bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Protestant World Mission and Race Discourse
Authors: Botha Nico A. , Baron Eugene
Published: December 2022

The chapter explores why race is neglected in mission studies by using a historical approach drawing on primary and secondary sources of the Protestant missionary movement of the first half of the twentieth century. The authors argue that during this period, “race” was recognized as a “problem” to be addressed in mission but not consistently described as being an issue of white racism. The chapter commences by examining the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, where racist and white supremacist attitudes were explicit. Secondly, the authors give special attention to analysis of J.H. Oldham’s Christianity and the Race Problem (1925) as a unique missiological response to race in the Protestant world mission scene in the early twentieth century. Thirdly, the meetings of the of the International Missionary Council (IMC), which grew out of Edinburgh 1910, from Jerusalem 1928 to Ghana 1958 are considered from the perspective of their treatment of race.
Women in Mission
Authors: Cruz Gemma Tulud
Published: December 2022

Women have been agents and recipients of missionary activity since the beginning of Christianity. Oftentimes, their experience has been theorized from the perspective of “living in two worlds” or from the perspective of victimhood and/or agency. This chapter explores the experiences of women in mission and how these have been described, analyzed, and theorized from the perspective of gender, both in the past and today. It then critically discusses gender as an analytical category as it is used by feminist missiologists. The author proposes this gendered approach to mission history and practice is a feminist theological contribution to missiology that remains unfinished.
Mission and Biblical Studies
Authors: Nguyễn vănThanh
Published: December 2022

God’s mission is the thread that is woven into the whole fabric of the Bible and forms a coherent framework of reading and interpreting the Bible. The task for both missiologists and biblical scholars in today’s global perspective is not only to read the Bible missionally but also critically and contextually. What is proposed is a missional hermeneutic of the Bible, an integrative approach that employs missio Dei as the key hermeneutical lens and takes into consideration the contexts of the author, the text, and also the reader. The essay also examines one key aspect in current biblical studies that has a bearing in mission studies, namely, the Roman imperial context.
Mission, Money, and Power
Authors: Vähäkangas Mika
Published: December 2022

The term “mission” in its modern meaning was coined during the expansion of Western Christianity which was in many ways entangled with colonialism. The Western missionary movement’s modus operandi was adopted by missions from other backgrounds as well, when economic growth and growth of revivalist Christianity have coincided. When the outcome is new churches in economically underprivileged areas, there is an economic and power imbalance between the mission agency and the local church. However, locally instituted churches and migrant churches have challenged the pattern and strengthened mission from the economic and political margins. Mission in the world of economic inequality has also reinvigorated the classic theological question of how to relate to money and power. From the margins, the prosperity gospel is often the response, whereas many churches which traditionally represent power and affluence tend to present perspectives critical towards global capitalism.
Introduction to Mission Studies
Authors: Kim Kirsteen , Fitchett-Climenhaga Alison
Published: December 2022

Mission studies, or missiology, is an interdisciplinary field that utilizes theological, historical, and social scientific methods. It represents over a century of scholarship related to the theology, history, and methodology of the propagation of Christian faith and the development of Christianity worldwide. We examine the current state of the field of mission studies, explaining how the structure of this Handbook mirrors the field’s structure and concerns. Then we analyze current trends in mission studies that emerge across the Handbook’s chapters, areas of growth that will shape the practice of missiology moving forward. In particular, we highlight emerging critical approaches within missiological scholarship to ecumenism, interreligious engagement, the missio Dei paradigm, grassroots agency, human mobility, and academic knowledge production. We underscore the relevance of the study of the history, motives, and operations of missions for academics in diverse fields, and policy makers in contexts of religious plurality, social need, and conflict.
Practical Theology and Mission Studies
Authors: Prior John Mansford
Published: December 2022

After looking at the origin of practical theologies and mission studies as independent specialties, this chapter describes the series of paradigm shifts in both disciplines that occurred in our globalizing world. This period saw a dramatic shift in context from a disjunctive Christian Northwest to an interreligious world influenced by the Southeast. The advent of social sciences led to a shift in methodology which brought practical theology and mission studies into a collaborative relationship as practically rooted academic studies. Rooted in experience, methodologies are outlined from the mission-inspired pastoral cycle to the grounded theory and appreciative inquiry approaches of more contemporary times, developments possible due to supportive networks and research institutes. From the mid-twentieth century, grassroots theologizing in basic ecclesial communities inspired transformative mission in the academy in a progressively secular world. This chapter concludes by looking at how spirituality imbues practical mission theology, influencing our choice of method and approach.
Government Venture Capital Programs
Authors: Cumming Douglas , Johan Sofia , Zhang Minjie
Published: December 2022

Governmental bodies around the world are paying increasing attention to the subsidization of research and development through venture capital programs. In both the US and Canada, approximately 90% of all venture capital investments are in the technology sectors. The perceived importance of developing the knowledge-based high-tech sectors has led to a large number of government programs designated to subsidize through direct government venture capital funds and tax policies. This chapter presents evidence on how governments offer venture capital support programs in different countries with mixed performances. We further discuss evaluation tools for government venture capital and highlight several pitfalls that future studies of government venture capital should avoid and how future studies could provide more helpful and unbiased policy suggestions to the government.
Outsourcing State Functions
Authors: Girth Amanda M.
Published: December 2022

Since the 1970s, governments have shifted away from statist policies and toward markets through waves of market-oriented reforms. Across advanced and emerging economies alike, the public sector increasingly outsources the provisioning of goods and services to the private sector. Outsourcing state functions is motivated by economic arguments that underscore the value of competitive markets to overcome the inefficiencies of monopolistic public institutions. Political and ideological motives drive outsourcing to reduce the size of the public sector workforce and curb union strength. Outsourcing is also pursued for pragmatic reasons such harnessing private sector innovation and shedding functions that are not core competencies. Critiques of public sector outsourcing include misplaced faith in markets and underemphasis on market efficiencies, which contribute to unreliable cost savings. Opponents contend the private sector emphasizes efficiency at the expense of other public values and further exacerbates accountability challenges of governing. Outsourcing state functions raises broader questions on the role of the public sector and the legitimacy of public institutions.
State Capitalism and Corporate Social Responsibility
Authors: Dong Jiyang , Luo Xiaowei Rose
Published: December 2022

In this chapter, we review the literature to examine the role of the Chinese state in shaping corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We start by taking stock of the variety of channels employed by the Chinese party-state to influence the adoption and diffusion of CSR among Chinese firms. Second, we examine how the state utilizes different institutional linkages between the state and firms to influence CSR in connected firms. These linkages include government’s shareholding in firms and political connections between firms and governmental agencies, and how they differ in transmitting the state’s influence regarding CSR. Third, we delve into the state’s bureaucratic fragmentation and dual goals (economic and noneconomic), which affect the effectiveness of the state’s CSR policy implementation. Fourth, we analyze the circumstances under which the civil society’s demands of CSR may undermine or enhance the state’s influence on CSR. Lastly, we explore the strategic benefits firms can obtain from the state through their CSR activities. Overall, our review unveils the complexity and evolution of the state’s influence on CSR in China and points to promising directions for future research.
State Capitalism in Latin America
Authors: DeMello Rodrigo B.
Published: December 2022

State capitalism in Latin America has survived the re-democratization in the 1980s and remains relevant to the political economy of most countries in the region. State capitalism remains popular because it has been instrumental for the political survival of both left- and right-wing governments. In this chapter, I provide an overview of current level of the state capitalism in Latin America, and a review of the extant literature. Finally, I develop a framework to describe how governments may use state capitalism tools to distribute private and public goods aiming at building and managing coalitions in multiparty presidential systems. State capitalism in Latin America still alive and relevant.
State Capitalism is Capitalism in Canada
Authors: Whiteside Heather
Published: December 2022

The long arc of state capitalism in Canada indicates that state capitalism is capitalism, and that liberal, particularly neoliberal, discourse of distinct private markets underpinned by public sector laissez-faire mentality is largely a fiction. Crosscutting historical and contemporary trends reveal that state-owned enterprises have both supported capitalist development and reflected changes within the capitalist system; thus the neoliberal era may be market-led but is highly reliant on and enabled by the state. This chapter reviews the literature on state capitalism and summarizes neoliberal era contradictions, details the relationship between state capitalism and state-owned enterprises in Canada through case study examples over various periods of economic development, and provides insights on state capitalism from the Canadian vantage point.
The Origins of the Developmental State
Authors: Reinert Sophus A.
Published: December 2022

This chapter interrogates the currently resurgent and frequently demonized concept of “state capitalism” from a deeper historical perspective. It argues that contrary to what often is maintained, the concept can be fruitfully traced back to the strategies and policies of the city-states of Medieval and Renaissance Italy, if not before, and that pertinent aspects of it can be used to explain practically all successful trajectories of development since. The chapter focuses on the political economy of Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany as a foundational case study in this regard and demonstrates how, in spite of “high modernist” critiques, a number of successful developmental states from the Renaissance to the present actually have aligned themselves with James Scott’s ideal of prudent and practical mētis in matters of political economy.
State Capitalism in East Asia
Authors: Carney Richard W. , Samphantharak Krislert
Published: December 2022

The chapter examines the relationship between political regimes and state capitalism in East Asia, with accompanying cases to illustrate the dynamics. A four-regime typology is used to characterize national political systems, including narrow authoritarian regimes (Brunei), single party authoritarian regime (China), dominant party authoritarian regime (Singapore), and democracy (Taiwan). With regard to the manifestation of state capitalism, we focus on the relative dominance of state ownership of listed firms and the role of sovereign wealth funds. Although political rulers in Dominant-party Authoritarian Regimes (DPARs) are autocrats, they face different incentives than other autocratic rulers because they hold multiparty elections. This critical feature motivates them to engage in more aggressive state interventions in the corporate sector, especially when their hold on power is threatened. The case studies illustrate: 1) cross-sectional relationship between political regime and the manifestation of state capitalism; 2) the change in state capitalism as a result of a change in the structure of the political regime, as with the case of Taiwan; and 3) the relatively greater assertion of state influence on the corporate sector by rulers in DPARs.
State Capitalism in Russia
Authors: Mizobata Satoshi , Hayashi Hiroaki
Published: December 2022

The aim of the chapter is to explain how Russian state capitalism functions in terms of business and society. Given that the government–business relationship in Russia has changed from state capture or the grabbing hand model to the “give-and-take” model, it is necessary to clarify the interrelations between government, business, and society in order to understand Russian state capitalism. The chapter highlights five characteristics of Russian state capitalism as follows. First, the basic feature of the Russian state capitalist economic structure heavily depends on natural resources led by a strong central authority. Rent-seeking behavior penetrates the economy. Second, with regard to corporate structure, a focus on the governmentalization of strategic sectors to attain corporate control has been in effect since the 2000s, and the state has retained control of priority business. Third, Russia’s innovation policy has a state-led character as well. Despite a series of ambitious strategies, Russia has failed to build coherent institutions for innovation. Fourth, with regard to state–society relations, the state has provided increased support to ordinary people, mainly using oil and gas revenue. This is one reason that the public supports the Putin regime. Finally, the Russian middle class is heavily dependent on the government due to its composition, implying that the Russian middle class is not strong enough to reform the status quo. Therefore, as long as oil and gas revenues do not decrease greatly, Russian society remains stable.
State Capitalism
Authors: Allen Matthew M. C. , Wood Geoffrey T. , Keller Matthew R.
Published: December 2022

The recent rise of companies from emerging markets, especially China, has led to a slew of studies based on the concept of “state capitalism.” However, definitions of this term vary significantly. We review how various leading authors use the term state capitalism to draw out differences between, and similarities within, those conceptualizations. By doing so, we seek to 1) define what “state capitalism” is (and is not); 2) demonstrate how the dimensions of state capitalism vary; and 3) put forward a range of Weberian “ideal types” of state capitalism. This enables us to highlight the dimensions along which state capitalisms vary as well as to specify the means that state capitalisms use in an effort to achieve their objectives, opening up important new areas for interdisciplinary research.
State Logic and Governance
Authors: Estrin Saul , Gregorič Aleksandra
Published: December 2022

State owned enterprises (SOEs) are playing an increasing role in many national economies, particularly outside the advanced countries. These trends somewhat counter the established literature portraying SOEs as inefficient, bureaucratic, and poorly managed entities that perform worse across a variety of measures than privately owned firms (POEs). This chapter proposes a more nuanced view of the SOEs. We argue that their performance ultimately depends on the combination of 1) the objectives or the logics driving the governmental involvement in the enterprises (welfare state, developmental, or predatory) and 2) the quality of the firm-level governance, defined by the quality of the corporate governance and managerial labor market institutions. We combine the different state logics and the firm governance to propose a taxonomy with six distinct configurations, each generating distinct outcomes in terms of SOE relative to POE performance and their wider implications for national economic performance. We conclude with a pilot empirical exercise comparing some basic indicators of contemporary national economic outcomes in examples of each of our six configurations.
State Ownership and Corporate Governance
Authors: Megginson William L. , Liu Xia (Summer)
Published: December 2022

In this study, we survey the extensive literature examining the economic and political developments since 2000 relating to state capitalism, state ownership of business, and corporate governance. Through the early twenty-first century, there was an unambiguous global trend toward reducing government ownership of business enterprise, but this trend has since at least been slowed, and perhaps even reversed. We discuss the factors that have promoted a global resurgence of state ownership, then define and analyze the new ideology labeled “state capitalism” and assess its impact on corporate governance. This research highlights that different types of state owners have very different impacts on corporate value and performance, and that state ownership generally has a significant, and mostly pernicious, impact on corporate investment and financial policies. The separate effect of state ownership on corporate valuation is less clear-cut. This survey also summarizes recent empirical research examining the relationship between state ownership of business assets and financial markets and institutions. Sovereign wealth fund research yields essentially benign findings, but almost all studies examining state-owned banking show that state ownership reduces banks’ efficiency. All the financial markets and institutions studies examined highlight the distortive effects and economic costs of bailouts and guarantees. Finally, the research surveyed here convinces the authors that “state capitalism” is an essentially failed model.
What is Early Modern Women’s Writing?
Authors: Clarke Danielle , Ross Sarah C. E. , Scott-Baumann Elizabeth
Published: December 2022

This opening chapter explores the trajectory of the study of early modern women’s writing. It traces the origins of the field from the nineteenth century to Virginia Woolf and up to the present, and interrogates the very idea of a ‘field’, the importance of attaining this status, and also the possible pitfalls of such territorial metaphors. It explores the category of ‘women’s writing’ itself and the challenges posed by new work on race, gender, and sexuality to that category. Finally, the chapter lays out the six parts which make up this Handbook, setting out the rationale behind its thematic and approach-based structure and briefly introducing the key arguments and authors of each chapter.
The Songscapes of Early Modern Women
Authors: Larson Katherine R.
Published: December 2022

Women’s singing voices formed a vital part of the early modern English songscape. This chapter considers how the wide-ranging evidence of women’s song performance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as the very notion of song as a generic category, opens up new ways of thinking about early modern women’s ‘writing’. Drawing on surviving print and manuscript sources, this chapter begins by charting the musical genres with which women engaged as singers and the varied contexts and social settings in which women sang. The second part of the chapter turns to the airs of Henry Lawes as explored on the recently launched Early Modern Songscapes platform (songscapes.org), as a way of unpacking these issues in more detail. The performance-based analysis enabled by this digital model also helps to showcase the multidimensionality of song and its tendency to confound generic, architectural, physiological, and sociocultural boundaries.
Women’s Life Writing and the Labour of Textual Stewardship
Authors: Eckerle Julie A.
Published: December 2022

Life-writing studies has impacted on our understanding of early modern Englishwomen’s writing, just as critical work on early modern women’s life writing has revised our understanding of several life-writing forms, especially ‘autobiography’. We now understand that, writing in a period before the ‘autobiography’ had solidified into a strict genre, early modern women often combined aspects of multiple life-writing forms. This chapter examines common characteristics of early modern women’s life writing, incorporating a range of women writers. The chapter demonstrates how life writing is a form of textual labour in which women enact stewardship of lives, whether their own or family members. As life-writing forms proliferated during these centuries, women played a role not only in developing various genres but also in putting specific life-writing genres to work for their own purposes. Life writing offered a practical means of agency and a more personal or intellectual means of understanding identity.
London and the Book Trade
Authors: O’Callaghan Michelle
Published: December 2022

Isabella Whitney’s writings illustrate how modes of publishing, types of readers, author functions, literary forms and tastes were shaped by the city and its rich traditions of vernacular literature. This chapter reads Whitney’s The Copy of a Letter (c 1567) and A Sweet Nosegay (c 1573) alongside ballads, such as John Lydgate’s ‘London Lickpenny’, A Letter Sent by the Maydens of London, to the Virtuous Matrones & Mistresses (1567), and another pamphlet published by Jones, Jane Anger Her Protection for Women (1589) to ask whether we can identify a shared literary idiom that is identifiably urban and speaks to a non-elite readership. We can therefore ask whether the literary forms favoured by Whitney and Anger take a distinctive orientation in response to an urban environment. The chapter concentrates on non-elite women’s writing to discover how place might inform the fashioning of voices and literary forms that are characteristically urban.
Changing Places
Authors: Knoppers Laura L.
Published: December 2022

The chapter considers women within elite courtly networks, from Mary Sidney and Lady Mary Wroth, to Aemilia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish. All of these women writers draw on the court masque as a material and symbolic performance space for elite girls and women under the influence of Queen Anna of Denmark and Queen Henrietta Maria. Exegetically and poetically innovative in her masque-like depictions of the heavenly court, Mary Sidney evokes a sense of place for devotional purposes. Aemilia Lanyer strategically places her would-patrons as attendants on the main masque of Christ’s Passion. By purposefully misplacing masques in her prose romance, Mary Wroth uses courtly codes as self-fashioning and social critique. Margaret Cavendish’s nostalgic and utopian relocation of the masque transforms centre and periphery, displaying aristocratic virtues. Changing the place of the court masque, these women also change their own places in and beyond court culture.
The Topopoetics of Retirement in Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson
Authors: Loxley James
Published: December 2022

This chapter explores the place of the poetics of retirement in the work of Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. The idea of retirement as a way of life counterposed to public engagement, as a leisured otium contrasted with negotium, is a commonplace of early modern culture. In the middle of the seventeenth century, in the political and military conflicts of the wars of the three kingdoms, retirement was also configured as exile, or an involuntary removal from the public sphere. A crucial consideration here is the fact that the contrasting evaluations of the meaning of retirement were gendered. An exploration of how Hutchinson and Philips articulated the experience of retirement allows us to see not only how women positioned themselves in relation to this cultural topos, but also how their writing became a way of making them both visible and audible within a cultural framework that might otherwise occlude them.
Untimely Developments
Authors: Dowd Michelle M.
Published: December 2022

Ever since the publication of Joan Kelly’s ‘Did Woman Have a Renaissance?’, scholarship on early modern women has wrestled with periodisation. Are the categories that scholars use to describe this period—such as ‘Renaissance’ or ‘Restoration’ or ‘seventeenth century’—useful for understanding women’s writing across these periods, or do they reflect a male-oriented model of literary history? This chapter considers what periodisation means for the study of early modern women, and for early modern studies generally. It demonstrates how early modern women's writing as a field challenges or helps to reconfigure conventional literary periodisations. What happens, if rather than attempting to fit women’s writing into pre-existing literary narratives, we use women’s writing as our critical jumping-off point? Considering women writers as active participants within a literary culture encourages us to change the ‘rules’ that we have learned, transforming our understanding of literary influence, generic development, and periodisation in the process.
Memory and Matter
Authors: Phillippy Patricia
Published: December 2022

This chapter considers Lady Anne Clifford’s life-long memorial project carried out in her manuscript compilations and writings and in her monumental commissions. Situating this project at the interfaces of materiality and memory, this chapter aims, on the one hand, to escape the confines of an exclusively dynastic reading of Clifford’s archive and, on the other, to explore her productive engagement with the early modern arts of memory. Clifford’s writings and commemorative works establish her as a remembering subject who employs the memory arts to create powerful social, personal, and dynastic interventions. Clifford troubles the gendered division of subject and object, occupying a medial space where identities intertwine: her example moves between and bridges the fields of early modern women’s writing. This chapter makes use of feminist new materialism to alert us to the means by which Clifford’s writings deploy the discipline of artificial memory while evading submission to masculine rule.
Touches Across Time
Authors: Murphy Erin
Published: December 2022

Through an analysis of the work of Aemilia Lanyer, this chapter illuminates how women’s writing helps us reconsider the possibilities of queer feminism for early modern studies, especially a queer feminism that does not unintentionally perpetuate its own exclusions and hierarchies of race and gender. The chapter concludes with a brief meditation on Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s 2018 play Emilia, originally performed at the Globe Theatre and then in London’s West End, to consider this popular mode of what Carolyn Dinshaw has called ‘a touch across time’. The complex dynamics of identification, erotics, and appropriation that mark Lanyer’s use of biblical typology, as well as the way she has been taken up recently in the popular imagination, will show how early modern studies can contribute to the development of queer feminist analyses that attend to the mutually constitutive forces of gender, race, sexuality, religion, and status.
Practical Texts
Authors: Griffin Carrie
Published: December 2022

Responding to tendencies in recent scholarship to take a broader view on early modern women's writing—and moving towards a more accurate understanding of the place of women in the production and reception of practical texts—this chapter examines several forms of women’s writing. It considers constructions of authority and expressions of common experience in printed manuals, written by both men and women (or in a female voice) for female readers. The chapter also examines some household books and domestic manuscripts compiled—and indeed read—by women, and that until recent times were not always considered part of the corpus of early modern women’s writing. At issue throughout the chapter is the matter of morality and the perceived role of didacticism in the management of unruly women, and the foils to those ideas expressed by women themselves.
Race and Geographies of Escape in Elizabeth Cary’sThe Tragedy of Mariam
Authors: Hall Meghan E.
Published: December 2022

This chapter considers the significance of transnational travel to Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam. Because the play takes place entirely within the pre-Christian Judean court and centres around issues of marriage and court politics, Mariam appears, at first glance, to be an unlikely candidate for a discussion of travel. Yet as scholarship shows, Mariam is deeply concerned with the social consequences of aristocratic women’s movement. The chapter takes a geographically wider view of these concerns, suggesting that it is primarily the land beyond Judea’s borders—Arabia, and what it represents—that draws the wandering hearts of the play’s women. Paying special attention to the emphasis Cary places on Salome’s racial difference—her identity as a dark, ‘mongrel’, ‘parti-Edomite’—the chapter argues that Cary accesses a fantasy about the personal freedom afforded by geographic mobility by locating it in a racialised woman character with whom she can simultaneously identify and disavow.
Cultures of Correspondence
Authors: Smith Helen
Published: December 2022

This chapter is rooted in the double meanings of ‘correspondence’ in early modern scientific culture, specifically in women’s engagements with natural philosophy. On the one hand, correspondence points to the importance of letters to projects of natural philosophical education and exchange. However, the idea of ‘correspondence’ draws attention to the importance of analogy and similitude as scientific and literary methods during this period. How did early modern women develop ideas of similarity, sympathy, and likeness that possessed both emotional and philosophical weight? This chapter explores the importance of correspondence in both senses to women’s natural philosophy. After outlining early modern Englishwomen’s varied engagements with natural philosophy, it explores several important epistolary exchanges, demonstrating how Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway engaged with questions of correspondence and antithesis, as well as the rhetorical uses of similitude, as they grappled with questions about the nature of the soul and the operations of matter.
Jasmonate activates a CsMPK6-CsMYC2 module that regulates the expression of β-citraurin biosynthetic genes and fruit coloration in orange (Citrus sinensis)
Authors: Yue Pengtao , Jiang Zhenghua , Sun Quan , Wei Ranran , Yin Yingzi , Xie Zongzhou , Larkin Robert M , Ye Junli , Chai Lijun , Deng Xiuxin
Published: December 2022

Carotenoids are natural pigments that influence the color of citrus fruit. The red-colored carotenoid β-citraurin is responsible for the peel color in “Newhall” orange (Citrus sinensis). Although jasmonates are known to regulate the biosynthesis and accumulation of carotenoids, their effects on β-citraurin biosynthesis in citrus fruit remain unclear. Here, we determined that treatment with methyl jasmonate (MeJA) significantly promotes fruit coloration and β-citraurin production in “Newhall” orange. A MeJA treatment induced the expression of CsMYC2, which encodes a transcription factor that serves as a master regulator of jasmonate responses. CsMYC2 bound the promoter of the gene that encodes carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase 4b (CsCCD4b), the key gene for β-citraurin biosynthesis, and the promoters of genes that encode phytoene synthase (CsPSY), lycopene β-cyclase (CsLCYb), and β-carotene hydroxylase (CsBCH) and induced their expression. In addition, CsMYC2 promoted CsMPK6 expression. Notably, we found that CsMPK6 interacted with CsMYC2 and that this interaction decreased the stability and DNA-binding activity of CsMYC2. Thus, we conclude that negative feedback regulation attenuates JA signaling during the jasmonate-induced coloration of citrus fruit. Together, our findings indicate that jasmonates induce β-citraurin biosynthesis in citrus by activating a CsMPK6–CsMYC2 cascade, thereby affecting fruit coloration.
Predicting Returns Out of Sample: A Naïve Model Averaging Approach
Authors: Chen Huafeng (Jason) , Jiang Liang , Liu Weiwei
Published: December 2022

We propose a naïve model averaging (NMA) method that averages the OLS out-of-sample forecasts and the historical means and produces mostly positive out-of-sample R2s for the variables significant in sample in forecasting market returns. Surprisingly, more sophisticated weighting schemes that combine the predictive variable and historical mean do not consistently perform better. With unstable economic relations and a limited sample size, sophisticated methods may lead to overfitting or be subject to more estimation errors. In such situations, our simple methods may work better. Model misspecification, rather than declining return predictability, likely explains the predictive performance of the NMA method. (JEL G12, G11)

Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
Advances in 3D skin bioprinting for wound healing and disease modeling
Authors: Zhang Mengde , Zhang Chao , Li Zhao , Fu Xiaobing , Huang Sha
Published: December 2022

Even with many advances in design strategies over the past three decades, an enormous gap remains between existing tissue engineering skin and natural skin. Currently available in vitro skin models still cannot replicate the three-dimensionality and heterogeneity of the dermal microenvironment sufficiently to recapitulate many of the known characteristics of skin disorder or disease in vivo. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting enables precise control over multiple compositions, spatial distributions and architectural complexity, therefore offering hope for filling the gap of structure and function between natural and artificial skin. Our understanding of wound healing process and skin disease would thus be boosted by the development of in vitro models that could more completely capture the heterogeneous features of skin biology. Here, we provide an overview of recent advances in 3D skin bioprinting, as well as design concepts of cells and bioinks suitable for the bioprinting process. We focus on the applications of this technology for engineering physiological or pathological skin model, focusing more specifically on the function of skin appendages and vasculature. We conclude with current challenges and the technical perspective for further development of 3D skin bioprinting.
Bank Lobbying as a Financial Safety Net: Evidence from the Postcrisis U.S. Banking Sector
Authors: Asai Kentaro
Published: December 2022

I argue creditors, plausibly considering the link between bank lobbying and government bailouts, reflect the financial-safety-net aspect of bank lobbying. My structural estimation based on U.S. data suggests bank lobbying is negatively associated with the occurrence of a run-like equilibrium when a bank is subject to multiple equilibria. The estimated effect on bank risk and value is economically significant in the postcrisis U.S. banking sector. This result is consistent with the reduced-form evidence in this paper and has passed multiple robustness checks. Counterfactual simulations suggest the lobbying effect as a financial safety net would vary depending on policy responses to financial crisis. (JEL E44, G01, G21, G28, G32, D72)
Neoadjuvant therapy for early human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 positive breast cancer in China: A multicenter real-world study (CSBrS-015)
Authors: Cheng Yuanjia , Xiang Hongyu , Xin Ling , Duan Xuening , Liu Yinhua
Published: December 2022

Background:

Pertuzumab has been approved for application in China by the National Medical Products Administration, and both national and international guidelines make recommendations for the use of neoadjuvant treatment with trastuzumab or trastuzumab + pertuzumab plus chemotherapy regimens for patients with indications. The goal of this study was to investigate the short-term clinical efficacy of the neoadjuvant therapies trastuzumab and trastuzumab+pertuzumab for patients with early human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer in China.

Methods:

A real-world study was conducted using the clinicopathological data of patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer who were admitted to the member hospitals of the Chinese Society of Breast Surgery, Chinese Surgical Society of Chinese Medical Association between March 2019 and December 2020. This study analyzed the efficacy and tolerance of trastuzumab+chemotherapy and trastuzumab+pertuzumab+chemotherapy in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer. The Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors 1.1 was adopted to evaluate clinical efficacy. The pathological efficacy was evaluated using the MillerPayne grade. The Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (version 5.0) was adopted to evaluate adverse events (AEs). The propensity scores were subjected to propensity score matching using the R language (1:1 matching with a maximum allowable difference of 0.05 between the two groups). Efficacy was compared using the chi-square test, and correlation analysis was performed using linear regression.

Results:

A total of 1032 patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer met the enrollment criteria and were included in this study. Among these patients, 472 received neoadjuvant trastuzumab+chemotherapy (the trastuzumab group), and 560 received neoadjuvant trastuzumab+pertuzumab+chemotherapy (the trastuzumab+pertuzumab group). The overall pathologic complete response (pCR) rate was 47.2% (487/1032), while the pCR rates of the trastuzumab and trastuzumab+pertuzumab groups were 34.5% (163/472) and 57.9% (324/560), respectively, and the difference was significant (P < 0.001). The incidence of grade 4 AEs was 24/321 (7.5%) in the trastuzumab+pertuzumab group, and there were no cases in which the left ventricular ejection fraction decreased by more than 10%.

Conclusions:

Patients in the trastuzumab+pertuzumab group had a higher pCR rate than those in the trastuzumab group, and the toxic side effects were tolerable.
Trichloroacetic Acid With Microneedling Versus Trichloroacetic Acid Alone for Treating Melasma
Authors: Hofny Eman R. , Abdel-Motaleb Amira A. , Hamed Safaa Ahmed , Twisy Howida Omar
Published: December 2022

BACKGROUND

Melasma is a common acquired disorder of hyperpigmentation which is difficult to treat.

OBJECTIVE

We aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of combined microneedling with trichloroacetic acid in the treatment of melasma.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Forty women with facial melasma were included and randomly classified into 2 groups. Group A included 20 patients treated with bimonthly session of trichloroacetic acid 25% peeling (8 sessions) combined with a monthly session of microneedling (4 sessions). Group B included the other 20 patients that were treated by bimonthly trichloroacetic acid 25% peeling session (8 sessions) alone.

RESULTS

After 1 and 3 months of treatment, the mean melasma area and severity index, modified melasma area and severity index, and melasma severity index scores showed significant improvement in each group (p < .05 for each). At 1 and 3 months, the mean percentages of change of all scores were significantly higher in group A than group B (p < .05).

CONCLUSION

Combined trichloroacetic acid peel with microneedling is effective and a safe option for treating melasma.
Lockdown period during SARS COVID-19 endemic outbreak in Taiwan did not cause an increase of the complications nor mortality of patients received endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography: A single-center retrospective study
Authors: Li Chia-Ju , Chang Tien-En , Hou Ming-Chih , Huang Yi-Hsiang , Lee Pei-Chang , Chang Nai-Wen , Chen Yu-Jen , Lee Fa-Yuah
Published: December 2022

Background:

Coronavirus disease 2019, known as a widespread, aerosol spreading disease, has affected >549 000 000 people since 2019. During the lockdown period, dramatic reduction of elective endoscopic procedures, including endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, had been reported worldwide, leading to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, whether patients’ hospital stays and complication rate of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) during the lockdown period were influenced by the pandemic still remains controversial.

Methods:

Patients who diagnosed with obstructive jaundice and acute cholangitis in the lockdown period, May 16 to July 26, 2021, were compared to the same prepandemic period in 2019.

Results:

A total of 204 patients in 2019 and 168 patients in 2021 were diagnosed with acute biliary cholangitis or obstructive jaundice, and 82 of the patients in 2019 and 77 patients in 2021 underwent ERCP (p = 0.274). Patients whose quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA) score was ≥ 2 occurred more during the lockdown period than during the normal period (24/77, 31.1% vs 12/82, 14.6%; p = 0.013). The initial laboratory data, including, total bilirubin (4.12 in 2021 vs 3.08 mg/dL in 2019; p = 0.014), gamma-glutamyl transferase (378 in 2021 vs 261 U/L in 2019; p = 0.009), and alkaline phosphatase (254 in 2021 vs 174 U/L in 2019; p = 0.002) were higher during the lockdown period compared to 2019. Hospital stay was statistically significant longer in the lockdown period (11 days [7.00–22.00] in 2021 vs 8 days in 2019 [6.00–12.00]; p value = 0.02). Multivariate analysis showed that qSOFA ≥ 2 (hazard ratio [HR] = 3.837, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.471–10.003; p = 0.006), and malignant etiology (HR = 2.932, 95% CI = 1.271–6.765; p = 0.012) were the statistically significant factors for a prolonged hospital stay, which was defined as hospital stay >21 days. ERCP-related complications and mortality rate were not statistically different between the two periods.

Conclusion:

Patients from May 16 to July 26, 2021, the lockdown period, had longer hospital stays and higher biliary tract enzyme levels, which indicated more severe disease. Nevertheless, ERCP could be safely and successfully performed even during the medical level 3 alert lockdown period without causing an increase in procedure-related complications and mortality.
The Reversed Flow Hemisoleus Propeller Muscle Flap
Authors: Saleh Dalia Mohammed Galal , Shaker Ayman A. , Alrefahi Mahmoud , Estawrow Mina Agaiby
Published: December 2022

Background

Soleus muscle flap can be used in different modifications to reconstruct lower limb defects. It can be proximally based, distally based, island or reversed flow flap. The first description of the soleus muscle as an island flap supplied by one distal perforator was reported by Yajima et al (Plast Reconstr Surg. 1995;96:1162–1168). However, its use as a propeller flap supplied by the distal perforators and rotated for more than 90 degrees was not described yet.

Obejectives

The aims of the study are to study the detailed vascular anatomy of the distal perforators of the soleus muscle flap and to demonstrate the applicability of using it as a propeller flap.

Patients and Methods

A total number of 42 patients were included in this study. These patients had various distal leg and foot defects. All patients were assessed preoperatively by Doppler study and computed tomography angiography to define the vascular status of the leg. The muscle was raised as a reversed flow flap, based on 1 or more distal perforators and its feeding vessel (posterior tibial artery) after being dissected and divided proximally. The muscle was rotated for more than 90 degrees to reach distal leg defects and approximately 180 degrees to reach the foot defects.

Results

All flaps survived completely with good and durable coverage. The vascularity of the limb was not affected in all patients. There was no functional donor site morbidity.

Conclusions

The reversed flow hemisoleus muscle flap supplied by the distal perforators and the posterior tibial artery has a great arc of rotation that can cover all distal leg, ankle, and foot defects. Therefore, it can be used as alternative to free flap in lower extremity reconstruction. A new nomenclature is suggested for this flap which is the propeller hemisoleus muscle flap.
SULFORAPHANE ADMINISTRATION AFTER HEMORRHAGIC SHOCK/RESUSCITATION IN MICE REDUCES THE SECRETION OF INFLAMMATORY CYTOKINES AND INCREASES THE IMMUNOCOMPETENCE OF SPLENIC MACROPHAGES
Authors: Qin Kang , Li You , Liang Weiqiang , Lichte Philipp , Zhang Xing , Zhao Qun , Fragoulis Athanassios , Pufe Thomas , Kobbe Philipp , Ma Chunxia , Meng Hongzheng , Balmayor Elizabeth R. , Hildebrand Frank , Greven Johannes
Published: December 2022

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the immunomodulatory effects of sulforaphane (SFN), a nuclear factor erythroid 2–related factor (Nrf2) pathway activator, on splenic macrophages’ immunocompetence after hemorrhagic shock/resuscitation (HS/R). Methods: Male C57/BL6 wild-type mice (n = 6 per group) were subjected to either pressure-controlled HS (MAP, 35–45 mm Hg) or a sham procedure surgery (without HS). After 90 minutes of HS, fluid resuscitation with withdrawn blood and 0.9% NaCl was performed. Sulforaphane (50 mg/kg of body weight) was applied intraperitoneally immediately after the resuscitation phase as well as 24 and 48 h thereafter, depending on group allocation. The mice were killed at 6, 24, and 72 h after resuscitation. After killing, spleens were harvested to perform Nrf2 immunofluorescence histology. Splenic macrophages were isolated and cultured to measure cytokine secretion in the cell culture supernatant. Furthermore, macrophages isolated after 24-hour resuscitation were treated with 100 ng/mL of bacterial LPS to measure immunocompetence. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging was performed to verify the distribution of SFN in the spleen after intraperitoneal injection. Results: We showed that administered SFN reached the spleen within the first hour after administration. Furthermore, we identified that SFN increased splenic Nrf2 activation and decreased cytokine expression in splenic macrophages after HS/R. In addition, we showed that SFN exhibited splenic anti-inflammatory properties of macrophages in vitro (IL-6/IL-10-ratio of the HS/R group: 51.79 ± 9.99 [at 6 h] and 15.70 ± 3.35 [at 24 h] vs. HS/R + SFN group: 20.54 ± 5.35 [at 6 h] and 8.60 ± 2.37 [at 24 h], P < 0.05). Furthermore, SFN improved in vitro splenic macrophage immunocompetence after HS/R, as evidenced by the increased secretion of inflammatory cytokines in response to LPS stimulation in vitro. Conclusions: Our study shows that SFN can reduce inflammatory cytokines secreted by splenic macrophages after HS/R and increase their immunocompetence toward a more anti-inflammatory profile.