bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Food and Water Security in North America’s Transboundary Sonoran Desert
Authors: Ley America Lutz , Lee Ryan , Peralta Yulia , Scott Christopher
Published: August 2018

The United-States-Mexico food system, and in particular the section located in the Sonoran Desert, is an example of the detrimental effects that result from instensified food production to supply increased demand from regional, transboundary, and global areas. Impacts to freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems in addition to human livelihoods and institutions create serious management and policy challenges. Understanding the region as an integrated water-food system with institutional imbalances reveals the following consequences: (a) an increasing reliance on groundwater resources for the majority of agriculture and livestock production; (b) a net export of nonrenewable water; and (c) a virtual water imbalance that further threatens the region’s water and food security.
Bayes linear uncertainty analysis for oil reservoirs based on multiscale computer experiments
Authors: Pievatolo Antonio , Ruggeri Fabrizio
Published: August 2018

This article discusses the results of a Bayes linear uncertainty analysis for oil reservoirs based on multiscale computer experiments. Using the Gullfaks oil and gas reservoir located in the North Sea as a case study, the article demonstrates the applicability of Bayes linear methods to address highly complex problems for which the full Bayesian analysis may be computationally intractable. A reservoir simulation model, run at two different levels of complexity, is used, and a simulator of a hydrocarbon reservoir represents properties of the reservoir on a three-dimensional grid. The article also describes a general formulation for the approach to uncertainty analysis for complex physical systems given a computer model for that system. Finally, it presents the results of simulations and forecasting for the Gullfaks reservoir.
Analysis of economic data with multiscale spatio-temporal models
Authors: Lopes Hedibert , Polson Nicholas
Published: August 2018

This article discusses the use of Bayesian multiscale spatio-temporal models for the analysis of economic data. It demonstrates the utility of a general modelling approach for multiscale analysis of spatio-temporal processes with areal data observations in an economic study of agricultural production in the Brazilian state of Espìrito Santo during the period 1990–2005. The article first describes multiscale factorizations for spatial processes before presenting an exploratory multiscale data analysis and explaining the motivation for multiscale spatio-temporal models. It then examines the temporal evolution of the underlying latent multiscale coefficients and goes on to introduce a Bayesian analysis based on the multiscale decomposition of the likelihood function along with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The results from agricultural production analysis show that the spatio-temporal framework can effectively analyse massive economics data sets.
Futures markets, Bayesian forecasting and risk modelling
Authors: Fernández-Villaverde Jesús , Guerrón-Quintana Pablo , Rubio-Ramírez Juan
Published: August 2018

This article demonstrates the utility of the Bayesian approach in forecasting and risk modelling regarding speculative trading strategies in financial futures markets. It first provides an overview of subjective expectations that are motivated as fair prices of futures contracts before discussing the futures markets and a portfolio mean-variance efficiency generalization. In particular, it considers the critical role of hedging to ensue attractive risk-adjusted performance. It also describes general Bayesian dynamic models and specific Bayesian dynamic linear models for assessing risk models in terms of their hedging effectiveness in the context of the risk-adjusted performance of trading strategies. The article showcases applied Bayesian thinking in the context of financial investment management, highlighting the corresponding concepts of betting and investing, prices and expectations, and coherence and arbitrage-free pricing in futures markets over the period 1990–2008.
The new macroeconometrics: A Bayesian approach
Authors: Challenor Peter , McNeall Doug , Gattiker James
Published: August 2018

This article examines the dynamics of the US economy over the last five decades using Bayesian analysis of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. It highlights an example application in what is commonly referred to as the new macroeconometrics, which combines macroeconomics with econometrics. The article describes a benchmark New Keynesian DSGE model that incorporates four types of agents: households that consume, save, and supply labour to a labour ‘packer’; a labour ‘packer’ that puts together the labour supplied by different households into an homogeneous labour unit; intermediate good producers, who produce goods using capital and aggregated labour; and a final good producer that mixes all the intermediate goods. It also considers the application of the model in policy analysis for public institutions such as central banks, along with private organizations and businesses. Finally, it discusses three avenues for further research in the estimation of DSGE models.
Assessing the probability of rare climate events
Authors: Clark James S. , Bell Dave , Dietze Michael , Hersh Michelle , Ibanez Ines , LaDeau Shannon , McMahon Sean , Metcalf Jessica , Moran Emily , Pangle Luke , Wolosin Mike
Published: August 2018

This article focuses on the use of Bayesian methods in assessing the probability of rare climate events, and more specifically the potential collapse of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) in the Atlantic Ocean. It first provides an overview of climate models and their use to perform climate simulations, drawing attention to uncertainty in climate simulators and the role of data in climate prediction, before describing an experiment that simulates the evolution of the MOC through the twenty-first century. MOC collapse is predicted by the GENIE-1 (Grid Enabled Integrated Earth system model) for some values of the model inputs, and Bayesian emulation is used for collapse probability analysis. Data comprising a sparse time series of five measurements of the MOC from 1957 to 2004 are analysed. The results demonstrate the utility of Bayesian analysis in dealing with uncertainty in complex models, and in particular in quantifying the risk of extreme outcomes.
Bayesian modelling for matching and alignment of biomolecules
Authors: Green Peter , Mardia Kanti , Nyirongo Vysaul , Ruffieux Yann
Published: August 2018

This article describes Bayesian modelling for matching and alignment of biomolecules. One particular task where statistical modelling and inference can be useful in scientific understanding of protein structure is that of matching and alignment of two or more proteins. In this regard, statistical shape analysis potentially has something to offer in solving biomolecule matching and alignment problems. The article discusses the use of Bayesian methods for shape analysis to assist with understanding the three-dimensional structure of protein molecules, with a focus on the problem of matching instances of the same structure in the CoMFA (Comparative Molecular Field Analysis) database of steroid molecules. It introduces a Bayesian hierarchical model for pairwise matching and for alignment of multiple configurations before concluding with an overview of some advantages of the Bayesian approach to problems in protein bioinformatics, along with modelling and computation issues, alternative approaches, and directions for future research.
Trans-study projection of genomic biomarkers in analysis of oncogene deregulation and breast cancer
Authors: Merl Dan , Lucas Joseph , Nevins Joseph , Shen Haige , West Mike
Published: August 2018

This article focuses on the use of Bayesian concepts and methods in the trans-study projection of genomic biomarkers for the analysis of oncogene deregulation in breast cancer. The objective of the study is to determine the extent to which patterns of gene expression associated with experimentally induced oncogene pathway deregulation can be used to investigate oncogene pathway activity in real human cancers. This is often referred to as the in vitro to in vivo translation problem, which is addressed using Bayesian sparse factor regression analysis for model-based translation and refinement of in vitro generated signatures of oncogene pathway activity into the domain of human breast tumour tissue samples. The article first provides an overview of the role of oncogene pathway deregulation in human cancers before discussing the details of modelling and data analysis. It then considers the findings based on biological evaluation and Bayesian pathway annotation analysis.
Legal Scholarship
Authors: Schröder Jan
Published: August 2018

The contribution is about the development of the concept of law, and the theory of legal sources and methods in the early modern period. The chapter builds on continental legal literature, with emphasis on the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. The author distinguishes two developmental phases: 1. the period from 1500 to 1650, which covers the era of humanism, and 2. the era of the Enlightenment from 1650 to 1800. From the first period to the second, the concept of law changes. Until c.1650, in order to be in force law had to be rightful and acceptable. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, positive law depended on the will of the lawgiver only, while natural law evolved into a complete embodiment of rational law. The chapter demonstrates the influence, which the change in the concept of law had on specific parts of legal methodology.
Law of Property and Obligations
Authors: Decock Wim
Published: August 2018

This chapter gives an overview of the state of the art in legal historical scholarship on the neoscholastic analysis of property, torts, and contracts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Neoscholastics, especially followers of the so-called ‘School of Salamanca’, have been credited with laying the foundations of a principled, systematic approach to the law of property and obligations. Concrete examples illustrating the wealth of the primary source material on these topics will be drawn mainly from Leonardus Lessius’s tractate De iustitia et iure, first published in Louvain in 1605. He is generally recognized to be one of the most important representatives of neoscholastic legal thought. Standing between the medieval ius commune and the Protestant natural law tradition, neoscholastics such as Lessius played a major role in shaping modern private law doctrines.
Civil Procedural Law, the Judiciary, and Legal Professionals
Authors: Wijffels Alain
Published: August 2018

In civil law courts, early modern civil procedure was based on the Roman-canonical model of proceedings originally developed in late medieval ecclesiastical courts and by academic scholarship. Its main features were the principle of party disposition and its corollary, the adversarial principle. These features also governed to a large extent English common law proceedings in civil litigation. The new secular and ecclesiastical social elites emerging in urban environments from the late eleventh century onwards rejected traditional forms of procedures because they perceived them as arbitrary. Early modern political developments tended to reorganize the courts’ systems in a polity under the authority of the sovereign, but in most territories, a patchwork of courts remained in place. The fundamental structure of civil proceedings remained by and large in place in the system of national courts established from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century onwards.
Spanish Law and its Expansion
Authors: Mirow Matthew
Published: August 2018

This chapter addresses the way Spain employed law in its discovery, exploration, conquest, and settlement of the New World. After describing the law on the peninsula, the chapter traces the application and adaptation of these legal materials and institutions to Spain’s new provinces through a new and important body of law known as derecho indiano. Specific aspects of colonial control are addressed in their relationship to new conditions and imperial economic and political aspirations. These include the justification for conquest, slavery, and indigenous labour, the creation of new institutions, sources, and legal actors. The chapter briefly describes the impact of derecho indiano during and after independence in the new republics of Latin America. Spain formed and adapted law to meet the challenges of distance, international competition, new populations, trade, and the replication of Spanish society as its political and military presence expanded throughout the world.
Introspection, Phenomenology, and Psychopathology
Authors: Sass Louis A. , Fishman Adam
Published: August 2018

This chapter reviews and evaluates the criticisms that phenomenological thinkers have made of introspection and introspectionism, as well as the attempts phenomenologists have made to distinguish themselves from introspectionists. Such criticisms and distinctions concern the epoché, the eidetic reduction, and the intentional structure and transcendental status of subjectivity. We concentrate on three examples of “introspection”: the Cornell school of Titchener and the German Würzburg School, both from the early twentieth century, as well as a contemporary group of French researchers who seek the “explicitation” of subjectivity. Some differences between the perspectives of Husserl and those of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are considered. We end by considering phenomenological psychopathology in light of these issues. We argue that the reasons for criticizing “introspection,” and distinguishing it from true “phenomenology,” may seem less cogent or apt when certain versions of “introspection” are considered, and also when phenomenological psychopathology is included under the rubric of “phenomenology.”
Understanding and Explaining
Authors: Hoerl Christoph
Published: August 2018

This chapter examines Karl Jaspers’s influential distinction between understanding and explaining, and its significance in psychiatry. It first outlines one way of interpreting the distinction, on which it is connected to the distinction between singular and general causal claims. It then discusses one reason for thinking that understanding has an essential role to play in psychiatry: Not achieving at least some level of understanding in the context of dealing with psychiatric patients would constitute a particular kind of epistemic failure—a failure to recognize their illness for the particular type of illness it is. Drawing on some ideas recently put forward by Kenneth Kendler and John Campbell, it also illustrates the particular kind of understanding that is crucial in this context.
The Bodily Self in Schizophrenia
Authors: Ferri Francesca , Gallese Vittorio
Published: August 2018

This chapter illustrates the most recent empirical evidence of anomalies of body experiences in schizophrenia and schizotypy, with a specific focus on body ownership, sense of agency, and self-other boundary. The authors link these anomalies of body experiences to a reduced temporal sensitivity of multisensory processing, as indexed by an abnormally wide temporal binding window, which has been reported in both schizophrenia and schizotypy. Then, the authors propose specific neurobiological markers possibly associated with temporal anomalies of multisensory processing and, consequently, body experiences in schizophrenia and schizotypy. They refer specifically to the role of disorganized patterns of spontaneous brain activity, and the underlying excitation/inhibition imbalance, as a possible key to understanding anomalies of bodily-self experiences in self-disorders.
The United Nations
Authors: Weiss Thomas G. , Daws Sam
Published: August 2018

This chapter makes the case for greater analytical precision and historical reflection about the balance between change and continuity within the United Nations since its founding in 1945. The most pertinent changes fall under four headings: the emergence of new threats and new technological opportunities; the increasing role of non-state actors; the reformulation of state sovereignty; and the emergence of a multipolar world. This chapter examines the nature and role of each of these in today’s international system and urges readers to keep in mind three distinct analytical problems: defining the nature of change; determining the meaning of success and failure; and tracking the ups-and-downs in world politics. It also introduces the forty-four chapters that follow in The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations.
Formal and Informal Groups
Authors: Herz Monica
Published: August 2018

The chapter examines the idea and practice of regional governance during the last twenty years. Intergovernmental regional organizations provide the focus of the analysis as they often are the hub of regional interaction leading to the generation of rules. In order to understand the idea of regional governance, the chapter looks into the relation between this idea and three other processes taking place in the international system: the changing nature of sovereignty, globalization, and the challenges to nationally based representative democracy. The role of regional multidimensional organizations that perform similar tasks in the human rights is a focus in the humanitarian, democratic governance, development, and security spheres as a result of the diffusion of international governance practices.
Cyber Threats
Authors: Kello Lucas
Published: August 2018

Cyber threats have become a pre-eminent concern in international affairs. The security of cyberspace has become a condition of the survival of modern societies; yet the scale of the threats grows only larger with time. Some states have turned to the UN system to address cyber issues. These efforts are of two general sorts. One involves the management of conflict in the cyber domain, a realm of security competition in which the dangers of miscalculation abound. The other concerns Internet governance, which pits Russia and China against Western countries. This chapter examines these multilateral thrusts. It argues that none has gone far, for various reasons. Cyber threats challenge the legal and institutional orthodoxies of the UN system. Large member states clash over the meaning and priorities of cybersecurity. Before analyzing these problems the chapter reviews the origins and history of cyber threats.
Security Council
Authors: von Einsiedel Sebastian , Malone David M.
Published: August 2018

This chapter provides a history of the Security Council from 1945 until today. The authors argue that the common division into a Cold War period, during which the Council was largely paralyzed, and a post-Cold War one, during which it has emerged as a central actor in international conflict management, obscures important changes since the end of the Cold War. Most occur in the twenty-first century and include a resurgence in peacekeeping, a growing thematic agenda, a preoccupation with terrorism and other transnational threats, and increasing attention to civilian protection. The Council has also seen a return of great power tensions, manifest by P-5 differences over Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. However, the biggest division does not run among the P-5 but the ten elected members that struggle to leave a mark in Council decision-making. Reform is essential.
Evangelical Higher Education
Authors: Rine P. Jesse
Published: August 2018

Although they represent a relatively small segment of the private nonprofit postsecondary sector, evangelical colleges and universities carry on the educational legacy of America’s earliest institutions of higher education. The evangelical segment is a rich tapestry woven from multiple dimensions of institutional diversity. This chapter first explores the historical development of these institutions, their philosophical and religious commitments, and their organizational structures and campus ethos. Attention then turns to contemporary forms of evangelical higher education and distinguishing institutional features such as denominational status, confessional and behavioral membership requirements, and the curricular orientation and delivery format of the academic program. The chapter concludes with a discussion of contemporary challenges to the future of evangelical higher education. These include concerns related to fiscal health, faculty recruitment, and curricular direction.
Campus Ministry
Authors: Schmalzbauer John A.
Published: August 2018

This chapter discusses the life and work of Catholic and Protestant campus ministers, paying special attention to their backgrounds and demographics, training and formation, goals and priorities, core job activities, and career satisfaction. Drawing on the National Study of Campus Ministries, as well as previous studies, it compares Christian campus ministers to their predecessors in the 1950s and 1960s. Conducted between 2002 and 2008, the NSCM is the most comprehensive study of campus ministry in four decades. Surveying campus ministers in six denominations, two parachurch organizations, and eighty-eight private colleges, it provides a portrait of a changing profession. Like many American congregations, campus ministry has experienced the processes of feminization, diversification, and laicization. Emphasizing spiritual formation and personal mentoring, it remains a student-centered occupation.
Religious Liberty in American Education
Authors: Haynes Charles C.
Published: August 2018

Many educators and school administrators receive little or no civic education about the history and significance of the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment. As a result, many Americans are misled about the constitutional role of religion in public life, confused about the meaning of church–state separation, and uncertain about the limits of the free exercise of religion. This chapter details the broad consensus that has been made about the principles of rights, responsibility, and respect that flow from the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment. This chapter argues that by applying this constitutional framework, educators and community stakeholders can forge a shared understanding of the place of religion in public life. They will be able to work together to sustain America’s bold experiment in living with our deepest differences.
Religious Expression in Public Schools
Authors: Pregent Kevin R. , Walker Nathan C.
Published: August 2018

There is perhaps no better setting that exhibits the perennial tension between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause than American public schools. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution ensures that students may retain their religious beliefs, practices, identities, and rights when they enter public schools. The free exercise principle also protects government employees; however, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prevents teachers and administrators, as agents of the state, from entangling the public school in religious activities or engaging in school speech that advances or endorses religion. This chapter illustrates how these two principles––free exercise of religion and non-establishment of religion––form the concept known as religious freedom. Attempting to strike this balance are public schools, which are required to serve the entire public, whether religious or not. Those within the school—both teachers and students—may be religious and wish to express their religion or to express their critique of or nonaffiliation with religion. This chapter explores different forms of religious expression for both students and teachers and details the unconstitutional nature of laws that seek to target religion for regulation or fail to accommodate religion in public schools.
Faith Development
Authors: Parks Sharon Daloz
Published: August 2018

This chapter describes the emergence, critiques, and some of the key implications of faith development theory as pioneered by James W. Fowler and informed by W. C. Smith, H. Richard Niebuhr, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Carol Gilligan, and others. Faith (differentiated from belief) is described as meaning-making in its most comprehensive dimensions. Constructive-developmental psychology, the role of imagination (content), and the social field all contribute to a multi-faceted understanding of the development of faith across the lifespan. Critiques and expansions of Fowler’s work are explored including gender perspectives, the linearity of stages, and the positing of an emerging adult stage. It addresses the need for the formation of mature adult faith as integral to the practice of self-critical community and citizenship and points toward a reassessment of the purposes of education and religion in a changing world.
On Bernstein Type and Maximal Inequalities for Dependent Banach-Valued Random Vectors and Applications
Authors: Rhomari Noureddine
Published: August 2018

This article discusses some results on Bernstein type and maximal inequalities for partial sums of dependent random vectors taking their values in separable Hilbert or Banach spaces of finite or infinite dimension. Two types of measure of dependence are considered: strong mixing coefficients (α-mixing) and absolutely regular mixing coefficients (β-mixing). These inequalities, which are similar to those in the dependent real case, are used to derive the strong law of large numbers (SLLN) and the bounded law of the iterated logarithm (LIL) for absolutely regular Hilbert- or Banach-valued processes under minimal mixing conditions. The article first introduces the relevant notation and definitions before presenting the maximal inequalities in the strong mixing case, followed by the absolutely regular mixing case. It concludes with some applications to the SLLN, the bounded LIL for Hilbertian or Banachian absolutely regular processes, the recursive estimation of probability density, and the covariance operator estimations.
Linear Processes for Functional Data
Authors: Mas André , Pumo Besnik
Published: August 2018

This article provides an overview of the basic theory and applications of linear processes for functional data, with particular emphasis on results published from 2000 to 2008. It first considers centered processes with values in a Hilbert space of functions before proposing some statistical models that mimic or adapt the scalar or finite-dimensional approaches for time series. It then discusses general linear processes, focusing on the invertibility and convergence of the estimated moments and a general method for proving asymptotic results for linear processes. It also describes autoregressive processes as well as two issues related to the general estimation problem, namely: identifiability and the inverse problem. Finally, it examines convergence results for the autocorrelation operator and the predictor, extensions for the autoregressive Hilbertian (ARH) model, and some numerical aspects of prediction when the data are curves observed at discrete points.
Kernel Regression Estimation for Functional Data
Authors: Ferraty Frédéric , Vieu Philippe
Published: August 2018

This article provides an overview of recent nonparametric and semiparametric advances in kernel regression estimation for functional data. In particular, it considers the various statistical techniques based on kernel smoothing ideas that have recently been developed for functional regression estimation problems. The article first examines nonparametric functional regression modelling before discussing three popular functional regression estimates constructed by means of kernel ideas, namely: the Nadaraya-Watson convolution kernel estimate, the kNN functional estimate, and the local linear functional estimate. Uniform asymptotic results are then presented. The article proceeds by reviewing kernel methods in semiparametric functional regression such as single functional index regression and partial linear functional regression. It also looks at the use of kernels for additive functional regression and concludes by assessing the impact of kernel methods on practical real-data analysis involving functional (curves) datasets.
Syntax
Authors: Kaplan Ronald M.
Published: August 2018

This chapter introduces some of the phenomena that theories of natural-language syntax aim to account for. It briefly discusses the correspondence between the sentences of a language and the semantic predicate-argument relations that they express, indicating how that correspondence is encoded in terms of word order, phrase structure, agreement, and valence. It surveys some of the grammatical notations, syntactic representations, and theoretical approaches that have figured prominently in linguistic research and that have particularly influenced the development of natural-language processing algorithms and implementations.
Bunyan’s Posthumously Published Works
Authors: Owens W. R.
Published: August 2018

This chapter provides an overview of sixteen works left in manuscript at Bunyan’s death. After giving an account of the circumstances of their posthumous publication, the chapter discusses their dates of composition and why Bunyan did not publish them, emphasizing particularly the context of severe persecution in which they were written. Most originated as sermons, and the chapter considers Bunyan’s style and rhetoric as a preacher. It also discusses Bunyan’s use of typology in interpreting the Bible, particularly in his commentary on the first ten chapters of Genesis: one of the most ambitious of the posthumously published works. Finally, it argues that these works reveal a great deal about the development of millenarianism in Bunyan’s thinking, and about changes in his political views.
Bunyan’s Life, Bunyan’s Lives
Authors: Mullett Michael A.
Published: August 2018

The Nonconformist leader John Bunyan (1628–88) has left us a partial account of his life, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), on the basis of which we can begin to assemble a fuller account of his life, which had at its central point the process of his transformative religion conversion in the 1650s. From an intensely self-preoccupied existence, Bunyan emerged as a fully public figure in the world of later seventeenth-century English Nonconformity. While subscribing to the prevalent Calvinism of the English Puritan tradition, in his preaching and writing Bunyan taught a vibrant practical and social morality, as well as disseminating a political code that helped to accommodate his faith to the realities of England under a securely restored Stuart monarchy.
Bunyan’s England
Authors: Coffey John
Published: August 2018

Readers of Bunyan enter an imaginative world powerfully shaped by the experience of persecution and the martyrological tradition, a world polarized between the godly and the ungodly, Dissenters and conformists, sufferers and oppressors. This chapter argues that Restoration England was more ambivalent towards Dissent than Bunyan’s writings suggest. On the one hand, this was a persecutory society, one in which Protestant minorities were subjected to repression that in scale and intensity was without parallel elsewhere in Protestant Europe. Yet at the same time, there was considerable sympathy for the plight of Dissent, and concerted campaigns for both comprehension and toleration. The emerging Nonconformist denominations—Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—flourished. Calvinist theology and Puritan piety remained vigorous, if embattled. Restoration Dissent had its triumphs as well as its trials, a reality epitomized in Bunyan’s own career.
Bunyan and Gender
Authors: Ezell Margaret J. M.
Published: August 2018

John Bunyan’s writings have traditionally invited critical readings focusing on gender issues. With the scholarly recovery of the writings of radical sectarian women during the 1650s and 1660s and renewed study of libertine sexuality in the Restoration, our understanding of Bunyan’s representation of gender hierarchy and gender roles in his writings has become more complex. On the one hand, as a minister, he insisted on conformity to a biblically based gender hierarchy, and in works like The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680) he condemned the fashionable display of sexuality. On the other hand, Bunyan conceptualized the nature of the human relationship with God as requiring men to perform feminine roles and women to take on masculine traits.
Bunyan, Poststructuralism, and Postmodernism
Authors: Sim Stuart
Published: August 2018

This chapter surveys examples of the use of poststructuralist and postmodernist theory to analyse Bunyan’s work. The primary concerns and general agenda of poststructuralist/postmodernist theory are identified to assess their applicability to Bunyan’s writings (particularly his fiction and spiritual autobiography), focusing on the concepts of difference, différance, discourse, grand and little narratives, and the differend, as outlined in the work of Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. It is argued that such theories emphasize instability, and that this was a prominent feature of life in later seventeenth-century England: a period of considerable socio-political turmoil in which various ideological narratives were vying for power. Bunyan is seen to be someone constantly struggling against difference, différance, and differends: a factor that renders his writings particularly receptive to poststructuralist/postmodernist readings.
Bunyan and the Victorians
Authors: Newey Vincent
Published: August 2018

This chapter considers the reception, influence, and adaptation of Bunyan in the Victorian period, especially The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678; 1684) and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Though Bunyan’s allegory remained for many a doctrinal work, it developed varied significance and appeal within an increasingly secular culture. Attention is paid to responses in non-fictional prose and to such relevant contexts as the rise of working-class radicalism, but the focus rests on novels by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Hale White (‘Mark Rutherford’), and Thomas Hardy, which have a direct connection with Bunyan as well as using the motif of the pilgrimage or soul journey. Paradoxically, Bunyan played an important role in the imagination and techniques of writers who lost their faith or turned predominantly to humanist beliefs. For these, as for others, he endured as a major presence, a compelling point of attraction, and a source of creative stimulus.
‘Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate’
Authors: Keeble N. H.
Published: August 2018

After 1660 John Bunyan’s publications articulated and enacted a conscientious dissent from, and opposition to, the religious and, to a degree, the political, authorities of the restored monarchical regime and the re-established episcopal Church of England. In so doing, they developed a circumstantially realistic, psychologically acute, autobiographically grounded body of work that frustrated the attempts of the regime to silence Dissent through imprisonment and censorship and, by addressing the everyday concerns of readers, not only contributed significantly to the establishment of Nonconformity but created a body of work that dissented from the literary and cultural conventions of elitist Restoration writing and pointed to the way to the predominance of works of direct address to a mass readership that would characterize the English literary future.
RETINAL–CHOROIDAL ANASTOMOSIS IN MACULAR TELANGIECTASIA TYPE 2
Authors: Spaide Richard F. , Yannuzzi Lawrence A. , Maloca Peter M.
Published: August 2018

Purpose:

To investigate the deep retinal vascular changes potentially present in macular telangiectasis Type 2 (MacTel 2) with projection resolved optical coherence tomography angiography including volume rendering.

Methods:

Retrospective consecutive evaluation of patients with MacTel 2 in a community-based retinal referral practice with a comprehensive ophthalmologic examination to include optical coherence tomography and projection-resolved optical coherence tomography angiography with volume rendering. Main outcome measures were the characterization of vessel presence and anatomical arrangement in the outer retina.

Results:

There were 26 eyes of 13 patients with a mean age of 64.9 (±11.3) years, and 6 were men. The mean visual acuity was logMAR 0.4 (Snellen equivalent 20/50). No eye had signs of choroidal neovascularization or exudation. Focal hyperpigmentation was seen in 13 (50%) and right-angle veins in 17 (65%) eyes. Retinal–choroidal anastomoses were seen in 17 (65%) eyes. These anastomoses typically occurred in multiple clusters of small vessels. The presence of anastomoses was associated with pigment (P < 0.001), although the anastomoses did not necessarily colocalize with the pigment, and right-angle veins (P < 0.001), which were found in every eye with a retinal–choroidal anastomosis.

Conclusion:

Retinal–choroidal anastomoses were commonly observed in eyes with MacTel 2 using projection-resolved optical coherence tomography angiography. One animal model for MacTel 2 uses very low-density lipoprotein receptor mutant mice and shows multiple retinal–choroidal anastomoses in the disease pathogenesis as well. These findings suggest MacTel 2 is more than just a neurodegenerative disease with secondary vascular abnormalities, as the choroid may be involved in the disease process.
Perioperative Ketorolac Use and Postoperative Hematoma Formation in Reduction Mammaplasty: A Single-Surgeon Experience of 500 Consecutive Cases
Authors: Firriolo Joseph M. , Nuzzi Laura C. , Schmidtberg Lauren C. , Labow Brian I.
Published: August 2018

Background:

In light of the escalating opioid crisis, surgeons are increasingly focused on minimizing opioid use. Ketorolac has well-documented opioid-sparing effects in the postoperative period; however, its use is limited because of concerns of postoperative bleeding and hematoma formation. This study explores the relationship between hematoma formation and administration of perioperative ketorolac in adolescent female patients and young adult women undergoing reduction mammaplasty. It also aims to determine the effect of perioperative ketorolac administration on the requirement for opioid analgesia.

Methods:

The authors reviewed the medical records of 500 consecutive female patients who underwent reduction mammaplasty for bilateral macromastia from 2007 to 2017. The authors collected data pertaining to perioperative analgesia use and postoperative hematoma formation.

Results:

Five-hundred patients were included in analyses. The average age of the patients was 18.1 ± 2.2 years. Three hundred eighty-nine patients (77.8 percent) received intravenous ketorolac during the perioperative period. Seven patients (1.4 percent) developed a postoperative hematoma. Hematoma was not associated with intraoperative, postoperative, and perioperative ketorolac use (p >0.43, all). Intraoperative ketorolac use was associated with lower total intraoperative dosing of fentanyl and morphine, and postoperative ketorolac use was associated with lower total postoperative doses of oxycodone and morphine (p< 0.001, all).

Conclusions:

Ketorolac use was largely associated with decreased perioperative opioid use, but not with hematoma formation. Ketorolac may be a safe alternative to opioids in adolescents and young women undergoing reduction mammaplasty without increasing the risk of hematoma formation.

CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE:

Therapeutic, III.
Human noroviruses: recent advances in a 50-year history
Authors: Atmar Robert L. , Ramani Sasirekha , Estes Mary K.
Published: August 2018

Purpose of review

Noroviruses are a major cause of gastroenteritis. This review summarizes new information on noroviruses that may lead to the development of improved measures for limiting their human health impact.

Recent findings

GII.4 strains remain the most common human noroviruses causing disease, although GII.2 and GII.17 strains have recently emerged as dominant strains in some populations. Histo-blood group antigen (HBGA) expression on the gut mucosa drives susceptibility to different norovirus strains. Antibodies that block virus binding to these glycans correlate with protection from infection and illness. Immunocompromised patients are significantly impacted by norovirus infection, and the increasing availability of molecular diagnostics has improved infection recognition. Human noroviruses can be propagated in human intestinal enteroid cultures containing enterocytes that are a significant primary target for initiating infection. Strain-specific requirements for replication exist with bile being essential for some strains. Several vaccine candidates are progressing through preclinical and clinical development and studies of potential antiviral interventions are underway.

Norovirus epidemiology is complex and requires continued surveillance to track the emergence of new strains and recombinants, especially with the continued progress in vaccine development. Humans are the best model to study disease pathogenesis and prevention. New in-vitro cultivation methods should lead to better approaches for understanding virus-host interactions and ultimately to improved strategies for mitigation of human norovirus-associated disease.
CXCR4 Antagonist Reduced the Incidence of Acute Rejection and Controlled Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy in a Swine Heart Transplant Model Receiving a Mycophenolate-based Immunosuppressive Regimen
Authors: Hsu Wan-Tseng , Lin Cheng-Hsin , Jui Hsiang-Yiang , Tseng Ya-Hsuan , Shun Chia-Tung , Hsu Ming-Chu , Wu Kenneth Kun-Yu , Lee Chii-Ming
Published: August 2018

Background

CXC motif chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) blockade is pursued as an alternative to mesenchymal stem cell treatment in transplantation based on our previous report that burixafor, through CXCR4 antagonism, mobilizes immunomodulatory mesenchymal stem cells. Here, we explored the efficacy of combining mycophenolate mofetil (MMF)-based immunosuppressants with repetitive burixafor administration.

Methods

Swine heterotopic cardiac allograft recipients received MMF and corticosteroids (control, n = 10) combined with burixafor as a 2-dose (burixafor2D, n = 7) or 2-dose plus booster injections (burixafor2D + B, n = 5) regimen. The efficacy endpoints were graft survival, freedom from first acute rejection, and the severity of intimal hyperplasia. Each specimen was sacrificed either at its first graft arrest or after 150 days.

Results

After 150 days, all specimens in the control group had died, but 28.5% of the burixafor2D group survived, and 60% of the burixafor2D + B group survived (P = 0.0088). Although the control group demonstrated acute rejection at a median of 33.5 days, the burixafor2D + B group survived without acute rejection for a median of 136 days (P = 0.0209). Burixafor administration significantly attenuated the incidence rate of acute rejection (P = 0.002) and the severity of intimal hyperplasia (P = 0.0097) at end point relative to the controls. These findings were associated with reduced cell infiltrates in the allografts, and modulation of C-reactive protein profiles in the circulation.

Conclusions

The augmentation of conventional MMF plus corticosteroids with a CXCR4 antagonist is potentially effective in improving outcomes after heart transplantation in minipigs. Future studies are warranted into optimizing the therapeutic regimens for humans.
Hydrodynamics of linear acceleration in bluegill sunfishLepomis macrochirus
Authors: Wise Tyler N. , Schwalbe Margot A. B. , Tytell Eric D.
Published: August 2018

SUMMARY STATEMENT

Bluegill sunfish accelerate primarily by increasing the total amount of force produced in each tail beat but not by substantially redirecting forces.

In their natural habitat, fish rarely swim steadily. Instead they frequently accelerate and decelerate. Relatively little is known about how fish produce extra force for acceleration in routine swimming behavior. In this study, we examined the flow around bluegill sunfishLepomis macrochirusduring steady swimming and during forward acceleration, starting at a range of initial swimming speeds. We found that bluegill produce vortices with higher circulation during acceleration, indicating a higher force per tail beat, but do not substantially redirect the force. We quantified the flow patterns using high speed video and particle image velocimetry and measured acceleration with small inertial measurement units attached to each fish. Even in steady tail beats, the fish accelerates slightly during each tail beat, and the magnitude of the acceleration varies. In steady tail beats, however, a high acceleration is followed by a lower acceleration or a deceleration, so that the swimming speed is maintained; in unsteady tail beats, the fish maintains the acceleration over several tailbeats, so that the swimming speed increases. We can thus compare the wake and kinematics during single steady and unsteady tailbeats that have the same peak acceleration. During unsteady tailbeats when the fish accelerates forward for several tailbeats, the wake vortex forces are much higher than those at the same acceleration during single tailbeats in steady swimming. The fish also undulates its body at higher amplitude and frequency during unsteady tailbeats. These kinematic changes likely increase the fluid dynamic added mass of the body, increasing the forces required to sustain acceleration over several tailbeats. The high amplitude and high frequency movements are also likely required to generate the higher forces needed for acceleration. Thus, it appears that bluegill sunfish face a tradeoff during acceleration: the body movements required for acceleration also make it harder to accelerate.
Representing Multiple Observed Actions in the Motor System
Authors: Cracco Emiel , Keysers Christian , Clauwaert Amanda , Brass Marcel
Published: August 2018

There is now converging evidence that others’ actions are represented in the motor system. However, social cognition requires us to represent not only the actions but also the interactions of others. To do so, it is imperative that the motor system can represent multiple observed actions. The current fMRI study investigated whether this is possible by measuring brain activity from 29 participants while they observed two right hands performing sign language gestures. Three key results were obtained. First, brain activity in the premotor and parietal motor cortex was stronger when two hands performed two different gestures than when one hand performed a single gesture. Second, both individual observed gestures could be decoded from brain activity in the same two regions. Third, observing two different gestures compared with two identical gestures activated brain areas related to motor conflict, and this activity was correlated with parietal motor activity. Together, these results show that the motor system is able to represent multiple observed actions, and as such reveal a potential mechanism by which third-party social encounters could be processed in the brain.