bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Optimization of Biodiesel Production Parameters from Cucurbita maxima Waste Oil Using Microwave Assisted via Box-Behnken Design Approach
Authors: Hundie Ketema Beyecha
Published: April 2022

The production of biodiesel from vegetables or fruits waste oils has high potential as renewable energy. The Cucurbita maxima wastes are massive source of oils, which are believed to indicate the possible sources of renewable energy whose biodiesel can be produced. Hence, the study explores the potential of the Cucurbita maxima wastes, for the production of biodiesel. In this study, the Soxhlet extraction method was used to extract Cucurbita maxima waste oil using an organic solvent. Through Box-Behnken design (BBD), the effects of methanol to oil molar ratio (6–10), catalyst concentration (2–6%), and reaction time (45–75 min) on the transesterification efficiency of methyl esters were investigated. The oil contents of Cucurbita maxima waste was found to be

44.6
±
0.21

%. This oil was characterized, and after obtaining the pure characterized oil, biodiesel was produced using microwave assisted by the transesterification process. The optimum conversion efficiency of the Cucurbita maxima waste oil to fatty acid methyl ether was 97.76%, at the optimal parameters, methanol to oil ratio (8.4 : 1), catalyst concentration (3.14%), and reaction time (57.12 min). The results revealed that all parameters have a significant effect on the yield of biodiesel (

p
<
0.0001

). The physicochemical properties reveal that the Cucurbita maxima waste oil could be applied as a potential source of material for methyl ester production. The fatty acid profile of the oil indicated that it was mainly composed of unsaturated fatty acid, which ensures good flow properties of the fuel. The results of these studies showed the prospective of Cucurbita maxima wastes as a new potential feedstock for biodiesel production.
Open Circuit Fault Diagnosis in Five-Level Cascaded H-Bridge Inverter
Authors: Mehta Pavan , Sahoo Subhanarayan , Dhiman Harsh
Published: April 2022

The development of power electronic converter, especially multilevel converter, is remarkable for several decades. The complex switching and increased power of semiconductor devices are prime reasons for faults in multilevel inverters and have raised question about reliability. To improve the reliability, a cost-effective solution in terms of fault diagnosis is essential. In this context, this study proposed an open circuit fault (OCF) diagnosis technique for a switching device in a five-level cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter using fuzzy logic control. The OCF features like output voltage total harmonic distortion (THD) and normalized average output voltage are fuzzed as input variables of the fuzzy logic controller. These input variables are divided into various triangular antecedent membership function (MF). The output produced by the fuzzy controller as consequent MFs is divided into different levels to identify the faulty switch. In order to make a complete fault-tolerant structure, a reduced modulation index-based postfault control is suggested to get a balanced output voltage. The MATLAB/Simulink results and prototype results are the evidence to support the proposed fault diagnosis technique.
Antitumor Activity of lncRNA NBAT-1 via Inhibition of miR-4504 to Target to WWC3 in Oxaliplatin-Resistant Colorectal Carcinoma
Authors: Li Chen , Li Xu
Published: April 2022

Background. Increasing evidence shows that dysfunction of noncoding RNAs is implicated in cancer. Neuroblastoma associated transcript 1 (NBAT-1) has been identified as a tumor suppressive lncRNA that is aberrantly expressed in cancers. However, the function and the underlying mechanisms of the NBAT-1 in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) remain unknown. Methods. Gene expression was detected by RT-qPCR. The influence of NBAT-1 on CRC was evaluated by the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay and an in vivo xenograft mouse model. The possible binding of NBAT-1 to miRNAs was predicted via the miRDB online tool and confirmed by a dual-luciferase reporter assay. Protein expression was detected by western blot. Results. NBAT-1 expression was significantly decreased in CRC tissues, especially in patients with oxaliplatin (OXA) resistance. NBAT-1 inhibited OXA-resistant CRC cell proliferation in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. The mechanism study revealed that NBAT-1 functioned as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) of miR-4504. NBAT-1 bound miR-4504 and decreased miR-4504 expression in CRC cells. Furthermore, WW-and-C2-domain-containing protein family member 3 (WWC3) was identified as a target of miR-4504. Downregulation of NBAT-1 promoted miR-4504 expression and reduced the level of WWC3. Inhibition of WWC3 by NBAT-1 depletion inactivated Hippo signalling by inhibiting the phosphorylation of large tumor suppressor kinase 1 (LATS1) and yes-associated protein (YAP). Consistently, knockdown of NBAT-1 suppressed the expression of YAP transcriptional targets. Conclusions. These findings demonstrated that lncRNA NBAT-1 suppresses OXA-resistant CRC cell growth via inhibition of miR-4504 to regulate the WWC3/LATS1/YAP axis.
An Efficient Energy Management Routing and Scalable Topology in Wireless Sensor Network Using Virtual Backbone
Authors: Rayan Alanazi , Taloba Ahmed I. , Hamed Nadir O. , Zahran Heba Y. , Mahmoud Emad E.
Published: April 2022

The wireless sensor network (WSN) approach is one of the fastest growing approaches in the world of communications and engineering. The primary objective of a WSN is to discover the important information about the environment, depending on the nature of the applications under which it is implemented, and to communicate this information to a single base station (BS) so that appropriate measures can be taken. These sensor nodes communicate via a variety of protocols. The difficulty with the traditional system is that while collecting the observed data, each node transmits its felt information directly to a base station, which quickly exhausts its power. This study suggests a Backbone Energy-Efficient Sleeping (BEES) management strategy with two appealing features: (i) the capacity of backbone is scalable by basic parameters, and (ii) the backbone nodes were distributed equally, implying that the backbone on its own is energy efficient during routine activities. Reliable connections are expected to obtain QoS and routing protocols of such backbone nodes in wireless multihop systems. As a result, present localized routing in virtualized backbone schedule cannot ensure energy-efficient paths. An energy-efficient routing scheme for Virtual Back Bone Nodes (VBS) increases life of node and switches off its radio while in sleep state to spend less power. BEES’ performance is evaluated by comparing it to two different topology management techniques. The results show that BEES performs better algorithms. It ensures optimal routing with minimal node power consumption but also implements the essential communication range for backbone networks.
The Theory and Method of Data Acquisition of Mixed Traffic Popular People and Nonmotor Vehicles Based on Image Processing
Authors: Wang Chongjiao , Yao Changrong , Zhao Siguang , Zhao Shida , Qiang Bin
Published: April 2022

In road mixed traffic, pedestrians and nonmotor vehicles have a great impact on the driving of motor vehicles. This kind of influence not only threatens the road traffic safety but also leads to the increase of delay and the decrease of traffic capacity. The purpose of this paper is to study the theory and method of data acquisition of mixed traffic popular people and nonmotor vehicles based on image processing technology. Aiming at the problem that the basic state space model solves the phenomenon of “failure” such as mutual interference between mixed objects, this paper proposes a KF tracking model based on a fuzzy matching method to realize the effective and accurate tracking of mixed traffic objects. The experimental results show that, after extracting the morphological features of the detected pedestrian and nonmotor vehicle images and using the method of pattern recognition to classify, recognize, and count the mixed traffic objects, through the comparison of the two trajectory lines, we can see that the tracking accuracy of the algorithm is high under the mutual interference of pedestrian and nonmotor vehicle. Excluding the detection error, the pedestrian tracking error is less than 10 pixels, the average error is 2.366 pixels, the maximum error of nonmotor vehicle tracking is 19 pixels, and the average error is 2.5 pixels.
SP1 Promotes HDAC4 Expression and Inhibits HMGB1 Expression to Reduce Intestinal Barrier Dysfunction, Oxidative Stress, and Inflammatory Response after Sepsis
Authors: Liu Zhen-Mi , Wang Xi , Li Chen-Xi , Liu Xue-Yan , Guo Xiao-Jing , Li Yang , Chen You-Lian , Ye Hong-Xing , Chen Huai-Sheng
Published: April 2022

As a serious and elusive syndrome caused by infection, sepsis causes a high rate of mortality around the world. Our investigation aims at exploring the role and possible mechanism of specificity protein-1 (SP1) in the development of sepsis. A mouse model of sepsis was established by cecal ligation perforation, and a cellular model was stimulated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), followed by determination of the SP1 expression. It was determined that SP1 was poorly expressed in the intestinal tissues of septic mice and LPS-treated cells. Next, we examined the interactions among SP1, histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4), and high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) and found that SP1 bound to the HDAC4 promoter to upregulate its expression, thereby promoting the deacetylation of HMGB1. Meanwhile, gain- or loss-of-function approaches were applied to evaluate the intestinal barrier dysfunction, oxidative stress, and inflammatory response. Overexpression of SP1 or underexpression of HMGB1 was observed to reduce intestinal barrier dysfunction, oxidative stress, and inflammatory injury. Collectively, these experimental data provide evidence reporting that SP1 could promote the HDAC4-mediated HMGB1 deacetylation to reduce intestinal barrier dysfunction, oxidative stress, and inflammatory response induced by sepsis, providing a novel therapeutic target for sepsis prevention and treatment.
Challenges Presented by Cuffless Measurement of Blood Pressure if Adopted for Diagnosis and Treatment of Hypertension
Authors: Avolio Alberto , Cox James , Louka Kyrollos , Shirbani Fatemeh , Tan Isabella , Qasem Ahmad , Butlin Mark
Published: April 2022

The global health burden presented by hypertension is providing increased motivation for improved means of collection of blood pressure (BP) data. A growing area of research and commercial activity is the use of wearable devices to provide BP data using non-invasive cuffless techniques. The accelerated progress in recent years, particularly relating to connectivity of smartphone technology, has promoted the availability of consumer devices that provide values of BP. The main types of devices are wrist-worn, watch-type devices with sensors that typically record a photoplethysmography (PPG) signal, sometimes also with an electrocardiography (ECG) signal. The general underlying concept of the cuffless BP measurement in most device types is the association of BP and the travel time of the arterial pulse between two locations, determined from the time delay between the ECG and PPG signals. Other methods may involve additional analysis of the PPG waveform features. Experimental data are presented to illustrate the challenges presented by cuffless BP techniques in obtaining reliable BP measurements when the change in BP is caused by different stimuli affecting cardiac and vascular mechanisms. These effects influence the association of the measured and physiological BP change, thus presenting significant challenges and potential limitations in the use of cuffless BP devices for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension.
Resistance to Erythropoiesis-Stimulating Agents among Patients on Hemodialysis Is Typically Transient
Authors: Goodkin David A. , Zhao Junhui , Cases Aleix , Nangaku Masaomi , Karaboyas Angelo
Published: April 2022

Introduction: This study examines factors associated with erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) hyporesponsiveness, the duration of ESA hyporesponsiveness, the frequency of new episodes, and variation across countries. Methods: We used international Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study data from 2015 to 2018 (N = 26,656) to investigate changes in ESA Resistance Index (ERI), calculated as epoetin dose divided by [hemoglobin × body weight] in patients on hemodialysis. We illustrated the proportion of patients who moved to other ERI quintiles over 12 months, and we studied the incidence and duration of ESA resistance. We examined case-mix factors associated with quintiles of ERI. Results: Most patients migrated out of their original ERI quintile within 4 months. Only 22% of patients in the top quintile of ERI at baseline (4.4% of all patients) remained in the top quintile during all 12 months of follow-up. A total of 42% of patients manifested an upper-quintile ERI during at least 1 month. Median duration of a new episode of ESA resistance was 2 months. Catheter hemoaccess, elevated C-reactive protein, lower transferrin saturation, lower serum albumin concentration, and recent hospitalization occurred more frequently among patients in the highest ERI quintile at baseline. ERI values were highest in the USA, Italy, and Mideastern nations and lowest in Russia and Japan. Discussion/Conclusion: It is a misconception to envision a sizable, fixed segment of the population with permanent resistance to ESA – resistance fluctuates frequently. The implications of these findings for prescription of ESAs and of hypoxia-inducible factor-prolyl hydroxylase inhibitors are discussed.
Desidustat in Anemia due to Dialysis-Dependent Chronic Kidney Disease: A Phase 3 Study (DREAM-D)
Authors: Gang Sishir , Khetan Prakash , Varade Deepak , Chinta Venkata Ramakrishna , Mavani Siddharth , Gupta Umesh , Reddy S. Venkata Krishna , Rajanna Sunil , Jeloka Tarun , Ruhela Vivek , Kansagra Kevinkumar , Kanani Pooja , Bhatt Jayesh , Zala Kuldipsinh ,   Study Investigator Group
Published: April 2022

Background: A phase 3 study to assess the efficacy and safety of the desidustat, an oral hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitor, against the epoetin alfa for the treatment of anemia in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) with dialysis dependency. Methods: DREAM-D was a phase 3, multicenter, open-label, randomized, active-controlled clinical study conducted across 38 centers in India. A total of 392 patients with clinical diagnosis of anemia due to CKD with dialysis need (Erythrocyte Stimulating Agent [ESA] naïve or prior ESA users) and with baseline hemoglobin levels of 8.0–11.0 g/dL (inclusive) were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either desidustat oral tablets (thrice a week) or epoetin alfa subcutaneous injection for 24 weeks to maintain a hemoglobin level of 10–12 g/dL. The primary endpoint was to assess the change in the hemoglobin level between the desidustat and the epoetin alfa groups from the baseline to evaluation period week 16–24. The key secondary efficacy endpoint was the number of patients with hemoglobin response. Results: The least square mean (standard error) change in hemoglobin from the baseline to week 16–24 was 0.95 (0.09) g/dL in the desidustat group and 0.80 (0.09) g/dL in the epoetin alfa group (difference: 0.14 [0.14] g/dL; 95% confidence interval: −0.1304, 0.4202), which met the prespecified noninferiority margin. The number of hemoglobin responders was significantly higher in the desidustat group (106 [59.22%]) when compared to the epoetin alfa group (89 [48.37%]) (p = 0.0382). The safety profile of the desidustat oral tablet was comparable with the epoetin alfa injection. There were no new risks or no increased risks seen with the use of desidustat compared to epoetin alfa. Conclusion: In this study, desidustat was found to be noninferior to epoetin in the treatment of anemia in CKD patients on dialysis and it was well-tolerated. Clinical Trial Registry Identifier: CTRI/2019/12/022312 (India).
A Systematic Review Assessing the Underrepresentation of Cancer Patients in COVID-19 Trials
Authors: Buchrits Shira , Fredman Danielle , Ben Tikva Kagan Kim , Gafter-Gvili Anat
Published: April 2022

Background: The new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has emerged as a global pandemic that threatens thousands around the world. Observational cohort studies have demonstrated that cancer patients have inferior outcomes due to underlying malignancy, treatment-related immunosuppression, or increased comorbidities. We aimed to examine the representation of cancer patients (hematological malignancies and solid tumors) in COVID-19 therapeutic and prophylactic interventional trials. Methods: In this review, all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published between December 2019 and August 2021 were included. We included only trials evaluating medications that were recommended by NIH guidelines: steroids, tocilizumab, remdesivir, and REGN-COV2. Results: The search yielded 541 potentially relevant RCTs, 22 of which were considered suitable. All trials included patients with solid cancer and hematological malignancies in the formal reported inclusion criteria. However, only two trials reported the accurate number of cancer patients included. Ten trials excluded neutropenic patients and seven trials excluded thrombocytopenic patients. Eleven trials excluded patients that were treated with any immunosuppression treatment. None of the two trials that included cancer patients reported separate outcomes for this population. Conclusion: Our systematic review shows that cancer patients are underrepresented in COVID-19 interventional therapeutic trials, and evidence regarding outcomes are lacking.
Conhecimentos, atitudes e práticas de adolescentes sobre o papilomavírus humano
Authors: Galvão Mariana Portela Soares Pires , Araújo Telma Maria Evangelista de , Rocha Silvana Santiago da
Published: April 2022

OBJETIVO Analisar conhecimentos, atitudes e práticas de adolescentes estudantes de escolas públicas do município de Teresina-PI sobre o papilomavírus humano (HPV). MÉTODOS Estudo transversal, analítico, realizado em 12 escolas da rede pública do município de Teresina, com uma amostra aleatória de 472 adolescentes de 15 anos. Todos os participantes responderam a um questionário validado, que avaliou as características sociodemográficas, o nível de conhecimento sobre o HPV, atitudes relacionadas à vacinação e ao status vacinal. Os níveis de conhecimento e atitude foram classificados por meio de escores padronizados e a prática mediante a situação vacinal. As análises foram realizadas com o uso do SPSS. Na análise bivariada, utilizou-se a regressão logística simples, por meio de odds ratio para identificar as associações entre as características sociodemográficas e o conhecimento, e a atitude com a prática de prevenção contra o HPV. As variáveis que na análise bivariada apresentaram valor de p ≤ 0,20 foram submetidas ao modelo multivariado de regressão logística. A significância estatística foi fixada em p < 0,05. RESULTADOS Dentre os participantes, 27,3% apresentaram conhecimento suficiente, 34,1% atitudes positivas e 74,6% prática adequada. Na análise multivariada observou-se associação estatisticamente significativa entre o sexo feminino (ORa = 15,62; IC95%: 9,08–26,9), conhecimento satisfatório (ORa = 2,09; IC95%: 1,15–3,81), e atitudes positivas (ORa = 1,89; IC95%: 1,10–3,23) com a prática adequada. CONCLUSÕES Ser do sexo feminino, ter nível de conhecimento sobre o HPV e a vacina classificados como satisfatório, bem como ter atitudes positivas frente à vacinação contra o HPV reforçam a prática adequada de vacinação. Estes achados demonstram a necessidade de ampliar o conhecimento dos adolescentes, gerando atitudes positivas com vistas à vacinação dentro de uma perspectiva adequada.
Hourly Air Pollutants and Acute Coronary Syndrome Onset in 1.29 Million Patients
Authors: Chen Renjie , Jiang Yixuan , Hu Jialu , Chen Honglei , Li Huichu , Meng Xia , Ji John S. , Gao Ya , Wang Weidong , Liu Cong , Fang Weiyi , Yan Hongbing , Chen Jiyan , Wang Weimin , Xiang Dingcheng , Su Xi , Yu Bo , Wang Yan , Xu Yawei , Wang Lefeng , Li Chunjie , Chen Yundai , Bell Michelle L. , Cohen Aaron J. , Ge Junbo , Huo Yong , Kan Haidong
Published: April 2022

Background:

Short-term exposure to ambient air pollution has been linked with daily hospitalization and mortality from acute coronary syndrome (ACS); however, the associations of subdaily (hourly) levels of criteria air pollutants with the onset of ACS and its subtypes have rarely been evaluated.

Methods:

We conducted a time-stratified case-crossover study among 1 292 880 patients with ACS from 2239 hospitals in 318 Chinese cities between January 1, 2015, and September 30, 2020. Hourly concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM
2.5
), coarse particulate matter (PM
2.5–10
), nitrogen dioxide (NO
2
), sulfur dioxide (SO
2
), carbon monoxide (CO), and ozone (O
3
) were collected. Hourly onset data of ACS and its subtypes, including ST-segment–elevation myocardial infarction, non–ST-segment–elevation myocardial infarction, and unstable angina, were also obtained. Conditional logistic regressions combined with polynomial distributed lag models were applied.

Results:

Acute exposures to PM
2.5
, NO
2
, SO
2
, and CO were each associated with the onset of ACS and its subtypes. These associations were strongest in the concurrent hour of exposure and were attenuated thereafter, with the weakest effects observed after 15 to 29 hours. There were no apparent thresholds in the concentration–response curves. An interquartile range increase in concentrations of PM
2.5
(36.0 μg/m
3
), NO
2
(29.0 µg/m
3
), SO
2
(9.0 µg/m
3
), and CO (0.6 mg/m
3
) over the 0 to 24 hours before onset was significantly associated with 1.32%, 3.89%, 0.67%, and 1.55% higher risks of ACS onset, respectively. For a given pollutant, the associations were comparable in magnitude across different subtypes of ACS. NO
2
showed the strongest associations with all 3 subtypes, followed by PM
2.5
, CO, and SO
2
. Greater magnitude of associations was observed among patients older than 65 years and in the cold season. Null associations of exposure to either PM
2.5–10
or O
3
with ACS onset were observed.

Conclusions:

The results suggest that transient exposure to the air pollutants PM
2.5
, NO
2
, SO
2
, or CO, but not PM
2.5–10
or O
3
, may trigger the onset of ACS, even at concentrations below the World Health Organization air quality guidelines.
Flow‐Diversion for Complex Posterior Communicating Artery Aneurysms Associated With a Fetal Posterior Circulation
Authors: Baranoski Jacob F. , Merrill Sarah , Rutledge Caleb , Catapano Joshua S. , Hendricks Benjamin K. , Cole Tyler S. , Majmundar Neil , Wilkinson D. Andrew , Srinivasan Visish M. , Jadhav Ashutosh P. , Albuquerque Felipe C. , Ducruet Andrew F.
Published: April 2022

Background

Flow‐diverting stents (FDSs) are effective in treating complex intracranial aneurysms, including posterior communicating artery aneurysms. However, some studies have suggested FDSs have limited efficacy for posterior communicating artery aneurysms associated with a fetal posterior communicating artery (FPCoA).

Methods

A retrospective analysis of patients with FPCoA aneurysms treated using FDS intervention alone was performed. Only aneurysms in which the FPCoA originated from the neck or dome of the aneurysm, which were therefore not amenable to standard coil embolization, were included.

Results

Stand‐alone, single‐device FDSs were placed in 16 patients with unruptured posterior communicating artery aneurysms associated with an FPCoA. The device was sized to ensure excellent wall apposition, with a focus on expanding the device across the aneurysm neck to optimize flow diversion. Excellent angiographic results were achieved in 12 patients (75%), and all patients had satisfactory clinical outcomes, with complete obliteration of the aneurysm in 10 (62.5%). No patients required additional treatment. Nine patients had complete patency of the FPCoA, 4 had mildly decreased flow, 2 had markedly diminished flow, and 1 had FPCoA occlusion. In all 7 cases with decreased FPCoA flow, there was coincident increased flow in the P1 segment of the posterior cerebral artery. No patient developed posterior circulation ischemia. Mean follow‐up was 19.9 months.

Conclusion

Contrary to previous reports, the placement of FDSs was found to be a safe and effective treatment option for FPCoA aneurysms. The deployment technique of maximizing device expansion across the neck of the aneurysm may contribute to successful outcomes. Treatment using an FDS may be particularly useful for complex FPCoAs.
Student Transportation in Choice-Rich Districts: Implementation Challenges and Responses
Authors: Sattin-Bajaj Carolyn
Published: April 2022

Despite a growing recognition of the significance of student transportation for promoting equitable school choice, to date, there has been limited understanding of the implementation of school transportation policies, particularly in choice-heavy settings. Moreover, little is known about the challenges associated with managing student transportation in large school districts or how school and district administrators working in distinct contexts respond to these challenges. This brief draws on interview data collected from district administrators, charter school leaders, charter authorizers, and stakeholders in three choice-rich school districts with distinct transportation policies and public transit infrastructures—Detroit, New Orleans, and New York City—to identify the common challenges associated with implementing student transportation policies and administrators’ responses to them. The brief includes a discussion of the implications of high transportation costs, logistical complexity, and student safety challenges as well as non-uniform transportation provision and transportation policies for equitable access to charter schools. It ends with a review of some potential policy alternatives that policymakers should consider when designing transportation policies or working to improve existing transportation practices.
Are Saul’s Sons Scapegoats?
Authors: Chambers Nathan
Published: April 2022

A number of scholars have praised the work of René Girard as opening a way forward for biblical interpretation. This essay seeks to test the utility of Girard’s theories by applying them to a close reading of 2 Samuel 21:1–14. It concludes that Girard’s work draws attention to certain neglected themes but is unable to account for the narrative of 2 Samuel 21 in its final form.
Now You’re in the Sunken Place: Constructed Monsters in Daniel 7 and Get Out
Authors: Jarrard Eric X.
Published: April 2022

This essay argues that both Daniel 7 and the film Get Out render the respective political status quo of their times in monstrous form, and use the horror narrative to dramatize their struggles against these monstrous political hegemonies. Comparing the two in this way reveals notable trans-temporal commonalities between groups forced to reckon with their socio-political disenfranchisement, with both works externalizing their respective social anxieties by fictionalizing their oppressor in monstrous form. These texts function comparably as creative expressions of political resistance in their respective eras by serving to empower oppressed groups. They do so by postulating an imagined escape from tyrannical structures of political abuse through the crystallization or manifestation of their fear of those structures in monstrous form. Part one of this essay identifies and analyzes the monstrous beings in Daniel 7 and Get Out, concentrating on the physical and spatial characteristics. Part two describes the historical and cultural specificity of these monsters and the productive value of their affect. The final part of this essay explores how a comparison of Daniel 7 and Get Out not only challenges the relative capaciousness of horror theory, but also helps us to better access the ambiguous rhetorical shaping of the biblical text. In sum, I will argue that both Daniel 7 and Get Out confront our existing notions of what horror is, how it functions, and the work it can do.
The Spirit of Labor
Authors: Soares Rebecca
Published: April 2022

Although typically characterized as authors of social realism or social gospel fiction, respectively, Elizabeth Gaskell’s and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s nineteenth-century industrial novels defy traditional generic designations through their deployment of supernatural and spiritualist discourse to otherwise decidedly earthly and material subjects. Creating a genre that I call spiritual realism, these writers infused realist narratives with the spiritual motifs and images that colored the social and religious ideology of the nineteenth century in order to represent both the material and immaterial realities of their everyday experience. This new spiritual realism allowed writers to depict the nebulous, transitory, and incomprehensible aspects of their everyday reality in an increasingly modern, industrial, and transnational world. In order to establish the centrality of spiritual realism to our understanding of nineteenth-century industrial fiction, this essay examines Elizabeth Gaskell’sNorth and South(1855) and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’sThe Silent Partner(1871), emphasizing each author’s deployment of spiritualism to interrogate the morality of industrialization and the treatment of workers.
“Personal Items”
Authors: He Yuemin
Published: April 2022

Whereas Buddhism’s profile is rising in the US, there are surprising ways that Buddhism recirculates in more secular guises in traditionally Buddhist cultures of East Asia. This essay explores an intriguing case. Chi Li’s razor-sharp, passionate poems are quirkily “personal,” but relate very well to a wide spectrum of Chinese readers who made the popular novelist’s surprise poetry debut a bestseller in China. By studying Chi’s extensive use of Buddhist references to tap into issues dear to her, this essay shows that the Chinese readers are receptive to Buddhist ideas more as philosophies, principles, and moral codes than as explicit religion, even though Buddhism has a 2,000-year history in China. It argues that understanding this coded receptiveness helps translate Chi’s personal musings, blasts, and defiance into dialogues that address social norms, environmental issues, and individual complicity in social problems.
East African Religious Pluralism
Authors: Gadsby Blair Alan
Published: April 2022

For many recent generations the city of Mombasa, Kenya, on the east African coast (pop. 1.2 million) has been a cosmopolitan racial-cultural-religious milieu of the African, Arab, Indian-Asian, and European. The purpose of this paper is to clarify religious pluralism (r/p) in this urban context to see if there are any instructions to be drawn for the academic understanding of religion in keeping with the methodologies of Religious Studies (RS). Especially of interest here is the effectiveness of the sociological theory of religion developed in the 1987 book A Theory of Religion (ATOR) by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge to (de)problematize religious behaviour as distinct from political behaviour, which too often become confused and misappropriated as causes. In addition, ATOR provides the terminology for a more critical theory of religion whereby the state’s involvement can be accounted for by examining its use of the cultural means of coercion, thereby clearing the way for a typology of east African r/p to emerge.
The Illusion of Reality and the Reality of Illusion
Authors: Palmeirim Manuela
Published: April 2022

This article reflects on the role of staged and rehearsed performance, trickery, and prestidigitation in ritual, acts that many anthropologists have observed and registered in their ethnographic accounts but most often took to be fraud, and consequently were discarded from their analyses and interpretations. The curative episode narrated here as a point of departure was intentionally arranged beforehand by the practitioners to make-believe. It is considered in the context of other deluding and simulative acts that are often engaged in healing ritualized behaviour to address several questions. Is deception an intrinsic property of ritual? Do these acts necessarily entail the judgment of true or false? How can they coexist peacefully in the healer’s mind with seriousness and conviction?
Historicising Refugee Protection in India
Authors: Sinha Manoj Kumar
Published: April 2022

Since the beginning of civilisation the Indian culture promoted, preached and practiced diversity; a land which has accommodated and embraced racial, cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. The doctrine of VasudhaivaKutumbakam1 – the world is a family – is entrenched in Indian philosophy; it is one of the basic tenets of India’s spiritual and cultural heritage. The intrinsic value of this philosophy is that it has no discrimination, does not play favourites and has no class or hierarchy. India has a great tradition of hosting people who were in the fear of being persecuted by their government much before the adoption of international legal framework for the protection of refugees. This paper examines the history of India’s approach towards people seeking protection, by invoking doctrine of humanitarian consideration, despite the non-existence of a refugee policy at the time. Then, the paper proceeds to evaluate the massive inflow of the people into India upon partition of India and how effectively these new population were integrated and rehabilitated into our society, and how the practice has evolved to its current form. The study also carefully looks into the development of jurisprudence on refugees in India, by analyzing various judgments of the Supreme Court, Courts, and lower Courts.
Maimonides as Muslim Theologian: Al-Kawtharī’s Edition of al-Tabrīzī’s Commentary on Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed
Authors: Mazor Amir
Published: April 2022

The article focuses on a Muslim commentary on a section from Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, written by a 13th-century Persian scholar. Whereas the first part of the article briefly discusses the reception of Maimonides’ Guide in medieval Islam, the nature of the commentary, and the identity of its composer, the second and main part discusses a mid-20th-century Egyptian critical edition of the commentary. This part focuses on the Muslim editor’s preface to the commentary, in which he depicts Maimonides and his Guide in a positive light, against the negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism. The contemporary political context is suggested as a motive for this apologetic and polemical depiction.
Colonisation at the Poles: A Story of Ineffective Occupation
Authors: Johnstone Rachael Lorna
Published: April 2022

This paper examines the legal concept of occupation of territory and its historic application to the Polar regions, to disclose the fallacies at the heart of the colonial projects at both Poles. It also considers how the increasing recognition of non-use value disrupts positivist accounts of occupation.

The colonisation of populated lands was justified by European theories of property that insisted that effective occupation required both a psychological and a physical element. The psychological element of occupation requires the sovereign to engage in a legal fiction that it controls the land and exercises dominion over it but this conceit is not shared by Arctic Indigenous Peoples. The physical element of occupation according to the positivist account requires an owner or sovereign to transform the land in some physical manner. The self-serving European legal theories construed the Indigenous relationship with land as a non-relationship and declared it retrospectively terra nullius. According to their own laws, the colonisers declared their own sovereign authority over Indigenous territories, notwithstanding the existing civilisations.

However, in the Polar regions, the colonisers themselves did very little in the way of physical occupation or transformation of the vast majority of the lands that they claimed. Colonisers demonstrated occupation through the naming of places, mapping, taking resources, building basic structures for shelter, and applying laws over their own people. But Indigenous Peoples had long been doing all those things in the Arctic. 20th century courts accepted that in territories remote from the colonising claimant with little or no population, the degree of physical occupation and exercise of jurisdiction could be very limited. However, they refused to consider the much longer and more extensive use and management by Indigenous Peoples.

In the Antarctic, the territorial claims of the seven claimant states do not pivot on any real physical occupation or transformation of the land at all. This would have been impossible on any scale of significance, given the size and challenging climate of the continent at the time of European discovery. Today, the principles that govern the Antarctic continent favour non-use and a minimisation of impacts. At both Poles, justifications for the exercise of jurisdiction are increasingly based on promises to protect wilderness by minimising human impacts. Sovereignty is demonstrated through non-occupation in a complete reversal of the classical legal theory.
Opportunities for Protecting Biological Diversity in the Arctic Ocean
Authors: Argüello Gabriela
Published: April 2022

The paper analyses the opportunities to establish marine protected areas (MPAs) beyond national jurisdiction in the Arctic Ocean. For this, the author scrutinises the legal processes allowing UNCLOS to adapt to current and future ocean governance challenges concerning biological diversity and the limits of such adaptability. Some significant limitations are found in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) in the Arctic Ocean. The low political commitment of Arctic States to cooperate in fora such the Arctic Council leaves the ABNJ of the Arctic Ocean in a very precarious situation. With extensive areas of the seabed potentially falling under national jurisdiction and the water column remaining as ‘high seas,’ there is a possibility that Arctic cooperation will be eroded.
Due Diligence and Compliance with the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty
Authors: Foster Caroline E.
Published: April 2022

Due diligence standards have been read into treaty provisions for the protection for the environment and beyond in a wide range of international legal settings. The compliance provision of the Madrid Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, Article 13, invites a similar analysis. Despite the doubts of ten years ago that a due diligence standard would be sufficient and appropriate for protecting the Antarctic environment the concept has arguably evolved to the point where it can provide an effective framework for operationalising States’ responsibilities under the Protocol as well as more widely in international environmental law, subject to adequate contextualisation.
Between Economic Nationalism and Globalism: Evaluating Russia’s Recent Regulations on Arctic Shipping
Authors: Sergunin Alexander
Published: April 2022

This study examines how recent changes in Russia’s legal regulations affected shipping via the Northern Sea Route. The paper discusses whether these regulations are helpful for making the NSR a popular international transport corridor or, on the contrary, may lead to its isolation and retaining its status of Russia’s national seaway? This study also reviews Russian legal and practical measures to implement the International Maritime Organization’s Polar Code. The author concludes that despite some legal inconsistencies, the lack of a proper infrastructure and residual environmental problems, the NSR will remain an important priority for the Russian future strategy in the Arctic region. The NSR is viewed by Moscow as an effective instrument to develop the Russian Arctic both domestically and internationally. However, Moscow still faces a dilemma: On the one hand, it wants to keep its control over the NSR and support Russian shipbuilding industry and shipping companies. On the other hand, the Kremlin is willing to open up this passage for international cooperation and integrate it to the global transportation system.
The Fate of the Defeated: Qin’s Treatment of Their Enemies
Authors: Yates Robin D.S.
Published: April 2022

Through an examination of documents from the Qin county of Qianling excavated from Well no. 1, Liye, Hunan Province, and looted documents held by the Yuelu Academy, Hunan University, that were rescued from the Hong Kong antiques market, this paper discusses the ways in which the victorious Qin state treated the enemy that they had defeated in the wars of unification leading to the establishment of the Qin Empire. It also considers how the Qin treated those who resisted the imposition of their rule. It is determined that the Qin categorized these people into three types or groups and applied Qin law to them. It also discusses the establishment of a bureaucratic system through which the Qin tracked down fugitive enemies.
The Withdrawal of the Qin Army from Qianling Prefecture: From the End of Conquest to the Beginning of Occupation
Authors: Miyake (宮宅潔) Kiyoshi
Published: April 2022

After having conquered the Liye region and establishing Qianling prefecture, the Qin army departed from this newly occupied territory stepwise. According to the withdrawal, the ruling system was also gradually adjusted. In this article, the author analyzes the Liye Qin strips chronologically, and examines the process through which military victories resulted in rule by the occupying forces.
The Statute Regarding the Remarriage of Women in The Qin Bamboo Slips in the Collection of Yuelu Academy (Vol. 5) and the Scandal of Lao’ai
Authors: Yang (楊振紅) Zhenhong
Published: April 2022

Slips 001-008 in The Qin Bamboo Slips in the Collection of Yuelu Academy (Vol. 5) contain a legal statute issued on the wuyin day of the twelfth month of the twenty-sixth year of the First Emperor of Qin. It is related to re-establishing a family by means of a woman’s remarriage. The content includes the following: it was forbidden to call the husband in a remarriage as jiafu “substitute father.” It was forbidden for children to call each other as brothers and sisters if they were not fathered by the same man. A widow with children was not allowed to transfer the property of her deceased husband to her maternal family or to the family she remarried into. It was forbidden to force a widow to remarry. The issuance of the wuyin statute was directly associated with the scandal of Lao’ai 嫪毐. Lao’ai had had an affair with the mother of the First Emperor of Qin, fathering two sons with her, and claiming himself as the substitute father of the First Emperor. The Stele of Mount Tai and the Stele of Mount Kuaiji praised the First Emperor for “defending and demarcating the boundary of the inner and the outer, forbidding licentious behavior, so that both men and women are pure and honest” 防隔内外，禁止淫泆，男女絜誠. The First Emperor also named the widow Qing 清 of the Ba 巴 region as a chaste woman and built the Terrace of the Woman Huai Qing 女懷清臺. Those events serve to confirm the relevance between the wuyin statute and the scandal of Lao’ai. Because the term “substitute father” had a notorious reputation, the Han people replaced it with “stepfather” (jifu
繼父) when calling the husband of a remarried mother.
A Preliminary Study of “Other Post Slips” from Liye Site J1
Authors: Tsuchiguchi (土口史記) Fuminori
Published: April 2022

Liye J1 is an archaeological site where the official documents belonging to the county court of Qianling County (遷陵縣) were discarded during the Qin dynasty. Among those unearthed slip manuscripts, some are called “Other Post Slips” 異處簡 These were meant to be delivered to other offices rather than the county court. This article discusses the possible significance revealed by their variety in quantity, and to point out that the frequency of the appearance of “Other Post Slips” reflects the relative distance between the county court and affiliated offices. At the same time, this work provides support to restore the spatial layout of these offices within the county.
What Operations Should a Modern Rural Surgeon Do?
Authors: Dissanaike Sharmila
Published: April 2022

Rural patients have fewer complications and deaths, shorter hospital stay, and less resource utilization than their urban counterparts. They also tend to have fewer chronic illnesses; this reflects a system working as intended, with high-risk patients transferred to better-resourced institutions, while others receive surgical care closer to home. Deciding which operations a modern rural surgeon should—and shouldn’t—perform starts with the question “Who decides?” Government, insurers, hospitals, surgeons, and patients are all stakeholders, with a vested interest in the answer.

Rural hospitals depend on surgeons for their financial existence, and rural surgeons need hospitals to function. The closure of rural hospitals throughout the country threatens the future of rural surgery. Without surgeons, rural patients will die unnecessarily. During the first COVID surge, patients died from such basic surgical emergencies as small bowel obstruction, when tertiary referral hospitals were full. Rural surgeons are essential in providing timely care of the injured patient; even today, patients die in isolated facilities from treatable injuries from lack of a surgeon who can do a splenectomy, or tube thoracostomy for traumatic pneumothorax, for example.

Recruitment of rural surgeons requires identifying interested trainees, often from rural backgrounds, and a defined residency curriculum with emphasis on endoscopy and vascular surgery plus basic gynecology, obstetrics, urology, and orthopedics. Financial incentives & credentials support are also essential for the new rural surgeon. We need to develop many more focused rural surgery programs, and quickly, before the possibility of a broadly skilled rural surgeon in the USA evaporates.
Do we need a posthumanist sociology? Notes from the COVID-19 pandemic
Authors: Vallee Mickey
Published: April 2022

This article asks whether we need a posthumanist sociology, arguing that such a perspective can export a good deal of useful methodological and theoretical insight into the sociological toolbox. A posthumanist sociology is not a flattened ontology, in which we find agency in all things living and non-living. A posthumanist sociology asks instead what we do with the fundamental question of becoming both more and less human, following a surge of interest in decentring human exceptionalism. Moreover, a posthumanist sociology returns to the question of what it means to be an intersectional being, to proliferate the involvement of entities at the intersections of histories and social structures. Thus, it is a perspective that emerges from within the conditions of related crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic has highlighted the need to decentre human exceptionalism, raising a challenge for sociologists to return to the premises of what it means to be a social being. In some sense, management of the pandemic already assumes a decentring. This article builds an argument by first reviewing what broadly constitutes a ‘posthumanist’ sociological perspective, then moves on to a case study of the interrelated human and non-human actors that constituted the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. The case study usefully marks the intersection between human and non-human bodies as nodes in the interpretive production chain of this global event – one that acknowledges human extensions and connections to multispecies and ecological systems. Such interlinkages become foundational to interrogating what it means to become human in a posthuman world. The article ends on this posthuman question: under the posthuman condition, if we do not discern a difference between the human and other-than-human entities, how will this homogenization affect the human collective ability to enact and maintain cross-species and cross-entity protections?