bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The PLATO Solar-like Light-curve Simulator
Authors: Samadi R. , Deru A. , Reese D. , Marchiori V. , Grolleau E. , Green J. J. , Pertenais M. , Lebreton Y. , Deheuvels S. , Mosser B. , Belkacem K. , Börner A. , Smith A. M. S.
Published: March 2019

Context. ESA’s PLATO space mission, to be launched by the end of 2026, aims to detect and characterise Earth-like planets in their habitable zone using asteroseismology and the analysis of the transit events. The preparation of science objectives will require the implementation of hare-and-hound exercises relying on the massive generation of representative simulated light-curves.

Aims. We developed a light-curve simulator named the PLATO Solar-like Light-curve Simulator (PSLS) in order to generate light-curves representative of typical PLATO targets, that is showing simultaneously solar-like oscillations, stellar granulation, and magnetic activity. At the same time, PSLS also aims at mimicking in a realistic way the random noise and the systematic errors representative of the PLATO multi-telescope concept.

Methods. To quantify the instrumental systematic errors, we performed a series of simulations at pixel level that include various relevant sources of perturbations expected for PLATO. From the simulated pixels, we extract the photometry as planned on-board and also simulate the quasi-regular updates of the aperture masks during the observations. The simulated light-curves are then corrected for instrumental effects using the instrument point spread functions reconstructed on the basis of a microscanning technique that will be operated during the in-flight calibration phases of the mission. These corrected and simulated light-curves are then fitted by a parametric model, which we incorporated in PSLS. Simulation of the oscillations and granulation signals rely on current state-of-the-art stellar seismology.

Results. We show that the instrumental systematic errors dominate the signal only at frequencies below ∼20 μHz. The systematic errors level is found to mainly depend on stellar magnitude and on the detector charge transfer inefficiency. To illustrate how realistic our simulator is, we compared its predictions with observations made by Kepler on three typical targets and found a good qualitative agreement with the observations.

Conclusions. PSLS reproduces the main properties of expected PLATO light-curves. Its speed of execution and its inclusion of relevant stellar signals as well as sources of noises representative of the PLATO cameras make it an indispensable tool for the scientific preparation of the PLATO mission.
Ödeme – Kardinalsymptom des nephrotischen Syndroms
Authors: Kühne Lucas , Brinkkötter Paul
Published: March 2019

Edema is a common symptom with mostly extrarenal causes. Nevertheless, it may also be a sign of glomerular disease. So renal causes should always be clarified to avoid serious complications, such as renal insufficiency, cardiovascular or thrombembolic events. The determination of the albumin-creatinine ratio in spot urine is easy to perform and the method of choice to diagnose nephrotic-range proteinuria. Renal biopsy then usually allows the definitive assignement to either glomerular or systemic disease. Salt restriction in combination with diuretics and antiproteinuric treatment are essential for an effective therapy. Depending on the underlying disease and individual risk factors, anticoagulation should also be considered.
Anhaltende Diarrhö einer älteren Dame – wie Blutdruck und Diarrhö zusammengehören
Authors: Israel Hanna , Hartig Andreas , Siebolts Udo , Wickenhauser Claudia , Tannapfel Andrea , Ernst Friedrich , Wahl Uwe
Published: March 2019

Anamnese und klinischer Befund Wir berichten von einer 72–jährigen Patientin mit einer therapieresistenten Diarrhö.

Untersuchungen Bei negativem Keimnachweis und unauffälliger Bildgebung erfolgte eine endoskopische Diagnostik. Histologisch imponierte das Bild einer Zöliakie im Duodenum sowie einer lymphozytären Kolitis bis in das terminale Ileum und eine mikroskopische Kolitis. Bei negativem Antikörpernachweis für eine Zöliakie ergab sich die Verdachtsdiagnose einer Medikamentennebenwirkung.

Therapie und Verlauf Nach Absetzen des Sartans Olmesartan kam es zu einer raschen Besserung der Symptomatik.

Folgerung und Diagnose Für den AT1-Rezeptorantagonisten Olmesartan ist in seltenen Fällen das Auftreten einer Sprue-ähnlichen Enteropathie beschrieben. Mikroskopische Kolitiden sind Ausnahmen.
Editorial: Beschaffung im Management-Fokus
Authors: Freye Carolin
Published: March 2019

Das Aufgabenspektrum der an der Klinikbeschaffung Beteiligten wandelt sich – und zwar gravierend. War der Klinikeinkäufer früher vor allem für die Abwicklung von Bestellungen und der Logistiker für die Verteilung der Waren zuständig, so steht jetzt die strategische Beschaffung im Fokus. Dadurch rücken Einkauf und Logistik enger zusammen und werden zu einer wichtigen Schnittstelle im Versorgungssystem des Krankenhauses. Der Einkäufer ist inzwischen Berater für die Ärzte und die Krankenhausleitung, er soll eine Übersicht über den Markt und gute Beziehungen zu den Lieferanten haben und zudem strategisch und mit Weitblick arbeiten, um auch wirtschaftlich gute Zahlen vorlegen zu können. Und natürlich sollen möglichst alle Prozesse digitalisiert ablaufen. Auch im Klinikeinkauf sucht man jetzt also die eierlegende Wollmilchsau. Wunsch und Wirklichkeit klaffen derzeit in vielen Kliniken aber noch weit auseinander.
Effizienter Einkauf: Einkaufsdienstleister als Vermittler zwischen Krankenhaus und Industrie
Authors: Wild Markus
Published: March 2019

In Zeiten verschärfter Datenschutzrichtlinien, Zulassungsanforderungen für Medizinprodukte und einer potenziellen Gefahr durch Brexit-Auswirkungen gilt es für den Krankenhauseinkauf, permanent die Leistungsfähigkeit zu steigern und damit auch die seiner Gesundheitseinrichtung zu sichern. Bei diesen Bemühungen steht zudem die Sicherstellung einer qualitativ hochwertigen Versorgung der Patienten im Fokus des Krankenhauseinkaufs.
Cytomegalovirus Has No Impact on Immune Thrombocytopenia Bleeding Scale or Prognostic Outcomes in Egyptian Pediatric Immune Thrombocytopenia
Authors: Mokhtar Galila , Ragab Iman , Bakr Salwa , Afifi Ahmed
Published: March 2019

Background Cytomegalovirus (CMV) has been implicated as one of the etiological factors of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) in many reports.

Objectives We aimed to estimate the frequency of CMV positivity among childhood ITP patients, and to assess its impact on severity of bleeding, chronicity of the disease, and response to therapy.

Methods A cross-sectional study was performed including 40 Egyptian pediatric patients with ITP. CMV infection was detected by serological testing and polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Clinical assessment for bleeding severity using ITP bleeding scale (IBLS) and initial response to therapy were included in the study.

Results The prevalence of CMV DNAemia among the ITP patients was 72.5%. The virus DNAemia was higher among newly diagnosed ITP cases compared with chronic ones (85 and 60% respectively, p = 0.07). There were no significant differences in age, gender, bleeding severity, or initial clinical presentation in patients who were CMV-PCR positive or negative (p > 0.05). Refractory cases were found in 17.2% of CMV-positive cases compared with 36.4% in CMV-negative ones (p = 0.29). Specificity and sensitivity of serological assay in comparison to PCR were 72.4% and 20.69%, respectively, with a negative predictive value of 25.8%, and a positive predictive value of 66.7%.

Conclusion Cytomegalovirus appears to have a high frequency among both newly diagnosed and chronic ITP patients in Egypt. CMV serological assay for IgM was not a good indicator of the presence of viral infection. CMV DNAemia seems to have no significant effect on severity of bleeding, clinical presentation, or outcomes of childhood ITP.
State-of-health estimation for lithium battery in electric vehicles based on improved unscented particle filter
Authors: Shi Enwei , Xia Fei , Peng Daogang , Li Liang , Wang Xiaokang , Yu Beili
Published: March 2019

This paper proposes an effective method to estimate the state of health (SOH) of a lithium-ion battery based on the ohm internal resistance R0. Unlike other estimation methods, this work considers the variation of R0 with the state of charge (SOC). The improved unscented particle filter (IUPF) is presented to track and predict R0. That is, an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used to generate an importance probability density function in the particle filter, and a method to select the fittest particle in the resampling stage is proposed. Based on the experimental data, a second-order resistance-capacitance equivalent circuit model is set up and the parameters are identified. To verify the accuracy of the proposed method, UKF and IUPF are compared in the prediction of R0 at different SOC points under the same cycle and at the same SOC point of different cycles. The results show that IUPF has certain advantages, and the SOH estimation error is always less than 3% during the charge-discharge stage.
Coherent generation and detection of acoustic phonons in topological nanocavities
Authors: Arregui G. , Ortíz O. , Esmann M. , Sotomayor-Torres C. M. , Gomez-Carbonell C. , Mauguin O. , Perrin B. , Lemaître A. , García P. D. , Lanzillotti-Kimura N. D.
Published: March 2019

Inspired by concepts developed for fermionic systems in the framework of condensed matter physics, topology and topological states are recently being explored also in bosonic systems. Recently, some of these concepts have been successfully applied to acoustic phonons in nanoscale multilayered systems. The reported demonstration of confined topological phononic modes was based on Raman scattering spectroscopy [M. Esmann et al., Phys. Rev. B 97, 155422 (2018)], yet the resolution did not suffice to determine lifetimes and to identify other acoustic modes in the system. Here, we use time-resolved pump-probe measurements using an asynchronous optical sampling (ASOPS) technique to overcome these resolution limitations. By means of one-dimensional GaAs/AlAs distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) used as building blocks, we engineer high frequency (∼200 GHz) topological acoustic interface states. We are able to clearly distinguish confined topological states from stationary band edge modes. The generation/detection scheme reflects the symmetry of the modes directly through the selection rules, evidencing the topological nature of the measured confined state. These experiments enable a new tool in the study of the more complex topology-driven phonon dynamics such as phonon nonlinearities and optomechanical systems with simultaneous confinement of light and sound.
Enabling migration by moderation: YAP/TAZ are essential for persistent migration
Authors: Nair Praful R. , Wirtz Denis
Published: March 2019

Persistent cell migration plays a crucial role in physiological processes, but its underlying mechanisms of regulation remain unclear. Mason et al. (2019. J. Cell Biol. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201806065) show that YAP/TAZ limit cytoskeletal tension, which is essential for persistent (but not initiation of) cell migration. Potential implications of this study range from embryonic development to metastasis.
Incipient adsorption of water and hydroxyl on hematite (0001) surface
Authors: Pabisiak Tomasz , Kiejna Adam
Published: March 2019

The adsorption of submonolayer coverages of water and hydroxyl molecules on hematite (0001) surface is investigated using density functional theory with Hubbard correction U (DFT+U). The effect of adsorption on the structural, energetic, and electronic properties of both iron and oxygen terminated hematite surfaces is examined. The influence of the van der Waals interactions on the adsorption binding energy and geometry is also considered. It is found that tilted orientations of molecules are energetically more favored than planar ones, because the hydrogen bond stabilizes molecules on the surface. Bonding of H2O is more than twice weaker than that of OH. For both molecules adsorption on the iron-rich termination is much stronger than on the oxygen-terminated surface. The differences in bonding properties of water and hydroxyl molecules to the hematite surfaces are explained by different character of the charge transfer in the molecule–oxide system.
Cost-Utility Analysis of Surgical Decompression Relative to Injection Therapy for Chronic Migraine Headaches
Authors: Shauly Orr , Gould Daniel J , Patel Ketan M
Published: March 2019

Background

Common treatments for chronic migraine headaches include injection of corticosteroid and anesthetic agents at local trigger sites. However, the effects of therapy are short term, and lifelong treatment is often necessary. In contrast, surgical decompression of migraine trigger sites accomplishes the same goal yet demonstrates successful long-term elimination of chronic migraines.

Objectives

Our primary objective was to perform a cost-utility analysis to determine which patients would benefit most from available treatment options in a cost-conscious model.

Methods

A cost-utility analysis was performed, taking into consideration costs, probabilities, and health state utility scores of various interventions.

Results

Injection therapy offered a minor improvement in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) compared with surgical decompression (QALY Δ = 0.6). However, long-term injection therapy was significantly costlier to society than surgical decompression: injection treatment was estimated to cost $106,887.96 more than surgery. The results of our cost-utility analysis thus conferred a positive incremental cost-utility ratio of $178,163.27 in favor of surgical decompression.

Conclusions

Surgery provides a durable intervention and has been shown in this study to be extremely cost effective despite a very minor QALY deficit compared with injection therapy. If patients are identified who require treatment in the form of injections for less than 8.25 years, they may fall into a group that should not be offered surgery.
Public Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution: A Cautionary Case from Cold War South America
Authors: Darnton Christopher
Published: March 2019

Can public diplomacy help resolve protracted international conflicts? Both rationalist and constructivist traditions identify significant domestic obstacles to international peacemaking. However, Robert Putnam's concept of “reverberation” implies that diplomats can expand their adversaries’ win-sets for cooperation by engaging foreign publics. This paper analyzes a most-likely case, with archival evidence: Argentine Ambassador Oscar Camilión's unsuccessful quest for Argentine-Brazilian rapprochement in 1976–77. Although the two countries later overcame rivalry, public diplomacy contributed negligibly to this success: internal Argentine divisions created mixed messages toward Brazil, Brazilian leaders launched a competing public relations operation, and these two currents obstructed and nearly terminated Camilión's mission. This case illuminates the paradoxes of Argentine foreign policymaking under military rule and offers a cautionary tale for scholars and practitioners of public diplomacy and conflict resolution.
US Strikes in Somalia and Targeted Civilian Killings by Al-Shabaab: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: Reeder Bryce W , Smith John R
Published: March 2019

This study investigates the relationship between US strikes targeting Al-Shabaab and civilian victimization using spatially disaggregated data. We find that US strikes make it approximately 5.5 times more likely that civilians are murdered—an effect that is comparable to battles and periods of territorial loss. Disaggregating based on the target of each strike, however, reveals a more nuanced relationship: strikes that destroy Al-Shabaab military assets are associated with more civilian killings, whereas there is some evidence that strikes that kill members significantly reduce this form of violence. This implies an ability of the United States to continue current policy while also minimizing the human costs that directly result from intervention. Notably, however, this would require a policy-shift that avoids destroying Al-Shabaab's war-fighting capabilities, thereby reducing the ability of the United States to undermine the organization's capacity to wage war.
Hallucinations and Delusions Signal Alzheimer’s Associated Cognitive Dysfunction More Strongly Compared to Other Neuropsychiatric Symptoms
Authors: Fuller Joshua T , Choudhury Tabina K , Lowe Deborah A , Balsis Steve ,   Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative
Published: March 2019

Objectives

Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) are common among individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer’s type (DAT). We sought to characterize which NPS more purely relate to cognitive dysfunction in DAT, relative to other NPS.

Method

Demographic, neurocognitive, neuroimaging, and NPS data were mined from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database (n = 906). Using factor analysis, we analyzed the degree to which individual NPS were associated with DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction. We also employed item response theory to graphically depict the ability of individual NPS to index DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction across a continuum ranging from cognitively normal to mild DAT.

Results

Psychotic symptoms (hallucinations and delusions) were more strongly related to the continuum of DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction than other NPS, with the strength of the relationship peaking at high levels of disease severity. Psychotic symptoms also negatively correlated with brain volume and did not relate to the presence of vision problems. Aberrant motor behavior and apathy had relatively smaller associations with DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction, while other NPS showed minimal associations.

Discussion

Psychotic symptoms most strongly indexed DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction, whereas other NPS, such as depression and anxiety, were not as precisely related to the DAT-associated cognitive dysfunction.
Is duration of hospital participation in meaningful use associated with value in Medicare?
Authors: Brice Yanick N , Joynt Maddox Karen E
Published: March 2019

Objectives

“Meaningful Use” (MU) of electronic health records (EHRs) is a measure used by Medicare to determine whether hospitals are comprehensively using electronic tools. Whether hospitals’ engagement in value-based initiatives such as MU is associated with value—defined as high quality and low costs—is unknown. Our objectives were to describe hospital participation in MU, and determine whether duration of participation is associated with value.

Materials and Methods

We linked national Medicare data with MU and other hospital-level and market data. We analyzed bivariate relationships to characterize duration of participation. We estimated inverse probability-weighted multilevel logistic regressions to evaluate whether duration of participation was associated with higher likelihood of value—operationalized as having performance on 30-day readmission and inpatient spending at or below the national average.

Results

Of 2860 short-term hospitals, 59% had 4 or 5 years of MU participation by 2015; 7% had 1 or 2 years. There were differences by duration of participation across location, ownership, and size. Seventeen percent of hospitals were classified as high-value. Controlling for hospital characteristics, and holding constant market location, there was no evidence of a statistical association between duration of participation and value (odds ratio = 1.05, 95% confidence interval: 0.91–1.21; P = .51). Examining the 2 outcomes separately, there was a significant relationship between duration of participation and lower Medicare inpatient spending, but not 30-day readmission.

Discussion

Sustained participation in MU is associated with lower Medicare spending, but not with lower readmission rates.

Conclusion

Policy interventions aimed at increasing value may need a broader focus than EHR implementation and use.
Environmental Justice, Ethics, and Public Health
Authors: Dwyer James F.
Published: March 2019

Environmental problems raise important issues of justice when these problems affect people’s health prospects in systematically uneven ways, when people contribute to the problems in substantially unequal ways, and when the people who are affected by the problems have not been empowered to participate meaningfully and equally in the decisions that affect their lives. This chapter shows how these aspects of justice are relevant to waste disposal, air pollution, climate change, ecological footprints, and other environmental problems. After discussing how issues of justice arise, the chapter explores the work of environmental justice: ways to articulate, guide, and justify judgments of justice; ways to articulate and foster forms of responsibility; and ways to change social institutions and individual conduct to respond more adequately to environmental injustices.
Energy, Emissions, and Public Health Ethics
Authors: Macpherson Cheryl C.
Published: March 2019

Decades of evidence from a range of disciplines shows that industrial energy releases greenhouse gas emissions and contributes extensively to climate change. Energy delivers water, food, and other goods to billions of people, but through emissions it also harms health and environments that support health. These harms vary and have different practical and ethical significance for different populations and environments. A public health ethics concerned with whether and how to respond to conditions that harm health must address these harms. This chapter reviews evidence that the primary cause of climate change is emissions released during industrial production and use of energy. It highlights the health impacts of climate change, defines emissions as health determinants with ethical implications, and discusses how and why ethically informed health policy and other interventions should integrate social justice and social responsibility.
Political Communication Research in a Networked World
Authors: Carpini Michael X. Delli
Published: March 2019

This chapter links long-standing normative, conceptual, and empirical issues regarding the theory and practice of citizen engagement to recent research developments. It first unpacks the definition of “democratic engagement” and its presumed requisites and attributes. Next the chapter explores the role of communication in the formation of these requisites and attributes, as well as their expression. It then turns to the question “What do we know?,” arguing that for a variety of reasons, the answer is a complicated and ultimately a disappointing one. Finally, the chapter discusses how developments in information and communication technologies are changing both the process of political engagement and the ways we study it, as exemplified by the chapters in this section.
How Can Computational Social Science Motivate the Development of Theories, Data, and Methods to Advance Our Understanding of Communication and Organizational Dynamics?
Authors: Contractor Noshir
Published: March 2019

It is almost a decade since the article “Computational Social Science” was published in Science (Lazer et al., 2009). That article advocated for computational social science as a promising new arrow in the quiver for understanding and enabling social systems. The chapters in this section, and indeed in this book, are a testament to the decade-long trajectory of this movement. The chapters in this section also provide an opportunity to reflect on how computational social science can motivate the development of theories, data, and methods to advance understanding of current and emerging forms of communication and organizational dynamics. This chapter reviews some of the progress made on these dimensions and points to chapters in the section that serve as exemplars.
Macroprudential Regulation of Banks and Financial Institutions
Authors: Dwyer Gerald P.
Published: March 2019

Regulation of financial institutions to avoid the worst effects of financial crises has become a major topic of research and a focus of regulators’ efforts. Policies designed to reduce crises’ effects on real GDP and employment are called macroprudential. Moral hazard has been introduced by deposit insurance and bailouts of banks and large financial institutions. Too little is known to premise macroprudential regulation on externalities. That said, higher capital at banks and other institutions counteracts one effect of deposit insurance and would make the financial system more resilient. Living wills are likely not to be time-consistent. Regulators will not have an incentive to use them in a financial crisis. Instead, they will bail out firms to avoid adverse effects on the economy. Institutions determining regulators’ choices in a crisis need to be designed to make it equilibrium behavior for regulators to let financial firms fail.
Monetary Policy Committees and Voting Behavior
Authors: Eijffinger Sylvester , Mahieu Ronald , Raes Louis
Published: March 2019

In this chapter we suggest to use Bayesian ideal point estimation to analyze voting in monetary policy committees. Using data from the Riksbank we demonstrate what this entails and we compare ideal point estimates with the results from traditional approaches. We end by suggesting possible extensions.
Peaks and Troughs
Authors: Masciandaro Donato , Romelli Davide
Published: March 2019

This chapter investigates the endogenous evolution of central bank institutional design over the past four decades. From a theoretical perspective, it employs a stylized political economy model to highlight some key determinants of the level of central bank independence as a function of macroeconomic shocks and political economy characteristics of countries. It then employs recently developed dynamic indices of central bank design to describe the evolution of central bank independence over the period 1972–2014. In a sample of sixty-five countries, it shows that the increasing trend in central bank independence during 1972–2007 has been reversing after the 2008 financial crisis, mainly due to significant changes to the roles of central banks in banking supervision. The authors find that this evolution can be related to several macroeconomic shocks, such as inflationary, fiscal, and exchange-rate shocks.
The Governance of Central Banks
Authors: Capie Forrest , Wood Geoffrey
Published: March 2019

Governance is a topic whose discussion has been confined to private-sector organizations. To an extent, this is not surprising, for the greater part of the public sector in most countries does not take the form of a corporation. But some parts do. The Bank of England is a prominent, but certainly not the only, example. This chapter maintains that corporate governance is perhaps better not viewed as a separated subject embracing matters not just economic but also ethical, but rather as a subdivision of an analytical framework that certainly dates back to Adam Smith. This chapter shows how that framework can both embrace corporate governance and be extended to public- as well as private-sector organizations. The chapter argues that the study of the governance of central banks is certainly illuminating and may be useful for the conduct of policy.
Strategies for Conducting Monetary Policy
Authors: Thornton D. L.
Published: March 2019

This chapter appraises strategies for conducting monetary policy with the objective of evaluating how these strategies are likely to work in the real world of policymaking. The chapter examines policies that are tied to a specific channel of monetary policy (money supply targeting, interest-rate targeting, and forward guidance) and strategies that are not directly tied to a specific channel of monetary policy (inflation targeting, nominal income targeting, and quantitative easing). The strategies are evaluated in terms of the strength of theory on which they are based and their practicality. From this perspective, many of these strategies seem much less feasible than when they are evaluated in the context of abstract and highly stylized economic models. The chapter ends with a new approach to conducting monetary policy—economic reality-based monetary policy—that will make policy more effective and more predictable.
Prospect Theory and Political Decision-Making
Authors: Stein Janice Gross , Sheffer Lior
Published: March 2019

Prospect theory has been adopted unevenly across different domains of political decision-making. Research drawing on prospect theory has contributed to important advances in the understanding of processes of elite decision-making in foreign policy and domestic politics. Political scientists have also contributed several important extensions of and qualifications to prospect theory that augment the original theoretical framework and are applicable in other disciplines. The next wave of research needs to be far more careful in specifying the scope conditions that have been the focus of research in behavioral economics. Scholars will also have to pay closer attention to the distribution of probability estimates across options; whether political decision makers are choosing among risky/certain bimodal distributions, high-probability distributions, high/low distributions, or low-probability distributions matters to the predicted impact of framing effects. Finally, studies will need to pay greater attention to the information political decision makers are given and to the impact of group dynamics in political settings. Identifying the scope conditions of prospect theory in the context of political and policymaking processes over time can make a significant contribution to the explanation of both domestic and foreign policy decisions, fill a gap between individual-level choice and institutionally based outcomes, and provide a stronger behavioral foundation for understanding the dynamics of multiactor policy choice.
Memory, Trauma, and the Politics of Repatriating Bikindi’s Music in the Aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide
Authors: McCoy Jason
Published: March 2019

The ethics of musical repatriation become especially murky when representative members of the originating culture disagree over whether certain musical artifacts should be repatriated at all. This may be due to linkages between the artifacts and violent histories, such that the artifacts carry the risk of inducing traumatic memories and contributing to ongoing political conflict. Centering on postgenocide Rwanda, this chapter employs a series of ethnographic vignettes to illustrate these ethical tensions. In 2007, the author came into possession of songs by Simon Bikindi, which were used by government-affiliated propagandists to incite the 1994 genocide. The songs are presently de facto censored by the current regime. In carefully reintroducing the songs to genocide survivors and witnesses, the author found that many did indeed support measures to suppress them, while others expressed an earnest desire to own and listen to them again, primarily as a facilitator for therapeutically remembering and narrativizing their own experiences of terror, loss, and recovery. In conclusion, this chapter does not aim to resolve this conflict, but to present it for the purposes of reflection and dialogue.
Grammatical Categories
Authors: Kemmerer David
Published: March 2019

This chapter reviews recent empirical and theoretical research on the cortical underpinnings of grammatical categories. It draws on data from multiple brain mapping methods, but it places special emphasis on a topic that has been quite prominent in this branch of neurolinguistics, namely the noun-verb distinction. This distinction is addressed from five perspectives: (1) studies that focus on the meanings of prototypical object nouns and action verbs; (2) studies that report brain-damaged patients with word production impairments that selectively or disproportionately affect not only a particular grammatical category (nouns/verbs), but also a particular output channel (speaking/writing); (3) studies that attempt to overcome confounds between conceptual and grammatical factors, either by closely matching the meanings of nouns and verbs, or by investigating both concrete and abstract nouns and verbs; (4) studies that concentrate on the different inflectional processes associated with nouns and verbs; and (5) studies that address subclasses of nouns and verbs—in particular, proper versus common nouns, and transitive versus intransitive verbs. The last section of the chapter goes beyond the noun-verb distinction by briefly discussing some neurolinguistic work on other grammatical categories—specifically, adjectives and a few classes of closed-closed items.
Magnetoencephalography and the Cortical Dynamics of Language Processing
Authors: Salmelin Riitta , Kujala Jan , Liljeström Mia
Published: March 2019

When seeking to uncover the brain correlates of language processing, timing and location are of the essence. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) offers them both, with the highest sensitivity to cortical activity. MEG has shown its worth in revealing cortical dynamics of reading, speech perception, and speech production in adults and children, in unimpaired language processing as well as developmental and acquired language disorders. The MEG signals, once recorded, provide an extensive selection of measures for examination of neural processing. Like all other neuroimaging tools, MEG has its own strengths and limitations of which the user should be aware in order to make the best possible use of this powerful method and to generate meaningful and reliable scientific data. This chapter reviews MEG methodology and how MEG has been used to study the cortical dynamics of language.
Shedding Light on Language Function and Its Development with Optical Brain Imaging
Authors: Minagawa Yasuyo , Cristia Alejandrina
Published: March 2019

Language can be described as a ubiquitous marvel: Nearly all humans acquire and process their native language(s) effortlessly. The neural bases of both acquisition and processing have long captured scientific attention. The study of the brain networks underlying language development, perception, and production was facilitated by the advent of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has led to a remarkable expansion of language studies, particularly on developing populations. This chapter introduces the technique, discussing the advantages and disadvantages relative to other common methods. It is argued that fNIRS provides an interesting compromise for the case of language studies in particular, given that it has a moderate spatial resolution, it is inexpensive and silent, and it is moderately tolerant of a range of movement. The chapter then turns to experimental design, instrumentation, and data analyses. In addition to laying out a number of potential options for each, it provides readers with useful practical advice, ranging from how to decide on the placement of optodes on the participant’s head to how to avoid data contamination due to muscular and other diverse artefacts. Next, the chapter provides a brief summary of three key strands of research in the study of language acquisition. In particular, it discusses the evidence for and against the presence of specific biases leading to left-dominant speech processing, the emergence of multi-region brain networks for language processing, and the use of fNIRS among clinical populations. It concludes by discussing likely advances in the near future of the technique.
The Jewish Ethnic Divide and Ethnic Politics in Israel
Authors: Smooha Sammy
Published: March 2019

Ethnic differences are commonly reflected in governing elites, public policies, political parties, voting, and intergroup conflicts. This is true of Jews in Israel despite the strong assimilationist ideology and lack of legitimacy of ethnicity and ethnic politics. Notwithstanding increasing assimilation, decreasing ethnic inequalities, and diminishing discrimination, Jews in Israel are still markedly divided by social class, religious observance, subculture, geographic concentration, and collective memory. The political divide between the Right and the Left-Center is grounded in both class and ethnicity. The bases of the right-wing parties are non-dominant and low-socioeconomic-status Jews, including Mizrahim, Russian immigrants, the National Religious, and the ultra-Orthodox, who are more nationalistic and less liberal than the economically better off supporters of the Left-Center. The political Right represents its supporters’ illiberal views well and grants them a feeling of being at home in Israel and some preferential treatment as Jews. The demographic predominance of its supporters gives the Right a lead in vying for power, makes Israel more Jewish than democratic, and reduces the chances of peacemaking with the Palestinians.
Max Weber and the Idea of the Occident
Authors: Derman Joshua
Published: March 2019

Max Weber believed that the Occident had produced a set of unique institutions whose distinctiveness could be characterized using ideal types that accentuated their type and degree of “rationalism.” The rise of modern capitalism, one element within this set, had been enabled by the presence of other elements, he famously argued, none of which had indigenously arisen anywhere else in the world. This chapter reconstructs Weber’s idea of the Occident and examines how he understood the place of his own “modern European cultural world” within the development of occidental rationalism. It also considers the ways in which Weber’s comparative project might have been contaminated by various forms of “Eurocentric” biases, such as cultural prejudices, misapprehensions of Western uniqueness, and inept applications of the ideal-typical method. The most serious methodological difficulty with Weber’s comparative project is not his assertion of occidental difference, this chapter suggests, but rather his assumption that many paradigmatic cultural institutions were shared by societies whose developmental trajectories ultimately diverged. By attempting to understand non-Western institutions in terms of ideal types that were derived from European experiences, Weber often failed to appreciate the distinctive norms that structured the dynamism of non-Western societies.
Regulation of Synaptic Homeostasis by Translational Mechanisms
Authors: Mori Megumi , Penney Jay , Haghighi Pejmun
Published: March 2019

The ability of synapses to modify their functional properties and adjust the amount of neurotransmitter release at their terminals is essential for formation of appropriate neural circuits during development and crucial for higher brain functions throughout life. Many forms of synaptic plasticity can adjust synaptic strength down (depression) or up (potentiation); however, depending on the cellular context as the forces of change act upon the synapse, other synaptic mechanisms are activated to resist change. This form of synaptic plasticity is generally referred to as homeostatic synaptic plasticity. Accumulating experimental evidence indicates that translational mechanisms play a critical role in the regulation of homeostatic synaptic plasticity. This chapter will review studies that contribute to this body of evidence, including a role for the target of rapamycin in the retrograde regulation of synaptic homeostasis.
Cross-Textual Interpretation as Postcolonial Strategy in Bible Translation in Asia
Authors: Lee Archie C. C.
Published: March 2019

This article intends to look at Bible translation as a site of contestation and negotiation. The chapter focuses on the complicated issues of naming God and the depiction of God’s opponents in missionary translations in East Asia in general and China in particular. Though translation is a process of interaction and exchanges between the Bible and the target languages, it may also reveal the translator’s imperialistic and colonial mindset. Some missionaries have regarded Asian religions and their textual traditions as dangerous and a threat to the religion of Christianity. In some of the missionary translations, Christian doctrinal disposition takes priority over a proclaimed fidelity to the biblical text. This chapter proposes a cross-textual approach to Bible translation that will affirm the hybridized identity of the colonized and provide a creative site for negotiation between the Asian text (Text A) and the biblical text (Text B).
What Kind of Studies Is Comics Studies?
Authors: Woo Benjamin
Published: March 2019

Dramatic recent growth in comics research suggests that comics studies has matured as a field, perhaps even constituting an emergent discipline. Yet important questions about the nature of this field and how it relates to established academic disciplines remain unresolved. This introductory chapter examines the genealogy of comics studies and explores the relationship between theory and method as a proxy for the field’s “paradigmatic” status. Four theories of page layout are analyzed as examples of theorization in comics studies. Drawing on Robert T. Craig’s “constitutive metamodel” of communications theory, the chapter ultimately rejects both attempts to retread the path of established humanities disciplines such as English literature and film studies and arguments against disciplinarity as such, calling instead for a dialogic conception of academic disciplines that continually reflects on the differences through which they are constituted.
Irony, Ethics, and Lyric Narrative in Miriam Engelberg’s Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person
Authors: Phelan James
Published: March 2019

This chapter situates Miriam Engelberg’s 2006 memoir, Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, within the larger context of discussions about the politics of the master narrative of breast cancer. This master narrative dictates that stories about breast cancer should treat the illness as a positive experience leading to self-improvement. While some critics have productively pushed back against this master narrative, their efforts run the risk of establishing a too-limiting alternative master narrative. From this alternative perspective, Engelberg’s persistent irony is politically problematic because it ultimately reinforces the master narrative: “I find redemptive humor in this experience.” Taking a rhetorical approach, this chapter counters that view. It examines Engelberg’s uses of irony and her deployment of a lyric-narrative progression in order to accomplish her purposes of depicting the grim realities of her experience, finding therapeutic value in her comics, and providing an account that can be useful to others.
Children in Comics
Authors: Ahmed Maaheen
Published: March 2019

This chapter begins by examining the tension between education and entertainment in comics from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yellow Kid exemplifies the agentic, carnivalesque comics child who gets away with everything he does, and Buster Brown narrates the antics and slips of a naughty child who is duly punished. This also holds for Katzenjammer Kids and the children in the British magazine Beano. Children in comics are first situated in the broader media context of the nineteenth century. Changing conceptions of children and childhood and the relationship between children and laughter are also elaborated. The chapter then focuses on naughty children in comics and the degree of impunity offered to them in order to map the negotiation between education and entertainment as well as social commentary. It highlights the queer inclinations and affective power of comics children while also tracing the continuation of racist stereotypes.
Auto/biographics and Graphic Histories Made for the Classroom
Authors: Smith Sidonie , Watson Julia
Published: March 2019

This chapter raises questions about how the grammar of the comics form, the aesthetics of its visual/textual interface, and the ethics of identification and empathy are affected when historical figures are reanimated and their life narratives remediated for the classroom. Abina and the Important Men casts the legal testimony of a nineteenth-century woman who was enslaved in the Cape Colony region of what is now Ghana as a graphic history and offers historical, geographic, social, and visual “pathways” to foster engagement with colonial African history and historiography. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth combines the quest of young Bertrand Russell to conceptualize the first principles of mathematics with both Russell’s later autobiographical reflections on the logic and madness of logicians in the early twentieth century and the metacritical story of how the authors and artists composed the comic. Logicomix, which is not explicitly designed for courses but assumes some conversancy with philosophy, interweaves its triple narrative in ways that invite students and scholars to engage with foundational issues in philosophy and mathematics, while enjoying a “real” comic.
Transformative Architectures in Postcolonial Hong Kong Comics
Authors: Chu Kin Wai
Published: March 2019

This chapter looks at Hong Kong cultural identities by analyzing the postcolonial Hong Kong comic Harbor Heroes, by Siuhak, in which the heroes are fictional characters in the form of anthropomorphologized robots transformed from famous architectural landmarks along the Victoria Harbor front. The characterization of these robots reflects the transmedial influences of robot animations produced in Japan and the United States in the 1980s when Siuhak was growing up. Originally published as editorial comics from 2004 to 2016, Harbor Heroes has the features of political cartoons that are closely tied to current issues and political events. The narratives include political humor, nostalgia, and parodies. Therefore, they have displayed the transformation of Hong Kong as well as the shifting cultural identities among Hong Kong people. After studying its comic forms, functions, and publication format, it is proposed that this story embodies multilayered hybridity which also accentuates hybrid Hong Kong cultural identities.
Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing
Authors: Crucifix Benoît
Published: March 2019

Drawing comics holds an ambiguous status, between graphic trace and mechanical reproduction. This chapter examines practices of copying that play up this ambiguity, looking at comics, redrawn and undrawn, that foreground the questions: What does it mean to draw without drawing? What does it mean to copy and redraw or even to disengage from the very act of drawing? By reading through a selection of contemporary small-press comics from both Europe and North America that draw from archives, this chapter works toward elaborating a “graphic archiveology,” analyzing the way creators materially engage with the past, literally redrawing from loose, often self-curated archives of comics.
The Cartoon on the Comics Page
Authors: Pizzino Christopher
Published: March 2019

This chapter examines phenomenological aspects of the cartoon in the context of comics reading. A simplified or iconic rendering of a figure, the cartoon has a prominent place in popular culture and in comics history; a large percentage influential and widely read comics have been drawn in iconic fashion. Scholarly definitions of comics as such routinely omit this fact; it is considered a matter of content, not form. Yet the relationship of comics to cartoons works differently from and implicitly challenges conventional understandings of the form/content relation. Several facets of the cartoon’s phenomenological relation to the reader are examined in order to disclose the powerfully self-referential aura of this kind of drawing, key to its effect in the context of comics. This aura may be among the reasons comics have been considered inferior to fine-arts production; it might also contribute to the medium’s often delinquent status in culture at large.