subject; and a lack of competence, confidence, and accountability among the teachers who are responsible for teaching physical education in schools, among other things. According to the World Health Organization, the physical and holistic health of young people and adults is threatened by increases in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers—in part due to increased sedentary modern lifestyles and insufficient exercise. Physical education has the potential to ameliorate the negative impact of sedentary lifestyles and exercise insufficiency. Teacher-education programs for physical education the world over advertise that teachers of the subject help young people acquire a love for physical activity and the skills to practice and enjoy sports; they also teach life skills, including teamwork, sportsmanship, problem-solving, and creativity, and help students develop the habits of a healthy lifestyle. How programs prepare physical-education teachers to deliver on these promises varies considerably. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Singapore has one of the best-performing teacher-education systems in the world. It is run by the National Institute of Education in Singapore. The tight coupling of theory and practice and the tripartite relationship between the policymakers at the Ministry of Education; the National Institute of Education, where teacher training occurs; and the schools, where physical education is experienced, are the key determinants of a quality physical-education experience among children and adolescents in Singapore.
Spiritual Development and the Preparation of Teachers
Authors: Mohanty Sunil Behari
Published: July 2019

Spirituality is concerned with eternal truth and universality and is essential for sustainable development. Many education systems also view spirituality as a part of religion as religious organizations also consider that their activities promote spiritual development. Such a situation has led many secular nations to avoid spiritual education. However, universities in secular countries have been conducting studies on spiritual intelligence of individuals and also spiritual development in students and teachers reflected in their day to day activities. Certain school systems have been giving stress on spiritual development of students. Many co-curricular activities including prayer classes contribute to the development of spirituality in school students. At the higher education stage, discussions and debates play crucial role in making students realize the limitations of religions and evil effects of religious fanaticism. Spiritual development has its origin in the mother’s womb. The spiritual practices of the mother have much influence on the baby. Later, family members contribute to the spiritual development of the baby. Although the foundation of the spiritual development of an individual is laid by one’s family members, it is nurtured by a formal education system that is steered by teachers. Hence, the preparation of teachers for this role has assumed significance. The teaching about various spiritual leaders and their contributions to education system is utilized by teacher training programs in making their trainees aware of importance of spirituality in the life of an individual. High quality teacher training programs Train their trainees in skills of conducting debates, dialogue sessions, discussions and conducting a plethora of co-curricular activities for developing spirituality in school students.
The Cameroon Grassfield States in the Broader History of Nigeria and Cameroon
Authors: DeLancey Mark Dike
Published: July 2019

The Grassfields constitutes a dynamic area covering primarily the Northwest and West regions of Cameroon. Considered by many to be the birthplace of the Bantu languages and a primary source of ancient sedentary cultures for Central Africa, the Grassfields witnessed the proliferation of a bewildering number of states beginning perhaps as early as the 16th century. Originally colonized by Germany, the fault line between the later British-controlled Southern Cameroons and the French-controlled Cameroun ran through the Grassfields, dividing the Bamenda groups from the Bamiléké and Bamum. In the postcolonial period, the Grassfields has been the heartland of important political opposition groups including the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) and later the Social Democratic Front (SDF), and more recently of the separatist Ambazonia movement.
Women in São Tomé and Príncipe
Authors: Seibert Gerhard
Published: July 2019

With a population of 225,000 (2021) and an area of 1,001 km², the twin-island republic of São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea is the second smallest country in Africa. Following the decline of the once prosperous plantation economy after independence from Portugal in 1975, the country has largely become dependent on foreign aid. More than half of the population lives in poverty, especially women, children, and people in rural areas. After fifteen years of socialist one-party rule, a multiparty democracy was adopted in 1990. The local Creole population, called forros, is descended from white colonists and African slaves who settled the hitherto uninhabited islands from the late 15th century. The minority of descendants of African plantation workers from the first half of the 20th century tends to assimilate into Creole culture, while the angolares, descendants of a maroon community from the 16th century, constitute a distinct sociocultural group. According to 2012 census data, 80 percent of the population is Christian, predominantly Roman Catholic, while 20 percent is nonreligious. African beliefs in witchcraft and other occult forces frequently coexist with Christianity. The kinship system is bilateral where descent and inheritance are passed through both father and mother. Infant baptism is an important ritual, whereas initiation ceremonies for adolescents, including male and female circumcision, are non-existent. The dominant conjugal union is the customary union, while the formal marriage is a rare exception and only practiced by the educated elite. Polygamy is a common practice, but a man’s different wives never live together in the same residence. Local society considers polygyny and male dominance as a natural condition of men. Despite their subordinated role in family and society, individual well-off or educated women have always achieved considerable prestige and recognition. During the socialist regime, legal equality between the sexes was guaranteed and the emancipation of women was promoted, at least officially. Since the 1990s, several externally conceived campaigns, government programs, and new legislation have combated gender inequality and discrimination against women.
Women in Post-Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction in Africa
Authors: Scanlon Helen
Published: July 2019

Women’s experiences of conflict have been the subject of increased international attention since the end of the Cold War and this has been accompanied by a concomitant growth in attention to the role of women in peace and security initiatives in Africa. Alongside the rise of humanitarian interventions, new trends have emerged in the realms of conflict resolution, accountability, and post-conflict transformation. As a result, post-conflict experiences in Africa in the 21st century have revealed numerous opportunities for the advancement of gender justice. Experiences from countries emerging from conflict on the continent provide some important examples of promoting women’s rights through accountability mechanisms, furthering access to government, producing gender-sensitive reform, challenging discriminatory laws, and advancing economic opportunities. However, while women’s needs and rights have been increasingly recognized through international and national commitments, women continue to face widespread gender-based violence as well as socioeconomic challenges in the aftermath of conflict. Thus, understanding intersectional experiences of conflict and the role of enduring gender power relations are critical to revisiting how transitions might be transformative.
Women and Violence in Africa
Authors: Medie Peace A.
Published: July 2019

Violence, in all of its forms, touches girls and women’s lives in Africa. While there is evidence that girls and women do participate in violence, research has shown that a significant proportion of them have also been victims. Violence against women describes violence inflicted on girls and women because of their gender and includes femicide, rape, intimate partner violence, and human trafficking. It also includes harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and early marriage. While it is a global problem, the levels of some forms of violence against women are particularly high in Africa. The problem is caused by a complex interaction of factors operating at multiple levels, including at the global level. Historical records show that acts of violence against women, including intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, were perpetrated during the colonial era. During this period, perpetrators of non-partner sexual violence included colonial officers and troops under their command. Cases brought before colonial courts sometimes resulted in the conviction of the offender, but sentences were generally light. However, incidents of violence against women were mostly resolved within the family or community, with relatives and traditional leaders playing a central role.

The post-independence period has seen increased attention to violence against women. Activism by women’s movements contributed to placing the issue on the agenda of states and of international organizations such as the United Nations. Sexual violence perpetrated by armed actors during wars in the 1990s also served to draw attention to violence against women. Consequently, most African countries have amended colonial-era rape laws and have adopted new legislation to address acts such as intimate partner violence, early marriage, and female genital mutilation. Many of them have also created specialized criminal-justice-sector institutions to address various forms of violence against women. These actions on the part of states have been influenced by women’s movements and by pressure from international organizations such as the United Nations. While this demonstrates progress on the part of African states, there is a large implementation gap in most countries. Thus, girls and women rarely benefit from the progressive laws on the books. This demonstrates that there is much work that needs to be done to address violence against women in Africa.
Women in Benin
Authors: Reuther Jessica Catherine
Published: July 2019

The modern-day Republic of Benin in West Africa was historically a patchwork of precolonial kingdoms and acephalous zones. In the 17th century, the kingdom of Dahomey formed in the south central interior plateau region of modern-day Benin. In the 18th century, Dahomey grew to become the dominant regional power. Dahomey’s women were famed globally for their roles as government ministers, queen mothers, and warriors. Women had multiple means through which to achieve various forms of power. Women’s power was multi-faceted during the precolonial era; however, these women’s power required proximity to the king and incorporation into the royal palace.

During the colonial era from 1894–1960, women had much fewer opportunities to achieve positions of formal power. After the conquest of the Slave Coast region in the 1890s, France established a colony named after the kingdom of Dahomey. Women’s roles in politics declined rapidly as part of the shift from the precolonial to colonial systems of governance. This shift continued a trend though, already unfolding in the 19th century, that reduced women’s power in the royal palace. Few women rose to formal positions of authority in collaboration with the French colonial administration. Colonialism irrevocably transformed gendered systems of power and authority in ways that removed Dahomean women from officially sanctioned positions of power. Despite these restrictions, Dahomean women always found ways to express their agendas and exert influence over the colonial government. During the colonial era, market women, in particular, found ways to protest colonial policies and developed gendered strategies of activism.

In 1960, Dahomey gained independence from France and was renamed Benin in 1972. Beninese women have struggled to regain their active roles in political life. Since the end of the Cold War and the transition from socialism to democracy in the 1990s, individual Beninese women who had access to education and the opportunity to study and work for extended periods of time have managed to once again participate in national politics. However, they remain a disadvantaged minority in electoral politics.
Urban Sprawl and the Control of Land Use
Authors: Anas Alex
Published: July 2019

Urban sprawl in popular sources is vaguely defined and largely misunderstood, having acquired a pejorative meaning. Economists should ask whether particular patterns of urban land use are an outcome of an efficient allocation of resources. Theoretical economic modeling has been used to show that more not less, sprawl often improves economic efficiency. More sprawl can cause a reduction in traffic congestion. Job suburbanization can generally increase sprawl but improves economic efficiency. Limiting sprawl in some cities by direct control of the land use can increase sprawl in other cities, and aggregate sprawl in all cities combined can increase. That urban population growth causes more urban sprawl is verified by empirically implemented general equilibrium models, but—contrary to common belief—the increase in travel times that accompanies such sprawl are very modest. Urban growth boundaries to limit urban sprawl cause large deadweight losses by raising land prices and should be seen to be socially intolerable but often are not. It is good policy to use corrective taxation for negative externalities such as traffic congestion and to implement property tax reforms to reduce or eliminate distortive taxation. Under various circumstances such fiscal measures improve welfare by increasing urban sprawl. The flight of the rich from American central cities, large lot zoning in the suburbs, and the financing of schools by property tax revenues are seen as causes of sprawl. There is also evidence that more heterogeneity among consumers and more unequal income distributions cause more urban sprawl. The connections between agglomeration economies and urban sprawl are less clear. The emerging technology of autonomous vehicles can have major implications for the future of urban spatial structure and is likely to add to sprawl.
Purchasing Power Parity and Real Exchange Rates
Authors: Chinn Menzie D.
Published: July 2019

The idea that prices and exchange rates adjust so as to equalize the common-currency price of identical bundles of goods—purchasing power parity (PPP)—is a topic of central importance in international finance. If PPP holds continuously, then nominal exchange rate changes do not influence trade flows. If PPP does not hold in the short run, but does in the long run, then monetary factors can affect the real exchange rate only temporarily. Substantial evidence has accumulated—with the advent of new statistical tests, alternative data sets, and longer spans of data—that purchasing power parity does not typically hold in the short run. One reason why PPP doesn’t hold in the short run might be due to sticky prices, in combination with other factors, such as trade barriers. The evidence is mixed for the longer run. Variations in the real exchange rate in the longer run can also be driven by shocks to demand, arising from changes in government spending, the terms of trade, as well as wealth and debt stocks. At time horizon of decades, trend movements in the real exchange rate—that is, systematically trending deviations in PPP—could be due to the presence of nontraded goods, combined with real factors such as differentials in productivity growth. The well-known positive association between the price level and income levels—also known as the “Penn Effect”—is consistent with this channel. Whether PPP holds then depends on the time period, the time horizon, and the currencies examined.
Corporate Governance and Enterprise Governance
Authors: McDonnell Brett
Published: July 2019

Corporate governance includes legal, contractual, and market mechanisms that structure decision-making within business corporations. Most attention has focused on corporate governance in large U.S. public corporations with dispersed shareholding. The separation of ownership from control in those corporations creates a unique problem, as shareholders typically have weak individual incentive to monitor managers. Mechanisms that have been developed to address this agency problem include independent directors, fiduciary duty, securities law disclosure, executive compensation, various professional gatekeepers, the market for corporate control, and shareholder activism. In most countries outside the United States, there are few companies with dispersed shareholding. Instead, most companies have a controlling shareholder or group. These companies face a different agency problem, the possibility that controlling shareholders may use their power to gain at the expense of minority shareholders.

Enterprise governance refers to mechanisms aimed at related agency problems that occur in closely held companies without publicly traded equity interests. Here too the agency problem typically encountered is the potential conflict between controllers and minority investors, with the added twist that share illiquidity removes an important protection for the minority. Closely held companies have adopted a variety of contractual mechanisms to address these concerns. Other than the important but special cases of venture capital and private equity fund investments, there is less empirical evidence on governance in closely held companies because information is generally much harder to find.
The Economics of Innovation, Knowledge Diffusion, and Globalization
Authors: Lind Nelson , Ramondo Natalia
Published: July 2019

A recent body of literature on quantitative general equilibrium models links the creation and diffusion of knowledge and technology to openness to international trade and to the activity of multinational firms. The unifying theme of this literature is methodological: productivities are Fréchet random variables and arise from Poisson innovation and diffusion processes for ideas. The main advantage of this modeling strategy is that it delivers closed-form solutions for key endogenous variables that have a direct counterpart in the data (e.g., prices, trade flows). This tractability makes the connection between theory and data transparent, helps clarify the determinants of the gains from openness, and facilitates the calculation of counterfactual equilibria.
Contests: Theory and Topics
Authors: Fu Qiang , Wu Zenan
Published: July 2019

Competitive situations resembling contests are ubiquitous in modern economic landscape. In a contest, economic agents expend costly effort to vie for limited prizes, and they are rewarded for “getting ahead” of their opponents instead of their absolute performance metrics. Many social, economic, and business phenomena exemplify such competitive schemes, ranging from college admissions, political campaigns, advertising, and organizational hierarchies, to warfare. The economics literature has long recognized contest/tournament as a convenient and efficient incentive scheme to remedy the moral hazard problem, especially when the production process is subject to random perturbation or the measurement of input/output is imprecise or costly. An enormous amount of scholarly effort has been devoted to developing tractable theoretical models, unveiling the fundamentals of the strategic interactions that underlie such competitions, and exploring the optimal design of contest rules. This voluminous literature has enriched basic contest/tournament models by introducing different variations to the modeling, such as dynamic structure, incomplete and asymmetric information, multi-battle confrontations, sorting and entry, endogenous prize allocation, competitions in groups, contestants with alternative risk attitude, among other things.
The Teamsters and the American Working Class
Authors: Bussel Robert
Published: July 2019

During the latter half of the 20th century, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) represented the labor organization most readily recognized by the American public. Rooted in the vital sectors of transportation, warehousing, and distribution, the Teamsters became one of the largest unions in the United States, wielded considerable economic leverage, and used this leverage to improve the lives of low-wage workers across a broad swath of occupations and industries. The union’s reputation for militancy and toughness reached its apotheosis in the controversial career of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters’ most prominent post-World War II leader. Under the leadership of Hoffa and his immediate predecessor Dave Beck, the union (with some notable exceptions) embraced a business ethos, often engaged in collusive and corrupt practices, and came to symbolize the labor movement’s squandered potential as a transformational social force. Fear of Hoffa and his associations with underworld figures provoked an intense backlash, resulting in the IBT’s 1957 expulsion from the AFL-CIO, concerted legal and legislative action aimed at curbing Teamster influence, and a lingering public perception that the union was a hopelessly corrupt and malign force.

Hoffa’s unsolved disappearance in 1975 cemented the Teamsters’ image as a suspect institution, and analysts of the IBT have often offered either superficial or sensational accounts of the organization’s history and operations. With the deregulation of the trucking industry in the 1980s, the IBT suffered serious losses in market share and membership that eclipsed many of the union’s crowning collective bargaining achievements. A series of lackluster, corrupt leaders who followed Hoffa as union president proved unable to counter these developments, triggering the rise of an aggressive internal reform movement (Teamsters for a Democratic Union), federal intervention and monitoring, and the election of a reform slate in 1991 that assumed leadership of the union. However, since the union’s victory in an epic strike against United Parcel Service in 1997, the Teamsters have struggled to regain their ability to assert working-class power, especially within the private sector transportation industry, where they once exercised nearly unchallenged hegemony.
Names of God in the Hebrew Bible
Authors: Cornell Collin
Published: July 2019

In everyday English parlance, God’s name is simply “God.” In the Hebrew Bible, however, the God of Israel has a personal proper name, similar to “Susan” or “Teddy”: the four-lettered name YHWH, also known as the Tetragrammaton (Greek for “four letters”). This name is by far the most common designation for God in the Hebrew Bible. Four texts within this body of literature give special attention to God’s disclosure of the divine name to humankind: in Gen 4:25–26 shortly after the creation of the first humans; and in Exod 3, Exod 6, and Ezek 20 at the time of God’s emancipation of the Israelites from their enslavement in Egypt. English translations obscure the prominence of God’s name by replacing Hebrew YHWH with the common noun “Lord,” written in small caps. As it turns out, this practice has an ancient pedigree: already in the Second Temple era, spoken recitations of the Hebrew Bible replaced Hebrew YHWH with the Hebrew word for “Lord,” adonay, and written manuscripts marked the name YHWH with special orthography. Later Christian copies of the Greek Old Testament would bring the oral tradition directly into the text itself, substituting Greek κύριος, “Lord,” for YHWH. These customs probably trace back to the influence of several other biblical texts, including the fourth commandment of the Decalogue (Exod 20:7//Deut 5:11) and Lev 24:16. The Talmud (Pes. 50a) also records a rabbinic interpretation of Exod 3:15 according to which God says “This [YHWH] is my name to conceal.”

But God has other names in the Hebrew Bible, too. Several names are formed by joining YHWH together with a second word, for example: YHWH ṣebaoth, a phrase that is usually translated into English as “the Lord of hosts”; or again, another example: YHWH elohim, translated “the Lord God.” The second part of this compound name is also an important name for God in its own right. The word elohim in Hebrew means “god” or “gods.” It is technically a plural noun, although most of the time in Hebrew it refers to a single divine agent. It is also typically a common noun similar to the English word “god”; that is, it signifies one among a class of divine beings. However, also as in English, Hebrew elohim occasionally functions as a proper name: capital-G God. Another Hebrew noun for god, eloah, shares a similarly dual purpose: mostly it is a generic word for divinity but sometimes it is the caption for the one God of Israel (i.e., YHWH).

These two names—YHWH and its compound forms as well as elohim in its usage as a name—cover the majority of instances when the Hebrew Bible names God. A few other divine titles are name-like but not, properly speaking, names. The first among these is the word Shadday, but also the series of so-called “el-epithets” found in the book of Genesis: El Elyon, El the Creator of Heaven and Earth, El Roi, and El Olam.
Digital Resources: Colonial Nahuatl in Central America
Authors: Romero Sergio
Published: July 2019

Nahuatl is the Latin American indigenous language having the largest number of colonial documents. As with other colonial documents, the study of these manuscripts requires mastery of the language as well as the relevant historical and philological sources. The emergence of digital repositories in Mexico, the United States, France, and other countries has made hundreds of digital images available to scholars who would not have had access to these sources otherwise. Digital repositories also contain additional tools such as morphological parsers and dictionaries. These allow users to upload new images, transcriptions, and translations, turning digital archives into veritable platforms for scholarly exchange. The irruption of digital repositories promises to effect substantial changes in the field of Nahuatl studies.
The Festival de Rock y Ruedas in Avándaro, 1971
Authors: Salazar Rebolledo Juan Alberto
Published: July 2019

The Festival de Rock y Ruedas took place in Avándaro, in the suburbs of Valle de Bravo, a small town in Estado de México, on September 11 and 12, 1971. Among the organizers were transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and the national mass media monopoly Telesistema Mexicano. Avándaro was the culmination of the process of creating a youth culture of consumption that started in the early 1960s and went through several transformations during the next decade.

As part of the project to commercialize youth culture, the mass media tried to impose stereotypes that were reappropriated and resignified by groups of young people, such as “onderos.” Their actions became an obstacle for corporate business plans and turned Avándaro into one of the milestones of the Mexican countercultural movement in the second half of the 20th century.
Digital Resources: Christianity in New Spain (Mexico)
Authors: Fabian Kristian J. , Orique David T.
Published: July 2019

A variety of useful digital resources provide material for enriching the study of Christianity in New Spain (colonial Mexico). Such records, covering the period from the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521 until Mexico achieved its independence from Spain in 1821, reside in the growing digital collections in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. These repositories—such as the national archives in Mexico and Spain; specialized libraries in the United States, like the Library of Congress or the Newberry Library, university-based collections; and Mexican religious institutional sources—have searchable databases to help users in their research of Christianity in New Spain. Knowing how to navigate these databases and which keywords to use will help users find their way through the morass. Some collections also have a thematic organization around such topics as colonial art and architecture (where one can find information about churches, convents, and monasteries), indigenous pictorial manuscripts (which will illustrate the constructions of community churches, baptism activities, and the like), printed texts of all kinds (doctrine, sermons, information about indigenous religious beliefs and practices, and so on), and Inquisition records.
Phonetics
Authors: Whalen D. H.
Published: July 2019

Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the physical realization of meaningful distinctions in spoken language. Phoneticians study the anatomy and physics of sound generation, acoustic properties of the sounds of the world’s languages, the features of the signal that listeners use to perceive the message, and the brain mechanisms involved in both production and perception. Therefore, phonetics connects most directly to phonology and psycholinguistics, but it also engages a range of disciplines that are not unique to linguistics, including acoustics, physiology, biomechanics, hearing, evolution, and many others. Early theorists assumed that phonetic implementation of phonological features was universal, but it has become clear that languages differ in their phonetic spaces for phonological elements, with systematic differences in acoustics and articulation. Such language-specific details place phonetics solidly in the domain of linguistics; any complete description of a language must include its specific phonetic realization patterns. The description of what phonetic realizations are possible in human language continues to expand as more languages are described; many of the under-documented languages are endangered, lending urgency to the phonetic study of the world’s languages.

Phonetic analysis can consist of transcription, acoustic analysis, measurement of speech articulators, and perceptual tests, with recent advances in brain imaging adding detail at the level of neural control and processing. Because of its dual nature as a component of a linguistic system and a set of actions in the physical world, phonetics has connections to many other branches of linguistics, including not only phonology but syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and clinical linguistics as well. Speech perception has been shown to integrate information from both vision and tactile sensation, indicating an embodied system. Sign language, though primarily visual, has adopted the term “phonetics” to represent the realization component, highlighting the linguistic nature both of phonetics and of sign language. Such diversity offers many avenues for studying phonetics, but it presents challenges to forming a comprehensive account of any language’s phonetic system.
“In the beginning”
Authors: Siecienski A. Edward
Published: July 2019

Orthodox Christians will tell you that their church was founded by Christ himself some 2,000 years ago, and that modern-day Orthodoxy is simply the continuation of the one true church Jesus established when he was on Earth. ‘“In the beginning”’ describes how the twelve apostles, the first Christians, continued Jesus’s preaching of the gospel, despite a lot of early resistance and Roman persecution. It also explains how the church moved on after the apostles’ deaths and how their teaching was preserved through the four gospels. The growth and shaping of Christianity under Constantine the Great—including how it became the official religion of the Roman Empire—and future emperors is described.
From terror to genocide
Authors: Caplan Jane
Published: July 2019

War sanctioned and normalized mass terror and murder, blunted ethical reservations, and emphasized the insignificance of individual lives compared with the survival of the ‘Aryan’ race and utopian visions of its future. ‘From terror to genocide’ considers how the Nazi regime moved from persecution to mass murder—from the expanded concentration camp system to the ‘euthanasia’ of the mentally and physically handicapped—and pays close attention to the complicated path by which a ‘final solution of the Jewish question’—genocide—emerged in eastern Europe and Russia.
4. Physics applied and extended
Authors: Perkowitz Sidney
Published: July 2019

‘Physics applied and extended’ considers how foundational physical concepts and theories apply broadly across science and serve as a basis for technology and its industrial use. Instruments and processes that use physical methods, or were created or discovered in physics labs, have wide uses outside them such as the range of imaging techniques that have revolutionized medical practice. Physical theories can also provide tools or conceptual frameworks that support other sciences or technology: quantum theory is necessary for applications of light and lasers and for nanotechnology; the complex theory that describes the motion of liquids and gases underpins meteorological forecasting and climate modelling; and quantum computation has implications for national security.
3. Architectures
Authors: Dodds Klaus
Published: July 2019

The term ‘geopolitical architecture’ is used to describe the ways in which states and non-state organizations access, manage, and regulate the intersection of territories and flows, and in so doing establish borders between inside/outside, citizen/alien, and domestic/international. Historically, there has been a series of such geopolitical architectures that rejig the relationship between spaces and flows. In order to understand the shifts and the implications for geopolitical theorizing, ‘Architectures’ considers two fundamental subjects: first, sovereignty and how it informs the activities of the territorial state/border; and second, the geopolitical architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries, which highlights how states in particular attempt to control and regulate spaces judged to be disorderly and ungoverned.
Contemporary trends in the management of aortic stenosis in the USA
Authors: Alkhouli Mohamad , Alqahtani Fahad , Ziada Khaled M , Aljohani Sami , Holmes David R , Mathew Verghese
Published: July 2019

Aims

To assess the contemporary trends in aortic stenosis (AS) interventions in the USA before and after the introduction of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI).

Methods and results

We utilized the National-Inpatient-Sample to assess temporal trends in the incidence, cost, and outcomes of AS interventions between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2016. During the study’s period, AS interventions increased from 96 to 137 per 100 000 individuals > 60 years old, P < 0.001. In-hospital expenditure on AS interventions increased from $2.28 billion in 2003 to $4.33 in 2016 P < 0.001. Among patients who underwent aortic valve replacement, the proportion of TAVI increased from 11.9% in 2012 to 43.2% in 2016 (P < 0.001). Males and Hispanics had lower proportions of TAVI compared with females and White patients. Adjusted in-hospital mortality of isolated SAVR decreased from 5.4% in 2003 to 3.3% in 2016 (P < 0.001), whereas adjusted in-hospital mortality of TAVI decreased from 4.7% in 2012 to 2.2% in 2016, P < 0.001. The incidence of new dialysis, permanent pacemaker implantation, and blood transfusion decreased after both TAVI and SAVR between 2012 and 2016. However, the rate of post-operative stroke did not significantly decrease. Length of stay and cost of hospitalization decreased after both SAVR and TAVI, although the later remained higher with TAVI. Rates of non-home discharge decreased over time after TAVI but remained stable after isolated SAVR.

Conclusion

This nationwide survey documents the increasing incidence of AS interventions, the rising cost of modern AS care, and the paradigm shift in aortic valve replacement practice in the USA.
Tomography of crust and lithosphere in the western Indian Ocean from noise cross-correlations of land and ocean bottom seismometers
Authors: Hable Sarah , Sigloch Karin , Stutzmann Eléonore , Kiselev Sergey , Barruol Guilhem
Published: July 2019

We use seismic noise cross-correlations to obtain a 3-D tomography model of SV-wave velocities beneath the western Indian Ocean, in the depth range of the oceanic crust and uppermost mantle. The study area covers 2000 × 2000 km2 between Madagascar and the three spreading ridges of the Indian Ocean, centred on the volcanic hotspot of La Réunion. We use seismograms from 38 ocean bottom seismometers (OBSs) deployed by the RHUM-RUM project and 10 island stations on La Réunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rodrigues, and Tromelin. Phase cross-correlations are calculated for 1119 OBS-to-OBS, land-to-OBS, and land-to-land station pairs, and a phase-weighted stacking algorithm yields robust group velocity measurements in the period range of 3–50 s. We demonstrate that OBS correlations across large interstation distances of >2000 km are of sufficiently high quality for large-scale tomography of ocean basins. Many OBSs yielded similarly good group velocity measurements as land stations. Besides Rayleigh waves, the noise correlations contain a low-velocity wave type propagating at 0.8–1.5 km s−1 over distances exceeding 1000 km, presumably Scholte waves travelling through seafloor sediments. The 100 highest-quality group velocity curves are selected for tomographic inversion at crustal and lithospheric depths. The inversion is executed jointly with a data set of longer-period, Rayleigh-wave phase and group velocity measurements from earthquakes, which had previously yielded a 3-D model of Indian Ocean lithosphere and asthenosphere. Robust resolution tests and plausible structural findings in the upper 30 km validate the use of noise-derived OBS correlations for adding crustal structure to earthquake-derived tomography of the oceanic mantle. Relative to crustal reference model CRUST1.0, our new shear-velocity model tends to enhance both slow and fast anomalies. It reveals slow anomalies at 20 km depth beneath La Réunion, Mauritius, Rodrigues Ridge, Madagascar Rise, and beneath the Central Indian spreading ridge. These structures can clearly be associated with increased crustal thickness and/or volcanic activity. Locally thickened crust beneath La Réunion and Mauritius is probably related to magmatic underplating by the hotspot. In addition, these islands are characterized by a thickened lithosphere that may reflect the depleted, dehydrated mantle regions from which the crustal melts where sourced. Our tomography model is available as electronic supplement.
Methods to isolate retrograde and prograde Rayleigh-wave signals
Authors: Gribler Gabriel , Mikesell T Dylan
Published: July 2019

Estimating shear wave velocity with depth from Rayleigh-wave dispersion data is limited by the accuracy of fundamental and higher mode identification and characterization. In many cases, the fundamental mode signal propagates exclusively in retrograde motion, while higher modes propagate in prograde motion. It has previously been shown that differences in particle motion can be identified with multicomponent recordings and used to separate prograde from retrograde signals. Here we explore the domain of existence of prograde motion of the fundamental mode, arising from a combination of two conditions: (1) a shallow, high-impedance contrast and (2) a high Poisson ratio material. We present solutions to isolate fundamental and higher mode signals using multicomponent recordings. Previously, a time-domain polarity mute was used with limited success due to the overlap in the time domain of fundamental and higher mode signals at low frequencies. We present several new approaches to overcome this low-frequency obstacle, all of which utilize the different particle motions of retrograde and prograde signals. First, the Hilbert transform is used to phase shift one component by 90° prior to summation or subtraction of the other component. This enhances either retrograde or prograde motion and can increase the mode amplitude. Secondly, we present a new time–frequency domain polarity mute to separate retrograde and prograde signals. We demonstrate these methods with synthetic and field data to highlight the improvements to dispersion images and the resulting dispersion curve extraction.
Genome-wide association analysis of 350 000 Caucasians from the UK Biobank identifies novel loci for asthma, hay fever and eczema
Authors: Johansson Åsa , Rask-Andersen Mathias , Karlsson Torgny , Ek Weronica E
Published: July 2019

Even though heritability estimates suggest that the risk of asthma, hay fever and eczema is largely due to genetic factors, previous studies have not explained a large part of the genetics behind these diseases. In this genome-wide association study, we include 346 545 Caucasians from the UK Biobank to identify novel loci for asthma, hay fever and eczema and replicate novel loci in three independent cohorts. We further investigate if associated lead single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have a significantly larger effect for one disease compared to the other diseases, to highlight possible disease-specific effects. We identified 141 loci, of which 41 are novel, to be associated (P ≤ 3 × 10−8) with asthma, hay fever or eczema, analyzed separately or as disease phenotypes that includes the presence of different combinations of these diseases. The largest number of loci was associated with the combined phenotype (asthma/hay fever/eczema). However, as many as 20 loci had a significantly larger effect on hay fever/eczema only compared to their effects on asthma, while 26 loci exhibited larger effects on asthma compared with their effects on hay fever/eczema. At four of the novel loci, TNFRSF8, MYRF, TSPAN8, and BHMG1, the lead SNPs were in Linkage Disequilibrium (LD) (>0.8) with potentially casual missense variants. Our study shows that a large amount of the genetic contribution is shared between the diseases. Nonetheless, a number of SNPs have a significantly larger effect on one of the phenotypes, suggesting that part of the genetic contribution is more phenotype specific.
AAV9-Stathmin1 gene delivery improves disease phenotype in an intermediate mouse model of spinal muscular atrophy
Authors: Villalón E , Kline R A , Smith C E , Lorson Z C , Osman E Y , O’Day S , Murray L M , Lorson C L
Published: July 2019

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a devastating infantile genetic disorder caused by the loss of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein that leads to premature death due to loss of motor neurons and muscle atrophy. The approval of an antisense oligonucleotide therapy for SMA was an important milestone in SMA research; however, effective next-generation therapeutics will likely require combinatorial SMN-dependent therapeutics and SMN-independent disease modifiers. A recent cross-disease transcriptomic analysis identified Stathmin-1 (STMN1), a tubulin-depolymerizing protein, as a potential disease modifier across different motor neuron diseases, including SMA. Here, we investigated whether viral-based delivery of STMN1 decreased disease severity in a well-characterized SMA mouse model. Intracerebroventricular delivery of scAAV9-STMN1 in SMA mice at P2 significantly increased survival and weight gain compared to untreated SMA mice without elevating Smn levels. scAAV9-STMN1 improved important hallmarks of disease, including motor function, NMJ pathology and motor neuron cell preservation. Furthermore, scAAV9-STMN1 treatment restored microtubule networks and tubulin expression without affecting tubulin stability. Our results show that scAAV9-STMN1 treatment improves SMA pathology possibly by increasing microtubule turnover leading to restored levels of stable microtubules. Overall, these data demonstrate that STMN1 can significantly reduce the SMA phenotype independent of restoring SMN protein and highlight the importance of developing SMN-independent therapeutics for the treatment of SMA.
Contests of legitimacy and value: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the logic of prohibition
Authors: Considine Laura
Published: July 2019

The recently adopted Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has caused much debate and controversy in global nuclear politics. Given that the stated goal of the TPNW supporters (states and NGOs alike) is to embed the treaty in the structures of nuclear governance and to strengthen its normative power, how likely is the TPNW to achieve these objectives? The article argues that the unique structures of legitimacy and value within which nuclear weapons are enmeshed place particular complications on the normative force of the TPNW as compared to previous humanitarian arms control initiatives, which has implications for the way in which the TPNW can function to consolidate a prohibitionary norm on nuclear weapons possession. The article uses the framing of legitimacy to analyse the complex structures within which the TPNW was adopted and within which it will enter into force, particularly focusing on the TPNW's relationship to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The article concludes that consolidation may require a further challenge to the existing structures of nuclear order than state actors have, so far, been willing to make. This work is based on first-hand observations from the TPNW negotiations and interviews with civil society actors at the United Nations in New York in June and July 2017.