bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Divergent Whole Brain Projections from the Ventral Midbrain in Macaques
Authors: Zubair Muhammad , Murris Sjoerd R , Isa Kaoru , Onoe Hirotaka , Koshimizu Yoshinori , Kobayashi Kenta , Vanduffel Wim , Isa Tadashi
Published: January 2021

To understand the connectome of the axonal arborizations of dopaminergic midbrain neurons, we investigated the anterograde spread of highly sensitive viral tracers injected into the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and adjacent areas in 3 macaques. In 2 monkeys, injections were centered on the lateral VTA with some spread into the substantia nigra, while in one animal the injection targeted the medial VTA with partial spread into the ventro-medial thalamus. Double-labeling with antibodies against transduced fluorescent proteins (FPs) and tyrosine hydroxylase indicated that substantial portions of transduced midbrain neurons were dopaminergic. Interestingly, cortical terminals were found either homogeneously in molecular layer I, or more heterogeneously, sometimes forming patches, in the deeper laminae II–VI. In the animals with injections in lateral VTA, terminals were most dense in somatomotor cortex and the striatum. In contrast, when the medial VTA was transduced, dense terminals were found in dorsal prefrontal and temporal cortices, while projections to striatum were sparse. In all monkeys, orbitofrontal and occipito-parietal cortex received strong and weak innervation, respectively. Thus, the dopaminergic ventral midbrain sends heterogeneous projections throughout the brain. Furthermore, our results suggest the existence of subgroups in meso-dopaminergic neurons depending on their location in the primate ventral midbrain.
Limited Evidence for Sensory Prediction Error Responses in Visual Cortex of Macaques and Humans
Authors: Solomon Selina S , Tang Huizhen , Sussman Elyse , Kohn Adam
Published: January 2021

A recent formulation of predictive coding theory proposes that a subset of neurons in each cortical area encodes sensory prediction errors, the difference between predictions relayed from higher cortex and the sensory input. Here, we test for evidence of prediction error responses in spiking responses and local field potentials (LFP) recorded in primary visual cortex and area V4 of macaque monkeys, and in complementary electroencephalographic (EEG) scalp recordings in human participants. We presented a fixed sequence of visual stimuli on most trials, and violated the expected ordering on a small subset of trials. Under predictive coding theory, pattern-violating stimuli should trigger robust prediction errors, but we found that spiking, LFP and EEG responses to expected and pattern-violating stimuli were nearly identical. Our results challenge the assertion that a fundamental computational motif in sensory cortex is to signal prediction errors, at least those based on predictions derived from temporal patterns of visual stimulation.
A Systematic Review and Network Meta-analyses to Assess the Effectiveness of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Self-testing Distribution Strategies
Authors: Eshun-Wilson Ingrid , Jamil Muhammad S , Witzel T Charles , Glidded David V , Johnson Cheryl , Le Trouneau Noelle , Ford Nathan , McGee Kathleen , Kemp Chris , Baral Stefan , Schwartz Sheree , Geng Elvin H
Published: January 2021

Background

We conducted a systematic review and network meta-analysis to identify which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) self-testing (HIVST) distribution strategies are most effective.

Methods

We abstracted data from randomized controlled trials and observational studies published between 4 June 2006 and 4 June 2019.

Results

We included 33 studies, yielding 6 HIVST distribution strategies. All distribution strategies increased testing uptake compared to standard testing: in sub-Saharan Africa, partner HIVST distribution ranked highest (78% probability); in North America, Asia, and the Pacific regions, web-based distribution ranked highest (93% probability), and facility based distribution ranked second in all settings. Across HIVST distribution strategies HIV positivity and linkage was similar to standard testing.

Conclusions

A range of HIVST distribution strategies are effective in increasing HIV testing. HIVST distribution by sexual partners, web-based distribution, as well as health facility distribution strategies should be considered for implementation to expand the reach of HIV testing services.
Simultaneous detection of Streptococcus
pneumoniae and prevention of carryover contamination using multiple cross displacement amplification with Antarctic thermal sensitive uracil-DNA-glycosylase and a lateral flow biosensor
Authors: Yan Linlin , Zhao Fan , Niu Lina , Cai Yu , Wu Lei , Zhu Xiaoxue , Nong Jinqing , Hu Shoukui
Published: January 2021

Streptococcus pneumoniae is an important clinical pathogenic bacterium that is the primary cause of meningitis, septicemia and community-acquired pneumonia. The mortality rate of pneumococcal disease is high, especially in children younger than 5-years-old. Rapid and accurate detection of S.pneumoniae is critical for clinical diagnosis. A ply gene-based multiple cross displacement amplification (MCDA) assay, amplifying DNA under 65°C for 40 min, was established to detect S.pneumoniae. Antarctic thermal sensitive uracil-DNA-glycosylase (AUDG) was applied to prevent carryover contamination. A lateral flow biosensor (LFB) was used to indicate the MCDA results. The ply-MCDA assay could detect as low as 10 fg of S. pneumoniae DNA and 447 colony forming units (CFU)/mL of spiked sputum samples. The analytical sensitivity of the ply-MCDA assay to detect clinical specimens was 100 times higher than that of PCR. The specificity of the ply-MCDA assay was evaluated using 15 S.pneumoniae strains and 25 non-S. pneumoniae strains, which confirmed the high selectivity of the ply-MCDA assay for S.pneumoniae. The AUDG enzyme could effectively eliminate carryover contamination and thus prevented false-positive results. In conclusion, ply-AUDG-MCDA-LFB is a simple, rapid and accurate method to detect S.pneumoniae.
SARS-CoV-2/human interactome reveals ACE2 locus crosstalk with the immune regulatory network in the host
Authors: Lite Christy , Ahmed Shiek S S J , Juliet Melita , Freddy A J
Published: January 2021

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), remains to be a threat across the globe. SARS-CoV-2 entry into the host is mediated by binding of viral spike protein to the Human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. ACE2 is an essential member of the Renin–Angiotensin system (RAS) involved in maintaining the blood pressure and vascular remodelling. Although ACE2 receptor is the entry point to the host, recent studies show activation of ACE2 to modulate the host to develop a suitable environment for its replication. However, the ACE2 activating the immune signals on SARS-CoV-2 attachment is still under investigation. We have used systems biological approach to construct the host regulatory network upon SARS-CoV-2 attachment to the ACE2 receptor. Since lungs are the primary infection site, we integrate human lung gene expression profile along with the host regulatory network to demonstrate the altered host signalling mechanism in viral infection. Further, the network was functionally enriched to determine immune modulation in the network. We also used the proteomic database to assess the occurrence of similar signalling events in other human tissues that exhibit lineage of infection across different organs. The constructed network contains 133 host proteins with 298 interactions that directly or indirectly connect to the ACE2 receptor. Among 133 proteins, 29 were found to be differentially regulated in the host lungs on SARS-CoV-2 infection. Altered proteins connect multiple proteins in a network that modulates kinase, carboxypeptidase and cytokine activity, leading to changes in the host immune system, cell cycle and signal transduction mechanisms. Further investigation showed the presence of similar signalling events in the kidneys, placenta, pancreas, testis, small intestine and adrenal gland as well. Overall, our results will help in understanding the immune molecular regulatory networks influenced by the ACE2 mediated interaction in other body tissues, which may aid in identifying the secondary health complications associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Verrucomicrobial methanotrophs: ecophysiology of metabolically versatile acidophiles
Authors: Schmitz Rob A , Peeters Stijn H , Versantvoort Wouter , Picone Nunzia , Pol Arjan , Jetten Mike S M , Op den Camp Huub J M
Published: January 2021

Methanotrophs are an important group of microorganisms that counteract methane emissions to the atmosphere. Methane-oxidising bacteria of the Alpha- and Gammaproteobacteria have been studied for over a century, while methanotrophs of the phylum Verrucomicrobia are a more recent discovery. Verrucomicrobial methanotrophs are extremophiles that live in very acidic geothermal ecosystems. Currently, more than a dozen strains have been isolated, belonging to the genera Methylacidiphilum and Methylacidimicrobium. Initially, these methanotrophs were thought to be metabolically confined. However, genomic analyses and physiological and biochemical experiments over the past years revealed that verrucomicrobial methanotrophs, as well as proteobacterial methanotrophs, are much more metabolically versatile than previously assumed. Several inorganic gases and other molecules present in acidic geothermal ecosystems can be utilised, such as methane, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide, ammonium, nitrogen gas and perhaps also hydrogen sulfide. Verrucomicrobial methanotrophs could therefore represent key players in multiple volcanic nutrient cycles and in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from geothermal ecosystems. Here, we summarise the current knowledge on verrucomicrobial methanotrophs with respect to their metabolic versatility and discuss the factors that determine their diversity in their natural environment. In addition, key metabolic, morphological and ecological characteristics of verrucomicrobial and proteobacterial methanotrophs are reviewed.
Genetic and metabolic engineering challenges of C1-gas fermenting acetogenic chassis organisms
Authors: Bourgade Barbara , Minton Nigel P , Islam M Ahsanul
Published: January 2021

Unabated mining and utilisation of petroleum and petroleum resources and their conversion to essential fuels and chemicals have drastic environmental consequences, contributing to global warming and climate change. In addition, fossil fuels are finite resources, with a fast-approaching shortage. Accordingly, research efforts are increasingly focusing on developing sustainable alternatives for chemicals and fuels production. In this context, bioprocesses, relying on microorganisms, have gained particular interest. For example, acetogens use the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway to grow on single carbon C1-gases (CO2 and CO) as their sole carbon source and produce valuable products such as acetate or ethanol. These autotrophs can, therefore, be exploited for large-scale fermentation processes to produce industrially relevant chemicals from abundant greenhouse gases. In addition, genetic tools have recently been developed to improve these chassis organisms through synthetic biology approaches. This review will focus on the challenges of genetically and metabolically modifying acetogens. It will first discuss the physical and biochemical obstacles complicating successful DNA transfer in these organisms. Current genetic tools developed for several acetogens, crucial for strain engineering to consolidate and expand their catalogue of products, will then be described. Recent tool applications for metabolic engineering purposes to allow redirection of metabolic fluxes or production of non-native compounds will lastly be covered.
Tectonic insight and 3-D modelling of the Lusi (Java, Indonesia) mud edifice through gravity analyses
Authors: Osorio Riffo Álvaro , Mauri Guillaume , Mazzini Adriano , Miller Stephen A
Published: January 2021

Lusi is a sediment-hosted hydrothermal system located near Sidoarjo in Central Java, Indonesia, and has erupted continuously since May 2006. This mud eruption extends over a surface of ∼7 km2, and is framed by high containment dams. The present study investigates the geometry of the subsurface structures using a detailed gravimetric model to visualize in 3-D the Lusi system and surrounding lithologies. The obtained residual Bouguer anomaly map, simulated through geostatistical interpolation methods, supports the results of previous deformation studies. The negative gravity anomaly zones identified at Lusi are interpreted as fractured areas through which fluids can ascend towards the surface. A 3-D detailed geological model of the area was constructed with Geomodeller™ to highlight the main features. This model relies on the structures’ density contrasts, the interpreted residual Bouguer anomaly map, and geological data from previous authors. 3-D algorithms were used to calculate the gravity response of the model and validate it by inverse methods. The final output is a gravity constrained 3-D geological model of the Lusi mud edifice. These results provide essential details on the Lusi subsurface and may be useful for possible future geothermal resource exploitation and for the risk mitigation plans related to the maintenance of the man-made framing embankment.
A De Lege Ferenda Perspective on Artificial Intelligence Systems Designated as Inventors in the European Patent System
Authors: Stierle Martin
Published: January 2021

The European patent system was designed around a paradigm of human inventorship. This paper will analyse in depth and from a de lege ferenda perspective the rather general arguments against and in favour of a possible designation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems as inventors. For the sake of a more concrete discussion, it will also outline a potential reform of the European patent system to implement AI inventorship and allocate the right to the European patent for such inventions by default to the machine’s operator. In the process, it will highlight the major specific issues associated with a reform that acknowledges AI inventorship and touch upon possible alternative approaches to addressing the growing autonomy of machines within the R&D process. The study must not be understood as a call for a reform to recognise AI systems as inventors but rather as a manner of laying the foundations for a more concrete, critical and fruitful discussion on non-human inventorship and its alternatives. The analysis will show that the more general, highly conceptional reservations advanced in the current discussion against AI inventorship are somewhat unfounded, e.g. the alleged break with the functions of the current patent system or the alleged need to endow AI with legal personality. More convincing arguments against a reform that allows for the designation of AI systems as inventor might instead relate to the specific difficulties associated with such reform.
Technological regimes and catching up in the product space
Authors: Desmarchelier Benoît , Regis Paulo José
Published: January 2021

This article proposes a micro-founded model of countries’ diversification trajectories in the product space. We argue that the type of technological regime under which countries operate conditions their export performance and diversification trajectories. In particular, repeated simulations show that countries with firms operating under an entrepreneurial regime expand their export basket faster when most other countries are characterized by a routinized regime. Simulations also show that catching-up trajectories in the product space are less likely when all countries operate under the same technological regime.
The State of Microbiome Science at the Intersection of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance
Authors: Ranallo Ryan T , McDonald L Clifford , Halpin Alison Laufer , Hiltke Thomas , Young Vincent B
Published: January 2021

Along with the rise in modern chronic diseases, ranging from diabetes to asthma, there are challenges posed by increasing antibiotic resistance, which results in difficult-to-treat infections, as well as sepsis. An emerging and unifying theme in the pathogenesis of these diverse public health threats is changes in the microbial communities that inhabit multiple body sites. Although there is great promise in exploring the role of these microbial communities in chronic disease pathogenesis, the shorter timeframe of most infectious disease pathogenesis may allow early translation of our basic scientific understanding of microbial ecology and host-microbiota-pathogen interactions. Likely translation avenues include development of preventive strategies, diagnostics, and therapeutics. For example, as basic research related to microbial pathogenesis continues to progress, Clostridioides difficile infection is already being addressed clinically through at least 2 of these 3 avenues: targeted antibiotic stewardship and treatment of recurrent disease through fecal microbiota transplantation.
Characterizing physician EHR use with vendor derived data: a feasibility study and cross-sectional analysis
Authors: Melnick Edward R , Ong Shawn Y , Fong Allan , Socrates Vimig , Ratwani Raj M , Nath Bidisha , Simonov Michael , Salgia Anup , Williams Brian , Marchalik Daniel , Goldstein Richard , Sinsky Christine A
Published: January 2021

Objective

To derive 7 proposed core electronic health record (EHR) use metrics across 2 healthcare systems with different EHR vendor product installations and examine factors associated with EHR time.

Materials and Methods

A cross-sectional analysis of ambulatory physicians EHR use across the Yale-New Haven and MedStar Health systems was performed for August 2019 using 7 proposed core EHR use metrics normalized to 8 hours of patient scheduled time.

Results

Five out of 7 proposed metrics could be measured in a population of nonteaching, exclusively ambulatory physicians. Among 573 physicians (Yale-New Haven N = 290, MedStar N = 283) in the analysis, median EHR-Time8 was 5.23 hours. Gender, additional clinical hours scheduled, and certain medical specialties were associated with EHR-Time8 after adjusting for age and health system on multivariable analysis. For every 8 hours of scheduled patient time, the model predicted these differences in EHR time (P < .001, unless otherwise indicated): female physicians +0.58 hours; each additional clinical hour scheduled per month −0.01 hours; practicing cardiology −1.30 hours; medical subspecialties −0.89 hours (except gastroenterology, P = .002); neurology/psychiatry −2.60 hours; obstetrics/gynecology −1.88 hours; pediatrics −1.05 hours (P = .001); sports/physical medicine and rehabilitation −3.25 hours; and surgical specialties −3.65 hours.

Conclusions

For every 8 hours of scheduled patient time, ambulatory physicians spend more than 5 hours on the EHR. Physician gender, specialty, and number of clinical hours practicing are associated with differences in EHR time. While audit logs remain a powerful tool for understanding physician EHR use, additional transparency, granularity, and standardization of vendor-derived EHR use data definitions are still necessary to standardize EHR use measurement.
Explanatory Model of the Relationships Between Self-Efficacy and Personal Learning Environments in Immigrant Minors Without a Legal Guardian
Authors: Martínez-Martínez Asunción , Tomé-Fernández María , García-Garnica Marina , Olmedo-Moreno Eva Mª
Published: January 2021

This study addresses the need to analyse the personal learning environments and self-efficacy of unaccompanied foreign minors. In addition, it seeks to identify existing relationships between these two parameters and establish an explanatory model which can help to understand the present situation of this collective regarding their inclusion in the educational sphere of society. A total of 292 unaccompanied foreign minors (UFM) aged between 8 and 17 years participated in this comparative and cross-sectional research study. A questionnaire to measure PLE and social integration in UFM, and the student’s self-efficacy scale (ACAES) was administered. From the results, it is observed that once UFM pass the 9-month period, improvements are seen in their academic planning and management, In addition to an improved use of educational resources. They showing positive effort and being self-efficacious in their academic performance. Nonetheless, communication and social interaction declines considerably. The model established a strong relationship between self-efficacy and PLE.
Refugee Solidarity Along the Balkan Route
Authors: Cantat Céline
Published: January 2021

In 2015, the mass mobilities of refugees, many from Syria, towards Western Europe, were presented as a crisis threatening the integrity of nation-states. Whilst governments along the so-called ‘Balkan route’ increasingly responded with exclusionary measures, large-scale solidarity movements emerged and played a key role in assisting refugees in their journeys and settlement. All along the route, activists and volunteers (sometimes in loose collaboration with official relief organizations) established solidarity communities that tasked themselves with assisting people on the move. Their activities have been underpinned by discourses of solidarity and hospitality reflecting deep-seated popular beliefs about displacement, sanctuary and refuge—alternative narratives of what is today called asylum. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with solidarity and refugee groups in Greece, Serbia and Hungary, I examine the practices and discourses of refugees and those mobilized to support them along the ‘Balkan route’.
Using the BDFX40 Automated Continuous Blood Culture System to Isolate and RecoverStreptobacillus moniliformisin the Presence of 0.05% SPS: A 55-Year, 56-Strain Retrospective Study
Authors: Szewc Adam M , Bell Melissa E , Kelly Aubree J , Humrighouse Ben W , McQuiston John R
Published: January 2021

Rat bite fever and Haverhill fever are often difficult to diagnose in a clinical setting. This difficulty results in part from clinicians and laboratory professionals not being able to reliably recover the causative agent Streptobacillus moniliformis using culture-based methods. After utilizing an automated continuous-monitoring blood culture bottle system, we showed that the organism can be reliably cultured when a blood volume inoculum of 10 mL is used. Further, we showed that when the above recommendation is followed, sodium polyanethole sulfonate (up to a concentration of 0.05% w/v) in commercially purchased blood culture bottle formulations seems to be inactivated, allowing for the growth and detection of S. moniliformis. Herein, we offer data and methods used to overcome these clinical limitations. This is a comprehensive study of the historical collection of S. moniliformis isolates maintained by our facility and believed to be the largest of its kind to date.
Inferring the properties of the sources of reionization using the morphological spectra of the ionized regions
Authors: Gazagnes Simon , Koopmans Léon V E , Wilkinson Michael H F
Published: January 2021

High-redshift 21-cm observations will provide crucial insights into the physical processes of the Epoch of Reionization. Next-generation interferometers such as the Square Kilometer Array will have enough sensitivity to directly image the 21-cm fluctuations and trace the evolution of the ionizing fronts. In this work, we develop an inferential approach to recover the sources and IGM properties of the process of reionization using the number and, in particular, the morphological pattern spectra of the ionized regions extracted from realistic mock observations. To do so, we extend the Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis tool 21cmmc by including these 21-cm tomographic statistics and compare this method to only using the power spectrum. We demonstrate that the evolution of the number-count and morphology of the ionized regions as a function of redshift provides independent information to disentangle multiple reionization scenarios because it probes the average ionizing budget per baryon. Although less precise, we find that constraints inferred using 21-cm tomographic statistics are more robust to the presence of contaminants such as foreground residuals. This work highlights that combining power spectrum and tomographic analyses more accurately recovers the astrophysics of reionization.
Polydisperse streaming instability – II. Methods for solving the linear stability problem
Authors: Paardekooper Sijme-Jan , McNally Colin P , Lovascio Francesco
Published: January 2021

Occurring in protoplanetary discs composed of dust and gas, streaming instabilities are a favoured mechanism to drive the formation of planetesimals. The polydispserse streaming instability is a generalization of the streaming instability to a continuum of dust sizes. This second paper in the series provides a more in-depth derivation of the governing equations and presents novel numerical methods for solving the associated linear stability problem. In addition to the direct discretization of the eigenproblem at second order introduced in the previous paper, a new technique based on numerically reducing the system of integral equations to a complex polynomial combined with root finding is found to yield accurate results at much lower computational cost. A related method for counting roots of the dispersion relation inside a contour without locating those roots is also demonstrated. Applications of these methods show they can reproduce and exceed the accuracy of previous results in the literature, and new benchmark results are provided. Implementations of the methods described are made available in an accompanying python package psitools.
Introduction: Rethinking Career Development
Authors: McCash Phil , Hooley Tristram , Robertson Peter J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter introduces readers to The Oxford Handbook of Career Development and to the field of career development. The origins of the field are discussed in relation to vocational guidance, differential psychology, interactionist sociology, and life course development. The selection of the term career development for this volume is explained with regard to three interlocking themes: the broader contexts of career development, including government policy; the wide range of theory concerned with career-related experiences, phenomena, and behaviour; and the broad spectrum of career helping practices, including one-to-one work and group work. The inspiration and aims for the volume are set out, and the challenges associated with terminology in the field are acknowledged. The editors seek to provide a state-of-the-art reference point for the field of career development, and engender a transdisciplinary and international dialogue that explores key current ideas, debates, and controversies. The volume is divided into three sections. The first explores the economic, educational, and public policy contexts for practice. The second section focuses on concepts and explores the rich theoretical landscape of the field. The third section turns to practice, and the translation of ideas into action to support individuals and groups with their career development.
Peaceful Change after the World Wars
Authors: Kristensen Peter Marcus
Published: January 2021

This chapter traces the travelogue—and marginalization in particular—of peaceful change in International Relations (IR) after the world wars. It argues that its marginalization is explained not (only) by its intellectual merits but also by political, institutional, and material changes that were unfavorable to the peaceful change agenda. The first section outlines how the changing geopolitical context, bipolarity and nuclear weapons, meant that the overarching concern of great powers was to stabilize and consolidate, not change, the order. The second section argues that the conflation of peaceful change with an appeasement policy and the 1938 Munich Agreement contributed to political and intellectual stigma in the postwar era. The third section argues that decolonization changed the articulation of the problem: where interwar articulations were primarily concerned with peaceful change through colonial redistribution, in effect to maintain European peace and supremacy, some postwar articulations used it in the anticolonial struggle to argue for revision of the imperial and colonial legacies of international law. The fourth section turns toward institutional changes, pointing to the demise of the interdisciplinary International Studies Conference (ISC) along with the postwar disciplinarization of IR within political science, which excluded much of the international law discourse that had earlier informed peaceful change. The fifth section argues that intellectual developments, notably the postwar stigma on interwar IR as “idealist,” contributed to the marginalization of some versions of peaceful change, while realist and neorealist versions survived. The final two sections trace two such ostensibly “idealist” lineages: peaceful change in international law and in (neo)functionalist IR.
Egyptian Conquest and Administration of Nubia
Authors: Valbelle Dominique
Published: January 2021

After the Second Intermediate Period (1730–1552 bce), the reconquest of Lower Nubia and the conquest of Upper Nubia by the Egyptian army happened in several phases during the New Kingdom, the powerful realm of Kush being supported by large African coalitions. Since the reign of Thutmose III (1458–1426 bce), the country being at last pacified, an administrative disposal was improved to exploit the resources of Nubia, whose knowledge increased until the death of Sety I. Rameses II (1279–1214 bce) was mostly interested in Lower Egypt where he built several temples devoted to the cult of his own sacred image but apparently less in Upper Nubia. After his reign, the interest of Egypt for the Nubian territories decreased along with its political and economic supremacy.
Jebel Barkal
Authors: Kendall Timothy , Mohamed El-Hassan Ahmed
Published: January 2021

Jebel (“Mt”) Barkal stood at the center of ancient Napata, the city farthest up the Nile from Thebes in Egypt’s Nubian empire. Following their conquest of Kush, the Egyptians identified this hill as a residence of a primeval aspect (“ka”) of Amun of Karnak, whom they depicted locally as a ram-headed man but who is revealed here to be a form of Kamutef. Once perceived as a creation site and a birthplace of Amun (being nearest the Nile sources), Jebel Barkal naturally came to be understood as the birthplace of the “royal ka.” This “discovery” apparently prompted the pharaohs to build Luxor Temple at Thebes as a ritual substitute for Amun’s temple at Napata, enabling the kings to house the Nubian god (their imagined “father”) in their capital and to reunite locally with him and with their “royal kas.” The Egyptian belief that their kingship sprang from “Amun of Karnak” at Jebel Barkal/Luxor was revived in the 8th century bce by the kings of Kush, who used it to claim Egyptian kingship for themselves during the 25th Dynasty and subsequently. This paper summarizes what is currently known of Jebel Barkal’s historical and religious significance and presents the results of the latest archaeological investigations.
Holocene Environments in Northeast Africa
Authors: Williams Martin
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides an overview of the geography, hydrology, and climate of NE Africa, with particular reference to the complex interactions between river regime, climate, the biota, and human settlement. During the Early (11.7–8.2 ka) and Middle Holocene (8.2–4.2 ka) the climate was far less arid than today across the Nile basin, including Nubia, albeit with sporadic dry phases. Climatic desiccation set in during the Late Holocene (4.2 ka to present), with minor wet phases. Intervals when the Nile flow regime was apparently shifting from high to low flow and flood plain incision have provisional ages of ca. 8.15–7.75 ka, 6.4–6.15 ka, 5.7–5.45 ka, 4.7–4.25 ka, 3.35–2.9 ka, 2.8–2.55 ka, and 1600 ce. In the Kerma area of Nubia there were two periods of relatively dense human occupation in the earlier part of the Holocene from 10 ka to 8 ka and from 7 ka to 6 ka, with two significant gaps in the archaeological record at 7.5–7.1 ka and 6.0–5.4 ka, that coincided with very low levels in Lake Challa, a maar lake on the eastern flank of Mt Kilimanjaro, near the Ugandan headwaters of the White Nile.
The Napatan Neo-Kushite State 1
Authors: Williams Bruce Beyer
Published: January 2021

Egyptian authority in Nubia evaporated at the end of the 20th Dynasty. For three centuries to ca. 750 bce, little remains of occupation or social organization. Recent research has identified occupation, continuing New Kingdom sites, and sites of new groups. The inscription of a queen regnant, Katimala, shows persisting Egyptian institutions and their naturalization. By 750 bce, Kush consolidated and its ruler, Kashta, acquired the area of Thebes in Egypt without evidence of struggle. His son, Piankhy, overcame an attack by northern rulers to control the entire country, initiating revival in Egypt and monumental civilization in Kush. However, the Kushite-Egyptian state soon confronted Assyrian aggression whose large-scale assaults replaced the Kushites with the Saite dynasty. For half a century Kush continued along monumental lines, marked by royal sculptures, inscriptions, palatial architecture, and a great trading center near Gebel Barkal. However, Psamtek II, Saite ruler of Egypt’s great campaign ended Kushite ambitions to the north.
Kush in the Wider World During the Kerma Period
Authors: Williams Bruce Beyer
Published: January 2021

The culture that emerged at Kerma in the mid-3rd millennium bce rapidly spread as far north as the Second Cataract and to the south where upstream it affected the contemporary culture of the Fourth Cataract. By the time of the Egyptian 6th Dynasty, ca. 2400 bce, the northern area was united under one ruler. After Egypt took control of Lower Nubia from a brief dynasty who styled themselves as pharaohs, Kush was a rival, subject to repeated campaigning, and the proximate cause of a huge fortification complex the Egyptians built at the Second Cataract. Sometime after 1750 bce Kush became supreme, first in northern Nubia, then the area of the Fourth Cataract, becoming a multi-ethnic empire. Kush allied with the Hyksos, then ruling northern Egypt, and led troops from as far as the Horn of Africa to campaign into Egypt. Resurgent Egypt gave priority to campaigns against Kush, subjugating it completely by or shortly after 1500 bce, but Kush had led the way toward political unity and pharaonic culture in Nubia that would endure.
Agreement in Languages of the Caucasus
Authors: Foley Steven
Published: January 2021

The three language families indigenous to the Caucasus exhibit a range of diverse, unusual, and highly complex agreement phenomena. Nakh-Daghestanian languages are dominated by ergative-aligned gender agreement in which the absolutive argument controls agreement on the verb, and potentially other clausal elements like adverbs or even pronouns. Special agreement patterns like long-distance and biabsolutive agreement emerge in certain syntactic configurations. Northwest Caucasian is polysynthetic; its verbs register features from each of their arguments in a distinct templatic slot. These languages also have special agreement for arguments that undergo A̅-extraction. Kartvelian agreement is not straightforwardly linked to syntactic roles, and morphemes exhibit many complex blocking relationships. Dative-subject constructions “invert” the normal morpheme–role mappings, adding another dimension of complexity to the languages’ agreement systems. This chapter describes typologically and theoretically notable agreement phenomena found in these three language families, highlighting micro- and macro-variation, drawing parallels to other language families, and citing relevant theoretical and experimental studies. For reference, the chapter concludes with an appendix of agreement paradigms.
Social and Ecological Impacts of Conquest and Colonization in New Spain
Authors: Candiani Vera S.
Published: January 2021

Throughout continental New Spain—both the Mesoamerican heartland and the arid regions later conquered by the United States—colonization brought environmental changes through the social and political regimes that it deployed. Indigenous demographic decline, exotic organisms, mining, and relations of property and production in agriculture and pastoralism affected socioecosystems and transformed landscapes over time. Beyond the individual and aggregate impacts of biological invasions or the fact of newcomers’ presence, key research questions are how, through whom, and with what technological packages and logics the changes penetrated and became imbricated in preexisting socioecologies following the conquest.

Hispanic appropriation of Amerindian landesque capital between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries might be compared to that of Christian colonists of Iberia as they took Muslim productive and urban landscapes between the twelfth and sixteenth: it allowed Spanish settlers to seize the opportunity when it came to extracting and generating wealth from newfound lands. This wealth was sustained by a pluriethnic peasantry whose persistence paradoxically also hindered the complete capitalist transformation of relations of property, production, and exchange of nature. The landscapes that resulted were not just variously Hispanized but also variously wrested from local, subsistence, communal control, indigenous or otherwise.
Myth and Reality of the Mexican Miracle, 1946–1982
Authors: Alexander Ryan
Published: January 2021

In the decades after World War II, from the start of the Cold War to the Latin American debt crisis of 1982, Mexico’s authoritarian government, dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI), made industrialization its top priority. The shift toward a manufacturing-based economy produced robust economic growth, rapid urbanization, and an array of structural changes.

Simultaneously, the revolutionary efforts of the 1920s and 1930s to improve the material conditions of blue-collar workers and the rural poor were suspended or even reversed. Industrial growth took priority over increasing workers’ wages; modernist residential districts in the capital city took priority over collective ejidos in the countryside; universities took priority over rural schoolhouses; and a consumerist culture took priority over revolutionary cultural nationalism.

Throughout the 1960s, many foreign and domestic observers agreed that the nation served as a model of Third World development: state-led capitalism, which combined industrial protectionism, resource nationalization, social expenditure, and foreign investment, had created an economic miracle and avoided political extremism in favor of stability. After the massacre of protesting students in the capital just days before the 1968 Olympic games, however, scholarly assessments soured. Subsequently, more evidence of political violence, media manipulation, and official corruption surfaced, leading to a crisis of political legitimacy. These sentiments were aggravated by mounting public debt, severe inequality, growing inflation, and periodic balance-of-payments crises, culminating in the region-wide collapse of 1982. The onset of a new reality, commonly called the neoliberal era, exposed the myths of the miracle as it drew to a close.
Postcolonialism and Technologies of Identification
Authors: Adam Alison
Published: January 2021

This chapter challenges traditional diffusionist approaches to the circulation of scientific and technological knowledge, exploring instead the “geographical turn” in science and technology studies through postcolonial philosophy which was developed to understand the movement of technical knowledge between west and east. The late nineteenth-century problem of unique identification of individuals, for civil and legal purposes in colonial India, provides two examples of forensic technologies, fingerprinting and criminalistics, which were developed in a colonial setting and then modified and introduced into western cultures. These examples resonate with Kapil Raj’s research on the circulation of knowledge in eighteenth century South Asia in terms of contact zones, the mutation of knowledge, trust relations in the making of technical knowledge in colonial India, and the maintenance of an efficient administration. Although this chapter focuses on historical examples, there are clear resonances with contemporary biometric identification technologies and their implications for today’s “information order.”
The Technological Uncanny as a Permanent Dimension of Selfhood
Authors: Aydin Ciano
Published: January 2021

“The uncanny valley” indicates that as a robot approaches a nearly human state, initial positive responses quickly turn to strong revulsion. After reviewing various explanations for this phenomenon, this chapter interprets the uncanny feeling towards humanoids not as a response to a lack of humanness but rather as a response to the inability to fathom and appropriate what makes the viewer of the robot different from the robot, that is, what makes the viewer human. The more technologies become intrusive, the more this inability is intensified, making the technological uncanny a permanent dimension of selfhood. As a result, technology cannot be simply externalized and conceived as an outside factor that can determine or liberate us, nor as something that can destroy or strengthen us. This insight calls for a more sophisticated account of how technology is shaping us, as well as how we would like to be shaped by it.
Repression of Islamists and Authoritarian Survival in the Arab World: A Case Study of Egypt
Authors: Lachapelle Jean
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the causes of state repression against Islamist organizations in the Arab world. Advancing a rich literature on state repression, authoritarianism, and Islamist politics, it proposes a new approach that centers on the role of non-Islamist audiences for explaining the repression of Islamists. Specifically, the chapter argues that when society is divided between non-Islamists and Islamists, an autocrat can repress Islamists to signal a commitment to non-Islamists to protect them from perceived threats by Islamists. It provides supporting evidence from Egypt, which shows how large-scale repression directed at the Muslim Brotherhood after the coup of 2013 served to cultivate the support of non-Islamists.
Magnetoencephalography and developmental cognitive neuroscience
Authors: Dalmaijer Edwin S. , Anwyl-Irvine Alexander L. , Bignardi Giacomo , Hauk Olaf , Astle Duncan E.
Published: January 2021

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an exceptionally useful tool to study child development. It measures brain waves: fluctuations in the magnetic field around the head caused by changes in the local field potential of neuronal populations that fire in synchrony. MEG has a high-temporal resolution, and a reasonable degree of spatial precision. It offers insights into how the brain responds to events, how brain rhythms affect perception and performance, and how different areas talk to each other. In addition to its scientific benefits, MEG is safe, silent, and requires relatively little setup time. In this chapter, the authors outline the origins of the MEG signal, provide practical tips specific to testing children, and describe a wide variety of analysis methods.
“The Beauteous Terrorist”
Authors: Siljak Ana
Published: January 2021

Based partly on sensationalized journalistic accounts of the lives of famous Russian terrorists, such as Vera Zasulich, and partly on the memoirs of radicals such as Sergei Kravchinksii, English-language novels at the turn of the nineteenth century depicted female terrorists as fascinating and, for the most part, beautiful. Embodying seemingly contradictory gender characteristics, female terrorists were described as both ruthless and compassionate, violent and kind. Given the supposedly tyrannical nature of the Russian regime, their revolutionary devotion was fully justified. Therefore, despite the need to adopt masculine bravery and heroism, they were still fully feminine, and often alluring. They became heroines, or “beauteous terrorists.”
Epilogue
Authors: Verhoeven Claudia
Published: January 2021

This epilogue proposes a conceptual apparatus to explain the paradoxical fact that, as the chapters in this volume amply demonstrate, terrorism’s shocking acts of violence mean simultaneously to immobilize and mobilize its targets’ intellectual and aesthetic functions. It excavates a strand in the history of philosophy—from Plato to Burke, Arendt, Benjamin, and Rancière—that sees shock not as leading to the paralysis of our capacity to perceive and understand events, but rather as being related to thaumazein (wonder, amazement) and theoria. This philosophical understanding of shock not only grounds the logic of terrorism, especially in its classical incarnation as “propaganda of the deed,” but also exposes the roots of a counterlogic that can activate the kind of knowledge required for the development of a genuinely historical theory of terrorism.
The Ethics of Stigma in Medical Male Circumcision Initiatives Involving Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Rennie Stuart , Gilbertson Adam , Hallfors Denise , Luseno Winnie K
Published: January 2021

Ongoing global efforts to circumcise adolescent and adult males to reduce their risk of acquiring HIV constitute the largest public health prevention initiative, using surgical means, in human history. Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) programs in Africa have significantly altered social norms related to male circumcision among previously non-circumcising groups and groups that have practiced traditional (non-medical) circumcision. One consequence of this change is the stigmatization of males who, for whatever reason, remain uncircumcised. This paper discusses the ethics of stigma with regard to uncircumcised adolescent males in global VMMC programs, particularly in certain recruitment, demand creation and social norm interventions. Grounded in our own experiences gained while conducting HIV-related ethics research with adolescents in Kenya, we argue that use of explicit or implicit stigma to increase the number of VMMC volunteers is unethical from a public health ethics perspective, particularly in campaigns that leverage social norms of masculinity. Ongoing global efforts to circumcise adolescent and adult males to reduce their risk of acquiring HIV constitute the largest public health prevention initiative, using surgical means, in human history. VMMC programs in Africa have significantly altered social norms related to male circumcision among previously non-circumcising groups and groups that have practiced traditional (non-medical) circumcision. One consequence of this change is the stigmatization of males who, for whatever reason, remain uncircumcised. This paper discusses the ethics of stigma with regard to uncircumcised adolescent males in global VMMC programs, particularly in certain recruitment, demand creation and social norm interventions. Grounded in our own experiences gained while conducting HIV-related ethics research with adolescents in Kenya, we argue that use of explicit or implicit stigma to increase the number of VMMC volunteers is unethical from a public health ethics perspective, particularly in campaigns that leverage social norms of masculinity.