bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Practical Synthesis of Poly(2-methoxyaniline-5-phosphonic acid), a Self-Doped Conducting Polyaniline Bearing Phosphonic Acid
Authors: Abe Yasushi , Amaya Toru , Hirao Toshikazu
Published: September 2014

A practical synthetic approach for poly(2-methoxyaniline-5-phosphonic acid) was developed. The improved method for the monomer synthesis was appropriate for scale-up in view of the yield, purification, and cost compared to the previous method. Polymerization was also performed in a gram scale.
Improving Penetration Forecasts Using Social Interactions Data
Authors: Toubia Olivier , Goldenberg Jacob , Garcia Rosanna
Published: September 2014

We propose an approach for using individual-level data on social interactions (e.g., number of recommendations received by consumers, number of recommendations given by adopters, number of social ties) to improve the aggregate penetration forecasts made by extant diffusion models. We capture social interactions through an individual-level hazard rate in such a way that the resulting aggregate penetration process is available in closed form and nests extant diffusion models. The parameters of the model may be estimated by combining early aggregate penetration data with social interactions data collected from a sample of consumers in as few as one time period. We illustrate our approach by applying it to the mixed influence model (Bass model) and the more recent asymmetric influence model. A field study conducted in collaboration with a consumer packaged goods company and a marketing research company confirms that incorporating social interactions data using the proposed approach has the potential to result in improved aggregate penetration forecasts in managerially relevant settings.

This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.
Probabilistic Selling in Quality-Differentiated Markets
Authors: Zhang Zelin , Joseph Kissan , Subramaniam Ramanathan
Published: September 2014

Probabilistic selling—the sale of synthetic products consisting of a lottery between two distinct goods—has been extensively analyzed in horizontal markets. In this research, we investigate probabilistic selling in quality-differentiated markets. This is an important new dimension of inquiry because of the widespread prevalence of quality-differentiated markets as well as significant differences in the preference structure across these markets. In fact, this latter consideration casts doubt as to whether probabilistic selling will even emerge in quality-differentiated markets. We find that probabilistic selling emerges in quality-differentiated markets as a way to profitably dispose excess capacity; moreover, probabilistic selling remains viable even under endogenous quality choice. In addition, in markets where sellers employ “strong” quality differentiation, the introduction of an intermediate probabilistic good actually causes closer quality levels in a product line and enhances consumer welfare. In contrast, in markets where sellers employ “weak” quality differentiation, the introduction of an intermediate probabilistic good increases quality separation and degrades consumer welfare. Overall, we view our contribution as one of characterizing the optimality, implementation, and policy implications of probabilistic selling in quality-differentiated markets.

This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.
Space and Time Variations in Crime-Recording Practices within a Large Municipal Police Agency
Authors: Boivin Rémi , Ouellet Frédéric
Published: September 2014

When comparing crime rates across several locations or analysing general trends, it is usually assumed that police statistics are an imperfect, but relatively constant indicator of the phenomenon. This study delves into the possibility that this may not be the case. Multilevel models are used to analyse the recording rate of six types of offences for the 33 police districts of a large Canadian city between 2005 and 2009. Results demonstrate that geographical and time factors unrelated to the offence committed may influence a police officer's decision whether or not to record certain types of offences. In some cases, official statistics do not provide a meaningful indicator of crime for comparative purposes.
Barrio Affinities: Transnational Inspiration and the Geopolitics of Latina/o Design
Authors: Londoño Johana
Published: September 2014

Latina/o cultural studies underexamines the work of designers, even as urban design, architecture, and graphic design are increasingly marketed to appeal to Latina/o tastes in housing, commercial packaging, and other consumer goods. This article explores the work of the designer Pablo Medina to expand this scholarship but also to understand how designers negotiate cultural expression with the socioeconomic particularities of places across the hemisphere. This barrio-inspired design varies from previous barrio culture dialectically produced by discriminatory US urban policies and Latina/o grassroots organizing, reminding Latina/o and American studies scholars to consider the socioeconomically poor barrio as a contemporary hemispheric place whose cultural values and visuality are shaped by global policies, elitist interests, and design culture, professionals, and industries. To illuminate recent changes to barrio cultural production this article introduces the term barrio affinity , a scopic regime that values and frames marginal urban spaces to dually celebrate actual barrios and abstract the place and culture to which it refers.
On Thinking Cruelty: An Interview with Jean Franco
Authors: Jiménez Cristina Pérez
Published: September 2014

In this interview, Jean Franco discusses her new book, Cruel Modernity (Duke University Press, 2013), which examines the conditions under which acts of cruelty were, and continue to be, instruments of power and social control in Latin America. During her conversation with Cristina Pérez Jiménez, Franco reflects on the roles of the Latin American state in the perpetration of crimes and of the United States in abetting cruelty in the region, the history of ethnocide in Guatemala, the function of art as witness to atrocity, the current memorialization projects in Latin America, and what lies ahead.
Recuperating Histories of Violence in the Americas: Vernacular History-Making on the US–Mexico Border
Authors: Martinez Monica Muñoz
Published: September 2014

This article examines the 1915 double murder of Jesus Bazán and Antonio Longoria north of the Rio Grande River in Hidalgo County, Texas, and shows that this event is emblematic of the wider use of violence in subject formation and state-building projects in the Americas. This article describes a state-sanctioned period of racial terror and the culture of impunity in which state agents abused their authority and denied protection to ethnic Mexicans within their jurisdiction. This period of anti-Mexican violence continues to be memorialized a century later. Generational memories of this double murder—and the vernacular histories created by local residents in Texas—continue to challenge historical narratives that disavow generational loss and obscure roots of state violence. These histories confront historical narratives that justify the violence inherent in nation-building practices and make transparent the longer legacies of histories of border policing.
Locating Neoliberalism in Time, Space, and “Culture”
Authors: Dávila Arlene
Published: September 2014

This article examines culture and neoliberalism across the Americas and discusses strategies to develop comparative analyses that engage with matters of race and power.
“Under the Skirt of Liberty”: Giannina Braschi Rewrites Empire
Authors: Cruz-Malavé Arnaldo Manuel
Published: September 2014

“‘Under the Skirt of Liberty’ : Giannina Braschi Rewrites Empire” traces the inscription of New York City in a tradition of male anti-imperial, subaltern, or divergently modern, broadly Latino discourses that identify the city as a space of gender and sexual dysfunction, and analyzes the work of contemporary New York Puerto Rican poet Giannina Braschi as representative of the ways that contemporary Latino authors have rewritten and redeployed this tradition since the 1980s. The essay identifies a representative evolution in Braschi’s oeuvre from a 1980s and 1990s performative poetics of inversion to a current rhyzomatic poetics of deterritorialization, singularity, and appositional, horizontal camaraderie “from below” that resonates with the work on resistance to empire of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, and Zapatista political practice, as analyzed by Neil Harvey.
Rules of Disengagement: Masculinity, Violence, and the Cold War Remakings of Counterinsurgency in Brazil
Authors: Cowan Benjamin A.
Published: September 2014

Amid pronounced anxieties that “new” forms of warcraft (technological, psychological, guerrilla, nuclear) would obviate manly soldiery in the post–World War II period, Brazilian, French, and US military theorists shared a discursive space in which they worked out these fears via the invention of counterinsurgency doctrine. In so doing, they both demonized guerrilla warfare as an unprecedented innovation of nefarious communists and imagined an idealized counterguerrilla or counterinsurgent warrior who must outpace the guerrillas’ putatively formidable masculinity. This essay traces the ideological contours of the transnational alliance of military theorists that collaborated in conceptualizing counterinsurgency as a formal, and now central, stratagem. Key to the cohesion of this alliance was a vision of remasculinization as the bulwark of Western defense. Hashed out in trans-Atlantic conversations, such remasculinization took the particular form of lack of restraint—laying the groundwork for indiscriminate violence, unmoored even from the pretense of rules of engagement.
University of Radicalism: Ricardo Flores Magón and Leavenworth Penitentiary
Authors: Heatherton Christina
Published: September 2014

Between 1917 and 1922, Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary was occupied by a unique mix of soldiers, war dissenters, radical labor organizers, foreign-born radicals, Black militants, and Mexican revolutionaries. Prisoners included figures like Ricardo Flores Magón, one of the central theorists and agitators of the Mexican Revolution. The article observes how incarcerated revolutionaries and working-class soldiers coordinated night schools, produced their own newspaper, led May Day marches, initiated strikes, and continued agitating and educating one another in the prison. Drawing from prison records, inmate book collections, correspondence, and federal surveillance records, archives collected from across the United States, Mexico City, and Amsterdam, the article explores the unanticipated alliances and political struggles that arose from this unique convergence space. It subsequently describes how a unique form of radical internationalism was theorized within and against an emergent security infrastructure.
The Cuban Exile Wars: 1976–1981
Authors: Quiroga José
Published: September 2014

The assassination of Carlos Muñiz Varela in Puerto Rico marks the turning point in the Cuban civil wars of the 1970s—a decade marked by repressive politics in Cuba and attempts at engagement by leftist Cuban exiles, which in turn produced violent responses by other exilic groups. The Muñiz Varela tragedy is examined as part of a broader context, one that crystallizes how undercover politics and ideology still define the Caribbean in the decades that follow the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Ruminations on Lo Sucio as a Latino Queer Analytic
Authors: Vargas Deborah R.
Published: September 2014

This essay considers lo sucio —a Latino vernacular for dirty, nasty, and filthy—as a Latino queer analytic. I situate lo sucio in relation to contemporary neoliberal projects that disappear the most vulnerable and disenfranchised by cleaning up spaces and populations deemed dirty and wasteful. Moreover, my initial ruminations of lo sucio , as a queer analytic, is invested in contributing to conversations that explore Latina queer genders and sexualities as sensate. Accordingly, lo sucio smells, acts, and tastes like the collateral genders of a world invested in the fiscal benefits of normative sexual intimacies. In this essay, lo sucio is in conversation with three racialized discourses of difference: first, lewd, obscene, offensive hypersexual undisciplined bodies; second, darkened, suspect citizens perpetually untrustworthy, impure, and disloyal to the state; and third, diseased “cultures of poverty” subjects overdetermined to fail to arrive to normative gender and sexuality.
The Myth of Diaspora Exceptionalism: Wyclef Jean Performs Jaspora
Authors: Jean-Charles Régine Michelle
Published: September 2014

This essay analyzes elements of the music, nonprofit work, political aspirations, and autobiography of hip-hop star Wyclef Jean in light of performance theory and discourses of Haitian exceptionalism. I argue that Wyclef stages a version of diasporic identity that is propelled by two central tropes of exceptionalism—romance and tragedy. Building on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s concept of Haitian exceptionalism as a fiction, I use performance theory methodologies to show that Wyclef’s articulation of jaspora (the Kreyòl term for diaspora) operates according to a rigid logic of idealization and degradation. By focusing on the different ways that Wyclef performs and authenticates Haitian identity, my goal is to describe and critique another manifestation of the trope of Haitian exceptionalism that focuses on the troubling terrain of diasporic identity politics.
Rehumanizing the Disappeared: Spaces of Memory in Mexico and the Liminality of Transitional Justice
Authors: Karl Sylvia
Published: September 2014

During the political violence of the Mexican dirty war of the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of people who had been considered internal enemies were disappeared by the military. Families of the disappeared started searching for them; organized in victims’ associations on a local, national, and transnational level; demanded truth and justice; and became important human rights actors in Mexico. Therein, the processes of dehumanization by state actors during the dirty war are responded to by processes of rehumanization by the families of the disappeared. Their fight for rehumanization comprises practices and discourses of memory such as the development of social memory groups, political rituals with representations and narratives about the disappeared, and the construction of memory places. In response to the political agency of victims, the government implemented transitional justice instruments. But within these processes, the multiple transitional frictions (as described by Alexander Hinton) between global norms and local realities of power became visible. Remembering the disappeared in Mexico is, rather, part of a countermemory than of the collective or national memory. I argue that the fight for rehumanization of the disappeared is a conflictive but important space of memory in Mexico that constantly challenges power holders and their interpretations of the past war and furthermore makes the liminality of transitional justice processes visible.
A Return to the South
Authors: Byrd Jodi A.
Published: September 2014

Written as a meditation, this essay considers how indigeneity challenges the geopolitical formations of “souths” within and beyond the US nation-state. In particular, Southeastern American Indians provide an important analytic through which to reconceptualize hemispheric understandings of race, place, and temporality that are often collapsed into discussion of a global South or often conscripted into absence in the assumption of a global North. Drawing on Éduoard Glissant and other Caribbean intellectuals to situate Southeastern American Indian histories within a larger hemispheric frame of the Americas, this piece argues for reading practices that disrupt colonialist geographies of absence and removal to demonstrate to importance of return within indigenous understandings of land.
Introduction: Las Américas Quarterly
Authors: Gómez-Barris Macarena , Fiol-Matta Licia
Published: September 2014

With the 2012 ASA convention in Puerto Rico, “Dimensions of Empire and Resistance” as impetus, and the questions of coloniality and empire raised there fresh in our minds, this special issue of American Quarterly brings together research that rethinks the meaning of American studies from Latin American and Latinx studies. The issue calls attention to the historical complexities of colonial encounters and the making of liberal human rights regimes—traditional paradigms in Latin American studies—as well as counterhistories and aesthetically grounded cultural analyses. Collecting these essays into five sections—Transgeographies, Revisiting Memory Politics and Rights Discourse, Alternative Histories, Cruel Modernities, and Archipelagic Thought—our aim is to encourage new dialogues, particularly in South–South reorientations. The issue focuses on cultural praxis and culture making to refine and outmaneuver critical accounts that otherwise rehearse historical structural inequities and reproduce overdetermined representations of the Américas.
Lorenza Böttner: From Chilean Exceptionalism to Queer Inclusion
Authors: Fischer Carl
Published: September 2014

Although critical efforts since the end of Chile’s dictatorship have successfully deployed narratives of dissident gender comportment to disrupt the country’s neoliberal discourse of economic exceptionalism, some queer narratives of the postdictatorship period that are not contingent on Chile’s dictatorial, violent past have been excluded from this debate. The story of Lorenza Böttner, a transgender Chilean performance artist profiled by Pedro Lemebel and Roberto Bolaño, aims to rectify this oversight. Lorenza’s life and work show how one person’s radical call for inclusion in the face of adversity, and refusal—in the vein of Anglo queer theory about “futurity”—to neatly fit into any historical, artistic, political, national, and economic narrative can exemplify how exceptionalism can be used against itself. Her unique liberation from these constricting categories offers a glimpse at what debates about both Anglo futurity and Latin American postdictatorship cultural criticism can “become.”
Queer Argie
Authors: Figari Carlos
Published: September 2014

In this essay I analyze the links and tensions between queer theory and politics of recognition in the Southern Cone. The queer gaze in Argentina seeps into the discussion of state recognition and the processes of civic normalization. Several demands with respect to the state were initiated or adopted by those who discussed queer theory in Argentina, from which circumstances I think also derives the originality of the process. These stretched from demands for legal personality for transvestite groups and for civil union at one end to equal marriage and gender identity law at the other. I also examine how none of these achievements was a point of arrival but rather a step toward the next objective and that each particular law did not solve the totality of any demand but, on the contrary, made it possible to continue deepening the analysis of the needs of increasingly wider publics.
Humboldt’s American Mediterranean
Authors: Gillman Susan
Published: September 2014

When Alexander von Humboldt traveled to South America in 1799–1804, he developed the idea of the “American Mediterranean,” shorthand for his comparative project to explore whether and how the physical and human geography—mountains and seas, languages and nations—of the New World resembles those of the Old. By “mediterraneanizing” America—and otherwise demonstrating its own complex comparability not only externally with Europe and Asia but also internally with what he calls Spanish America, Portuguese America, the English possessions in North America, and the United States—Humboldt’s hybrid travelogue/scientific/historical account of his voyage provides a model for Américas studies, both cautionary and inspirational. Attuned to asymmetrical, uneven, and incommensurate comparisons, the Humboldtian American Mediterranean comments self-reflexively on the limits and possibilities of the Mediterranean as a comparison and thus raises larger contextual issues of linguistic and cultural translation inherent in the project of rethinking the Américas in global, world-historical perspectives.
The Reparative Politics of Central America Solidarity Movement Culture
Authors: Stuelke Patricia
Published: September 2014

This essay examines the affective structures of the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s. Through an analysis of movement photography, memoir, and Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Bean Trees , the essay shows how the 1980s Central America solidarity movement was characterized by a disillusionment with the “hermeneutics of suspicion” and a valorization of sentimental reparative modes that emphasized affective connections between US and Central American subjects. This reparative orientation often required depoliticizing racial performances from Central Americans, anticipating the demands of neoliberal multiculturalism.
Documenting The Crime of Cuba : An Américan Left and the 1933 Cuban Revolution
Authors: Gronbeck-Tedesco John A.
Published: September 2014

This article examines the cultural exchange between members of the US Old Left and Cuban Generación del 30 in the context of the 1933 Cuban revolution. US and Cuban radicals agitated for a “new Cuba” in their enlistment of proletarian art and class warfare using modernist devices. Documentary was the primary genre by which to exhibit revolution using a blend of oppositional politics and aesthetic experimentation. In transit were Clifford Odets, John Dos Passos, Walker Evans, Juan Marinello, and Pablo de la Torriente Brau, and journals, periodicals, pamphlets, and photographs where one found documentary to be the favored genre that offered the reader/viewer backstage access to horrific Cuban realities. Carleton Beals’s The Crime of Cuba (1933) is the preeminent documentary text in this oeuvre. But in purporting to discover the “truth” of Cuban conditions, the popular tome also discloses how documentary became another way to reinscribe Cuban alterity by well-intentioned northern radicals, thereby exposing inexorable divides in these gainful exchanges.
War, Women, and the State: The Politics of Sacrifice in the Ottoman Empire During the First World War
Authors: Akın Yiğit
Published: September 2014

The Ottoman Empire was one of the belligerents most severely affected by the First World War. The war lasted four years and required the most comprehensive mobilization of men and resources in the history of the empire. The extraction of millions of men from society and the economy, coupled with the state’s increasingly ruthless intervention in the everyday lives of the Ottoman people, placed unprecedented burdens on their shoulders. Women bore most of the brunt of the war and the state’s wartime policies on the home front. Focusing on their perceptions of and reactions to the war and the dramatic changes it brought to Ottoman society, this article examines how the war shaped women’s relationships with the state and influenced their understanding of gender roles. In doing so, it aims to challenge the historical and cultural construction of war as exclusively male centered and render Ottoman women’s wartime actions and experiences visible.
Feminism and Nationalism: The National Council of Italian Women, the World War, and the Rise of Fascism, 1911–1922
Authors: Rossini Daniela
Published: September 2014

This article addresses the issue of Italian feminists’ acquiescence to fascism during the early postwar years. What process drove the liberal feminists into the orbit of a reactionary movement hardly likely to promote women’s emancipation? At the heart of the problem lies a myth of war elaborated during the conflict. Feminists came to consider the World War as a process of national regeneration, a gender revolution: the war educated women to citizenship, asking for the contribution of women in all fields. Perceiving the war as the cradle of a “new Italy” brought feminists close to nationalist rhetoric, making difficult the defense of women’s rights vis-à-vis the aggressive campaign of right-wing politicians and veterans against women’s work. Eventually feminists found themselves complicit in a regime which stifled their movement and remained hostile to most forms of women’s emancipation.
Composing Gender and Class: Paraguayan Letter Writers during the Chaco War, 1932–1935
Authors: Chesterton Bridget María
Published: September 2014

This article studies the important role of Paraguayan women during the Chaco War (1923–1935). It studies the relationship between “Godmothers of War” and their “Godsons” during the war, outlining how urban elite Paraguayan women corresponded with rural lower-class men in the name of patriotism.
Women Immigrant Teachers and State Formation in Israel, 1948–1959
Authors: Tadmor-Shimony Tali
Published: September 2014

This article discusses the phenomenon of women immigrant teachers during the 1950s in Israel, an issue which incorporates several research topics: migration, gender, and teaching. It asks whether the popular saying: “Teaching is women’s work,” was true in regard to Israel during this time period. In order to do so, this article examines the choices and actions of those women, all of whom were trying to cope with their new situation and to integrate successfully into the host society. A large portion of women immigrant teachers found jobs in immigrant villages and development towns. From an educational point of view, these women were not the strongest link in the pedagogical chain, and yet they were asked to assist in the formation of a new society. By doing so, they chose to become agents of acculturation and carried out leadership functions; they became empowered, and quickly shed their weak, immigrant women status.
Sisterhood of Blood: The Will to Descend and the Formation of the Daughters of the American Revolution
Authors: Strange Carolyn
Published: September 2014

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), one of many white lineal societies that emerged in the late-nineteenth century, promoted a fantasy of the nation as an extended white family, united by blood. Yet the DAR faced internal and external challenges before it could transform documented Revolutionary blood into political capital. The organization accomplished this by asserting its biological credentials selectively, not just in racial and class terms, but also in reference to the fitness of its ancestors and descendants. The DAR’s “will to descend,” and the ambition of its leaders, meant that patriotic character had to be demonstrated as well as celebrated. By narrating a compelling, ethno-nationalist interpretation of U.S. history—inclusive and elitist, democratic and demonstratively exclusionary—the DAR began to exercise a marked influence over political culture within a decade of its founding, culminating in its enthusiastic support for the War with Spain.
RNA-Seq Alignment to Individualized Genomes Improves Transcript Abundance Estimates in Multiparent Populations
Authors: Munger Steven C , Raghupathy Narayanan , Choi Kwangbom , Simons Allen K , Gatti Daniel M , Hinerfeld Douglas A , Svenson Karen L , Keller Mark P , Attie Alan D , Hibbs Matthew A , Graber Joel H , Chesler Elissa J , Churchill Gary A
Published: September 2014

Massively parallel RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has yielded a wealth of new insights into transcriptional regulation. A first step in the analysis of RNA-seq data is the alignment of short sequence reads to a common reference genome or transcriptome. Genetic variants that distinguish individual genomes from the reference sequence can cause reads to be misaligned, resulting in biased estimates of transcript abundance. Fine-tuning of read alignment algorithms does not correct this problem. We have developed Seqnature software to construct individualized diploid genomes and transcriptomes for multiparent populations and have implemented a complete analysis pipeline that incorporates other existing software tools. We demonstrate in simulated and real data sets that alignment to individualized transcriptomes increases read mapping accuracy, improves estimation of transcript abundance, and enables the direct estimation of allele-specific expression. Moreover, when applied to expression QTL mapping we find that our individualized alignment strategy corrects false-positive linkage signals and unmasks hidden associations. We recommend the use of individualized diploid genomes over reference sequence alignment for all applications of high-throughput sequencing technology in genetically diverse populations.
Purifying Selection, Drift, and Reversible Mutation with Arbitrarily High Mutation Rates
Authors: Charlesworth Brian , Jain Kavita
Published: September 2014

Some species exhibit very high levels of DNA sequence variability; there is also evidence for the existence of heritable epigenetic variants that experience state changes at a much higher rate than sequence variants. In both cases, the resulting high diversity levels within a population (hyperdiversity) mean that standard population genetics methods are not trustworthy. We analyze a population genetics model that incorporates purifying selection, reversible mutations, and genetic drift, assuming a stationary population size. We derive analytical results for both population parameters and sample statistics and discuss their implications for studies of natural genetic and epigenetic variation. In particular, we find that (1) many more intermediate-frequency variants are expected than under standard models, even with moderately strong purifying selection, and (2) rates of evolution under purifying selection may be close to, or even exceed, neutral rates. These findings are related to empirical studies of sequence and epigenetic variation.
Topical issues of medical malpractices
Authors: Heiner Tamás , Barzó Tímea
Published: September 2014

The number of medical malpractice lawsuits filed each year in Hungary has considerably increased since 1990. The judicial decisions and practices on determining and awarding wrongful damages recoverable for medical malpractices in the Hungarian civil law have been developing for decades. In the meantime, a new Hungarian Civil Code (Act V of 2013) has entered into force, which among others, necessitates the revaluation of assessment of damages recoverable for medical malpractices. There are two main areas where fundamental changes have been introduced, which may significantly affect the outcome of medical malpractice lawsuits in the future. In the early stage of medical malpractices it was unclear whether the courts had to consider either the contractual relationship between patients and healthcare providers (contractual liability) or general codal articles on damages arising from non-contractual liability/torts (delictual liability) in their judgement delivered in the cases. Both the theoretical and practical experience of the last ten years shows that healthcare services agreements are concluded between healthcare providers and patients with the aim and intention to provide appropriate professional healthcare services to patients, which meet patients’ interests and wishes. The medical service is violated if it fails to meet patients’ interests and wishes as well as the objectives of the agreement. Since the new legislation implies a stricter liability for damages in the case of breach of contract and stricter rules for exempting the party in breach from compensation obligations, the opportunities to exempt healthcare providers from these obligations have become limited compared to previous regulations. This modification, which was aimed at further integrating the established judicial practices into legislation, stipulates the application of the rules for liability for damages resulting from medical malpractice in non-contractual situations. This paper analyses dogmatic and practical problems related to this topic. Another important area of current analysis is the institution of injury fees, which replaced the reimbursement of non-pecuniary damages. The mere fact of infringement allows setting injury fees. Taking into consideration the current resources in staff and equipment available in healthcare, this regulation may promote claims for injury fees impartial. Consequently, courts will have to apply other criteria when judgment in ‘trivial cases’, which might not require legal assessment, is delivered. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(38), 1510–1516.
Special application of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry in clinical microbiological diagnostics
Authors: Nagy Erzsébet , Ábrók Marianna , Bartha Noémi , Bereczki László , Juhász Emese , Kardos Gábor , Kristóf Katalin , Miszti Cecilia , Urbán Edit
Published: September 2014

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry as a new possibility for rapid identification of bacteria and fungi revolutionized the clinical microbiological diagnostics. It has an extreme importance in the routine microbiological laboratories, as identification of the pathogenic species rapidly will influence antibiotic selection before the final determination of antibiotic resistance of the isolate. The classical methods for identification of bacteria or fungi, based on biochemical tests, are influenced by many environmental factors. The matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a rapid method which is able to identify a great variety of the isolated bacteria and fungi based on the composition of conserved ribosomal proteins. Recently several other applications of the method have also been investigated such as direct identification of pathogens from the positive blood cultures. There are possibilities to identify bacteria from the urine samples in urinary tract infection or from other sterile body fluids. Using selective enrichment broth Salmonella sp from the stool samples can be identified more rapidly, too. The extended spectrum beta-lactamase or carbapenemase production of the isolated bacteria can be also detected by this method helping the antibiotic selection in some cases. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry based methods are suitable to investigate changes in deoxyribonucleic acid or ribonucleic acid, to carry out rapid antibiotic resistance determination or other proteomic analysis. The aim of this paper is to give an overview about present possibilities of using this technique in the clinical microbiological routine procedures. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(38), 1495–1503.
New possibility for measuring the cortical auditory evoked potentials: the HEARLab
Authors: Bach Ádám , Tóth Ferenc , Matievics Vera , Kiss József Géza , Jóri József , Szakál Beáta , Balogh Norbert , Soós Alexandra , Rovó László
Published: September 2014

Introduction: Cortical auditory evoked potentials can provide objective information about the highest level of the auditory system. Aim: The purpose of the authors was to introduce a new tool, the “HEARLab” which can be routinely used in clinical practice for the measurement of the cortical auditory evoked potentials. In addition, they wanted to establish standards of the analyzed parameters in subjects with normal hearing. Method: 25 adults with normal hearing were tested with speech stimuli, and frequency specific examinations were performed utilizing pure tone stimuli. Results: The findings regarding the latency and amplitude analyses of the evoked potentials confirm previously published results of this novel method. Conclusions: The HEARLAb can be a great help when performance of the conventional audiological examinations is complicated. The examination can be performed in uncooperative subjects even in the presence of hearing aids. The test is frequency specific and does not require anesthesia. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(38), 1524–1529.
Situation, possibilities and difficulties of the hospice and palliative care in Hungary
Authors: Hegedűs Katalin , Lukács Miklós , Schaffer Judit , Csikós Ágnes
Published: September 2014

Hospice-palliative care has existed in Hungary for more than 20 years but physicians know very little about it. The objective of the study is to give detailed practical information about the possibilities and the reasonability of hospice care and the process of how to have access to it. The authors review and analyze the database of the national Hospice-Palliative Association database to provide most recent national data on hospice-palliative care. In addition, legal, financial and educational issues are also discussed. At present there are 90 active hospice providers in Hungary, which provide service for more than 8000 terminally ill cancer patients. According to WHO recommendations there would be a need for much more service providers, institutional supply and more beds. There are also problems concerning the attitude and, therefore, patients are admitted into hospice care too late. Hospice care is often confused with chronic or nursing care due to lack of information. The situation may be improved with proper forms of education such as palliative licence and compulsory, 40-hour palliative training for residents. The authors conclude that a broad dissemination of data may help to overcome misbeliefs concerning hospice and raise awareness concerning death and dying. Orv. Hetil., 2014, 155(38), 1504–1509.
Long‐term declines in nutritional quality of tropical leaves
Authors: Rothman Jessica M. , Chapman Colin A. , Struhsaker Thomas T. , Raubenheimer David , Twinomugisha Dennis , Waterman Peter G.
Published: September 2014

Global change is affecting plant and animal populations and many of the changes are likely subtle and difficult to detect. Based on greenhouse experiments, changes in temperature and rainfall, along with elevated CO2, are expected to impact the nutritional quality of leaves. Here, we show a decline in the quality of tree leaves 15 and 30 years after two previous studies in an undisturbed area of tropical forest in Kibale National Park, Uganda. After 30 years in a sample of multiple individuals of ten tree species, the mature leaves of all but one species increased in fiber concentrations, with a mean increase of 10%; tagged individuals of one species increased 13% in fiber. After 15 years, in eight tree species the fiber of young leaves increased 15%, and protein decreased 6%. Like many folivores, Kibale colobus monkeys select leaves with a high protein‐to‐fiber ratio, so for these folivores declining leaf quality could have a major impact. Comparisons among African and Asian forests show a strong correlation between colobine biomass and the protein‐to‐fiber ratio of the mature leaves from common tree species. Although this model, predicts a 31% decline in monkey abundance for Kibale, we have not yet seen these declines.
Empirically Supported Treatments: Dissemination Practices in Impoverished Regions
Authors: Zepeda-Burgos Raquel M. , Storch Eric A. , Ballabriga Maria Claustre Jané
Published: September 2014

A growing understanding of the implications of childhood psychopathology has driven the dissemination of empirically supported treatments (ESTs). This has not been the case in countries with high rates of poverty and violence—where the need for ESTs is fundamental. In this article, we examined the current status of child psychopathology and mental health services for children in El Salvador to explore key factors that can improve dissemination of ESTs in middle- and low-income countries. In El Salvador, children are constantly exposed to risk factors related to childhood disorders (e.g., violence), and there is an increase in the demand for mental health services for this population. However, a lack of a guiding policy and formal training has led to few psychologists using ESTs. A scientist–practitioner model to guide formal education and training of mental health providers would be the first step to improving the dissemination of ESTs in El Salvador.
Problem of Confidence and its Loss – the Role of a Family in Instilling Truthfulness
Authors: Ignatowski Grzegorz
Published: September 2014

Confidence is one of the most essential elements which no social or professional group can exist without. As feature of character it is required in someone’s private, social and professional life. In all our relationships we lose it due to telling lies. Lies accompany our personal life on all its stages. Already three-year old children tell lies to satisfy their parents, check whether they are able to realize they are deceived or to demonstrate their dominance over them. Teachers and ethicists differentiate between useful didactic lies and ruthless and cynical comments harmful to others. Because of emotional ties and close relationships, a family is the best environment where a child should be taught to despise lies and respect trust
Institutional forms of support for the elderly
Authors: Świderska Mariola
Published: September 2014

The development of social welfare homes occurred in the fifties of the last century and was the result of the transformation of previously functioning nursing homes. In addition to centers providing twenty-four-hour care, day care homes were also established and other forms of support for the elderly such as protected housing, family-based care homes or environmental nursing homes. These institutions, apart from securing the living needs of the elderly, are supposed to provide them with revitalization, activation, and integration. They organize their residents’ free time and care about their well-being
Normative Ethics and Sport: A Moral Manifesto
Authors: Kosiewicz Jerzy
Published: September 2014

This article constitutes a strictly cognitive and completely non-ideological moral (or rather, amoral) manifesto that makes no value judgments. The article concerns relationships that, according to sport enthusiasts with varying levels of competence, occur between sport and normative ethics. The author of this article supports a standpoint he terms ethical negationism that rejects the need for moral rules to externally support and bolster the rules of sport competition. The author assumes that the rules of sport play and competition are, and should be, completely amoral and independent from ethics. While this article is a fully autonomous ethical manifesto, it also constitutes an introduction to other articles in this issue of the journal arguing that sport competition takes place beyond the scope of moral good and evil.

The author debates value judgments commonly held by sport enthusiasts who, albeit presumably driven by noble intentions, take great effort to bolster the formal, functional, and axiological status of sport. Most sport enthusiasts claim that sport has a unique moral and normative mission to propagate intuitively understood religious and non-religious good. They argue that sport constitutes something more than sport play and competition. The author rejects this point of view and assumes that normative ethics is unnecessary because what only matters is strictly following the rules of competition (referred to as pure play) and skillfully and praxeologically (i.e., effectively) using them during play, thus working towards the assumptions and aims of a given sport activity.
Helping Hands for the International Journal of Environment
Authors: Bhandari Govinda
Published: September 2014

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i3.11057 International Journal of Environment Vol.3(3) 2014: i-ii
Multi-Criteria Evaluation of Quality of Exisiting Urban Parks in Dhaka City - Towards Achieving Livable City
Authors: Neema MN , Hossain MR , Haque AM , Farhan MHM
Published: September 2014

Qualitative and quantitative assessment of the quality of major parks in mega city Dhaka have been conducted. Four incommensurate factors: environment, safety and security, landscape and aesthetic value have been considered to qualitatively and quantitatively assesses the quality of the parks. From qualitative analysis it is found that, some parks (located in highly classified residential area of the city) are superior in safety and security and landscape design whereas other parks (located remote from residential area) are inferior in safety and security and environmental factor. It is necessary to address factors of each park lacking behind to ensure better quality of parks. To quantitatively assess the quality of parks, we formulated a new index value calculation to rank all parks in terms of all factors. It is found that the quality of all the parks are dispersed. In addition, investigation of universal accessibility of the parks and direct park user’s opinion has been accumulated to supports findings of this analysis. Based on the major findings of this study a number of recommendations have been provided for the improvement of the quality of parks in Dhaka city such as involvement of local community and establishment of office for the park authority inside the park can be helpful in the quality maintenance of the parks. The findings of this paper can enhance the existing knowledge of city planners a step forward with a-priori knowledge to ensure quality of parks in further city planning. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i3.11058 International Journal of Environment Vol.3(3) 2014: 1-15
Genetic Variation of Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Genotypes in Semi-Arid Zone Sudan
Authors: Sabiel Salih AI , Ismail Mohamed I , Abdalla Elgailani , Osman Khalid A
Published: September 2014

Twelve genotypes of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) were executed under rain-fed conditions in a semi-arid zone at the Research farm of El Fasher Research Station, Sudan for two consecutive seasons 2006 and 2007. Genotypic and phenotypic variability, heritability in a broad sense and genetic advance were estimated in a randomized complete block design with four replications. High heritability estimate (above 95 %) was recorded by hay yield (kg/ha) in both seasons and 100- seed weight in season 2006. Moreover, the high genetic advance was recorded for hay yield (kg/ha) and pod yield (kg/ha) in both seasons. However, a day to 50% flowering was expressed low genotypic coefficient of variation with low genetic advances in both seasons. Highly significant different among genotypes were found for days to 50% flowering, hay yield (kg/ha), shelling (%), while pod yield (kg/ha) and 100- seed weight were observed non-significant. The high yielding genotype was ICGV93260 with a pod yield of 1389.1 kg/ha. Pod yield (kg/ha) was highly significantly and positively correlated with hay yield (kg/ha), shelling (%) and 100- seed weight, while non-significant and negative correlated with days to 50% flowering. Based on the results the characters hay yield (kg/ha), shelling (%), 100- seed weight and days to 50% flowering to be the important characters which would be used in selection for groundnut improvement. The promising genotype identified in this study could provide valuable sources of resistance to climate-change-related stresses and for other consequent breeding activities in groundnut improvement. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ije.v3i3.11060 International Journal of Environment Vol.3(3) 2014: 16-23