bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Aristocracy of Southern Tuscany
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

In this chapter we look at the aristocracy of southern Tuscany, where the signoria territoriale was more widely diffused and the dependence of the peasantry more general. Here we encounter the Aldobrandeschi, the southern equivalent of the Guidi. Beginning with their contention with the monastery of Monte Amiata and its subjection, we trace the family’s long process of transformation from imperial functionaries to a territorial dynasty. We look closely at their clientele, part of which was feudo-vassalic, and at the multiple functions of southern castles, including mineral extraction and industrial use. From these we turn to the minor aristocracy, the lambardi, whom Cortese calls ‘puntiform’, that is to say nuclear or local. We look at their consorterie, their control of natural resources, and their capacity for enterprise. Their residences within castles will also be examined. Finally the chapter looks at the fortunes of these signori in terms of the forward march of the city of Siena.
From Knighthood to Nobility
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

This chapter deals with knighthood, the ‘crystallization’ of the nobility, and the relationship between the two. From a rather lowly affair, by the early twelfth century knighthood had become the chief means of social ascent in an increasingly militarized world. A detailed examination of the terminology employed in the sources shows that the references to nobility began in the late twelfth century, were relatively rare until 1220, and increased until the language of nobility became entrenched. The crystallization of the nobility, I argue, began in the highest ranks of seigniorial society and was diffused downwards in a spirit of exclusion in both the countryside and the cities. This was prompted by the social tensions arising within a commercially and demographically expanding world. The knighting ceremony would appear to be an important constituent. Opposition formed among the rich but non-aristocratic popolo. In Pisa it led eventually to a full-scale popolo regime in 1254. These developments were paralleled in other cities.
The Aristocracy in ‘Carolingian’ England
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

Chapter 9 argues that late Anglo-Saxon England was a state of the ‘Carolingian’ type. Lordship was fully integrated into the judicial system and public authority played a major part in legitimating comital rule. Traditional historiography is complemented by the concepts of aristocrazia intermedia and ‘zonality’ employed by Cortese for Tuscany. We examine the aristocracy of some Midland counties, with Leofric earl of Mercia taken as a case study for the exercise of comital power. We follow Maitland and Baxter in emphasizing the tripartite division into personal bonds, tenurial bonds, and judicial bonds. The chapter turns then to the rank and file of the aristocracy, the thegnage, and then to the aristocratic presence in towns. Finally, the chapter looks at the direction in which this society was travelling in the eleventh century and sees an increasing degree of uncertainty, competition, and anxiety. There was a relative decline in Königsnähe and an increasing localization of power as the authority of kings weakened.
The Structure and Articulation of Aristocratic Society in Anglo-Norman England
Authors: Coss Peter
Published: November 2019

This chapter employs the Italian approach to feudalism where the feudo-vassalic relationship is one among many varieties of lord–client bond. It turns to the tenurial relationship and to the question of the honour. The perspective of the honour is complemented by Cortese’s concepts of zonal and multi-zonal aristocracy, aristocrazia intermedia, and minor aristocratic families. Warwickshire is taken as a case study revealing Anglo-Norman society as a dynamic one in which families appear and rise or fall. We examine religious benefaction, family structure and strategy, local lordship, and the protection of estates, before moving to tournaments and proto-chivalry. We pay close attention to the men described as milites, and to the survival of Englishmen as sub-tenants and the like. It was from the ensuing mix that the militaristic minor aristocracy of twelfth-century England sprang. Finally, the chapter examines the interlocking of public and seigniorial courts. Tension and uncertainty persisted, despite a new equilibrium being established after the massive shock of the Norman Conquest.
Early Lutheran Christologies
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: November 2019

This chapter outlines the views of Melanchthon and the early Brenz, showing how Lutheran Christology bifurcated into two basic traditions—those accepting bodily omnipresence and those denying it. It demonstrates that Melanchthon quickly abandoned early claims affirming both the omnipresence of Christ’s human nature and its life-giving power, and ended up adopting a view very similar to Zwingli’s. The chapter outlines the first stages in the development of Brenz’s Christology, showing how Brenz, from 1528 or 1529 onwards, came to adopt a view of the hypostatic union according to which the divine person and human nature are the same person but different natures, and according to which human properties are borne by the divine person, and divine properties by the human nature (the so-called genus maiestaticum). By 1561 Brenz has begun to restrict the set of divine attributes that can be borne by the human nature, presumably in response to the Christology of Caspar Schwenckfeld, and the chapter ends with a brief summary of Schwenckfeld’s view.
Concluding Remarks
Authors: Cross Richard
Published: November 2019

This chapter suggests that part of the early seventeenth-century debate between the theologians of Tübingen and the theologians of Giessen on the question of the communicatio idiomatum represents the conflicting structures of Brenzian and Chemnitzian accounts of the hypostatic union. At issue was the human nature’s possession of divine attributes during Christ’s earthly life, affirmed by the Tübingen theologians and denied by the Giessen ones. The 1624 Decisio saxonica ruled in favour of Giessen, and thus in effect against Brenzian understandings of Christ’s kenosis. Lutheran orthodoxy requires that some (and not all) divine attributes are communicated to the human nature. It concludes with puzzles about the way in which the genus maiestaticum might be possible at all, given the denial of any distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies.
Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta
Authors: Jahner Jennifer
Published: November 2019

Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta traces the fortunes of literary training and experimentation across the early history of the English common law, from its beginnings in the reign of Henry II to its tumultuous consolidations under the reigns of John and Henry III. The period from the mid-twelfth through the thirteenth centuries witnessed an outpouring of innovative legal writing in England, from Magna Carta to the scores of statute books that preserved its provisions. An era of civil war and imperial fracture, it also proved a time of intensive self-definition, as communities both lay and ecclesiastic used law to articulate collective identities. Literature and Law in the Era of Magna Carta uncovers the role that grammatical and rhetorical training played in shaping these arguments for legal self-definition. Beginning with Thomas Becket, the book interweaves the histories of literary pedagogy and English law, showing how foundational lessons in poetics helped generate both a language and theory of corporate autonomy. Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s phenomenally popular Latin compositional handbook, the Poetria nova, finds its place against the diplomatic backdrop of the English Interdict, while Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-French devotional poem, the Château d’Amour, is situated within the landscape of property law and Jewish-Christian interactions. Exploring a shared vocabulary across legal and grammatical fields, this book argues that poetic habits of thought proved central to constructing the narratives that medieval law tells about itself and that later scholars tell about the origins of English constitutionalism.
What You Want to Hear
Authors: Marsh John
Published: November 2019

This chapter discusses hope, how it works, and what people in the 1930s hoped for. It begins with a late science fiction story (Isaac Asimov’s “Liar!”) that reveals how hope works or, at least, how those who do not think much of hope think hope works. It then returns to one particularly ambiguous archive of Great Depression hope: the largely unprecedented genre of self-help books and success manuals. Many of these books reflect the tempered hopes of the decade, nowhere more so than in the pages of Alcoholics Anonymous, published in 1939. The skepticism about hope is also reflected in the politics of the decade. Chastened by the blasted hopes of the Depression, the greatest contribution policymakers made during the 1930s was to develop safety net provisions—unemployment insurance, social security—founded on the belief not that everything would turn out well but could turn out badly.
Music, Emotions, and Political Influences
Authors: Townsend Peter
Published: November 2019

Music is emotive, and an excellent and powerful route to controlling and influencing opinions in fields as diverse as religion, politics, and war. There are parallel splits between different social classes and individuals. While it is highly personal, it nevertheless is used to gain control of the way we behave, from lullabies to political rallies. There is no unique definition of ‘good’ music and this criterion should be a totally individual decision. Equally, enjoyment of classical music does not inhibit pleasure from jazz, pop culture, or something more exotic from different continents. Many examples are used to show both the power and diversity of music in its influence on people and nations.
Introduction—Historiography and Sources
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: November 2019

This chapter provides essential context by outlining the recent historiography of secularization in Britain and the sources of religious statistics, on which subsequent chapters are largely based. The work of leading contributors to the debates about British religious change is summarized, notably Steve Bruce, Hugh McLeod, Callum Brown, Jeffrey Cox, Jeremy Morris, and Simon Green. In this book, secularization is used as a convenient shorthand descriptor for the waning social significance of religion, rather than an invocation of the classic theory of secularization as a by-product of modernization. Specifically, the focus is on secularization in relation to the individual, particularly religious allegiance (subsuming affiliation and membership of churches and Sunday schools) and churchgoing, being the two performance indicators of religious belonging and behaving most susceptible to long-term quantification. Data on them were variously gathered by the state (comparatively little), the Churches, and social investigators (including local religious censuses).
Before 1880—The Long Prelude
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: November 2019

This chapter summarizes what is known about religious allegiance and churchgoing during the long eighteenth century and the early Victorian era, with reference to statistics (noting methodological difficulties, especially affecting the 1851 religious census). There are separate analyses for England and Wales and Scotland. The dominant trend in religious allegiance was towards voluntaryism and pluralism, the established Churches of England and Scotland losing their near-monopoly of religious affiliation in the face of Dissent’s rapid advance. The nineteenth century witnessed sustained church growth, absolute and relative, in members and Sunday scholars. Despite the continued existence of legislation requiring churchgoing, its enforcement was infrequent and often ineffective. Absenteeism was a growing problem from the eighteenth century. It remains unclear whether there was any general rise in attendance during the early nineteenth century. By 1851, two-fifths of Britons may have worshipped, Wales being the most devout of the home nations, but churchgoing declined thereafter.
1918–39—The Depression Years
Authors: Field Clive D.
Published: November 2019

The inter-war years are a comparatively neglected period of British religious history. Yet, on the measure of ‘active church adherence’ used in this book, they emerge as far more significant in Britain’s secularization journey than the intensively studied 1960s. Between 1918 and 1939, there was a marked shift away from religious commitment and participation towards nominalism, especially in the Free Churches. Although Protestant church membership recovered after the First World War, it peaked in England and Wales around 1927 and dropped absolutely thereafter. There was no such post-war recovery in churchgoing, rather an acceleration of decline, partly because people worshipped less regularly. This fall was fuelled by a weakening Sabbatarian culture and competition from Sunday cinema and religious broadcasting. Congregations were also ageing and take-up of Anglican baptismal and marriage services diminishing. A further 2 million Sunday scholars were lost, while the number of religious ‘nones’ rose by 1 million.
Introduction
Authors: Atrey Shreya
Published: November 2019

This introduction inaugurates the book by pointing to the prolific developments in the field of intersectionality theory which have eluded discrimination law over the last three decades. The book is introduced as an endeavour to respond to this gap between intersectionality theory and discrimination law. The introduction provides an overview of the discussion contained in each of the main chapters and, in doing so, states the central argument made in the book and the scheme in which it transpires.
The Theory
Authors: Atrey Shreya
Published: November 2019

Chapter 2 posits a theoretical framework of intersectionality for the purposes of discrimination law. It identifies the core of intersectionality as comprising several mutually reinforcing aspects which include: the simultaneous focus on sameness and difference; interest in explicating patterns of group disadvantage; an appreciation of integrity of identity and context; and its final aim of transformation. The chapter also responds to some of the most pertinent and persisting critiques of intersectionality theory. Taking the example of Dalit feminism in India, the chapter then goes on to illustrate the relevance of intersectionality theory in discursive spaces. With this, the chapter develops, defends, and applies the framework of intersectionality, which helps unravel the distinct nature of intersectional discrimination.
The Practice
Authors: Atrey Shreya
Published: November 2019

This chapter considers how intersectional claims are established in practice. The chapter thus traverses the labyrinth of discrimination law to understand how each of its central features interacts with and processes an intersection claim. In particular, it considers the significance of the text of equality guarantees, the basis of selection of grounds generally and specifically in claims of intersectional discrimination, the distinction between direct and indirect intersectional discrimination, the test for wrongful intersectional discrimination, the use of comparators, justification analysis, standards of review, the burden of proof, and choice of remedies. Comparative doctrine helps to unravel the complex issues pertaining to each and helps to underscore the interpretive possibilities which help realize intersectional discrimination.
Conclusion
Authors: Atrey Shreya
Published: November 2019

This conclusion closes the book with a reminder that the endeavour to have the traditional model of discrimination law fit intersectionality may be ill-conceived. It thus highlights the urgency of remoulding discrimination law for the purposes of a distinct category of intersectional discrimination per se. It reiterates the theoretical and doctrinal steps needed to do this. The book concludes by seeing the present work as just one part of intersectionality’s transformative agenda and it underscores the significance of broader non-judicial efforts in realizing intersectionality catholically.
Apostles of Equality: James Brown Scott and the Feminist Cause
Authors: Amorosa Paolo
Published: November 2019

Chapter 6 tracks the story of an unlikely alliance between Scott and leading feminist activists Doris Stevens and Alice Paul. The first section provides a short history of the women’s rights movement in the United States and details how Paul and Stevens rose to become key figures in the battle for women’s suffrage. Section 2 tracks the early interest by feminist activists in international politics. As Paul and Stevens moved toward internationalism, Scott moved closer to the positions of women’s rights activists by becoming a supporter of the equality of sexes under nationality law. Section 3 follows the collaboration between Scott and the feminist leaders. Beginning in 1928, the collaboration would peak in 1933 with the approval at the Montevideo Pan-American Conference of two equal rights treaties.
Authorizing Attacks in Response to Terrorist Attacks
Authors: Grzebyk Patrycja
Published: November 2019

Some states (mainly the United States and Israel) intermingle the terms/principles of the law of armed conflicts/international humanitarian law regime and the regime of the law on the use of force in order to avoid legal constraints and to justify attacks against non-state armed groups in violation of the sovereignty of other states and the rights of particular persons. The counterterrorism strategy is created under the influence of legal arguments, and thus the recent trend of abusive interpretation of the regimes could encourage decision-makers to resort to military measures instead of using less intrusive instruments such as criminal cooperation. This tendency is more visible in times of crisis. States are then still interested in having legal justification for their actions, but they tend to see the role of law differently: the law is expected to serve the authorities, rather than to guide them, when the state’s fundamental interest—its security—is under threat.
Multiple Actors in Framing EU External Policy
Authors: Ruse Ilze
Published: November 2019

There is a strong correlation between the EU’s institutional architecture and policy output. The more complex the institutional set-up, the more challenges it poses for achieving an ambitious and coherent policy output. This is particularly at stake in the situation when the EU has to handle numerous crises and respond to international security challenges. The Lisbon Treaty has introduced a new institutional architecture by adding complexity with multiple actors in the field of Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The European External Action Service (EEAS) is in charge of EU foreign and security policy. At the same time, it must accommodate the interests of the EU Member States and those of the EU institutions in order to make the policy output credible and efficient. By contributing to this volume with its multidisciplinary approach, this chapter applies the Principal–Agent (P–A) theory of political science, which argues that the relationship between the Member States and the EEAS can be perceived as a delegation arrangement where the Member States (principal) sign a contract of delegation with the EEAS (agent) for fulfilling the mandate, yet deliberately leave a particular level of ‘discretion’ to the EEAS. The agent’s abuse of its empowered position may lead to ‘slippage’. To avoid this happening, the Member States could employ various control measures to keep the agent adhering to the preferences of the principal. The hypothesis is tested by drawing on the case of the EU Global Security Strategy. The chapter explores the means of control that the Member States use to maintain ownership in framing the new EU security strategy.
Recent Opposing Trends in the Conceptualization of the Law of Immunities
Authors: Dominelli Stefano
Published: November 2019

Traditional rules concerning immunity of states from jurisdiction are currently being challenged by Italian domestic courts, seeking the possibility to provide exceptions to foreign immunity based upon the gravity of the foreign state’s conduct and the consequences for human rights following recognition of immunity. This trend is opposed to others that do recognize immunity for states, state agents, and international organizations, even where these do not establish internal procedures to adjudicate or ensure access to justice. The aim of the present work is to reconstruct the opposing emerging trends so as to reflect on their value in the promotion of new rules, and to determine their consequences in terms of the ‘crisis of the law of state immunity’.
How to Limit Immunity of State Officials from Foreign Criminal Jurisdiction
Authors: Šturma Pavel
Published: November 2019

This contribution aims to shed more light on the question whether international law on immunities is in crisis and, if so, how to overcome the crisis. It will not deal with all kinds of immunities under international law but will focus only on immunity of state officials. Immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction is governed by customary international law whose exact scope is often debatable both in theory and in practice, particularly in connection with the international effort to end impunity for the most serious crimes under international law, such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, including torture and enforced disappearances. Although state practice and case law of the International Court of Justice supports the absolute immunity ratione personae of the highest officials, such as head of state, head of government, and minister of foreign affairs, as long as they are in office, the situation of immunity ratione materiae that protects the official acts of other state officials seems to be less clear. There are good arguments in favour of exceptions to such immunity, at least in respect of crimes under international law.
The Paris Agreement and the Future of the Climate Regime
Authors: Savaresi Annalisa
Published: November 2019

This chapter discusses how international law has responded to climate change, focusing on the challenges that have faced implementation of existing climate treaties, and on the suitability of the Paris Agreement to address these. Expectations of this new treaty could scarcely be greater: the Paris Agreement is meant to provide a framework to improve international cooperation on climate change, and to keep the world within the global mean temperature-change goal identified by scientists as safe. Yet, whether and how this important objective will be reached largely depends, on the one hand, on the supporting political will and, on the other, on the redesign of the international architecture for climate governance. This chapter specifically reflects on international law-making and on the approach to climate change governance embedded in the Paris Agreement, drawing inferences from the past, to make predictions on what the future may hold for international climate change law.
The Domestic Judiciary in the Architecture of the Strasbourg System of Human Rights
Authors: Kosař David , Petrov Jan
Published: November 2019

The Strasbourg system of human rights has been going through a backlog, legitimacy, and implementation crisis during the past decade. Debates addressing the future of the ECHR system and seeking answers to those challenges have concentrated on the domestic level of the Strasbourg system. This chapter concurs that domestic actors, and the domestic judiciary in particular, are essential for the effectiveness and legitimacy of the Strasbourg system since they ‘diffuse’ the ECtHR’s conclusions domestically and subsequently ‘filter’ human rights claims. However, the chapter seeks a more nuanced approach to the role of domestic courts in the architecture of the ECHR system. It problematizes the contribution of domestic courts to the ECHR’s effectiveness on three accounts. First, courts are not the sole actors involved in domestic implementation mechanisms. The judiciary enters into multiple interactions with other domestic actors and is not necessarily always victorious. Second, there are several actors within the judiciary who may have different attitudes to the ECtHR such as the constitutional court, apex courts, lower courts, court presidents, and judicial associations. Third, not all those actors unequivocally support implementation of Strasbourg case law and some of them have shown considerable resistance to the ECtHR. These insights should provide a more nuanced basis for addressing the future of the ECHR system.
The Chilcot Report
Authors: Bouwhuis Stephen
Published: November 2019

The inquiry by the United Kingdom into its decision to intervene in Iraq is one of the longest running and most comprehensive examinations of government decision-making. In particular, the inquiry examined in detail the processes by which legal advice was provided to and formed a part of the decision by the Government of the United Kingdom to intervene in Iraq. Through this lens, the current chapter examines what the inquiry illustrates about the general relevance of international law to the decision to intervene in Iraq and more broadly what illustrates about the role of international law in decision-making more generally. In particular, the chapter pertains to the practical and ethical aspects providing international legal advice to government as well as the nature of government legal practice more generally.
A very brief history of respiratory biology
Authors: Perry Steven F. , Lambertz Markus , Schmitz Anke
Published: November 2019

A better understanding of what life is and how living organisms function has always been of crucial importance to humans, but ‘biology’ as a scientific discipline is quite young, the term being coined around 1800. Similarly, ‘respiratory biology’ as a discrete branch of biology is much younger and even today the term is not commonly used. However, the knowledge about life and the discovery and study of respiration as parts of other disciplines accumulated as a mosaic over the centuries. Some of the most important persons and their primary achievements in the field that we now call respiratory biology are summarized in this chapter.
Coping with extremes
Authors: Perry Steven F. , Lambertz Markus , Schmitz Anke
Published: November 2019

The vast majority of humans live at altitudes where respiration usually appears to ‘come for free’. However, high altitudes as well as diving teach us that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hypoxia probably is one of the most common critical factors that animals can endure, be it only for short periods, which include processes called acclimatization, or permanently, which requires specific adaptations. This chapter looks at some of the ways of living under extreme conditions such as high altitude and diving in a wide variety of invertebrate and craniote groups, including us humans. The chapter also discusses other extreme conditions such as heat or cold and how the organisms deal with this in order to keep their respiration going.
Control of breathing in invertebrates
Authors: Perry Steven F. , Lambertz Markus , Schmitz Anke
Published: November 2019

Every animal that has a respiratory faculty has some mechanism for regulating its perfusion and ventilation. A prerequisite for such regulation is some way of sensing internal and external levels of respiratory-relevant gases. The regulatory entities can be peripheral, central, or both. This chapter looks at the control of breathing in aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates and concludes that the main signal for aquatic species is oxygen, whereas the internal pH/PCO2 is most important for the control of air breathing, regardless of the phylogenetic group to which the animal may belong.
Control of breathing in craniotes
Authors: Perry Steven F. , Lambertz Markus , Schmitz Anke
Published: November 2019

Craniote gills are arranged sequentially along the pharynx and accordingly are ventilated from anterior to posterior by a wave of muscle contraction, beginning with the mouth. Each gill pair appears to have its own set of neurons in the brainstem that coordinate the muscle activity and stimulate the next gill pair in the sequence. This system appears to have been maintained from hagfish to teleosts. In tetrapods, on the other hand, various centres in the brainstem coordinate different phases of breathing: expiration, inspiration, and post-inspiration. The location of these centres in the brainstem is similar in amphibians and mammals. The stimulus for regulating ventilatory frequency in water-breathing species is oxygen, whereas for air-breathing species it is blood pH/PCO2—just as in invertebrates.
The evolution of air-breathing respiratory faculties in craniotes
Authors: Perry Steven F. , Lambertz Markus , Schmitz Anke
Published: November 2019

The origin of lungs from a swim bladder, swim bladder from lungs, or both from a relatively undifferentiated respiratory pharynx remains unresolved. Once present, the lungs can be ventilated by a positive-pressure buccal pump, which can be easily derived from the gill ventilation sequence in a lungfish, or by negative-pressure aspiration. Although aspiration breathing is characteristic of amniotes, it has also been observed in a lungfish and body wall muscle contraction in response to respiratory stimuli has even been reported in lamprey larvae. The hypaxial body wall musculature used for aspiration breathing is also necessary for locomotion in most amniotes, just when respiratory demand is greatest. This paradox, called Carrier’s constraint, is a major limiting factor in the evolution of high-performance faculties, and the evolution of anatomical and physiological specializations that circumvent it characterize most major amniote groups. Serendipitous combinations have resulted in evolutionary cascades and high-performance groups such as birds and mammals. Complementing evolution are the capacities for acclimatization and adaptation not only in the structure and function of the gas exchanger, but also in the control of breathing and the composition of the blood.
Contractarianism and the Moral Equality of Combatants
Authors: Benbaji Yitzhak , Statman Daniel
Published: November 2019

The purpose of this chapter is to offer a contractarian defence of Moral Equality, the thesis that Just and Unjust Combatants do not wrong each other when they kill and maim each other in war. We concede that the killings of Just Combatants by Unjust Combatants is pre-contractually impermissible. Moral Equality is nevertheless true if an agreement between states that equalize the legal standing of soldiers is fair and also mutually beneficial. By accepting such an agreement, combatants attain a right to take advantage of traditional jus in bello rules, thereby violating no duty against Just Combatants by attacking them.
Discursive Elusions
Authors: Park Yoosun
Published: November 2019

The “vexed problem of immigration,” as Jane Addams termed it in 1909, was a central issue for the emerging social work profession in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Work with immigrants, some of the poorest subsections of the growing urban population, shaped the nature and the direction of social work in the crucial early years of the profession. Social work’s attention, however, did not extend to Asian immigrants nor to the fact that all Asian immigrants had long been adjudged as a population racially unsuitable for full participation in U.S. society. The profession’s lack of contact with and interest in this population—excluded in immigration and blocked from naturalization—is an important context in understanding its response to the removal and incarceration of the Nikkei during World War II.
The Start of War
Authors: Park Yoosun
Published: November 2019

Prior to the War, few social workers in the coastal states, including state and county welfare workers soon to be confronted with the massive task of facilitating the forced removal of an entire population, had any significant contact with the Nikkei. As West Coast social work began preparing for the fallout from Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declaration of War on Japan, therefore, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and its offshoot organization, the International Institutes, were the only social work organizations with both knowledge of the community and contacts within it. This chapter, focused on the so-called voluntary period between mid-February 1942 and March 29, 1943, outlines the beginnings of social work’s equivocal role as both the protector of the Nikkei and the instrument of their delivery into incarceration.
The Removal
Authors: Park Yoosun
Published: November 2019

In the so-called controlled phase of the removal of the Nikkei, social workers on loan to the Bureau of Public Assistance were responsible for the provision of “all necessary social welfare services for the individuals affected by the Exclusion Order” and on hand at all of the 123 Control Stations. Social workers interviewed, registered, and counseled all Nikkei; made recommendations for exemptions and deferments; organized family separations as well as unions and reunions; and tagged and eventually shipped all of them off to temporary detention camps, usually referred to as Assembly Centers. The case number assigned to each family by a social worker during this registration process was the one with which all individuals and accompanying luggage were tagged for removal and used to identify them throughout their incarceration.
Resettlement
Authors: Park Yoosun
Published: November 2019

While the War Relocation Authority (WRA) camp administrators had in-depth and often sympathetic knowledge of the losses suffered by the Nikkei as well as the difficulties they would encounter in resettlement, such knowledge was profoundly at odds with the organization’s primary mandate for clearing out the camps. The plight of the Nikkei was identified, therefore, not as displacement and poverty produced by forced removal and incarceration, but as a problematic rise in dependency and the erosion of self-sufficiency. To combat this culture of dependency, the WRA created the Family Counseling Program, a “massive persuasion program” in which social work departments at each camp were tasked to interview and counsel the reluctant. Various financial aid programs were created to incentivize resettlement, but they were as problematic and inadequate as all other social work program the WRA had devised and run in the camps.
The challenge of using routinely collected data to compare hospital admission rates by ethnic group: a demonstration project in Scotland
Authors: Knox S , Bhopal R S , Thomson C S , Millard A , Fraser A , Gruer L , Buchanan D
Published: November 2019

Background

Recording patients’ ethnic group supports efforts to achieve equity in health care provision. Before the Equality Act (2010), recording ethnic group at hospital admission was poor in Scotland but has improved subsequently. We describe the first analysis of the utility of such data nationally for monitoring ethnic variation.

Methods

We analysed all in-patient or day case hospital admissions in 2013. We imputed missing data using the most recent ethnic group recorded for a patient from 2009 to 2015. For episodes lacking an ethnic code, we attributed known ethnic codes proportionately. Using the 2011 Census population, we calculated rates and rate ratios for all-cause admissions and ischaemic heart diseases (IHDs) directly standardized for age.

Results

Imputation reduced missing ethnic group codes from 24 to 15% and proportionate redistribution to zero. While some rates for both all-cause and IHD admissions appeared plausible, unexpectedly low or high rates were observed for several ethnic groups particularly amongst White groups and newly coded groups.

Conclusions

Completeness of ethnicity recoding on hospital admission records has improved markedly since 2010. However the validity of admission rates based on these data is variable across ethnic groups and further improvements are required to support monitoring of inequality.
Platelet-rich plasma combined with injectable hyaluronic acid hydrogel for porcine cartilage regeneration: a 6-month follow-up
Authors: Yan Wenqiang , Xu Xingquan , Xu Qian , Sun Ziying , Jiang Qing , Shi Dongquan
Published: November 2019

Based on our previous study, the utilization of an ultraviolet light photo-cross-linkable hyaluronic acid (HA) hydrogel integrated with a small molecule kartogenin-encapsulated nanoparticles obtained good reconstruction of osteochondral defects in a rabbit model, indicating the superiority of injectable hydrogel-based scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP), rich in various growth factors, proteins and cytokines, is considered to facilitate cartilage healing by stimulating cell proliferation and inducing chondrogenesis in cartilage defect site. The aim of this study was to test the therapeutic feasibility of autologous PRP combined with injectable HA hydrogel on cartilage repair. The focal cartilage defects with different critical sizes in the medial femoral condyle of a porcine model were used. At 6 months, the minipigs were sacrificed for assessment of macroscopic appearance, magnetic resonance imaging, micro-computed tomography, histology staining and biomechanics. The HA hydrogel combined with PRP-treated group showed more hyaline-like cartilage exhibited by macroscopic appearance and histological staining in terms of extracellular matrix and type II collagen without formation of hypertrophic cartilage, indicating its capacity to improve cartilage healing in the minipig model evaluated at 6 months, with full-thickness cartilage defect of 8.5 mm diameter and osteochondral defect of 6.5 mm diameter, 5 mm depth exhibiting apparent regeneration.
When the Road Is Covered in Nails: Making Sense of Madness in an Urban Mosque
Authors: Prickett Pamela J
Published: November 2019

This study returns to the classic interactionist approach of earlier work on mental illness to understand how communities attribute nonconforming behaviors as symptoms of mental illnesses and how their informal labels shape the ways in which they interact with people perceived as ill. It draws on six years of in-depth fieldwork in a low-income urban mosque community, where members frequently interacted with fellow Muslims they labeled “crazy.” Through repeated interaction, members come to understand madness as part of living in a poor neighborhood and then perceive themselves as also at risk of developing mental health problems. Many members avoided getting close to people with mental illnesses, but their shared religious identities meant that at the end of life someone who had previously been excluded from social networks could receive burial care. I discuss the implications of their responses for understanding the role of community care.
The ABCDE of Big Data: Assessing Biases in Call-Detail Records for Development Estimates
Authors: Pestre Gabriel , Letouzé Emmanuel , Zagheni Emilio
Published: November 2019

This article contributes to improving our understanding of biases in estimates of demographic indicators, in the developing world, based on Call Detail Records (CDRs). CDRs represent an important and largely untapped source of data for the developing world. However, they are not representative of the underlying population. We combine CDRs and census data for Senegal in 2013 to evaluate biases related to estimates of population density. We show that: (i) there are systematic relationships between cell-phone use and socio-economic and geographic characteristics that can be leveraged to improve estimates of population density; (ii) when no ‘ground truth’ data is available, a difference-in-difference approach can be used to reduce bias and infer relative changes over time in population size at the subnational level; (iii) indicators of development, including urbanization and internal, circular, and temporary migration, can be monitored by integrating census data and CDRs. The paper is intended to offer a methodological contribution and examples of applications related to combining new and traditional data sources to improve our ability to monitor development indicators over time and space.
First Report of Resistance to Pyraclostrobin, Boscalid, and Thiophanate-methyl in Colletotrichum gloeosporioides from Blueberry in Georgia
Authors: Ali Md Emran , Hudson Owen , Hemphill Will H. , Brenneman Timothy B. , Oliver Jonathan E.
Published: November 2019

Colletotrichum gloeosporioides causes anthracnose fruit rot and leaf spot on blueberries. For controlling anthracnose, blueberry growers mostly rely on pre- and postharvest fungicide applications in addition to orchard sanitation. Single-site fungicides including quinone outside inhibitors (QoIs), such as pyraclostrobin and azoxystrobin as well as fungicides containing the succinate dehydrogenase inhibitor (SDHI) boscalid are used frequently to control anthracnose rots and other diseases on blueberry; however, development of fungicide resistance is a real risk because a limited number of fungicides are now available for blueberry disease management. In 2019, three isolates of C. gloeosporioides were cultured from blueberry fruit collected from southern highbush blueberry cultivar ‘Farthing’ in two commercial blueberry fields in Pierce County, Georgia, where ripe rot had been a problem. Fungicide sensitivity tests were conducted using a mycelial growth inhibition assay as described previously. A total of nine fungicides were evaluated to determine the sensitivity of these C. gloeosporioides isolates. All three isolates were resistant to thiophanate-methyl, the QoI fungicide pyraclostrobin, and the SDHI fungicide boscalid. These findings suggest that continuous monitoring of fungicide resistance is necessary to avoid the unwarranted application of single-site fungicides.
Differential Responses of Tobacco to the Citrus Variegated Chlorosis and Coffee Stem Atrophy Strains of Xylella fastidiosa
Authors: Lopes Silvio A. , Raiol-Júnior Laudecir L. , Torres Simone C. Z. , Martins Elaine C. , Prado Simone S. , Beriam Luís O. S.
Published: November 2019

Xylella fastidiosa comprises a diverse group of xylem-limited, insect-transmitted bacterial pathogens. In Brazil, the citrus variegated chlorosis (CVC) and coffee stem atrophy (CSA) diseases are caused by X. fastidiosa subspecies pauca transmitted by common insect vectors. No simple protocol allowing strain discrimination exists, making epidemiological studies, which are important for devising control measures, difficult to undertake. Here, we show that both strains can easily be distinguished based on the pattern of leaf symptoms that they induce on pin prick-inoculated tobacco seedlings, namely small orange lesions and large necrotic lesions induced by the CVC and CSA strains, respectively. These differential responses allowed us to investigate whether mixed strain infections would occur in citrus or coffee trees in the field. Seedlings were individually inoculated with X. fastidiosa colonies recovered from citrus or coffee plants from various locations at three different times. No mixed infections were detected. In two experiments, the citrus and coffee strains infected only their original hosts as well as tobacco. The usefulness of this tobacco bioassay as a tool to study X. fastidiosa spread was demonstrated. It provided evidence that, over the years, the CVC and CSA pathogens have remained limited to their original hosts, despite crop proximity and the presence of sharpshooter vectors that favor transmission of the bacteria to and between both host species.
A mutation in MAP2 is associated with prenatal hair follicle density
Authors: Jiang Yao , Jiang Yifan , Zhang Haihan , Mei Mengran , Song Hailiang , Ma Xianghui , Jiang Li , Yu Zhenquan , Zhang Qin , Ding Xiangdong
Published: November 2019

Hairlessness is usually a rare trait in pigs; however, in this study, we found hairless (HR) pigs at a relatively high frequency in 1 pig herd. We observed that, the lower hair shaft density of HR pigs could be mainly attributed to the lower hair follicle density, and during the embryonic period, d 39‐45 were a critical stage for the formation of the hair follicle. In this regard, d 41 during gestation was a particularly important point. Hair follicle morphogenesis occurring at an early stage of embryo development is similar to humans and mice. Further analyses of association studies based on single‐nucleotide polymorphism chip as well as sequence data, mRNA sequencing, immunohistochemistry, and comparative genomics demonstrated that microtubule‐associated protein 2 (MAP2) is a key gene responsible for hair follicle density and 1 missense mutation of A‐to‐G at rs328005415 in MAP2, causing a valine‐to‐methionine substitution leads to the HR phenotype. Considering the high homology between pigs and humans, our research has some significance for the study of the mechanisms of skin development, hair morphogenesis, and hair loss in humans by showing that the pig may be a more appropriate model in which to study these processes.—Jiang, Y., Jiang, Y., Zhang, H., Mei, M., Song, H., Ma, X., Jiang, L., Yu, Z., Zhang, Q., Ding, X. A mutation in MAP2 is associated with prenatal hair follicle density. FASEB J. 33, 14479‐14490 (2019). www.fasebj.org
Alteration of the brain methylation landscape following postnatal inflammatory injury in rat pups
Authors: Pierre Wyston C. , Legault Lisa‐Marie , Londono Irene , McGraw Serge , Lodygensky Gregory A.
Published: November 2019

Preterm infants are vulnerable to inflammation‐induced white matter injury (WMI), which is associated with neurocognitive impairment and increased risk of neuropsychiatric diseases in adulthood. Epigenetic mechanisms, particularly DNA methylation, play a role in normal development and modulate the response to pathological challenges. Our aims were to determine how WMI triggered DNA methylation alterations in brains of neonatal rats and if such changes persisted over time. We used a robust model of WMI by injecting lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or sterile saline in the corpus callosum of 3‐day‐old (P3) rat pups. Brains were collected 24 hours (P4) and 21 days post‐injection (P24). We extracted genomic DNA from the brain to establish genome‐wide quantitative DNA methylation profiles using reduced representation bisulfite sequencing. Neonatal LPS exposure induced a persistent increased methylation of genes related to nervous system development and a reduced methylation of genes associated with inflammatory pathways. These findings suggest that early‐life neuroinflammatory exposure impacts the cerebral methylation landscape with determining widespread epigenetic modifications especially in genes related to neurodevelopment.