bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Kesselring K.J.
Published: March 2019

This chapter surveys the existing scholarship on the declining incidence of homicide and on the changing legal definitions of murder and manslaughter in early modern England, adds to it the results of new research on both subjects, and explains why we ought to view these two changes alongside each other and as linked. It explains, too, the ways in which homicide might beneficially be viewed through a political lens, and sets out the argument that homicide became, in these years, increasingly ‘public’. That is, people came to see homicide increasingly as an offence not just against individuals and their kin, but also against a ‘king’s peace’ that was in turn being reconceptualized as belonging to a bigger, broader community.
Religion and the Bio-Sociology of Transformation
Authors: Flood Gavin
Published: March 2019

This final chapter seeks, first, to account for some recent explanations of human interaction in terms of cognition and evolutionary neuroscience; and second, to show how social cognition is transformed through religion at a cultural level as a system in relation to the environment; religion is a form of bio-sociology. This transformation is echoed in the history of Homo sapiens as a move from sign to symbol, suggesting, third, an abductive philosophical claim that life itself comes to articulation through religion; religions are the transformation of bio-energy expressed at an interpersonal level in human face-to-face encounter re-articulated at structurally higher levels of religious systems comprising practice, doctrine, narrative, and law. This transformation of human bio-sociology into religion is the way in which civilization seeks to repair the human and to bring us more acutely into life through the integration of higher linguistic consciousness with deeper, pre-linguistic forms of life.
Cloistered Virtue
Authors: Mottram Stewart
Published: March 2019

This chapter focuses on Marvell’s Upon Appleton House (c.1651) and explores how Marvell uses the ruins of Nun Appleton Priory in this poem to meditate on the ruination of state-run religion during the puritan revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. The chapter sets the poem’s representation of Marvell’s patron—Thomas, third lord Fairfax—against the backdrop of the Scottish invasion of England in early August 1651, arguing that despite Fairfax’s decision the previous summer to resign his role as lord general of the parliamentary army, the poem nevertheless envisages a role for Fairfax in the military defence of northern England in August 1651, as governor of the important garrison town of Hull. Scotland, however, was not the only threat facing England in summer 1651. For the Fairfaxes, and other English presbyterians, the English church was a garden paradise overrun by the weeds of sectarianism, and it was English sectarianism that presbyterians on both sides of the border blamed for the outbreak of England’s war with Scotland in 1650. The chapter explores how Marvell gives voice in Upon Appleton House to presbyterian anxieties over the rise of sectarianism in the early 1650s, focusing on the poem’s representation of Nun Appleton’s meadows, garden, and priory ruins. In these catholic ruins, the chapter argues, Marvell sees English protestant sins reflected, and thus the poem’s remembrance of the dissolution of the monasteries is also an opportunity for a presbyterian meditation on the iconoclasm of English sectarians in the early 1650s.
Conclusion
Authors: Mottram Stewart
Published: March 2019

This chapter opens with a case study, assessing the impact of a century of protestant reforms on the layout and liturgy of the parish church of All Saints’, Bolton Percy, in the early 1650s—a time when both the poet, Andrew Marvell, and his patron, the former lord general of the parliamentary army, Thomas, third lord Fairfax, were parishioners. The chapter explores how Thomas Fairfax had helped preserve the stained glass and other features of Bolton Percy church, in spite of parliamentary ordinances directing the destruction of church idols and images, including those in windows. Yet Fairfax’s distaste for forms of protestant iconoclasm nevertheless co-existed with his presbyterian beliefs—a conjunction that may seem surprising, were it not for the fact that this study has uncovered a similar ambivalence towards religious violence and ruin creation in other avowedly puritan writers, from Spenser to Marvell. The chapter goes on to explore the Laudian apologist, Peter Heylyn’s identification with the religious conservatism of the Elizabethan church, arguing against the conventions of reformation historiography by suggesting that it was by no means only Laudians who sought to slow the pace of reformation and return the seventeenth-century church to the sobrieties of the Elizabethan settlement. The ambivalence of writers across the early modern period towards forms of reformation violence points rather to an anti-iconoclastic tradition that was indigenous to English protestantism in its formative century—suggesting that Laudian opposition to protestant iconoclasm was less ‘avant-garde’ than reformation historians have hitherto suggested.
Johannine Arch-Intelligibility
Authors: Behr John
Published: March 2019

Chapter Six opens up Part Three of this work, devoted to the reading of the Gospel of John given by the French Phenomenologist Michel Henry. This chapter begins by exploring the phenomenology of life developed by Henry, not that which appears in the world, but that which is prior to the world and only known in the immediacy of its pathos, the self-affectivity of the experience of living. The condition of our self as living ones is Christ himself, the First Living One, in whom the life that is the Father is engendered, so that, as Henry quotes Eckhart, ‘God engenders me as himself’. Identity in pathos (suffering is the experience of suffering, it doesn’t appear elsewhere by another means) grants truth, unlike the horizon of the world, in which something only appears as other than itself, torn from its own identity, rendered dead (for life, Henry reminds us, does not appear in the world). According to Henry’s analysis, this pathos of life constitutes the flesh, as phenomenologically distinct than the body; the latter is how we appear, externalized, in the world, the former is how we experience ourselves in the self-affectivity of the pathos of life. This then enables Henry to provide a more sophisticated understanding of Incarnation, not as the appearing of the Word of God within the world, but rather as the Word of God giving us access to life by sharing in his own flesh and his own pathos. The chapter finishes by considering how Henry reads Scripture, especially John, not against the horizon of the world and its history, but as an invitation to life with its own intelligibilty or ‘arch-intelligibility’.
Introduction
Authors: Behr John
Published: March 2019

The introduction explores the various methodological problems involved in studying the Gospel of John and the idea of Incarnation, and introduces the various readers of the Gospel engaged in this study: early Christian writers (the ‘School of John’ as they were called by J.B. Lightfoot), modern exegetes, and Michel Henry. The methodological issues are addressed by way of Quentin Skinner’s ‘mythology of doctrine’, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s ‘effective history’, and Herbert McCabe’s questioning of the coherence of the idea of ‘pre-existence’ as it relates to ‘incarnation’. Of particular concern is the way in which systematic theological reflection has become detached from the exegetical practices in which theology developed, to be combined with a very different practice of reading Scripture, resulting in a loss of coherence and a different understanding of key ideas, such as Incarnation and the Passion (meaning the Crucifixion and Resurrection) and the relationship between them. Finally, the introduction argues for the need to bring together the different readers engaged in this volume so as to undertake the task of theology.
Managing Money and Discord in the UN
Authors: Patz Ronny , Goetz Klaus H.
Published: March 2019

How do international organizations in the United Nations system put together their budgets? What is the role of complex principals—most notably member states—and the complex agents in the bureaucracies of international organizations in budgeting processes? And what does a focus on budgeting tell us about the changing nature of the system of international organizations? This book provides answers to these questions through a detailed examination of budgeting in the UN system. The analysis draws on both quantitative and qualitative observations for a total of twenty-two UN system organizations and detailed case studies for the United Nations, ILO, UNESCO, and WHO. The findings demonstrate the importance of three key organizational outcomes—proceduralization, routinization, and budgetary segmentation—as international organizations grapple with managing discord over priorities as a result of complex principal–agent constellations. Contrary to a common view of international bureaucracies as pathological organizations, core budget routines are mostly successfully maintained. However, principal constellations are becoming more complex, notably through the rise of voluntary contributions and non-state donors; budgetary segmentation advances (in some cases even leading to the setting up of new international organizations); and budgeting and resource mobilization have become ever more intertwined. As a consequence, the capacity of international bureaucracies to fulfill their budgeting responsibilities is stretched to the limit and beyond.
The Historical Origins of UN System Budgeting
Authors: Patz Ronny , Goetz Klaus H.
Published: March 2019

Chapter 3 introduces many of the topics of the book by tracing the evolution of UN system budgeting from the mid-nineteenth-century international unions, several of which are predecessor organizations of today’s UN specialized agencies, through the interwar League of Nations to the main geopolitical changes after World War II. This historical perspective demonstrates the continuity in some of the budgeting dynamics throughout more than a century. It shows how principal and agency complexity in the UN are based on early design decisions in the League of Nations. It highlights how voluntary funding of the League of Nation’s Health Organization looked similar to today’s financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, suggesting that principal complexity has always included actors beyond states. And the chapter explores how the complexity of the IO bureaucracy responsible for managing money and discord evolved from small, host-state supervised bureaucratic units to today’s major administrative operations.
Budgeting in the UN System: A Comparative Analysis
Authors: Patz Ronny , Goetz Klaus H.
Published: March 2019

Chapter 4 constitutes the core comparative data chapter presenting two novel datasets. The first compares budgeting procedures in twenty-two UN organizations, with a focus on the actors involved and the timelines prescribed by formal rules and drawing also on previous analyses on UN budgeting from the 1980s and 2000s. The second dataset reveals, with few exceptions, a high level of routinization of budgeting procedures in the UN system. This finding is based on the analysis of the timing of budget proposals and budget adoptions in twenty of the twenty-two UN organizations included in the first dataset. Both the stability of budgeting procedures and the routinization of budgeting, even in times of a global financial crisis, run against theoretical expectations. Four organizations (UN, ILO, UNESCO, WHO) with highly routinized budgeting procedures are selected (studied individually in Chapters 5–8) to better understand the causal mechanism identified in the theoretical chapter.
Isaac James, Wife and Children
Authors: Newell Quincy D.
Published: March 2019

In Salt Lake, the Jameses initially worked for Brigham Young. Their family continued to grow, eventually including seven living children. The Utah Territorial Legislature passed “An Act in Relation to Service,” requiring that those brought to Utah in slavery be made indentured servants. Although the James family was not directly affected by this act, it illustrated the race-based social hierarchy in which they lived. By the mid-1850s, the Jameses owned property and were prospering. A small African American community developed in the Salt Lake Valley. The US Civil War had little immediate impact, though Jane James’s oldest son enlisted in the local militia. Mormons largely remained outside the conflict, but some African Americans in Utah were more open about their hope that the Union would win. In the late 1860s, Isaac James and a woman believed to be Jane James posed for photographs by a Salt Lake photographer.
That Was Faith
Authors: Newell Quincy D.
Published: March 2019

Jane James performed her last baptism for the dead in the Salt Lake Temple in 1894. Health concerns began to arise more often as she aged, but she remained active and regularly attended women’s meetings and special events. Her daughter died in 1897, leaving only two of her children alive for the last decade of her life. James was one of few remaining Mormons who had known Joseph Smith personally, so the community valued her memories and gave her regular opportunities to talk about them. James obliged, partly because this allowed her to press her case for temple privileges. James was regularly referred to as “Aunt Jane,” a title that conveyed respect but also reinforced the racial hierarchy and kept her at arm’s length. James’s 1908 death was front-page news. Her funeral was well attended and included remarks by the LDS Church president.
Epilogue
Authors: Newell Quincy D.
Published: March 2019

After her death, Jane James faded into obscurity until the late twentieth century, when she gained new fame. Mormons used her story to reimagine their church as racially diverse and Joseph Smith as racially egalitarian. For historians of American religion and others, James’s story gives the history of Mormonism from below and shows the limits of Mormonism’s democratizing impulse. It illustrates the variety of Mormon religious experience and shows the limits of focusing on temple rituals and priesthood. James’s Mormonism differed from that of other Latter-day Saints and thus illustrates how race and gender shaped ways of being Mormon. James also shaped Mormon history in subtle but crucial ways. Her presence in present-day LDS discourses suggests that she has finally achieved what she worked so hard for during her life: Mormons of all races now hold her in “honourable remembrance,” as her second patriarchal blessing promised her.
Conclusion
Authors: Thakur Vineet
Published: March 2019

This chapter summarizes the findings of the book. It compares the Indian and South African cases and finds ideational and institutional similarities and differences in the two experiences.
A Debate to Remember
Authors: Ravi Chaitanya
Published: March 2019

The US–India nuclear deal, popularly known as the 123 Agreement, announced by George W. Bush and Manmohan Singh on 18 July 2005, was a defining moment in the relationship of the two countries, as also India’s relationship with the non-proliferation regime. The Bush administration’s implied recognition of India’s nuclear weapons, and its abrupt reversal of three decades of sanctions to restore Indian access to nuclear fuel, reactors, and dual-use technologies despite being a non-proliferation treaty non-signatory, led to contentious debates in both India and the USA. A Debate to Remember emphasizes the multifaceted debate in India over the nuclear deal using concepts from science and technology studies. It focuses on the intense contestation over the civil-military mix of India’s separation plan, the competition between the Iran–Pakistan–India pipeline and the nuclear deal, the role of retired nuclear scientists, and the issue of liability that has stalled the full implementation of the nuclear deal. The impact of domestic factors on issues ranging from the civil-military status of breeder reactors to the Indian insistence on no restriction on future nuclear testing in the 123 Agreement is also revealed in this book.
Gujarat’s Success in Efficient Electricity Distribution
Authors: Sareen Siddharth
Published: March 2019

Gujarat’s power sector in the 1990s followed a path similar to other relatively prosperous states. A high share of industrial consumption helped buy the sector’s finances, enabling populist measures to agriculturists, notably flat rate tariffs and diminished accountability. This pattern shifted when a decade of competitive elections came to an end in 1998, replaced by a long period of BJP rule. Under conditions of electoral, that state undertook a gradual set of reforms that included establishing a regulator and unbundling, but also feeder separation to introduce transparency and a political deal with farmers to curtail, rationalize, and improve the quality of agricultural supply. Several conjunctural factors also helped: an unusually high state capacity, an effective regulatory commission that was able to challenge the reported AT&C loss figures, and the state’s broader economic success enabled both continued cross-subsidies and direct fiscal support. Gujarat also became a leader in RE capacity, although that first-mover position has loaded the state with expensive RE contracts in a period of rapidly declining RE costs. The overarching story, however, is of Gujarat using its breathing space and favourable economic conditions to carve out a gradual reform process that provided political rewards for power sector improvements.
Paradoxes of Distribution Reforms in Maharashtra
Authors: Dixit Kalpana
Published: March 2019

Maharashtra is locked into a fragile equilibrium of unsustainable subsidies and high cost supply—a pattern initiated by the Enron project and repeated more recently—but mitigated by the fact that the state achieved household electrification earlier than most others, is relatively wealthy and can afford direct subventions, and has plentiful industrial consumers for cross-subsidies. However, Maharashtra’s equilibrium is threatened by the prospect of industrial flight from the grid; the state faces increasing pressure from open access on one hand, which will dilute the ability to cross subsidize, and high cost power on the other. Reforms increased transparency in a way that has made public participation more active, but the state has failed to make the kinds of managerial and organizational improvements that would have improved the overall performance of the sector.
Stalled Reform in the Face of Electoral Fears
Authors: Balls Jonathan
Published: March 2019

One of the largest states in India in terms of population and political influence, UP is also one of the poorest, with a very large rural population and low levels of electricity access. UP has seen a highly competitive political environment over the last couple of decades, with intense jockeying for power among three major parties—SP, BSP, and BJP. The bifurcation of the state in 2000 led to UP losing access to significant cheap hydro power, thereby raising its overall cost of power procurement. The relatively high shares of domestic, rural, and agricultural consumption coupled with high levels of poverty has made it politically challenging to sustain reforms (e.g. privatization has been attempted several times and failed on each occasion, efforts to reduce AT&C losses, improving bill recovery, raising tariffs, etc.). With high levels of political competition, successive UP governments have been unable to incur the political costs of reducing rampant theft and electricity misgovernance; this also makes it challenging to credibly offer enhanced electricity access as a political strategy, locking the state into a vicious cycle at low levels of electricity access.
Artists in Courts
Authors: Maheshwari Malvika
Published: March 2019

Chapter 2 of this first section turns to independent India’s concerns with law as a broader problem and solution to this issue of violence, and questions whether legal-institutional logics might have produced not less but more offence-taking. The idea here is not simply to ‘critique’ vigilant, and even, as many would argue, necessary laws and regulatory bodies, or to suggest that they are the cause of the escalation of violence against artists. The widespread and dramatic increase in criminalized competitive and communal electoral politics, the onslaught of globalized media since the economic liberalization of the 1990s, the rise and radicalization of Hindu nationalism since the mid-1980s, the politically creative and deepening bargaining capacity of hitherto disadvantaged groups—all have played a part in the definitive increase in the anxieties around free speech and the attacks against artists. However, if the violence of offence-taking steadily came to not so much dislocate but relocate itself in the courts, the courts themselves remain a critical element among many others that contributed to the precariousness of free speech, with the law emerging as a medium of harassment.
From a Murder to Deaths in the Morcha
Authors: Maheshwari Malvika
Published: March 2019

This chapter explores the responses to two questions. The first asks how criminalized politics and its associated violence came to administer the limits of artistic expression in the country, and in doing so, hampered or reformed the systemic order of constitutional politics. The second explores what implications this had for the sustenance of democratic processes (given that regulation of freedom of speech and expression is an aspect that is apparently fundamental to the regulatory role of a democratic state). The idea is not to conclude whether criminalized politics and its ensuing violence are themselves democratic or not. Instead, what we can understand from these questions is the extent to which criminalization and violence gradually acquired salience in the narrative and functioning of India’s liberal democracy, no longer inviting punishment or being regarded as anomalies or as impediments to governance. Based on two case studies, the chapter examines two different aspects of the politico-criminal nexus: one of patronage, which pertains to the opportunism of violent actions undertaken by cadres of criminals and local strongmen as pawns in the game of power politics; and the other of partnership that relates to the subversive ritualism of para-statal organizations like the mafia, on whom the state relies, but with whom it also competes for domination.
Introduction
Authors: Rai Shirin M. , Spary Carole
Published: March 2019

In the Introduction we outline the major themes and arguments of the book and cover some theoretical debates on gender and representation. Evaluating how gender inequality runs through Parliament, its practices and norms, and its institutional frameworks and the forms that representation takes as a result are the areas on which we focus in our book. We note that the consistent under-representation of women in Parliament affects our reception of the performance of representation and the claims that the Indian Parliament makes to being the premier democratic institution of the country. The Introduction outlines the politics and performance framework that allow us to make an innovative and informed empirical analysis of continuities and changes in women’s participation in parliamentary politics. The framework focuses as much on rules and norms of the Parliament as on the corporeality and speech, stage and script of politics and political life that are witnessed in its practices. The Introduction then elucidates the main arguments and empirical focus of each chapter of the book.
Conclusion
Authors: Rai Shirin M. , Spary Carole
Published: March 2019

The conclusion revisits the major theoretical themes of the book to suggest how the issue of women’s representation in the Indian Parliament is framed within the context of neoliberal development and the politics of recognition. It looks forward to outline some trends that are becoming visible in Indian parliamentary politics and suggest ways in which these might affect women’s participation. It argues that we need to see parliamentary politics for what it is—a limited but critically important gendered performance of politics, where women members play their roles through participating in its deliberations, law-making, ceremonies, and rituals. In so doing they reproduce dominant forms of gendered power relations while at the same time challenge them.
European Roots
Authors: Gurukkal Rajan
Published: March 2019

This chapter discusses the Greek and Hellenic history of thoughts and ideas. It is followed by a discussion of the Arab Muslim engagement with the classical Greek and Hellenic knowledge by way of translation, interpretation, and academic extension. Drawing the broad contours of the Arab epistemology, the section shows how the Arab scholars retained, improved upon, and carried forward the Greek scholarship in different fields, enabling Europe to trigger the Renaissance movement. It includes a review in recognition of the medieval Catholic scholars’ contribution to the growth of new knowledge in mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, and philosophy, which also had a role in the intellectual preparation for the onset of Renaissance in Europe.
Summing Up
Authors: Gurukkal Rajan
Published: March 2019

This chapter summarizes the main discussions in the preceding chapters and provides a brief account of the history and theory of knowledge production, in Asia as well as Europe, from the earliest times to the rise of new physics, largely following the theoretical perspective of Social Formation and depending on the secondary works, except for analysing the homology between the Social Formation and the knowledge form, in the third chapter, where the illustrations are drawn from the primary source. In that sense the role of the primary source is supplementary and confined to the study of specific instances of the concepts, designs, and methodology of Indian knowledge production. Tracing through a variety of thoughts, the birth of science, the making of new science, the book ends up with consciousness as a problem of particle physics. Roger Penrose, dismissing the matter–mind dichotomy, declares that laws of new science about the quantum gravity seem to govern consciousness too.
Persuasion and Responsibility
Authors: Bromwich David
Published: March 2019

Modernist poetry was defined partly by its renunciation of didactic purpose. Yet the most renowned of twentieth-century British poets, W. B. Yeats—a leading exponent of modernist doctrine—wrote often in a vein that directly implicates a political purpose. This contradiction was the main subject of an essay by George Orwell; it was also a motive for the rich meditation on art and morality in W. H. Auden’s elegy for Yeats. The latter went so far as to acquit Yeats of any ultimate blame for his opinions, on the ground that a true poet’s language belongs to every “free man” and therefore is emancipatory. Auden’s argument is stirring, but dubious. An apology for the language of poetry cannot wash out the impurity or the proneness to misunderstanding that poetry shares with rhetoric and with language generally.
Expertise
Authors: Heathcote Gina
Published: March 2019

Chapter 2 argues that there is a gap between gender expertise, as a technique of global governance, and the transnational feminisms that gender law reform becomes a near-replica of. This chapter examines the rise of gender expertise within global governance to pay attention to what is lost, subsumed, and forgotten in the techniques of global governance, examining how transnational feminist histories and actions become subsumed within and yet expunged from gender law reform within international law. Thus, chapter 2 considers how a great deal of gender law reform functions as a plastic, near-replica of the complex feminist transnational knowledge (or, in Arendt’s words ‘know-how’) and histories that the reforms are expected to incorporate and replicate within global governance—ultimately erasing more feminist knowledge than they integrate.
Institutions
Authors: Heathcote Gina
Published: March 2019

The chapter builds on the analysis of expertise and fragmentation that illuminates the risks for feminist engagements with global governance and law, to consider further strategies of reconstruction (and disruption) within the structures of the global order. In paying attention to international institutions, as non-state actors wielding legal power of sorts within global governance, this chapter takes dialogues from contemporary feminist approaches—the configuring of maternal subjectivity as interruption and feminist approaches to political economy—as initiating plural dialogues on international institutions from a feminist perspective. The chapter provides an analysis of the Human Rights Council, the World Health Organisation, and the Peacebuilding Commission, as well as an account of gender mainstreaming.
The Liturgical Qur’an
Authors: Neuwirth Angelika
Published: March 2019

This chapter lays out a detailed discussion of the liturgical usage of the Qur’an texts that is evident in the texts and the changes in ritual and liturgical function evident through a reading of the Qur’an texts. A picture emerges of the gradually increasing adoption of the sura as a liturgical form through the early, middle, and late Meccan phases, followed by its expansion into the “long form” sura in the Medinan phase. This development is related also to discernible changes in the early cult practices, in which the suras came to serve more as sermons than as psalmic prayers.
The Topographic Sources of Defoe’s Tour
Authors: Rogers Pat
Published: March 2019

The most important study of the topographic background to Daniel Defoe’s Tour thro’ Great Britain (1724–1726) is still one written by the historical geographer J. H. Andrews in 1960. This article seeks to amplify what Andrews says about two aspects of the subject: the use that the author made of maps in compiling his work, and his recourse to the text of topographic volumes, including atlases and guides. On the first issue, the evidence corroborates what Andrews suggested about the use of maps in the Tour, but it shows that Defoe enlisted their aid more widely than previously suspected in areas of the country such as Westmorland. The discussion draws chiefly on maps by Robert Morden, but also those by John Speed, Herman Moll, and others. On the second point, Andrews tended to understate Defoe’s acquaintance with counties such as Dorset, Somerset, and East Yorkshire. As a result, except for parts of Cornwall, he exaggerated the degree to which the author relied on A New General Atlas (1721). Some other sources that he did not consider have now surfaced. A full comparison between the Tour and John Macky’s Journey is provided, exploring the kind of topographic detail each writer supplied. It remains the case that much of the treatment by Andrews continues to be valid after 60 years, and the article endorses his conclusion that even when we identify Defoe’s borrowings, they do not diminish the importance of ‘a great pioneer work of economic geography’.
Oral Rehydration in Children with Acute Diarrhoea and Moderate Dehydration—Effectiveness of an ORS Tolerance Test
Authors: Kauna Rhondi , Sobi Kone , Pameh Wendy , Vince John D , Duke Trevor
Published: March 2019

Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is the mainstay of treatment of acute watery diarrhoea, but it is underutilized in many hospitals, resulting in children with moderate degrees of dehydration being unnecessarily hospitalized and receiving intravenous fluids. We aimed to assess the utility of an ORS tolerance test on initial presentation to an emergency department, and determine the volume of ORS a child with diarrhoea and moderate dehydration needed to tolerate to be successfully managed at home. One hundred and twenty-nine children with acute watery diarrhoea and moderate dehydration were given ORS and observed in a Children’s Emergency Department (CED) over a period of 2–4 h. Patients were admitted, kept in the CED for further management or discharged, based on the assessment of oral intake and the clinical judgement of the treating health workers. Seventy-nine (61.2%) patients tolerated ORS well. They drank a median [interquartile range (IQR)] of 24.4 ml (IQR 12.5–28.8) ml/kg, were judged to have passed the ORS test and were discharged to continue oral rehydration treatment at home. At follow-up on days 2 and 5, 63/79 (79.7%) children had improved, were adequately hydrated and the diarrhoea had reduced. Sixteen of the 79 (20.3%) failed oral home treatment, with persisting diarrhoea, vomiting, hypokalaemia and/or weakness. The 63 who succeeded had tolerated a median of 25.8 (IQR 18.4–30.0) ml/kg of ORS in the CED, whilst the 16 who failed oral home treatment had tolerated 11.1 (IQR 9.1–23.0) ml/kg ORS (p < 0.001).
Reliability of Measures Intended to Assess Threshold-Independent Hearing Disorders
Authors: Kamerer Aryn M. , Kopun Judy G. , Fultz Sara E. , Neely Stephen T. , Rasetshwane Daniel M.
Published: March 2019

Objectives:

Recent animal studies have shown that noise exposure can cause cochlear synaptopathy without permanent threshold shift. Because the noise exposure preferentially damaged auditory nerve fibers that processed suprathreshold sounds (low-spontaneous rate fibers), it has been suggested that synaptopathy may underlie suprathreshold hearing deficits in humans. Recently, several researchers have suggested measures to identify the pathology or pathologies underlying suprathreshold hearing deficits in humans based on results from animal studies; however, the reliability of some of these measures have not been assessed. The purpose of this study was to assess the test–retest reliability of measures that may have the potential to relate suprathreshold hearing deficits to site(s)-of-lesion along the peripheral auditory system in humans.

Design:

Adults with audiometric normal hearing were tested on a battery of behavioral and physiologic measures that included (1) thresholds in quiet (TIQ), (2) thresholds in noise (TIN), (3) frequency-modulation detection threshold (FMDT), (4) word recognition in four listening conditions, (5) distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), (6) middle ear muscle reflex (MEMR), (7) tone burst-elicited auditory brainstem response (tbABR), and (8) speech-evoked ABR (sABR). Data collection for each measure was repeated over two visits separated by at least one week. The residuals of the correlation between the suprathreshold measures and TIQ serve as functional and quantitative proxies for threshold-independent hearing disorders because they represent the portion of the raw measures that is not dependent on TIQ. Reliability of the residual measures was assessed using intraclass correlation (ICC).

Results:

Reliability for the residual measures was good (ICC ≥ 0.75) for FMDT, DPOAEs, and MEMR. Residual measures showing moderate reliability (0.5 ≤ ICC < 0.75) were tbABR wave I amplitude, TIN, and word recognition in quiet, noise, and time-compressed speech with reverberation. Wave V of the tbABR, waves of the sABR, and recognition of time-compressed words had poor test–retest reliability (ICC < 0.5).

Conclusions:

Reliability of residual measures was mixed, suggesting that care should be taken when selecting measures for diagnostic tests of threshold-independent hearing disorders. Quantifying hidden hearing loss as the variance in suprathreshold measures of auditory function that is not due to TIQ may provide a reliable estimate of threshold-independent hearing disorders in humans.
Original Intracerebral Hemorrhage Score for the Prediction of Short-Term Mortality in Cerebral Hemorrhage: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Authors: Gregório Tiago , Pipa Sara , Cavaleiro Pedro , Atanásio Gabriel , Albuquerque Inês , Castro Chaves Paulo , Azevedo Luís
Published: March 2019

Objectives:

To systematically assess the discrimination and calibration of the Intracerebral Hemorrhage score for prediction of short-term mortality in intracerebral hemorrhage patients and to study its determinants using heterogeneity analysis.

Data Sources:

PubMed, ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and CENTRAL from inception to September 15, 2018.

Study Selection:

Adult studies validating the Intracerebral Hemorrhage score for mortality prediction in nontraumatic intracerebral hemorrhage at 1 month/discharge or sooner.

Data Extraction:

Data were collected on the following aspects of study design: population studied, level of care, timing of outcome measurement, mean study year, and mean cohort Intracerebral Hemorrhage score. The summary measures of interest were discrimination as assessed by the C-statistic and calibration as assessed by the standardized mortality ratio (observed:expected mortality ratio). Random effect models were used to pool both measures. Heterogeneity was measured using the I
2 statistic and explored using subgroup analysis and meta-regression.

Data Synthesis:

Fifty-five studies provided data on discrimination, and 35 studies provided data on calibration. Overall, the Intracerebral Hemorrhage score discriminated well (pooled C-statistic 0.84; 95% CI, 0.82–0.85) but overestimated mortality (pooled observed:expected mortality ratio = 0.87; 95% CI, 0.78–0.97), with high heterogeneity for both estimates (I
2 80% and 84%, respectively). Discrimination was affected by study mean Intracerebral Hemorrhage score (β = –0.05), and calibration was affected by disease severity, with the score overestimating mortality for patients with an Intracerebral Hemorrhage score greater than 3 (observed:expected mortality ratio = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.78–0.91). Mortality rates were reproducible across cohorts for patients with an Intracerebral Hemorrhage score 0–1 (I
2 = 15%).

Conclusions:

The Intracerebral Hemorrhage score is a valid clinical prediction rule for short-term mortality in intracerebral hemorrhage patients but discriminated mortality worse in more severe cohorts. It also overestimated mortality in the highest Intracerebral Hemorrhage score patients, with significant inconsistency between cohorts. These results suggest that mortality for these patients is dependent on factors not included in the score. Further studies are needed to determine these factors.
Targeting the androgen receptor and overcoming resistance in prostate cancer
Authors: Einstein David J. , Arai Seiji , Balk Steven P.
Published: March 2019

Purpose of review

Prostate cancer (PCa) is diagnosed in one out of every nine men and is the second leading cause of cancer death among men. Although therapies targeting the androgen receptor (AR) are highly effective, development of resistance is universal and remains a major therapeutic challenge. Nonetheless, signaling via AR is frequently maintained despite standard androgen-signaling inhibition. We review the current understanding of mechanisms of resistance as well as therapeutic approaches to improving treatment of PCa via targeting of the AR.

Recent findings

Resistance to AR-targeting therapies may be mediated by several mechanisms, including amplification, mutation, and alternative splicing of AR; intratumoral androgen synthesis; activation of alternative signaling pathways; and in a minority of cases, emergence of AR-independent phenotypes. Recent trials demonstrate that intensification of androgen blockade in metastatic castration-sensitive PCa can significantly improve survival. Similar strategies are being explored in earlier disease states. In addition, several other cellular signaling pathways have been identified as mechanisms of resistance, offering opportunities for cotargeted therapy. Finally, immune-based approaches are in development to complement AR-targeted therapies.

Targeting the AR remains a critical focus in the treatment of PCa.
Employ ductus venous blood flow in the early detection of trisomy 21, trisomy 18, and trisomy 13
Authors: Ge Yibing , Xia Lili , Wu Yun , Cao Hongbao
Published: March 2019

Background and objective:

Ductus venosus (DV) Doppler has been suggested as a biomarker for the early screening of trisomy diseases. However, results from different studies have been largely inconsistent. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between DV and top 3 fetal aneuploidies by a systematical meta-analysis: trisomy 21 (T21), trisomy 18 (T18), and trisomy 13 (T13).

Methods:

We performed a literature search covering articles from Medline, PubMed, RePORTER, and Elsevier publications. DV-T21/T18/T13 relation data were extracted from 9, 7, and 6 previous studies, respectively, including 31,053, 28,092 and 26,721 pregnant women worldwide. Both random-effects and fixed-effect model were used to study the log odds ratio (LOR) of T21, T18, and T13 in case of DV. Four potential influential factors were studied using a multiple linear regression (MLR) model, including maternal age, data age, sample size, and population region.

Results:

DV was significantly related to T21, T18, and T13 (LOR = 3.44, 3.89 and 3.46; P value <2.1E-13). Significant between-study variance was observed for T21 (P value <1.71E-14), but not for T18 (P value >.05) and T13 (P value >.87). MLR results suggested that significant influential factors could include population region (P value <.0021), but not sample size, data age, and maternal age (P value >.078).

Conclusions:

Integrating DV could help in the detection of trisomy. However, accuracy and validity may vary depending on the population regions, which need further study.
Circulating cell-free DNA as a potential marker in smoke inhalation injury
Authors: Hayun Yehiel , Shoham Yaron , Krieger Yuval , Silberstein Eldad , Douvdevani Amos , Ad-El Dean
Published: March 2019

Failure in evaluation of smoke inhalation injury (SII) is related to increased morbidity and mortality. Prognostic biomarkers that reflect the injury are undoubtedly needed. Cell-free DNA (CFD) concentrations are associated to the extent of tissue damage and inflammation in various pathologies. We have developed a simple assay for CFD quantification and previously found it prognostic in various pathologies including burns, lung disease, and sepsis. The aim of this study was to evaluate admission CFD as an injury severity marker in patients with SII.

In a prospective study, we measured admission CFD levels in 18 SII patients and matched control subjects. Daily CFD levels were also performed in 4 hospitalized patients. Serum CFD levels were measured by our direct rapid fluorometric assay.

Admission CFD levels of SII patients were significantly higher than those of healthy controls, 879 (236–3220) ng/mL vs. 339 (150–570) ng/mL, [median (range)], P < .0001. Admission CFD levels of hospitalized patients were significantly higher than those of nonhospitalized patients, 1517 (655–3220) ng/mL vs. 675 (236–1581) ng/mL, P < .05. Admission CFD positively correlated with hospitalization time (Rho = 0.578, P < .05) and was in linear correlation with CO poisoning (carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels, R
2 = 0.621, P < .0001). Additionally, along with the recovery of hospitalized patients, we observed a matched reduction of CFD levels.

CFD appears to be a potentially valuable marker for severity and follow-up of SII. We believe this rapid assay can help introduce the routine use of CFD measurement into daily practice.
Efficacy of nasal endoscopic dacryocystorhinostomy for chronic dacryocystitis
Authors: Chen Xiao , Liu Yang
Published: March 2019

Background:

This study aims to assess the efficacy and safety of nasal endoscopic dacryocystorhinostomy (NED) for patients with chronic dacryocystitis (CD).

Methods:

The following 7 electronic databases will be searched from inception to the present: Cochrane Library, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Web of Science, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database. In addition, the clinical trials registry and reference lists of included studies will also be searched. We will only include randomized controlled trials of NED for CD in this systematic review. Two review authors independently carry out the study selection, data extraction, and methodological quality assessment. Whenever it is possible, we will pool the data and conduct meta-analysis by using RevMan 5.3 software.

Results:

This study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of NED for patients with CD. The primary outcome includes success rate of ostial patency. The secondary outcomes consist of duration of surgery, quality of life, postoperative complications, and surgeon's comfort.

Conclusion:

The findings of this study may summarize the latest evidence of NED for patients with CD.

PROSPERO registration number:

PROSPERO CRD42019123664.
Can we predict vascular status and culture result based through wound status in diabetic foot infection?
Authors: Shin Jin Yong , Roh Si-Gyun , Chang Suk Choo , Lee Nae-Ho
Published: March 2019

Diabetic foot infection (DFI) should be treated by a multidisciplinary team to prevent amputation and morbid status. As physicians encountering DFI in outpatient clinic, a proper selection of antibiotic treatment and diagnostic approach for a vascular status is essential. We retrospectively investigated the patients with DFI from 2016 to 2017. All patients were examined for vascular status, wound status, and pathologic culture preceding the treatment. No statistical significance was observed between PEDIS grade 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 in culture status and culture results. Association analysis between vascular status and other variables, such as wound score and culture results, has no significant difference. Through these results, the helpful epidemiologic result of microbiology and necessity of examination for peripheral arterial disease were verified.
Establish new formulas for the calculation of renal and isthmus depth in horseshoe kidney
Authors: Ma Guangyu , Chen Yingmao , Shao Mingzhe , Tian Jiahe , Xu Baixuan
Published: March 2019

This study was performed to develop a new formula to estimate the renal and isthmus depth in horseshoe kidney, and to compare the new formula with previously published formulas.

Renal depth, isthmus depth, vertebral thickness, and total thickness (T, cm) of the body at the level of the kidneys were measured by CT in 124 adults. Their sex, age, height (H, cm), and weight (W, kg) were recorded. Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis was conducted. The 124 cases were divided into 2 random groups, of which the first group was used to derive a regressive formula and the second group was used to verify the formula and compare the formula with previously published formulas.

Multiple stepwise linear regression analysis showed that the important variables in estimating the depth of each kidney were the body weight (W, kg) and the total thickness (T, cm) of the body at the level of the kidneys. The important variables in estimating the depth of isthmus soft tissue and vertebral thickness were W, T, and age, W. The new formula was the following: right renal depth (cm) = 0.273 × T + 0.043 × W + 1.086 (r = 0.82, P < .05; standardized regressive coefficient: T = 0.500, W = 0.367), left renal depth (cm) = 0.245 × T + 0.041 × W + 0.676 (r = 0.83, P < .05; standardized regressive coefficient: T = 0.520, W = 0.353); isthmus depth (cm) = soft tissue depth + vertebral thickness, soft tissue depth (cm) = 0.144 × T + 0.044 × W + 0.536 (r = 0.58, P < .05; standardized regressive coefficient: T = 0.272, W = 0.335), vertebral thickness (cm) = 0.012 × age + 0.018 × W + 3.683 (r = 0.53, P < .05; standardized regressive coefficient: age = 0.326, W = 0.438). It is much better than the literatures.

The new renal depth estimation formula in horseshoe kidney that we derived by using multiple stepwise linear regression has greatly outperformed other 6 previously published formulas. Isthmus depth estimation formula can also get accurate results. Our new formula provides a more reliable and accurate renal and isthmus depth estimation and contributes to improving the methods used to estimate renal function from radionuclide renography in horseshoe kidney.