bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
BloodChIP Xtra: an expanded database of comparative genome-wide transcription factor binding and gene-expression profiles in healthy human stem/progenitor subsets and leukemic cells
Authors: Thoms Julie A I , Koch Forrest C , Raei Alireza , Subramanian Shruthi , Wong Jason W H , Vafaee Fatemeh , Pimanda John E
Published: October 2023

The BloodChIP Xtra database (http://bloodchipXtra.vafaeelab.com/) facilitates genome-wide exploration and visualization of transcription factor (TF) occupancy and chromatin configuration in rare primary human hematopoietic stem (HSC-MPP) and progenitor (CMP, GMP, MEP) cells and acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell lines (KG-1, ME-1, Kasumi1, TSU-1621-MT), along with chromatin accessibility and gene expression data from these and primary patient AMLs. BloodChIP Xtra features significantly more datasets than our earlier database BloodChIP (two primary cell types and two cell lines). Improved methodologies for determining TF occupancy and chromatin accessibility have led to increased availability of data for rare primary cell types across the spectrum of healthy and AML hematopoiesis. However, there is a continuing need for these data to be integrated in an easily accessible manner for gene-based queries and use in downstream applications. Here, we provide a user-friendly database based around genome-wide binding profiles of key hematopoietic TFs and histone marks in healthy stem/progenitor cell types. These are compared with binding profiles and chromatin accessibility derived from primary and cell line AML and integrated with expression data from corresponding cell types. All queries can be exported to construct TF–gene and protein–protein networks and evaluate the association of genes with specific cellular processes.
A Multimodal and Interdisciplinary Approach to Luo Yusheng’s Video Performance of Choumo yinchu (At Break of Day)
Authors: Sborgi Lawson Francesca R.
Published: October 2023

This chapter argues for the necessity of taking a broad, interdisciplinary perspective and analyzes a case study from the Tianjin narrative-arts tradition: the classic Beijing drumsong (Jingyun dagu 京韻大鼓) piece known as At Break of Day (Choumo yinchu 醜末寅初), performed by the acknowledged “queen of drumsinging,” Luo Yusheng 駱玉笙 (1914–2002). Luo’s 1960 video performance demonstrates and embodies fascinating cultural elements unique to China. It also exemplifies how a multimodal and interdisciplinary approach to the performance encourages an exploration of scholarly research in a number of unexpected disciplines outside of China studies and ethnomusicology, such as biomusicology, mother-infant communication, and artificial intelligence. Investigating interdisciplinary topics enables scholars in humanistic fields to explore new strategic connections.
Kunqu from Analytical Perspectives
Authors: Lau Kar Lun Alan
Published: October 2023

Using the aria “Feng ru song” as an example, two structural aspects of kunqu music are examined: 1) interactions between linguistic tones and musical pitches; 2) melodic relationships among different versions of the same aria. Differences between music and language as distinct temporal processes are highlighted, and important features of the “qupai paradigm” are introduced. Mostly employing comparative-reductive methodologies, this chapter alludes to alternative analytical approaches, including historical investigation, prescriptive voice-leading, tonal contour analysis, musical set theory, and syntactic analysis. Investigations into much debated topics, such as Zhongzhou yun and zhuqiang, are conducted to reconcile between traditional notions and analytical evidence.
Theorizing “Natural Sound”
Authors: Hui Yu , Yingshi Chen
Published: October 2023

The study of the tuning system (lüxue 律學) has been a central research field in traditional Chinese music theory throughout history. This chapter provides a case study as to why this topic remains significant, tracing its impact on the formation of Chinese musicological perspectives in the specific case of performance on the emblematic zither, guqin. After an orientation to key historical works over a period of 2,500 years on tuning systems, the chapter focuses on the “natural sound” of just intonation, discussing how this precept was realized historically in actual musical practice on (and beyond) the guqin and how it interacted with the tonality provided through the sanfen sunyi system (essentially equivalent to the Pythagorean tuning), which has greater prominence in historical accounts of Chinese music. The chapter thus exemplifies an approach to music history that is led by considerations of performance practice and offers one a chance to hear with fresh ears the music preserved in historical manuscripts.
“Kita Anak Malaysia” (“We Are the Children of Malaysia”)
Authors: Beng Tan Sooi
Published: October 2023

This chapter looks at how the Malaysian Chinese have created multiple identities through their musical cultures from the early twentieth century to the turn of the new millennium. These identities are often informed by contestations and challenges and can be understood in the contexts of the socio-political and historical conditions that led to their creation. Factors such as class, education, state policies, and cultural contact with other ethnic groups also influence the making of identities and musical works. This chapter emphasizes that Chinese musicians in Malaysia have continually crossed boundaries, mixed cultural elements of the country’s multiethnic society, and incorporated content about their experiences as Malaysians into their music. Nevertheless, selected Chinese cultural markers with flexible borders are maintained as icons of Chineseness.
Studies in Contrast
Authors: Mundim Tiago
Published: October 2023

Chilean and Brazilian musical theatre have responded in their own distinctive way to the importation of Anglophone culture. The decentralised system of theatre productions in Chile (19 million inhabitants) uses distinctive means of funding, staging, and developing musicals, while in Brazil (population: 213 million) there are federal tax incentives for sponsoring the performing arts and thus encouraging private investment in theatre. Using various case studies, this essay contrasts the musical theatre industries in both countries and analyses the unique features of Brazilian musicals, which tend to be about remarkable historical figures or events, thus suggesting an artistic perspective that is rather inward-looking.
The Development Process and Characteristics of the South Korean Musical Market
Authors: Kwon Yongmin , Ra Hyeyoung , Cho Kangjoo
Published: October 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the Korean musical market at large, examining its major characteristics, limitations, and prospects in three parts. The first section delineates the history of Korean musicals, identifying its unique characteristics. The second section examines the current status of the Korean musical industry by assessing various recent statistics to determine which phenomena need close attention in 2020. The last section focuses on Korean musicals’ relationship to K-pop—by far the most ‘Korean’ aspect of the market—highlighting phenomena derived from this relationship. The rapid growth of the musicals industry since 2000 has led to the active involvement of large corporations, which invested mainly in tested, licensed musicals starring high-profile celebrities. This strategy restricted investment in original musicals and resulted in various problems related to celebrity casting, such as a rise in ticket prices and multiple casting. It also limited the popularisation of musicals and the acquisition of new audience pools, thus weakening the overall structure of the industry. The chapter concludes that in order for the industry to grow and for its internal stability to be strengthened, new works and audience bases need to be developed.
The Swedish Folk Musical
Authors: Strömberg Mikael
Published: October 2023

This essay discusses the musical Kristina från Duvemåla, based on Vilhelm Moberg’s quartet of novels beginning with Utvandrarna (The Emigrants), as a folk musical. The chapter explores features of the lyrics, the score, and the production, while arguing that the original production’s strong emphasis on themes and aspects familiar to Swedish theatre-goers runs the risk of excluding an international audience. The musical revolves around tension between a more general theme of seeking a better life and its historical frame referring to Swedish emigration. These two tropes are interrelated, and the show emphasises the latter with recurrent references to Swedish traditions and the Swedish countryside, offering an explanation for why the musical has become such a huge success in Sweden while so far not being able to attract an international audience.
Musical Travails in the British Empire
Authors: Peimer David
Published: October 2023

After briefly charting the colonial export of British musical theatre to South Africa and Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, this chapter discusses the postcolonial indigenous works created in both countries, some of which have been exported to the United Kingdom and, occasionally, New York. Starting with King Kong (1959), South African musicals offered new representations of black identity in contestation with, or an embrace of, the colonial/apartheid paradigm, whereas most Australian shows are linked by their exploration of different images of masculinity. Throughout, Stuart Hall’s concept of identity formation is employed as a theoretical frame of the interplay between musical theatre and the legacy of the colonial gaze.
The History of International Tax Law
Authors: Sadowsky Marilyne
Published: October 2023

International taxation was not born in the 1920s at the time of the League of Nations. It is the result of a historical construction from ancient times. This approach follows the nature and transformation of jus gentium, from miksum to multilateral instrument (MLI). Historical recurrences reveal the cyclical nature of history and the permanence of international tax law. Thus, modern tax reforms often contain ancient tax elements, peoples are constantly revolting, and states imitate each other. However, international tax law is forced to evolve in order to adapt to its time and to overcome this cyclical vision of time, revealing its mutation. It is built in reaction to historical realities, adapting to modernity. Concepts have evolved under the effect of technical and economic progress and globalization, causing shifts from: citizenship to nationality, foreigner to consumer, source state to market state, fiscal sovereignty to fiscal jurisdictions, or bilateralism to multilateralism. In fact, the question has always been the same: where and how to tax income? The answer differs at different times, and the current crisis in international tax law is shaking its historical foundations. While the evolution of international tax law is now certain, its outcome is not. The implementation of the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) reform gives us a choice: ignore history with the risk of repeating the past, or take into account the past to write a new history. Time will tell if we have made the right choice.
International Tax Law and Public International Law
Authors: HJI Panayi Christiana , Perrou Katerina
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores the relationship between international tax law and public international law. Since international tax law is part of public international law and at the same time is rooted in domestic systems and premised on national fiscal autonomy, it is imperative to define what components of public international law are relevant to international taxation. A characteristic feature of the public international law of taxation is that it is more facilitative than normative. Certain fundamental areas that belong to public international law rules which are not specific to tax but apply to tax law and provide a facilitative function for international tax law are, in particular, the rules on the sources of international law, the rules on tax treaty interpretation, and the rules on dispute resolution. However, there are certain areas of public international law that interact with international tax law, and as they are norms of public international law, have an impact on both the design and substance of international tax rules. Such rules are the rules on the jurisdiction privileges and immunities, the rules of international human rights law, and the rules of international investment law.
International Tax Law and Language
Authors: Haase Florian
Published: October 2023

This chapter reviews the importance of language in tax law. The language of international tax law is clearly English; most official documents, tax journals, materials, and provisions with respect to international tax law are (at least also) available in English. This brings us to the general problem of multilingualism in international tax law, which increases the intricacies in interpreting international tax law rules dramatically. Thus, the influence language has on the application of law in general and tax law in particular cannot be underestimated. If law by and large equates to language, it is inherent that the well-known problems of usage and abusage of language inevitably also influence the results of the application and interpretation of law. The chapter begins by elaborating on language and its interpretation in double-taxation treaties, where additional problems come into play due to the fact that such tax treaties are usually concluded in at least two binding, authentic languages. It then investigates the languages that are used in EU tax law and by the institutions of the EU in tax matters, before closing with a discussion and suggestions as to how problems arising from language in international tax law could be avoided or at least mitigated.
The Future of Avoiding Double Taxation
Authors: Berglund Martin
Published: October 2023

This chapter evaluates the future of avoiding double taxation. The two main methods of mitigating international double taxation—exemption and foreign tax credit—have been an essential part of international tax law since this area of law was established. The methods are regulated in the OECD Model Tax Convention (OECD Model) in the two alternative articles 23A and 23B, and in the national legislation of different countries. The rules in the OECD Model aim at mitigating international juridical double taxation, and thereby at achieving a situation where the income in question is instead subject to single taxation. However, these objectives are not always fulfilled in the concrete application. The chapter assesses what impact the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project has had so far, and can be expected to have in the future, on the methods of mitigating international double taxation. This refers to both the OECD BEPS reports published in 2015 and the continued work within the Inclusive Framework, where in 2020 two drafts—the Pillar One and Two Blueprints—were published on changes in international tax law as a result of digitalization of the economy.
Exchange of Information and Tax Treaties
Authors: Oberson Xavier
Published: October 2023

This chapter assesses exchange of information (EOI) and tax treaties. Following the ‘big bang’ of EOI on 13 March 2009, many double-taxation treaties (DTTs) around the world were adapted or concluded with the purpose of implementing the OECD standard. At the same time, tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) were also widely signed. As of 2014, this development led to the adoption of Automatic Exchange of Information as the new OECD standard. The chapter provides a general description of the international existing rules of EOI before focusing on the main issues raised in the context of EOI under DTTs. The principles governing EOI in the various legal instruments tend to protect the interest of the contracting states. However, the interest of the taxpayers should also be considered, notably in cases where the state has a discretionary power of decision in the process. Such rights may be divided into substantive rights on the one hand, and procedural rights on the other hand.
The Principal Purpose Test under Tax Treaty Law
Authors: Danon Robert J.
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the Principal Purpose Test (PPT), which is the multilateral minimum standard to combat the improper use of double taxation conventions. It notes the PPT architecture being inspired by the ‘guiding principle’ inserted in the OECD Commentaries in 2003. Moreover, the PPT has been codified in Article 29(9) OECD and UN Model Tax Conventions. Since the PPT is rooted in the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative, questions arose on the capability of the PPT to influence the conditions governing access to tax treaty benefits. The chapter notes how the PPT, as a general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), is incapable of building into tax treaty law requirements that were never intended.
Taxation of International Partnerships
Authors: Stevens Ton
Published: October 2023

This chapter studies the taxation of international partnerships. There are at least three reasons why partnerships are preferred to other legal forms of business (e.g. corporations) in some countries or situations: (1) partnership law is in many countries more flexible than corporation law; (2) partnership law offers in many countries more legal forms to choose from than corporations; and (3) partnerships sometimes offer preferential tax treatment. With respect to the third reason, partnerships are quite often treated as fiscally transparent compared to corporations being separate tax subjects (opaque tax treatment). However, not all states have the same tax treatment for partnerships. Such different tax treatment by states delivers complex tax issues for those partnerships that operate internationally. The chapter discusses the domestic tax treatment of international partnerships before looking at the tax treaty treatment of international partnerships. It also considers the EU law aspects of international partnerships.
The Role of Article 9 OECD MC
Authors: Teixeira de Abreu Miguel
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the role of article 9(1) of the OECD Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital (MC). Article 9(1), in its current text, was introduced by the 1963 version of the MC. It grants a contracting state the right to include in the profits of a resident enterprise profits which were registered not to its benefit, but to the benefit of a non-resident associated enterprise. In reflecting on the role of article 9, one must look into the concept of associated enterprises as well as into the way it should interact with domestic laws. Temptation to look at article 9 as an anti-avoidance provision does exist but one must carefully distinguish between anti-avoidance provisions and a provision such as article 9, the purpose of which is, and should remain, neutral, related only to ‘a system of pricing the transfer of goods, services and intangibles between entities of one MNE’ and to the elimination of economic double taxation.
Tax Treaties and EU Fundamental Freedoms
Authors: Helminen Marjaana
Published: October 2023

The member states of the European Union have concluded a large number of tax treaties with each other and with states that are not members of the Union. Membership of the EU does not prevent the member states from concluding bilateral or multilateral tax treaties in order to eliminate double taxation and to prevent tax avoidance. The tax treaties, however, must comply with EU law and specifically with the EU fundamental freedoms. This chapter explores tax treaties from the perspective of these fundamental freedoms, which are considered to be part of the general legal principles of EU law protected by the EU Court.
Aspects of Cross-Border VAT
Authors: Scalia Roberto
Published: October 2023

This chapter discusses the European Union approach to cross-border value-added tax (VAT) and the evolving trends. The essential backbone of European VAT, whose history dates back to the inception and initial steps of the European Communities, was established in the ten-year period between 1967 and 1977 and later amended in several parts. Such additions and amendments were recast in the currently binding Council Directive 2006/112 on the common system of value added tax (the VAT Directive) for the purpose of achieving ‘clarity and rationalisation’. This evolution of the VAT rules has also affected the underlying principles of the directive and the so-called ‘place-of-supply’ (POS) rules. The chapter analyses the current VAT approach—and foreseeable developments—towards cross-border supplies and, more precisely, towards the ‘fixed establishment’ (FE) proxy in the light of the VAT: (1) grounding principles; (2) origin and historical evolution; and (3) case law of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU).
The Indian Perspective on International Tax Law
Authors: Dave Kuntal
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the Indian perspective of international tax law. India collaborates on various initiatives on matters related to the OECD’s tax policy formulation, and is an important contributor to a range of OECD standard-setting activities. India, as a member of the Inclusive Framework, is committed to implementing the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project and has introduced several measures recommended in the BEPS Action Plans in its tax law. However, to the concern of the global investor community, the Indian tax authorities have, on various occasions, acted in ways that have given rise to unprecedented controversies in the field of tax law which has raised questions about India’s commitment to investors as well as to its treaty obligations. The chapter also provides an overview of income tax law in India as well as its interplay with its treaty obligations.
Challenges of the Emerging International Tax Consensus for Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Authors: Quiñones Natalia
Published: October 2023

This chapter discusses the challenges of the emerging international tax consensus for low- and middle-income countries. It is undeniable that low- and middle-income countries are usually identified as source countries, and their international tax policies and treaties are based on the twentieth-century division of taxing rights between source and residence states. This traditional dichotomy recognized that source countries could obtain their ‘fair share’ in the international business income tax pie by taxing a multinational enterprise’s (MNE) physical presence within their territorial borders. This consensus is still reflected in the treaty and domestic definitions of permanent establishment (PE) in most low- and middle-income countries, which rely on the presence of physical infrastructure or a personal agent in order to trigger PE taxation. As a result of the reduced requirements for physical presence and permanence offered by technology for the significant economic activities that an MNE may perform in any given market, the scope of PE taxation in source countries has shrunk significantly. Given this situation, it is in the interest of low- and middle-income countries to actively devise a solution to the tensions that are threatening to reduce their share in an already precarious consensus on the distribution of taxing rights.
International Tax Law and Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Authors: Ranjan Akhilesh
Published: October 2023

This chapter assesses the relationship between international tax law and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The tax policy of any country is influenced by a combination of factors, such as the strategy for growth, prevailing economic environment, and political imperatives. Developing countries, including LMICs, are also guided by the same factors but, additionally, tax policy formulation in these nations must take into account the capabilities of the tax administration, technological capacity, social welfare needs, and, above all, the level of trust between the government and the people. The approach to international taxation over the years in developing countries has been largely to follow and try to apply the principles set out in the model tax conventions framed by the OECD and by the United Nations, utilizing the guidance contained in the commentaries accompanying these conventions. While many of the developing countries have entered into double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAAs) with economically advanced countries, the primary purpose of doing so has been to facilitate investment from the treaty partner country by agreeing to limited source-taxation rights along with mechanisms for eliminating double taxation.
US Constitutionalism, Local Movements, and Economic and Social Rights
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: October 2023

Although the United States is sometimes thought to lack social and economic rights, these rights do appear in US state constitutions. This chapter argues that given their place in state constitutions, social and economic rights should be considered part of the American constitutional tradition. It discusses the reasons we find these rights at the state (rather than national) level, as well as problems and possible advantages of protecting rights in subnational constitutions. Finally, it argues that to understand the way these rights were designed to operate it is necessary to study the social movements that pursued, drafted, and ultimately secured them.
Free to Learn
Authors: Sorenson Gia Coturri
Published: October 2023

The nineteenth-century was an era of profound cultural change, and the immense changes American and British women philosophers proposed to educational policy typify how class, race, and gender influenced the way children were educated. Studying how early nineteenth-century women philosophers such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld sought to expand girls’ education illuminates the mid-century struggle led by Anna Elizabeth Dickinson and other educational theorists to educate poor and orphaned children; similarly, considering the push to provide a quality education to workhouse children helps explain the late-century fight spearheaded by advocates such as Manella Bute Smedley for strong, government-sponsored universal education. Juxtaposing the push to expand education for all white citizens with the hard-fought expansion of education for Black Americans and indigenous people showcases the unique challenges faced by educators of color. Without African American philosophers like Sarah J. Woodson, educational philosophy would not be making the innovative changes it is making today.
The Rehabilitation of the Concept of Public Good
Authors: Olssen Mark
Published: October 2023

The concept of “self-interest” that guided the liberal economists, and the ontology of individualism that underpinned Rawls’s writings, have not proved adequate for understanding politics and the logic of collective action in terms of which politics necessarily operates. This chapter will not seek to provide a modification or revision of the liberal views, or of utilitarianism, but it will proffer a new normative theory which is necessary in the current age to guide politics. The chapter argues that new models of science which gained ascendancy from the start of the 20th century, as well as poststructuralist ideas, can assist in a reconceptualization of the idea of public good to guide politics, accommodate liberty and diversity, and overcome liberal objections.
Why Globalization Hardly Affects Education Systems
Authors: Garritzmann Julian L. , Garritzmann Susanne
Published: October 2023

Many scholars and observers have assumed that globalization triggers convergence in many areas, including education policy and systems. Yet, while some change has happened, the central elements of countries’ education systems have been relatively unaffected by globalization. This chapter explains this inertia, pointing at the politics of education. Taking a historical institutionalist perspective, the chapter shows that education systems have created positive feedback effects generating path dependencies which make education systems increasingly resilient to change. A review and discussion of recent research underpin this reasoning, identifying three mechanisms, through public opinion, interest groups, and political elites, respectively.
Higher Education and Organizational Theory
Authors: Huisman Jeroen
Published: October 2023

This chapter addresses organization and globalization theory development in the field of higher education. Many researchers would qualify the study of higher education as applied, multidisciplinary research. This suggests that scholars focusing on higher education, where appropriate, would import concepts from organizational and globalization theory. This chapter, however, will address two important deviations from this expectation. First, it will show that the concept of globalization only entered the scholarly literature on higher education (organizations) relatively late. Second, higher education researchers were sometimes ahead of organizational theorists, but they used different scholarly language to theorize higher education. Importantly, the use of insights from organizational or globalization theory is affected by characteristics of the object of study and the practical applicability of concepts, especially in light of the policy and management challenges in higher education.
Inclusive Education, Globalization, and New Philosophical Perspectives on Social Justice
Authors: Verhoeven Marie , Gonzalez Amandine Bernal
Published: October 2023

This chapter aims to uncover the theoretical and normative assumptions underpinning the “inclusive education” framework, as promoted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We examine it from a twofold perspective: social theory and theories of justice. We argue that it bears the mark of the social grammar of globalized and reflexive second-modernity societies. The analytical potential of three approaches of social justice (redistribution, recognition, and capability-approach) is then explored to address the social justice issues emerging from this new configuration. Whereas the redistributive approach in terms of equal rights and opportunities is renewed, the recognitive perspective highlights new claims of interpersonal respect, rights, and social utility; and the capability approach echoes the emphasis put on talents and potentialities and on real freedom to accomplish oneself through social participation. These approaches can therefore be envisaged as complementary analytical tools echoing the semantics of the inclusive education framework but also as a useful critical apparatus for its normative assessment.
Small Worlds
Authors: Mangez Eric , Tilman Alice
Published: October 2023

Against sociological dogma, Niklas Luhmann famously described our global modern society as a loose, heterarchical ensemble of functionally differentiated systems, each assuming the primacy of its own function. In this chapter, homeschooling is discussed as illustrative of the problems emerging from the tumultuous coexistence of these systems. The latter typically gives rise to reactions claiming and hoping to reorder society along lines that run against its functional differentiation. To the extent that such movements react to highly advanced self-referential systems by ceasing to place their trust in their organizations, they will often take on the appearance of a retreat away from modernity and into small worlds. They should, however, not be taken as actual backward moves to nonmodern or premodern forms of existence. Instead, the analysis shows that they are processes through which modernity reacts to itself and to its own, self-made, problems.
Manipulation of the Concept “Indian” in the Caribbean
Authors: Valcárcel Rojas Roberto , Pesoutova Jana
Published: October 2023

The Spanish conquest and colonization of the Americas profoundly transformed the societies and environments of the continent. Harsh colonial labor exploitation, imported diseases and violence led to a dramatic collapse of Indigenous societies, and the emergence of populations blending existing Indigenous and external cultural attributes. The surviving local populations were forced to conform to the social roles and identities assigned to them in the world ruled by foreign Others. The unfortunate role of the Caribbean, and particularly of the Greater Antilles, as the initial stage of conquest and colonial enterprise still has many legacies. One of them is the colonizers’ conceptualization of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Greater Antilles as “Indians.” This term became a colonial and racial category that was imposed upon many Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. By combining results from various historical, and to a lesser extent archaeological studies from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, we examine how the representation and identities of Indigenous peoples or their descendants were manipulated by various actors from the arrival of Christopher Columbus and other Europeans in 1492 to the present day. A critical study of this stereotypical image of Indigenous peoples of Greater Antilles unveils the influential role of this term in shaping national histories. Its uncritical reproduction becomes even more problematic as it can lead to alienation from one’s own past given that it is phrased according to a Eurocentric vision of history that is rooted in a particular space and connected to a particular group of peoples.
The Haunted Present
Authors: Kumar Udaya
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines an emergent strand in Malayalam fiction that engages inadequately acknowledged dimensions of Kerala’s social history, especially linked to depressed caste communities and the practices of slavery and forced migration. The novels and short fiction of Raju K. Vasu (b. 1959), P. F. Mathews (b. 1960), Pradeepan Pampirikkunnu (1969–2016), Johny Miranda (b. 1968), and Vinoy Thomas (b. 1975), and the earlier short fiction of C. Ayyappan (1949–2011), are prominent examples of this impulse. These writers, from Dalit, Anglo-Indian, and Luso-Indian communities, move away from social realist and modernist styles in Malayalam writing to develop new fictional imaginaries that mix fantasy and historical recall to offer a deep and conflicted engagement with contemporary Kerala. The afterlife of dead ancestors, who were victims of caste and gender oppression, shapes the fictional world, either immobilizing the present in the tight grip of haunting or serving as a resource for the new generation’s refusal of a normalizing modernity. Spirits, curses, and benedictions appear as crucial tropes, either against the background of lower-caste conversions to Christianity—in the 16th century under Dutch and Portuguese dominance and in the 19th and 20th centuries by British and European Protestant missionaries—or through the ritual invocation of ancestors by Dalit communities in Kerala. The chapter argues that these narratives may be seen as an important fictional response to Kerala’s history, its encounter with modernity, and the silences that accompany its self-perception as a progressive, enlightened, and liberal society.
Narrative Authority in the Colonial Novel
Authors: Pinto Rochelle
Published: October 2023

A primary challenge confronting 19th-century colonial novels was the wresting of narrative authority from more authoritative discourses that claimed to speak for colonial society. Two novels about Goa reveal that it was not just the epistemic validity of ethnography, philology, and law, but also their structures of representation that impinged on the conventions of this modern literary genre. An instance of this is the ubiquitous narrative of agrarian settlement as the foundation of society in India. The Portuguese novel Os Maharatas represents such origin narratives, as it subsumes early and late modern narrative traditions into its discontinuous structure. In doing so, it enacts the impossibility of epistemic resolution by disabling the novel itself. In contrast, the Konkani novel Battcara mechanically concedes the space of the hero to an undeserving landlord, but inserts the life of a Goan migrant in the interstices of its plot through myriad details. Literary history has tended to view such novels that lack a single coherent schema as tentative precursors to a more perfect mastery of modern literary form. This chapter argues that these novels stage a fundamental challenge of colonial modernity—namely, how a novel could achieve formal autonomy when narrative authority always had to be ceded to another discourse. It suggests that early novels met this challenge by incorporating these discourses into their structure, or by self-consciously staging the impediments to their formation.
Ambiguous Journeys and Halfway Homes in Ramanujan, Narayan, Karnad, and Ananthamurthy
Authors: Hasan Anjum
Published: October 2023

This chapter is a reading of the ambivalent, playful, and embodied relationship to the binaries of tradition and modernity, rural and urban, past and present, in four great Karnataka writers and contemporaries—A. K. Ramanujan (1929–1993), R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), U. R. Ananthamurthy (1932–2014), and Girish Karnad (1938–2019). Using Ashis Nandy’s idea of the journey between the village and city (and back) as the archetypal anxiety of Indian civilization, the chapter analyzes how this bind has been a creative source for the fiction, playwriting, and poetry of these four writers. Their works reveal the possibility of an Indian sensibility highly attuned to its own contradictions, both rooted and open minded. With the hardening in public life of the divide between liberal and conservative views of culture, this secular slant, as poetics rather than only politics, is losing appeal. This also brings into question where these four might have failed to create the new paradigms, forms, and idioms that could have anticipated, if not helped forestall, the ideological battles of the present.
Saadat Hasan Manto and the Poetics of the Urdu Short Story
Authors: Dubrow Jennifer
Published: October 2023

This chapter argues that the preeminent Urdu short-story writer Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) utilized a fundamentally poetic style in his best work. The chapter analyzes three exemplary works—the 1942 short story “Bu”; the 1948 collection of vignettes and prose poems on Partition violence, Siyah Hashiye; and the 1948 story “Khol Do”—to show how Manto reinvigorated aspects of Urdu ghazal poetry to make meaning with minimal words. In “Bu,” Manto produced disjuncture and jar by contrasting an underlying lyrical structure with disturbing events. In Siyah Hashiye, Manto expanded this technique to create prose poems on Partition that further compressed the short story and overturned readerly expectations about poetry. Finally, in “Khol Do,” Manto displayed his style of extreme brevity by leaving the most important elements unsaid, using the ghazal’s reliance on audience familiarity with poetic convention to different ends. Manto’s style of extreme brevity helps mark him as a world writer, one whose career and work transcended national borders and continue to challenge dominant national and linguistic paradigms for the study of modern Indian literatures.
The Cultural Transmission of Technological Skills
Authors: Derex Maxime , Morgan Thomas J. H.
Published: October 2023

Human adaptation relies on the multigenerational transmission and accumulation of both skills and knowledge. Nonetheless, there is currently no agreement on which factor, or combination of factors, explains our peculiar ability to do so. Theoretical and empirical work, however, has identified many candidates that operate at both the individual and population levels. This chapter starts by giving a brief overview of these factors that support cultural transmission before highlighting the relative lack of research on the cultural transmission of skills. The chapter characterizes skills as behaviours that rely on fine motor control and knowledge as mental states that guide behaviours. Many behaviours require both complex knowledge and skilled actions to be effective. Nonetheless, the chapter argues that the field of cultural evolution has largely studied the transmission and evolution of knowledge, as opposed to skill, raising the possibility that it presents an incomplete picture of human adaptation. Drawing on evidence from anthropology and economics, the chapter suggests that the cultural evolutionary dynamics of skill are likely to differ from those of knowledge. Specifically, it argues that (i) skills are less reliant on language for transmission than is knowledge; (ii) skills are more costly to transmit than knowledge; (iii) skills are transmitted along different pathways than is knowledge, and are more often limited to vertical transmission; and (iv) as a result, skills are likely to evolve more slowly than does knowledge. The chapter concludes that a full picture of human adaptation requires an increased focus on skill, alongside knowledge.
Viewpoint: Could better understanding of risk factors for comorbidities pave the way towards personalized therapy in rheumatoid arthritis?
Authors: Majnik Judit , Nagy György
Published: October 2023

In addition to joints, several organs can be affected in rheumatoid arthritis. Coexisting conditions with different pathomechanisms all contribute to disease activity, treatment efficacy, mortality and quality of life. The wide selection of treatment options makes it possible for rheumatologists to personalize treatment for their patients, which in present practice mainly includes the consideration of established comorbidities and contraindications. We suggest that further research can enable clinicians to take into account the individual risk of the future development of comorbidities, when making therapeutic decisions. Individual risk assessment could be mainly based on biomarkers and the better understanding of the patomechanism of different coexisting conditions, as we highlight with the examples of depression and interstitial lung disease. This biomarker-based person-centred therapy can lead not only to the treatment but ideally even the prevention of coexisting conditions, and can lead to better disease control, survival and quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis.
Viewpoint: how to measure comorbidities in patients with rheumatoid arthritis – clinical and academic value
Authors: Radner Helga
Published: October 2023

Given the high prevalence and the enormous impact on key outcomes, comorbidities are important to consider, especially in patients with RA. Comorbidity indices are tools to quantify the impact of the overall burden of coexisting diseases on a specific outcome of interest. Until now, no gold standard exists on how to measure comorbidities. A large variety of indices have been developed using different settings and therefore leading to conceptual differences. Choosing the right tool clearly depends on the intention (clinical or research purpose) and the specific research question. The current article will address the purpose and challenge of measuring comorbidities in RA patients.
O010 Capturing Localised Electroencephalography Signals During Sleep using Tripolar Concentric Ring Electrodes
Authors: Stuart N , Manners J , Lechat B , Ngyuen P , Kemps E , Scott H , Catcheside P
Published: October 2023

Introduction

Tri -concentric ring electrodes (TCRE) evaluate the current density underlying each electrode and provide improved signal-to-noise compared to conventional electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes. This pilot study used TCRE for the first time to compare TCRE versus more conventional EEG signals during sleep .

Materials and Method

Twenty healthy sleepers (8 males, mean±SD age 27.8±9.6 y) completed a 9-hr sleep opportunity. Eighteen TCRE electrodes were placed based on the 10-20 system, along with more conventional EEG recorded from the outer rings of paired TCRE electrodes (emulated EEG; eEEG). A Fast Fourier Transform using multitaper-based estimation was applied in 5 second epochs to calculate absolute and relative powers in delta, alpha, theta, sigma and beta frequency bands for eEEG and TCRE signals throughout conventionally scored sleep stages.

Results

At the Cz position, TCRE showed reduced relative powers in beta frequency bands across sleep stages compared to eEEG. Further, TCRE demonstrated lower relative beta activity during wake (mean difference [95% confidence lower, upper]; -14%, [-15.9%, -12.1%]), N1 sleep (-5.7%, [-7.6%, -3.7%]), and REM sleep (-4.4%, [-6.3%, -2.5%]). TCRE also recorded higher relative delta power across all stages of sleep and wake.

Conclusions

Lower signal power in high frequency bands and higher power in lower frequency bands supports more favourable signal-to-noise ratio with TCRE compared to more conventional EEG. Thus, TCRE shows promise for evaluating sleep related brain activity. The more focal nature of TCRE recordings may be an additional advantage, that warrants further analysis.
O018 Improvement in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Improves Heart Rate response to Obstructive Respiratory events in Children with Down syndrome.
Authors: Walter L , Andiana A , Shetty M , Bassam A , Kleeman E , Davey M , Nixon G , Horne R
Published: October 2023

Background

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have a much higher predisposition to obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) compared to typically developing (TD) children. Children with DS have a lower heart rate (HR) response to respiratory event termination compared with TD children matched for age, sex and OSA severity, but the effect of improvement in OSA severity over time or with treatment is unknown. We compared the HR surge at event termination in children with DS with improved OSA to those with unimproved OSA 2 y following baseline study.

Methods

24 children (3-19 y at baseline) were included. Children were grouped into Improved (decrease in obstructive apnoea hypopnoea index (OAHI) to ≤ 50% of baseline OAHI; n=12; 7 treated between studies) and Unimproved (n=12; 2 treated between studies). Beat-to-beat HR was averaged 10s before (pre), during and the peak after (post) each obstructive event during sleep, and expressed as percentage change.

Results

583 obstructive events at baseline and 435 at follow up were identified. % change in HR from during the event to post event was greater at follow up (mean±sem, 22.4%±0.9%) than baseline (19.0%±0.8%; p<0.01) in the improved group, but reduced at follow up (16.8%±1.1%) compared with baseline (21.1%±0.7%; p<0.001) in the unimproved group and was greater at follow up in the improved group than in the unimproved group (p<0.001).

Conclusion

These results suggest that the dampened HR response to events seen in DS is reversible, adding weight to the need for diagnosis and management of OSA in this population.