bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Thermally assisted magnetic switching of a single perpendicularly magnetized layer induced by an in-plane current
Authors: Bi Chong , Huang Lin , Long Shibing , Liu Qi , Yao Zhihong , Li Ling , Huo Zongliang , Pan Liqing , Liu Ming
Published: July 2014

We report that by heating samples the critical current density for magnetization reversal (Jc) in a single perpendicularly magnetized layer can be decreased from 2.6 × 107 A/cm2 to about 1 × 106 A/cm2 for a temperature increase of 143 K. The nonlinear dependence of Jc on the perpendicular anisotropy field indicates that the coherent magnetic switching model cannot fully explain the current-induced perpendicular switching. By considering the current-induced domain nucleation and expansion during switching, we conclude that Jc also depends on current-induced domain behavior. Moreover, by reversing the heat flow direction, we demonstrate that the thermal related spin transfer torques have little influence on the thermally assisted magnetic switching.
Effects of layer thickness and alloy composition on carrier lifetimes in mid-wave infrared InAs/InAsSb superlattices
Authors: Aytac Y. , Olson B. V. , Kim J. K. , Shaner E. A. , Hawkins S. D. , Klem J. F. , Flatté M. E. , Boggess T. F.
Published: July 2014

Measurements of carrier recombination rates using a time-resolved pump-probe technique are reported for mid-wave infrared InAs/InAs1−xSbx type-2 superlattices (T2SLs). By engineering the layer widths and alloy compositions, a 16 K band-gap of ≃235 ± 10 meV was achieved for all five unintentionally doped T2SLs. Carrier lifetimes were determined by fitting a rate equation model to the density dependent data. Minority carrier lifetimes as long as 10 μs were measured. On the other hand, the Auger rates for all the InAs/InAsSb T2SLs were significantly larger than those previously measured for InAs/GaSb T2SLs. The minority carrier and Auger lifetimes were observed to generally increase with increasing antimony content and decreasing layer thickness.
Efficient generation of sFat-1 transgenic rabbits rich in n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids by intracytoplasmic sperm injection
Authors: Zhang Shun , Lu Fenghua , Liu Qingyou , Liu Yubing , Guan Xiaomei , Wei Yingming , Tan Shijian , Shi Deshun
Published: July 2014

N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have their first double bond at the third carbon from the methyl end of the fatty-acid chain and had been proven to be beneficial to human health. However, mammals cannot produce n-3 PUFAs by themselves because they lack the n-3 fatty-acid desaturase (Fat-1) gene. Thus, the possibility of producing sFat-1 transgenic rabbits was explored in this study. The transgenic cassette of pPGK1–sFat-1–CMV–EGFP was constructed and transgenic rabbit embryos were produced by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). When 123 EGFP-positive embryos at the 2–8-cell stage were transplanted into the oviduct of four oestrous-synchronised recipients, two of them became pregnant and gave birth to seven pups. However, transfer of embryos into the uterus of oestrous-synchronised recipients and oviduct or uterus of oocyte donor rabbits did not result in pregnancy. The integration of the sFat-1 gene was confirmed in six of the seven live pups by PCR and Southern blot. The expression of the sFat-1 gene in the six transgenic pups was also detected by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis revealed that transgenic rabbits exhibited an ~15-fold decrease in the ratio of n-6 : n-3 PUFAs in muscle compared with wild-type rabbits and non-transgenic rabbits. These results demonstrate that sFat-1 transgenic rabbits can be produced by ICSI and display a low ratio of n-6 : n-3 PUFAs.
“Zdravljica” - toast to a cosmopolitan nation anthem quality in the Slovenian context
Authors: Kelen Christopher , Pavković Aleksandar
Published: July 2014

As with many states, in the case of Slovenia two songs principally contend for the position of national anthem. In this case an apparent ideological gulf masks perhaps a more essential temperamental divide: the bellicose army song versus the happy drinking “all together…” number. Vacillation between “Zdravljica” (“A Toast”) and “Naprej zastava slave,” (“Forward, Flag of Glory”) might be taken as reflecting the ambivalence with regard to potentially hostile others one reads attributed to Jesus Christ in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke:who's not with me is against me/who's not against me is with me. The 1989 adoption of “Zdravljica” (lyrics courtesy of Slovenia's national poet France Prešeren) is strongly suggestive of an outward looking state, one hoping for a place in a cosmopolitan Europe. “Naprej zastava slave” has remained the anthem of the Slovenian army and so is far from being discarded for the purpose of asserting Slovenian national aspirations. Perhaps retaining it in this minor role has been necessary because “Zdravljica” is a song which - at least as it is presently sung — de-emphasises national aspiration to a degree unusual for the anthem genre. In a crossroads of Europe dominated historically by the national (or imperial) aspirations of larger and more powerful political entities, “Zdravljica” is a song which tests the limits of what an anthem can be by holding out a hope of rising above the national.
Strategies to maintain skeletal muscle mass in the injured athlete: Nutritional considerations and exercise mimetics
Authors: Wall Benjamin T. , Morton James P. , van Loon Luc J. C.
Published: July 2014

The recovery from many injuries sustained in athletic training or competition often requires an extensive period of limb immobilisation (muscle disuse). Such periods induce skeletal muscle loss and consequent declines in metabolic health and functional capacity, particularly during the early stages (1–2 weeks) of muscle disuse. The extent of muscle loss during injury strongly influences the level and duration of rehabilitation required. Currently, however, efforts to intervene and attenuate muscle loss during the initial two weeks of injury are minimal. Mechanistically, muscle disuse atrophy is primarily attributed to a decline in basal muscle protein synthesis rate and the development of anabolic resistance to food intake. Dietary protein consumption is of critical importance for stimulating muscle protein synthesis rates throughout the day. Given that the injured athlete greatly reduces physical activity levels, maintaining muscle mass whilst simultaneously avoiding gains in fat mass can become challenging. Nevertheless, evidence suggests that maintaining or increasing daily protein intake by focusing upon the amount, type and timing of dietary protein ingestion throughout the day can restrict the loss of muscle mass and strength during recovery from injury. Moreover, neuromuscular electrical stimulation may be applied to evoke involuntary muscle contractions and support muscle mass maintenance in the injured athlete. Although more applied work is required to translate laboratory findings directly to the injured athlete, current recommendations for practitioners aiming to limit the loss of muscle mass and/or strength following injury in their athletes are outlined herein.
Automatic labelling of transitivity functional roles
Authors: Yan Hengbin
Published: July 2014

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a functionally oriented linguistic framework that has gained increasing influence in recent years, with important applications in the description and analysis of text/discourse. Despite its popularity, relatively little has been done to automate the parsing of functional structures using this framework. Previous attempts have largely depended on non-statistical, rule-based methods, which have limited their application in more complex scenarios. In this article, we present a data-driven method for the classification and labelling of SFL-based functional roles, trained on a recently developed corpus resource. We describe our efforts to engineer lexical, semantic and contextual features in constructing a system for labelling the process types and participant roles in the transitivity system based on the SFL framework. Initial evaluation shows accuracies of 80.5% and 91.8% for the classification of process types and participant roles, respectively. The system is expected to be an important step in achieving fully automated analysis of functional roles in SFL. In addition to applications requiring analysis of English functional structure, we discuss some of the difficulties and future directions in extending the current system to handle less other languages such as Chinese.
Gustaf: Detecting and correctly classifying SVs in the NGS twilight zone
Authors: Trappe Kathrin , Emde Anne-Katrin , Ehrlich Hans-Christian , Reinert Knut
Published: July 2014

Motivation: The landscape of structural variation (SV) including complex duplication and translocation patterns is far from resolved. SV detection tools usually exhibit low agreement, are often geared toward certain types or size ranges of variation and struggle to correctly classify the type and exact size of SVs.

Results: We present Gustaf (Generic mUlti-SpliT Alignment Finder), a sound generic multi-split SV detection tool that detects and classifies deletions, inversions, dispersed duplications and translocations of ≥30 bp. Our approach is based on a generic multi-split alignment strategy that can identify SV breakpoints with base pair resolution. We show that Gustaf correctly identifies SVs, especially in the range from 30 to 100 bp, which we call the next-generation sequencing (NGS) twilight zone of SVs, as well as larger SVs >500 bp. Gustaf performs better than similar tools in our benchmark and is furthermore able to correctly identify size and location of dispersed duplications and translocations, which otherwise might be wrongly classified, for example, as large deletions.

Availability and implementation: Project information, paper benchmark and source code are available via http://www.seqan.de/projects/gustaf/ .

Contact:  kathrin.trappe@fu-berlin.de
AffyPipe: an open-source pipeline for Affymetrix Axiom genotyping workflow
Authors: Nicolazzi Ezequiel L. , Iamartino Daniela , Williams John L.
Published: July 2014

The Affymetrix Axiom genotyping standard and ‘best practice’ workflow for Linux and Mac users consists of three stand-alone executable programs (Affymetrix Power Tools) and an R package (SNPolisher). Currently, SNP analysis has to be performed in a step-by-step procedure. Manual intervention and/or programming skills by the user is required at each intermediate point, as Affymetrix Power Tools programs do not produce input files for the program next-in-line. An additional problem is that the output format of genotypes is not compatible with most analysis software currently available. AffyPipe solves all the above problems, by automating both standard and ‘best practice’ workflows for any species genotyped with the Axiom technology. AffyPipe does not require programming skills and performs all the steps necessary to obtain a final genotype file. Furthermore, users can directly edit SNP probes and export genotypes in PLINK format.

Availability and implementation:   https://github.com/nicolazzie/AffyPipe.git .

Contact:  ezequiel.nicolazzi@tecnoparco.org
Anaxagoras
Authors: Curd Patricia
Published: July 2014

The Presocratic philosopher Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (in Ionia, now western Turkey) was active in the mid-5th century bce. He was probably the first of the early Greek philosophers to live in Athens, where he was said to be a friend of Pericles (we do not know if he knew Socrates, who was born in Athens in about 469). Anaxagoras is renowned both for his scientific and his more philosophical views. He claimed that the heavenly bodies were stones, not divinities, and was said to have predicted the fall of a meteorite. He argued that everything is in everything and that there is no largest or smallest share of anything. All the things that humans perceive are mixtures of all ingredients, and are ontologically dependent on the ultimate reality of those ingredients. In addition, he claimed that the rotation that caused and explains the development of the cosmos is itself caused by Mind or Intelligence (Nous). Nous is the only unmixed thing in Anaxagoras’ theory, and it is unlike and unaffected by any other thing. Anaxagoras also seems committed to the possibility of there being “other worlds,” which, although they develop independently, are like our own. As with some other early Greek philosophers, Anaxagoras’ views seem to have been known to Herodotus, and are reflected in some of the works of Euripides and in Aristophanes’ Clouds. Some have seen him as influential on Diogenes of Apollonia and on the author of the Derveni Papyrus (a late-5th- or 4th-century naturalistic and allegorizing interpretation of Orphic claims). His philosophical theories posed problems for and are discussed by both Plato (who seems to have been impressed by Anaxagoras’ theory of mixture and predominance) and Aristotle (who explores the implications of Anaxagoras’ account of Mind). Note: Anaxagoras’ views constitute a tightly connected system; whereas later thinkers would separate various parts of their accounts into what had become standard divisions in philosophy and science, the Presocratics combined the various parts in order to provide a unified explanation of everything. Most of the works listed in this bibliography will have something to say about more than one aspect of Anaxagoras’ thought, and also include comprehensive bibliographies.
Women Writers in Ireland
Authors: Coolahan Marie-Louise
Published: July 2014

Women’s writing in early modern Ireland constitutes a multifarious and multilingual category. The island’s population was comprised, broadly speaking, of four ethnic groups. The native, Gaelic, or Old Irish were the indigenous inhabitants, who adhered to the Catholic religion and spoke Irish Gaelic. The Old English descended from 11th-century Normans; they remained Catholic and were often bilingual. The New English—Protestant and English-speaking—settled during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Ulster Scots, northern settlers, were largely Presbyterian and spoke English and/or Scots. Thus, the writing produced by women who lived on the island reflected these often-conflicting identities. It emerged from social and political circumstances forged by competing allegiances during a time of great turmoil. Tudor policies of conquest and colonization led to upheaval and military conflict, as existing Gaelic systems of regional governance were attacked and, ultimately, dismantled, not without sustained resistance. A series of grueling wars—the Munster rebellions (1569–1573, 1578–1583, and 1598), the Nine Years’ War (1594–1603), the 1641 Ulster rising, the Confederate Wars of the 1640s, Cromwellian Wars of the early 1650s, and Williamite Wars of the 1690s—resulted in widespread displacement, colonial plantation, emigration, and immigration. But these circumstances also stimulated women to write. The pattern of recurrent upheaval generated large numbers of emigrants. Refugees fled to France and Spanish territories in pursuit of employment and support. Their letters, petitions, and accounts of exile offer a gendered perspective on political activism and Irish identities in Europe. Women’s participation in Gaelic bardic culture has been extensively mapped since the beginning of the 21st century; although less plentiful than that surviving from Gaelic Scotland, it is clear that women were culturally active, engaged in poetic composition and patronage. Anglophone writing was produced mainly by women of the settler class, for whom Ireland was a land of opportunity. Female planters wrote letters home and adapted English coterie models to their construction of literary networks. Second-generation women also recorded their experiences. Some rose in the social ranks to join English aristocratic society and became writers of distinction now established in the English literary canon. The Irish contexts for such women’s writing have, until recently, been neglected by literary scholars; the works cited here are those that address the Irish dimensions of an author’s work. This is a burgeoning field of scholarship that is developing and diversifying as further texts and archival material come to light.
Children's Beliefs about Intelligence
Authors: Bonne Linda
Published: July 2014

How children from around five to thirteen years old conceptualize and think about intelligence—or being smart or clever—and how these ideas might be associated with children’s outcomes, such as achievement, is the focus of this literature review. Children’s conceptualizations of intelligence are thought to be influenced by various factors, including cognitive development and the messages they receive from family members, teachers, and peers. In an education context, both children’s definitions of intelligence and their beliefs about it are thought to be important for the ways in which they can affect children’s learning. At school and beyond, the ways in which children conceptualize intelligence are associated with their attributions for success and failure and their motivation. Children’s beliefs about the malleability of intelligence have also been the subject of considerable research, and trends in these beliefs have been identified related to age, gender, and ethnicity. Factors that have been shown to influence children’s beliefs about whether or not they can increase their intelligence include the feedback children receive from parents and teachers, and how different cultures value ability and effort. In the literature presented here, the terms “ability” and “intelligence” are often used synonymously by authors, and both are included. The focus is on the perspectives of children, who might also think of ability and intelligence as overlapping or even the same thing, rather than on describing how intelligence might be defined from a psychological perspective. Citations have been chosen to include seminal works and to represent the development over time of related knowledge. Although children and adolescents up to around thirteen years old are the target group, much of the empirical work included has employed cross-sectional studies that also included older participants. Research with older participants is also included where it illustrates a salient point. When this article was revised in 2022, there had been only a small number of research papers added to the body of work that was the focus of the original article. Rather than investigating children’s beliefs about what they think intelligence is, there had been a narrowing of focus to examine beliefs about the malleability of intelligence—otherwise known as incremental and entity theories of intelligence. In addition, technological advances have enabled neuroscience to contribute new knowledge about intelligence and the brain. The result, however, has been that the research into what children believe about intelligence—beyond its malleability—has somewhat stalled over the past decade.
Race and Affirmative Action in Higher Education
Authors: Park Julie J. , Koo Katie K.
Published: July 2014

Affirmative action is one of the most highly contested policies in US higher education. Affirmative action refers to the ability of colleges and universities to act “affirmatively” with the goal of increasing racial diversity within their institutions. In order to do this, universities have race-conscious admissions policies, meaning that they may consider an applicant’s race as one of numerous factors in weighing whether to admit a student or not. Race-conscious admissions policies stand in contrast to “race-blind” or “race-neutral” policies, which do not consider an applicant’s race as a factor in any portion of the admissions process. In general, race-conscious admissions policies at the undergraduate level generally affect only selective and highly selective institutions, a fraction of colleges and universities. However, other types of affirmative-action-related programs (e.g., affirmative action in hiring faculty, scholarships for minority students) exist at a broader range of institutions and are affected by the continued legality of race-conscious admissions. Affirmative action has notable symbolic significance. A key component of the debate is whether universities should be able to take race into account in the admissions process, which reflects a broader controversy over whether color-blindness or some measure of race consciousness is the more appropriate way to address the continued underrepresentation of certain minority groups in higher education. Thus, the affirmative-action debate has garnered a significant amount of media and public attention since the 1970s. Due to numerous court cases, the legal permissibility and justification for affirmative action remains in flux. Different states, such as California and Washington, have also passed anti-affirmative-action ordinances. Some confusion exists over what affirmative action is and is not. Affirmative action is often associated with quotas or set-asides; that is, reserving a certain number of seats for a particular group in an admissions pool. However, such measures have been illegal since the 1970s. Points systems that assign a specific amount of points related to an applicant’s race/ethnicity are also illegal. However, under current Supreme Court rulings, holistic review of applicants that considers the influence of race as one of numerous factors is generally legal except in states that have passed affirmative-action bans. Finally, the implementation of affirmative action also varies from institution to institution due to the unique contexts of different college campuses. Various universities choose to weigh different criteria given their needs and range of applicants.
Argentina in the Era of Mass Immigration
Authors: Meter Alejandro
Published: July 2014

In his exploration of the dichotomy between civilization and barbarism in 1845, Domingo F. Sarmiento, an Argentine intellectual who would become president some years later, proposed Argentina should seek European immigrants to help populate and modernize the large Latin American nation. The Immigration and Colonization Act of 1876 became the catalyst for what would become known as the “era of mass immigration” (1880–1930), a period in Argentine history that would see a continuous, uninterrupted flow of people across the Atlantic. There were many reasons why Europeans desired to migrate to the Americas in general, and to Argentina in particular. Most immigrants sought to leave behind the difficult economic times that led them to experience hunger and poverty, while others wanted to escape discrimination and persecution. The longing for a better life, for themselves and their families, led them to leave their countries of origin for a chance at a more promising future. Innovations in technology—namely the steamship, but also the railroad—made this odyssey possible for millions of people. The 1876 law offered immigrants food and lodging upon arrival, promised to help them find work, and provided them with a free train ride to their final destination. These, and other incentives, in addition to the global and regional mechanisms in place, made Argentina one of the largest immigrant destinations in the world during the era of mass migration, second only to the United States. It is estimated that between 1850 and 1930, Argentina received more than 6.6 million immigrants. Italians, Spanish, French, German, British, and others came to “make it in America” and, while not everyone stayed (approximately half of them either returned to their country of origin or continued their migration to another destination), it certainly forever affected the character of the Argentine nation. The government of Argentina attracted immigrants not only from Europe, but also from the Middle East and Asia. Jews and Arabs, for instance, arrived from three empires on the verge of disintegration: the Ottoman Empire, the Tsarist Empire, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire of central Europe, making Argentina home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. Argentina thus became as much a country of immigrants as the United States. Yet, in contrast to its North American neighbor, the effects of immigration had a greater impact on Argentina because the proportion of newcomers to the existing population was much greater, thus affecting its language and culture in unimaginable ways. The purpose of this article is to focus on the historical and sociological aspects of immigration to Argentina in the period from 1880 to 1930. The impact of immigration on its cultural production—its literature, music, and art—is beyond the scope of this study.
Language Shift
Authors: Ostler Nicholas
Published: July 2014

In this article, “language shift” means the process, or the event, in which a population changes from using one language to another. As such, recognition of it depends on being able to see the prior and subsequent language as distinct; and therefore the term excludes language change which can be seen as evolution, the transition from older to newer forms of the same language. (For this latter topic, seek references in “Historical, or Diachronic, Linguistics.”) Language shift is a social phenomenon, whereby one language replaces another in a given (continuing) society. It is due to underlying changes in the composition and aspirations of the society, which goes from speaking the old to the new language. By definition, it is not a structural change caused by the dynamics of the old language as a system. The new language is adopted as a result of contact with another language community, and so it is usually possible to identify the new language as “the same” as, that is, a descendant of, a language spoken somewhere else, even if the new language has some new, perhaps unprecedented, properties on the lips of the population that is adopting it. Language shift results in the spread of the new language that is adopted, and may result in the endangerment or loss of the old language, some or all of whose speakers are changing their allegiance. As a result, some readings on language spread and endangerment are relevant to language shift. Language shift may be an object of conscious policy; but equally it may be a phenomenon which is unplanned, and often unexplained. Consequently, readings in language policy (especially those on status planning) often relate to it. The conditions of imperial relations between societies, and the special links mediated nowadays by technological inventions, often worldwide and at a particularly rapid pace, are thought by some to require special theories.
Word Formation in Japanese
Authors: Kageyama Taro
Published: July 2014

The term “word formation” is used here as a broad term covering a wide array of word formation processes and morphological issues related to syntax and semantics. The reason Japanese is specifically focused on is that this language, though lacking a complicated system of agreement-based inflections and declensions that are common to inflectional and polysynthetic types of languages, is rich in word formation processes that straddle the boundaries of morphology, syntax, semantics, and phonology and is therefore considered to have good potential to contribute toward theorizing the place of morphology in the overall architecture of grammatical modules. Japanese has a wealth of concatenative and nonconcatenative word formation processes that produce complex words by compounding, affixation, conversion, inflection, blending, clipping, and other mechanisms, which are often conditioned by differences of lexical strata (native, Sino-Japanese, foreign, and mimetic). This article chiefly treats concatenative morphology, with brief reference to nonconcatenative morphology. Besides, the agglutinative character of Japanese makes it difficult to identify “words” in a unitary manner as in European languages. Defining the notion of “word” is also a key issue in mulling over the word formation phenomena in this language.
History of Pediatrics
Authors: Pawluch Dorothy , Schotland Samuel
Published: July 2014

Although interest in the health, illnesses, and well-being of the young dates back to Antiquity, the term pediatrics is relatively modern, originating in the latter half of the 19th century with the emergence of a distinct and organized specialty within medicine. The literature covering that development, and the history of medical interest in children more generally, is vast, characterized by contributions from clinician-historians and, especially after the 1960s, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists. The tendency in the earlier literature was to produce largely descriptive works celebrating the great men (less so women) of pediatrics and their triumphs. Since the 1960s, however, appreciation has grown of the need to look beyond a simple chronicling and honoring of individuals and their scientific and technological achievements. The trend has been toward more analytical histories that pay attention to the social, cultural, political, and economic contexts within which pediatrics developed, and to the role of such factors as class, race, and gender. Both types of contributions—those generated by clinician-historians and those by critical analysts writing from vantage points outside of medicine—are reflected here. Drawing clear boundaries around the subject of pediatric history is difficult. The literature cited inevitably overlaps to a greater or lesser extent with other Oxford Bibliographies articles, such as “Children and Social Policy and “Ethics in Research with Children.” An effort has been made to include sources where pediatrics as a specialty features centrally or that cover developments that have been pivotal to the evolution of the specialty.
Indigenous Media
Authors: Wilson Pamela , Hearne Joanna , Córdova Amalia , Thorner Sabra
Published: July 2014

Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circulated by indigenous peoples around the globe as vehicles for communication, including cultural preservation, cultural and artistic expression, political self-determination, and cultural sovereignty. Indigenous media overlap with, and are on a spectrum with, other types of minority-produced media, and quite often they share a kinship regarding many philosophical and political motivations. Indigenous media studies allow us access to the micro-processes of what Roland Robertson has famously called “glocalization”—in this case, the interpenetration of global media technologies with hyperlocal needs, creatively adapted to work within and sustain the local culture rather than to replace it or homogenize it, as some globalization theorists have long feared. The scope of indigenous media studies, a growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship, is quite broad and extensive. We first present some core literature in the emerging field of indigenous media studies, followed by a handful of illustrative case studies. In the second main section, we provide focused attention on works dealing with some specific media genres: film and video production, radio and television broadcasting, and the emerging field of indigenous digital media. Next, we divide the field by geographic and cultural regions and areas, looking at significant work being done in and about indigenous media in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, Europe (including Russia and the Arctic North), Africa, and Asia. This Oxford Bibliographies article is partnered with that of the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Native Americans,” and so we refer the reader to that article to avoid excessive duplication. In the spirit of much indigenous mediamaking, this was a collaborative production. The primary author, Pamela Wilson, wishes to thank her main collaborator, Joanna Hearne, who contributed expertise on North American indigenous media, particularly to the section on Indigenous Film and Video. Other significant contributors were Amalia Córdova on Latin America and Sabra Thorner on Australia.
Immigration and Cinema
Authors: Lykidis Alex
Published: July 2014

Films have appealed to immigrants since the early days of the medium, providing a visual and kinetic form of entertainment that transcended language barriers and captured the dynamism of modern city life. Indeed, the style of many early American films was modeled on the fairground attractions and vaudeville acts popular with working-class and immigrant audiences. While it may seem evident that immigrant experience shaped early American film culture, the manner and scope of its influence has been hotly debated in film studies since the late 1970s. The economic and political crises that marked much of the 20th century created new waves of immigration, especially in the interwar period, that in some cases infused new talent and ideas into established film industries and in others created entirely new film movements. Many film scholars have studied the work of émigré directors in Hollywood and elsewhere, with increasingly sophisticated attempts being made to interpret the style and content of their films in relation to their creators’ industrial marginality and cultural alienation. In the 1990s, film scholars sought to distinguish immigrant films from dominant modes of production, genres, and styles, developing a new critical vocabulary to explain how the exilic, nostalgic, and alienating aspects of immigrant experience could be expressed cinematically. Recent scholarship has begun to address the aesthetic hybridity of immigrant filmmaking, tracking its oscillations between realism and stylization, individualism and communalism, essentialism and performativity, and “high” and “low” cultural forms. Many scholars today are also looking at how gender and sexuality complicate cinematic portrayals of immigrant identity. The study of immigration and cinema intersects with that of transnational and diasporic cinemas (see the article “Transnational and Diasporic Cinema”), the former focusing more on representational strategies and less on modes of production than the latter. In this article, a distinction is made between the work of “émigré filmmakers” who travel abroad but might not explicitly address immigration in their films, “immigrant filmmakers” whose work engages with immigrant issues in some way, and “films about immigration” that deal explicitly with immigration but might not be directed by an immigrant filmmaker. These distinctions reveal the competing investments in immigrant identity, the disarticulation of which is an essential task for scholars seeking to better understand the ethical and ideological implications of immigrant representation.
Democracy
Authors: Wheatley Steven
Published: July 2014

Researchers on “democracy” in international law have to make an important methodological choice: They can examine the “democracy norm” from the perspective only of international law (state practice, treaty norms, international law texts, etc.) or they can locate their research within a wider body of social science literature, in particular considering the normative conception of democracy in political theory (electoral, deliberative, consociational, etc.) and the practice of democracy and democracy promotion identified in political science. The latter is recommended since the idea of democracy in international law did not emerge ex nihilo. To be meaningful, it seems reasonable to conclude that the international law conception of democracy must maintain its family relationship with the idea of democracy that has emerged in political thought and practice over time—after all no agreed definition of democracy exists in international law. For researchers engaged in a critique of doctrine and practice from the perspective of democratic legitimacy, more in-depth reading will be required and reading of the original materials is essential. This article introduces researchers to the key writings in the English language on democracy in international law and relevant readings that inform the debates in international law in cognate disciplines. While certain democratic elements can be found in international doctrine and practice over time, “democracy” as an identifiable principle of the international law order can be dated back to the 1990s and the ending of the Cold War. While the status and content of the “democracy norm” in international law remains contested, the influence of democratic ideals can be seen in a number of areas relating to legitimate political authority at the level of the state and, increasingly, the (democratic) legitimacy of international organizations and institutions. The principle of democracy is seen to have an influence in the functioning of international law and the practice of international relations and international governance: establishing a criterion for legitimate and lawful government, giving form to the right of peoples to political self-determination, providing a context for the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and establishing the basis for peaceable and nonpeaceable interstate relations. Moreover, following the globalization and fragmentation of governance functions, concern has grown increasingly with respect to the “democratic deficit” experienced by citizens at the level of the state, leading to proposals for the democratization of global governance and a literature that examines the extent to which a democratic state should accept the authority of nondemocratic international law norms.
Benjamin Disraeli
Authors: Clausson Nils
Published: July 2014

Benjamin Disraeli (b. 1804–d. 1881) is unique among Victorian novelists in that, outside of specialists in Victorian literature, he is much better known as a politician and statesman (he was leader of the Conservative Party, and twice prime minister) than as a novelist. Historians are as interested in him as are literary critics, if not more so, and consequently his novels have long been mined for information about Disraeli the historical figure rather than approached as works of literature and studied in relation to literary history in the nineteenth century. His novels have been read with two principal goals in mind: (1) to better understand the mind of the enigmatic man who wrote them, and (2) as historical documents that will shed light on Disraeli’s political career and the policies he advocated. The first of these approaches has tended to produce biographical readings of the novels, even in a time when biographical approaches to literature are no longer fashionable. The goal of historians and literary critics alike has been to peep behind the mask and uncover the real Disraeli. The second approach, reflecting the turn to history and politics in literary studies, has produced historical readings that tend to see the novels as more or less reliable reflections of ideas existing outside the text, either in history or in politics. Viewing the novels as containers of political ideas, or as reflections of dominant Victorian ideologies, is particularly prevalent in criticism of Disraeli’s major novels—the Young England trilogy consisting of Coningsby (1844), Sybil (1845), and Tancred (1847)—which are widely read either as the manifesto of Young England, a rather loose political grouping of Tory MPs that Disraeli was widely taken to be the leader of, or as examples of a sub-genre of the Victorian novel known, variously, as the “condition-of-England” novel, the social-problem novel, or the industrial novel. When reading criticism of the novels, then, one needs to be aware that much critical commentary on them is not written by literary critics—and thus, strictly speaking, is not literary criticism at all—and is often motivated by non-literary purposes. Nevertheless, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries there has been a reevaluation of Disraeli by historians and, to a lesser extent, by literary scholars, focusing on “the role played in Disraeli’s conception of life and politics by his Jewishness and his romanticism” (Smith 1996, cited under Biographies). A major new focus of recent criticism of the novels has been the vexing question of Disraeli’s Jewishness and, to a lesser extent, Orientalism in his novels. Particularly after the publication of Edward Said’s influential Orientalism in 1978, there was a renewed interest in the representation of the East in Disraeli’s fiction, with critics divided over whether (as Said claimed) Disraeli contributed to the construction of the Orient as “Other,” or whether he admired Oriental culture and saw his mission as one of reuniting the West with its Eastern origins.
Ants work harder during consensus decision-making in small groups
Authors: Cronin Adam L. , Stumpe Martin C.
Published: July 2014

Individuals derive many benefits from being social, one of which is improved accuracy of decision-making, the so-called ‘wisdom of the crowds’ effect. This advantage arises because larger groups can pool information from more individuals. At present, limited empirical data indicate that larger groups outperform smaller ones during consensus decision-making in human and non-human animals. Inaccurate decisions can lead to significant costs, and we might therefore expect individuals in small groups to employ mechanisms to compensate for the lack of numbers. Small groups may be able to maintain decision accuracy if individuals are better informed than those in larger groups and/or by increasing the proportion of the group involved in collective decision-making relative to larger groups. In this study, we use interactive computer vision software to investigate individual contributions to consensus decision-making during house-hunting in different sized groups of the ant
Myrmecina nipponica
. We show that individuals in small colonies invest greater effort in the consensus decision process than those in large colonies and should be better informed as a result. This may act to ameliorate the limitations of group size, but could leave smaller groups more susceptible to additional stresses.
An elastica arm scale
Authors: Bosi F. , Misseroni D. , Dal Corso F. , Bigoni D.
Published: July 2014

The concept of a ‘deformable arm scale’ (completely different from a traditional rigid arm balance) is theoretically introduced and experimentally validated. The idea is not intuitive, but is the result of nonlinear equilibrium kinematics of rods inducing configurational forces, so that deflection of the arms becomes necessary for equilibrium, which would be impossible for a rigid system. In particular, the rigid arms of usual scales are replaced by a flexible elastic lamina, free to slide in a frictionless and inclined sliding sleeve, which can reach a unique equilibrium configuration when two vertical dead loads are applied. Prototypes designed to demonstrate the feasibility of the system show a high accuracy in the measurement of load within a certain range of use. Finally, we show that the presented results are strongly related to snaking of confined beams, with implications for locomotion of serpents, plumbing and smart oil drilling.
Using transfer functions to quantify El Niño Southern Oscillation dynamics in data and models
Authors: MacMartin Douglas G. , Tziperman Eli
Published: July 2014

Transfer function tools commonly used in engineering control analysis can be used to better understand the dynamics of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), compare data with models and identify systematic model errors. The transfer function describes the frequency-dependent input–output relationship between any pair of causally related variables, and can be estimated from time series. This can be used first to assess whether the underlying relationship is or is not frequency dependent, and if so, to diagnose the underlying differential equations that relate the variables, and hence describe the dynamics of individual subsystem processes relevant to ENSO. Estimating process parameters allows the identification of compensating model errors that may lead to a seemingly realistic simulation in spite of incorrect model physics. This tool is applied here to the TAO array ocean data, the GFDL-CM2.1 and CCSM4 general circulation models, and to the Cane–Zebiak ENSO model. The delayed oscillator description is used to motivate a few relevant processes involved in the dynamics, although any other ENSO mechanism could be used instead. We identify several differences in the processes between the models and data that may be useful for model improvement. The transfer function methodology is also useful in understanding the dynamics and evaluating models of other climate processes.
Bifurcation analysis of delay-induced resonances of the El-Niño Southern Oscillation
Authors: Krauskopf Bernd , Sieber Jan
Published: July 2014

Models of global climate phenomena of low to intermediate complexity are very useful for providing an understanding at a conceptual level. An important aspect of such models is the presence of a number of feedback loops that feature considerable delay times, usually due to the time it takes to transport energy (for example, in the form of hot/cold air or water) around the globe. In this paper, we demonstrate how one can perform a bifurcation analysis of the behaviour of a periodically forced system with delay in dependence on key parameters. As an example, we consider the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is a sea-surface temperature (SST) oscillation on a multi-year scale in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. One can think of ENSO as being generated by an interplay between two feedback effects, one positive and one negative, which act only after some delay that is determined by the speed of transport of SST anomalies across the Pacific. We perform here a case study of a simple delayed-feedback oscillator model for ENSO, which is parametrically forced by annual variation. More specifically, we use numerical bifurcation analysis tools to explore directly regions of delay-induced resonances and other stability boundaries in this delay-differential equation model for ENSO.
Parameter estimation for energy balance models with memory
Authors: Roques Lionel , Chekroun Mickaël D. , Cristofol Michel , Soubeyrand Samuel , Ghil Michael
Published: July 2014

We study parameter estimation for one-dimensional energy balance models with memory (EBMMs) given localized and noisy temperature measurements. Our results apply to a wide range of nonlinear, parabolic partial differential equations with integral memory terms. First, we show that a space-dependent parameter can be determined uniquely everywhere in the PDE's domain of definitionD, using only temperature information in a small subdomainE⊂D. This result is valid only when the data correspond to exact measurements of the temperature. We propose a method for estimating a model parameter of the EBMM using more realistic, error-contaminated temperature data derived, for example, from ice cores or marine-sediment cores. Our approach is based on a so-called mechanistic-statistical model that combines a deterministic EBMM with a statistical model of the observation process. Estimating a parameter in this setting is especially challenging, because the observation process induces a strong loss of information. Aside from the noise contained in past temperature measurements, an additional error is induced by the age-dating method, whose accuracy tends to decrease with a sample's remoteness in time. Using a Bayesian approach, we show that obtaining an accurate parameter estimate is still possible in certain cases.