bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Path and Development of the Chinese Musical
Authors: Fangtian Cai
Published: October 2023

Musical theatre was introduced to China in the 1980s. This chapter reviews the development of the Chinese musical theatre industry from then to the present day in order to examine the challenges and problems faced by musical theatre productions in China. It also surveys the spread and influence of Western musicals since the Chinese-language translation of The Music Man premièred in Beijing in 1987 and reviews three types of musicals in China: Western musicals, Chinese-language translations of Western musicals, and original Chinese musicals. Finally, the author examines musical theatre training in higher educational institutions in China, the cultivation of musical theatre talent, and the future prospects of the Chinese musical theatre industry.
Training for Writers and Performers
Authors: Dunbar Zachary
Published: October 2023

The widespread growth of Broadway and West End musicals, especially after World War II, has produced a global market in need of industry-ready performers and writers, resulting in a rapid growth in, and demand for, writing and performance training. This chapter offers a global snapshot of the worldwide schooling in the musical craft whose legacy undoubtedly owes much to Broadway and the West End. In writing, the innovations in the musical art form which led to closer-crafted dramaturgies mirror the systematic development of collaborative creativity among the component arts. In performance training, integrative practice which aspires toward a versatile and seamless fusion of singing, acting, and dancing (ubiquitously trademarked as the ‘triple threat’), emerges alongside the rise of the choreographer-director. In both cases, a creative tension exists between global socio-economics and local culture, played out as both an appropriation of and resistance to the transmitted principles of Broadway- or West End-style musicals, inasmuch as foreign markets may develop the next Filipina Kim or Chinese Cats for the ‘megamusical’ trade whilst fostering an indigenous (‘glocal’) talent base for their own burgeoning markets. A summary of the global status quo considers the vexed challenges of vocational training in context of integration, industry-facing aims, and current social issues.
‘Merrily She Waltzes Along’
Authors: Koegel John
Published: October 2023

By 1907 Franz Lehár’s operetta Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow, 1905) had played in almost all German-speaking cities and had triumphed in Warsaw, Budapest, London, and New York. It not only sparked the silver age of Viennese operetta but was also one of the first productions to make extensive use of marketing, including the ‘Merry Widow hat’ and many other commercial tie-ins. But the success story of the wealthy widow Hanna Galwari and her noble suitor Count Danilo Danilovitsch did not stop there. The operetta masterpiece can be seen as the first truly global work of musical theatre: it was popular everywhere it was performed, in a multitude of languages and countries. This chapter charts the victorious journey of The Merry Widow around the world and highlights how its enthusiastic reception and many revivals paved the way for numerous stage and film parodies, refunctionings, and film and television versions. More than a century after the Widow’s première, it is still a very successful artistic and commercial global property.
Genetic and Genomics Research
Authors: Parker Lisa S.
Published: October 2023

Genetic and genomic research (GR) presents many of the same ethical challenges found in other areas of research. The distinctive methods of GR combine with distinctive features of genetic and genomic information (GI) to warrant considering the ethics of GR as a distinct subfield of research ethics. This chapter elucidates what sets GI apart from other personal or health-related information and examines four aspects of GR that have prompted considerable ethical analysis and debate within the “ELSI community” (i.e., researchers examining the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of GR). The discussion is organized into sections focusing on four phases of research: participant recruitment; obtaining informed consent; reporting individual research results, managing incidental and secondary findings, and publication of research results; and management of biospecimens and data sharing. A number of remaining challenges within and beyond GR must be addressed to realize its potential benefits and avoid exacerbating health disparities and other material and social differences.
Minoritized Racial and Ethnic Groups
Authors: Hoover Stephanie , Rennie Stuart , Richmond Al , Wynn Mysha , Green Melissa A. , Corbie Giselle
Published: October 2023

Health research in the United States has been a vehicle of racism, perpetuating chronic health inequities. The authors posit that researchers and research institutions must seek to redress these issues and develop an antiracist health equity praxis. Existing frameworks (critical race public health praxis and intersectionality theory) can form the basis of this praxis—the application of theory to practices. Community-based participatory research is a methodological approach consistent with an antiracist health equity praxis to ensure ethical research with racial and ethnic minorities. The authors propose four tenets central to ethical research with racial and ethnic minoritized communities: trustworthiness, reflexivity, shared power, and capacity-building. The authors define each tenet, propose questions to interrogate one’s research and offer examples of specific strategies to apply to future research studies and partnerships with minoritized racial and ethnic groups.
Interpretivist Interviewing
Authors: Schaffer Frederic Charles
Published: October 2023

Interpretivist interviewing is a tool for self-reflectively exploring in fine and personal detail how people experience and conceive of phenomena that range from migration to democracy to genocide. It does so by exploring with interviewees how they give sense to their world and by analyzing the ways in which both interviewee and interviewer co-generate that knowledge in an interactive dance inflected by situated power dynamics and self-presentations. Rather than attempting to insulate the interview from so-called “bias” and “contamination”—an aspiration ill-suited to interpretivism—the roles of interviewer and interviewee are instead examined to show how the interviewer and interviewee’s respective concerns and interests, along with the play of power and presentation which results, shape the knowledge they co-construct.

Fully grasping what is distinctive about and valuable in interpretivist interviewing requires understanding the interpretivist methodological presuppositions it enacts. This chapter thus provides a brief overview of those presuppositions and contrasts them with the presuppositions of positivist methodology, sketches out the divergent consequences of these two sets of presuppositions for how interviews are conceived, and discusses two core sets of interviewing practices that flow from interpretivist methodology: the contextual investigation of meaning-making on the one hand and reflexivity with special attentiveness to positionality and self-presentation on the other.
International Tax Law and International Trade Law
Authors: Van Thiel Servaas
Published: October 2023

This chapter illustrates the relationship between international tax law and international trade law by placing both disciplines in the ‘integration law’ perspective of removing obstacles to cross-border economic activity. It explores in particular how states have collectively agreed to limit their international taxing powers through the multilateral World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements applying to goods (GATT), services (GATS), and subsidies (SCM), including their powers to impose tariffs and similar duties, as well as indirect taxes and direct taxes in relation to trade in goods and services. While international trade law traditionally focused on customs duties and indirect tax discrimination and international tax law on double taxation and direct tax discrimination, European law has addressed all tax obstacles, and it may thus serve as a source of inspiration on possible ways to further strengthen international trade law and solidify a global economic integration process based on a multilateral rules-based system. This is not necessarily high on today’s political agenda, but a strengthening of the substance and enforcement of multilaterally agreed rules and procedures is the necessary legal underpinning for a sustainable future.
OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines and International Tax Law
Authors: Matsubara Yuri , Garcia Clémence
Published: October 2023

This chapter evaluates the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administration, which is the main international standard regarding transfer pricing. In the international tax system, permanent establishments belonging to multinational groups are usually taxed as separate entities in the jurisdiction where they operate. For that purpose, assessing flows of goods and services transferred in cross-border-related party transactions is necessary when allocating taxable profits. Transfer pricing is a complex and volatile area of practice, and the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines have been frequently revised since their prototype was issued in 1979. Valuation methods of transfer prices have grown dramatically both in complexity and diversity. The number of transfer pricing disputes around the world has increased greatly in the past two decades, an issue that remains despite the efforts of parties to engage in advance price agreements.
Transfer Pricing versus Formulary Apportionment
Authors: Matsos Georgios
Published: October 2023

This chapter assesses formulary apportionment (FA) as an alternative towards transfer pricing for the allocation of corporate profits among taxing jurisdictions. Although FA has been a relatively old operational notion in subnational corporate taxation, especially in the USA and Canada, it was not generally used in international taxation, other than in theoretical exercises. This is bound to change, as FA is currently the basis of major reform proposals aiming to reregulate the cross-border allocation of taxing powers. FA is usually juxtaposed with transfer pricing and with the arm’s-length principle (ALP). However, the idea of a full or even partial FA goes much further than simply replacing transfer pricing and the ALP: FA challenges the very essence of the allocation rules of the current double tax convention (DTC) network, i.e. source and residence as allocation principles. While formally the constitutive elements of a formula are no nexus, FA modifies the consequences of source and residence in a way that effectively replaces the means used by the source/residence principles and by the DTCs in order to allocate profits. This is done by substituting the world income principle and the attraction force of residence, by profoundly altering the rules deriving from the source principle, and, finally, by rendering the current DTCs obsolete.
Twenty-First Century Tax Challenges of the EU Candidate Countries
Authors: Mihaylova-Goleminova Savina
Published: October 2023

This chapter illustrates the twenty-first-century tax challenges of the EU candidate countries. The Treaty on European Union sets out the conditions (art. 49) and principles (art. 6(1)) to which any country wishing to become an EU member must conform. These include stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities; a functioning market economy and the ability to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the EU; the ability to take on the obligations of membership, including the capacity to effectively implement the rules, standards, and policies that make up the body of EU law (the acquis); and adherence to the aims of political, economic, and monetary union. Taxation is especially complicated in the context of accession negotiations of EU candidate countries, given the fact that the European Union is built on a constitutionalized legal order, which aims to sustain effective policing of agreed rules not only at supra-state but also at national level while also protecting individual rights according to international treaty law. In general, member states have broad sovereignty in the area of direct taxation. The acquis on taxation covers extensively the area of indirect taxation: value-added tax (VAT) and excise duties.
European Anti-Tax-Avoidance Regimes
Authors: Schwarz Martínez Paloma
Published: October 2023

This chapter highlights European anti-tax avoidance regimes. The global initiative against tax avoidance and profit shifting has entailed profound changes in European Union (EU) direct tax law. In the past, anti-tax-avoidance rules grounded on EU secondary law were a rather scarce phenomenon and would traditionally take one of the following forms: (1) rules referring to domestic or agreement-based anti-avoidance provisions; and (2) rules denying the tax benefit of a directive, when the principal or one of the principal motives of a transaction is tax evasion or tax avoidance. One can observe that the OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan has ushered in a new era of direct tax policy that has urged member states to reform their tax legislation in an unprecedented speed. The chapter looks at the EU toolbox against tax avoidance and addresses some challenges that follow from the implementation of the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive—the most significant EU legislative measure to counter abusive tax practices.
‘White Supplies’ and Double Taxation in Cross-Border VAT Law
Authors: Friedrich-Vache Heidi
Published: October 2023

This chapter investigates double taxation in cross-border value-added tax (VAT) law. In countless cases, international cross-border transactions are non-taxed or subject to VAT or goods and services tax (GST) in two or more countries. VAT or GST should not be levied this way because of the basic concept that a consumption tax should be linked only and in full to the place of consumption. However, this relies on a legal territoriality principle based on the goods’ final destination or the end consumer’s residency. VAT taxation has become more prevalent worldwide, along with the international trade in goods and services across an increasingly globalized economy. These developments have created an increased interaction between VAT systems. Growing risks of double taxation or unintentional non-taxation result from uncoordinated VAT systems, both in the EU and its internal market, a fortiori to and between non-EU member states.
International Tax Law and Customary International Law
Authors: Gil García Elizabeth
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the relationship between international tax law and customary international law (CIL). CIL refers both to the process through which certain rules of international law are formed and the rules themselves formed through such a process. No consensus has been reached, however, regarding the concept. Nevertheless, when establishing the sources of international law, article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice indicates the two constituent elements that manifest the existence of a customary rule. Moreover, the International Law Commission has shed light on how CIL rules are identified. Traditionally, the literature has focused little on custom in international tax matters, probably because international tax law (if it exists as such) is treaty-based. The use of double taxation conventions as a (bilateral) mechanism to prevent double taxation has resulted in a large network of tax treaties. But even if international tax law is eminently based on treaty rules, the question is whether these treaties contain rules that do in fact reflect CIL.
The Brazilian Perspective on International Tax Law
Authors: Souza de Man Fernando
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores the perspective of Brazil regarding international tax law. It cites how Brazil is a prime example of how the growth of countries might result in the adoption of tax positions, which are more in line with the OECD Model Tax Convention. Despite engaging in the signature of double tax conventions, Brazil took advantage of every situation to increase its source taxing rights, going beyond the OECD and UN Model Tax Conventions. The chapter considers the influences of the UN Model Tax Convention, BEPS actions and the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) on the Brazilian domestic tax rules. It then acknowledges Brazil as a trendsetter for favouring taxation based on real economic criteria over formal considerations.
EMDR Therapy and the Trident Model
Authors: Farrell Derek , Moran Johnny
Published: October 2023

EMDR therapy is an empirically supported, eight-phase treatment protocol intervention with multiple technical components but is also highly reliant on relational dynamics. Clinical supervision is a vital tool in supporting the development of EMDR therapists in their journey toward mastery, enhanced competence, and effectiveness in this therapy. This chapter will explore the broader components of clinical supervision—competency, governance, citizenship, and welfare. It will explore various models of clinical supervision and offer a new integrative framework—the Trident Model of EMDR Clinical Supervision. There is also an exploration of the various mediums for accurately viewing the EMDR therapist’s clinical activity as a means of determining competency. The chapter will also outline nine key objectives and how they could be further supported by an EMDR therapy personal development plan. Within EMDR therapy clinical supervision the focus on competence, adherence to treatment fidelity, evidence-based practice, and accountability are critical cornerstones to the overall process.
The Expansion of Education in and Across International Organizations
Authors: Martens Kerstin , Niemann Dennis , Krogmann David
Published: October 2023

Today, international organizations (IOs) are significant actors that confront national education systems across the globe with data, standards, and norms. Beyond case studies of single IOs, however, we know little about how many and what types of IOs work on education policy. In this chapter, we examine how education as a policy field has spread across and within IOs. While education has always been a relevant issue for some IOs based on their mandate, others gradually adopt the topic for various reasons, for example, to promote economic growth. In this chapter, we examine the expansion of education as a field of IO activity and identify two major trends: economist IOs added education as a field to their portfolio, and education IOs with a regional focus flourished.
Can Non-Western Countries Escape From Catch-Up Modernity?
Authors: Kariya Takehiko
Published: October 2023

Japan is among a few non-Western countries to have experienced both “catch-up” (with the West) and what might be called a “post-catch-up modernization.” This is particularly clear in the field of education. This chapter places these Japanese experiences in a global context and discusses what implications they have for sociological research on education as well as what theoretical contributions such a lens can contribute to recent debates on modernity and globalization. To explicate this argument, the chapter focuses on policy discourses related to education reforms in Japan. Japan is a typical case of a “late” modernizing country, one which intended to design and establish a “modern” education system rapidly and extensively, where modernity has been understood and interpreted distinctively from advanced “Western” modern nations. The Japanese experience undergoing the transition from the catch-up to the post-catch-up modernity is outstanding as a case of reflexive modernity in education in accommodating to rapid globalization. Discourse analyses of policy documents will reveal that Japan’s experiences indicate that reflections in modernity are influenced not only by their perceived past achievements but also by their perceptions of what is sacrificed underneath the achievements during a catching-up modernization.
World Culture, Education, and Organization
Authors: Choi Minju , D'Apice Hannah K. , Skinner Nadine Ann , Bromley Patricia
Published: October 2023

This chapter calls attention to widespread organizational changes in education, which occur in countries with highly varied contexts, at both local and global levels of education, and across public and private sectors. Drawing on a neoinstitutional lens in organization theory, this chapter argues that a globalizing world culture, characterized by the valorization of the intertwined principles of scientized rationalization and individual empowerment, is at the root of these changes. The chapter considers how the expansion and growing dominance of organization fundamentally transforms the structure and content of education. Moreover, the expanded education systems serve to normalize and legitimate the dominance of organizations throughout contemporary society. The chapter thus notes a recursive relationship between the expansion of education and organization.
Globalization of Education and the Sociology of Elites
Authors: Bertron Caroline , van Zanten Agnès
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the impact of globalization on elite education, looking at current debates on the place of elites in society and the renewed attention paid to issues related to elites and elite education. It shows how the sociology of elite education contributes to our understanding of new forms of cosmopolitanism and transnational mobility patterns and how these processes participate in the reproduction and transformation of existing inequalities. The first section focuses on the cosmopolitan educational perspectives and transnational practices of elite families but also of upper-class and aspiring middle-class parents, in a variety of countries and geographical areas. The second section examines the globalizing practices of elite secondary schools around the world and the role played by international curricula, tracks, and schools in redefining elite education.
Education in a Functionally Differentiated World Society
Authors: Vanderstraeten Raf
Published: October 2023

This chapter provides an overview of systems-theoretical reflections on education in modern society. It focuses particularly on education as a function system in our world society. Building upon the theories of Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, three aspects of the sociohistorical evolution of this function system are discussed: the worldwide institutionalization of inclusion imperatives, the limits to professionalization processes, and the triggers of the rapid global expansion of higher education. In light of recent evolutions, also discussed is how the rapid expansion of participation in higher education in recent decades is changing the position and relevance of education in contemporary society. Attention is drawn to the forms of socio-geographical segregation and exclusion that are currently emerged between high- and low-schooled individuals in many parts of the world.
Colonization, Indigenous Resilience, and Social Justice in Caribbean Archaeology
Authors: Herrera Malatesta Eduardo , Sony Jean Joseph
Published: October 2023

This chapter provides an overview of colonization, indigenous resilience, and social justice in Caribbean archaeology. It starts with how the colonial expansion in the Caribbean played a crucial role in shaping the landscape of the European powers. The indigenous history of the local Carribean has been strongly biased towards perpetuating colonialist representations of the past indigenous people. The chapter explains how archaeology can become an important element in the search for balance in the distribution of opportunities, privileges and education for Caribbean societies. It cites that, in order to achieve social justice, the voices of indigenous populations and local communities must be amplified without continuing to maintain an asymmetric relationship between the interlocutors of the past.
Heritage and Institutional Power
Authors: Vawda Shahid
Published: October 2023

This chapter discusses the recognition of heritage and institutional power within the Southern Indian Ocean. It acknowledges heritage as one of the most highly contested issues, spilling over into the political sphere, reflecting and shaping old, new, and invented identities and traditions. Archaeology and anthropology shaped the understanding of heritage matters that reflect real and deeper problems around the symbolic content of public colonial representations. The chapter details how South African heritage legislation and policy showcase the twists and turns of the meaning of heritage as “state authorization” for over eight decades. It also elaborates on the underlying issues surrounding the Rhodes Must Fall movement, citing the erasure of history and the institutional power of the university to impose a solution.
Modernist Poetry and Marathi Modernism
Authors: Dharwadker Vinay
Published: October 2023

In contemporary Marathi and Indian literary cultures, Dilip Chitre continues to be an exemplary figure of the sāṭhottarī period, not only as a bilingual writer but also as an innovative artist in different mediums of representation. A cornerstone of Chitre’s lasting influence is his Anthology of Modern Marathi Poetry (1967), which still frames our understanding of modernism and modernist poetry, not only in Marathi but also in India’s broader multilingual dynamics of the early post-Independence decades. This chapter examines the Anthology’s remarkable legacy more than half a century after its publication as well as the contours of Marathi poetic modernism as they appear today through the lens of Chitre’s work as critic, translator, poet, and theorist.
Elites, Subalterns, and the Postcolonial Nation
Authors: Jani Pranav
Published: October 2023

Indian novels in English, exploding onto the world stage in the 1980s and 1990s in the midst of neoliberal expansion and postcolonial crises, occupied a contradictory space. Written mostly by writers from elite backgrounds and addressing a global audience, the novels benefited from the expansion of markets, the circulation of English writing, and a new interest in postcolonial writing. At the same time, writing in the aftermath of the Emergency, they raised criticisms of the postcolonial nation and its authoritarianism, of rising sectarianism, and of social hierarchies. Examining four major works of the period—Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Nayantara Sahgal’s Rich Like Us, Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance—this chapter draws out the different narrative strategies and perspectives through which writers examined elite subjectivity and subaltern suffering while mobilizing their cultural capital to critique the nation.
Urban Space across Genre
Authors: Goulding Gregory
Published: October 2023

This chapter takes up a major writer of post-Independence Hindi through a focus on his depiction of urban space. The works of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917–1964) are set in different small- and medium-sized cities across the urban landscape of central India. In his fiction, poetry, and criticism, Muktibodh combined a detailed examination of urban space with a keen sense of local, national, and international scale. The resulting works reveal the unstable grounds of the mid-century Indian city. Through readings of Muktibodh’s short story “Claude Eatherly” and his poem “Cāṁd kā muṁh ṭeḍhā hai” (“The Moon’s Face Is Crooked”), this chapter considers how Muktibodh’s idea of the city was expressed through experimentation with form. These two works consider a range of responses to urban space, from utopian revolutionaries pasting posters across a surveilled, midnight space, to a paranoid internationalism in which an American pilot is held in the center of a newly planned, wealthy city. Both of these pieces present new formal techniques for depicting the city that incorporate both the subjectivity of Hindi modernism and tropes from popular fiction. Muktibodh’s imagination of the city, the chapter argues, offers a unique set of case studies for considering the discomfiting, alienating experience of everyday life.
Bilingual Premchand and His Legacy
Authors: Asaduddin M.
Published: October 2023

This chapter undertakes an end-century assessment of Premchand, who not only pioneered Urdu-Hindi fiction but also shaped and nurtured the readership in these language communities at their formative stages. He used literature as a potent instrument for moral edification, social awakening, and ethical reform. Almost all issues of contemporary Indian life can be seen reflected in his fictional and non fictional writings. Many of the social issues he grappled with have remained as relevant today, at the distance of a century, as they were during his lifetime. One of the difficulties that plagued Premchand criticism is that very few scholars could access the entire Premchand corpus that exists in Hindi and Urdu. They largely limited themselves to only one of the archives, basing their assumptions on that limited archive, without even a gesture toward the “vast unread.” This chapter discusses both the archives for complementary insights, looks at his reception in India and abroad to assess his global impact, and explores how Premchand shows a continuing relevance for both Hindi and Urdu literatures even though many of his contemporary writers have become dated.
Probable, Improbable, and Catastrophic Realisms in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction
Authors: Ray Sangeeta
Published: October 2023

This chapter takes up questions of form and genre in Amitav Ghosh’s key novels. It focuses on the use of realism as the chosen mode of representation in Ghosh’s many historical fictions. The chapter argues that despite the choice of realism, Ghosh, in many of his novels, has skillfully delineated the improbable in fictional worlds often governed by the laws of probability and chance. The chapter begins with a critical examination of Ghosh’s nonfictional work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, before moving on to a discussion of The Glass Palace. The chapter then shifts to an exploration of the explicit engagement with questions of form and ecology in The Hungry Tide and the Ibis trilogy, particularly Sea of Poppies and Flood of Fire. It concludes by exploring Ghosh’s experimental novel Gun Island, which, despite its sweeping historical trajectory and the representation of contemporary crises caused by climate change, fails to provide a successful alternate mode of storytelling to represent catastrophic planetary spacetime.
English in India, India in English
Authors: Sunder Rajan Rajeswari
Published: October 2023

The representation of India in English is a complex and fraught affair, closely intertwined with the phenomenon of English in India. The existence and function of English in India is analyzed in terms of its sociology and its ideology. The demographics of English language users, the official status of English, and its social functions define the former. The ideological double valence of English is more complex. English in India has borne the burden of a secular modernity, shading imperceptibly into (the only true) national identity. The elite, secular, and minority identification of English in the early Nehruvian post-Independence decades has yielded, however, to the impact of the changing configurations of a global economy in the new century. Writing in English in India is viewed as an “alienated” literature because of its elitism. The implications of the changes in the status of English for anglophone literature are identified in terms of an expanded readership, new writing by Dalits, popular fiction, and translation.
Toward a Canon of Modern Indian Queer Literature
Authors: Rao R. Raj
Published: October 2023

Recent anthologies of queer writing from India in a range of languages are redefining the centrality of what was previously seen as a “niche” genre in the modern Indian literary canon. This chapter is a study of four major recent anthologies (which we can use as a tool, both pedagogical and one that also helps create the visibility of writers in a literary field) that give queer writing a more prominent place in Indian literary studies and raise important themes about what counts as queer writing; the place of gay, lesbian and trans writing in the larger body of queer writing; queer aesthetics; and the place of Indian queer writing within Indian literature and South Asian literature more broadly.
How to Play Indian Literature
Authors: Mukherjee Souvik
Published: October 2023

The entry of videogames, as a primarily western medium, into Indian narrative traditions is considered suspect, and, indeed, whether the games even constitute a narrative medium is called into question. As such a medium, although hugely popular among the current generations of Indians, videogames remain in a relative limbo in Indian academia, particularly in connection to literary studies and media studies. Building off the example of the graphic novel and addressing existing discussions around the mediality and the literariness of videogames, this chapter argues for Indian videogames as a literary form that is ensconced within, and, in turn, keeps challenging, the boundaries of literary tradition.
Writing and Being Modern
Authors: Geetha V.
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines the fictional universes of six women writers—two of them, Kruthika and Rajam Krishnan, are from the Brahmin communities of Tamil Nadu, while the rest, Hepsibai Jesudasan, Visalakshi, Tamizhselvi, and Sivakami, belong to what are today designated as backward and forward non-Brahmin castes and as Dalits. All writers engage with the “modern” moment in history, which interrupts the time and space of various social worlds in intersecting ways: through conversion to Christianity, a rejection of untouchability and caste, higher education, nationalism, progressive political and social movements, companionate marriage, and labor migration. Read together, these works of fiction constitute a complex archive of the “feminine” in modern Tamil Nadu, one that allows us to unpack the entangled realities of nation, caste, and family, especially their gendered and affective dimensions. This chapter points to the knowledge encoded in these lifeworlds, and equally to what cannot be—may not be—represented or narrated, except as a careless aside or uneasy afterthought. It suggests that these moments of narrative impasse have to do with caste and the manner it eludes representation.
Cross-Species Comparisons of Human and Non-Human Culture
Authors: Wood Lara A. , Vale Gill L. , Flynn Emma G. , Rawlings Bruce S.
Published: October 2023

Studies that directly compare the behaviour of two or more species can identify important similarities and differences in the psychological mechanisms that underpin culture, social learning, and innovation. This chapter focuses on the phylogenetically closely related human children and non-human primates to justify a comparative approach to understanding culture. Methodological approaches are outlined, and formative comparative research is summarized. We provide an overview of close convergence in many behaviours, highlighting potential evolutionary foundations and the necessary psychological toolkit underpinning culture, social learning, and innovation. Alongside this, the chapter illustrates the equally valuable divergence between species, demonstrating differences in behaviour and cognition that further illuminate our understanding of the mechanisms of culture. The challenges and limitations of comparative approaches are acknowledged and explored, and future avenues of effective comparative research are proposed.
Activating Cultural Evolution for Good When People Differ from Each Other
Authors: Efferson Charles , Vogt Sonja , von Flüe Lukas
Published: October 2023

Interventions designed to promote behaviour change operate through at least two channels. First, an intervention can have a direct effect in that some people directly exposed to the intervention make a choice as a result of exposure. Second, an intervention can have an indirect effect in that some people make choices because they observe other people whose choices have already been influenced by the intervention. The authors surveyed the literature and found that this second cultural evolutionary channel has been offered as a way to amplify the effects of interventions across a spectacular array of domains related to health, human rights, and the environment. The authors argue, however, that ordinary forms of heterogeneity and the intrinsic complexity of cultural evolutionary processes introduce a number of ethical and practical challenges. For example, when people have different preferences, social planners should typically expect a trade-off between the direct and indirect effects of an intervention. Increasing one means decreasing the other, and social planners may often lack the information they need to resolve the trade-off effectively. In spite of these challenges, however, the authors also argue that narratives designed to be both educational and entertaining could play a powerful supporting role given our limited understanding of how to activate cultural evolution for good.
Multimorbidity in rheumatoid arthritis: common mechanistic links and impact and challenges in routine clinical practice
Authors: Surandran Sanggeeta , Ahmed Saad , Walton Tom , Nikiphorou Elena , Dey Mrinalini
Published: October 2023

Early identification and management of multimorbidity in patients with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs), such as RA, is an integral, but often neglected, aspect of care. The prevalence and incidence of conditions such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease and malignancies, often co-existing with RA, continues to have significant implications for the management of this patient group. Multimorbidity in RMDs can be associated with inflammatory disease activity and target organ damage. Lifestyle factors, such as smoking and inactivity, further contribute to the burden of disease. Inflammation is the underlying factor, not just in RA but also many comorbidities. The current framework of a treat-to-target approach focuses on achieving early remission and inflammatory activity suppression. We describe how the comorbidity burden in people with RMDs impacts on disease outcome and treatment response. The importance of addressing comorbidity at an early stage and adopting a patient centred approach is critical in modern practice.
The term structure of equity yields—a bottom-up approach
Authors: Schröder David
Published: October 2023

This article proposes a novel perspective on the term structure of market equity yields. Instead of using market dividend futures, we aggregate equity yields of individual firms to estimate the market equity yield curve. This approach allows studying the aggregation effect that shapes the market equity yield curve. During the period from 1990 to 2019, we find a positive aggregation effect: companies with high equity yields were expected to grow at higher rates than companies with low equity yields. Thus, high-yield companies were expected to generate an increasing share of total market dividends when expanding the investment time horizon. Under the assumption of flat firm-risk premia, this implies an upward-sloping term structure of equity risk premia. Together with the concave bond yield curve, the market equity yield curve was upward-sloping.
O045 Sleep Duration is Associated with Young Adult's Heart Rate Variability Response to Stress
Authors: Gadam S , Rossa K , Pattinson C , Shekari Soleimanloo S , Mann D , Salmon P , Sullivan K , Smith S
Published: October 2023

Introduction

Young adulthood is a critical developmental period typified by heightened exposure to stress, and a tendency towards insufficient sleep. The relationship between sleep loss and stress may have lifelong health consequences. Currently, our understanding of this relationship in young adults is limited. Heart rate variability (HRV) is an important indicator of balance in the autonomic nervous system. We examined the association between sleep duration and HRV in response to cognitive stressors.

Methods

Seventy-six young adults (M=20.6±1.9, 72.4% female) who self-identified as short sleepers were recruited. Habitual sleep duration was monitored with actigraphy for two weeks. Participants subsequently underwent an in-lab experiment where their HRV was recorded during baseline, and during a cognitive stress condition involving the completion of computerised cognitive stress tasks. Participants also reported their habitual stress levels and sleep quality.

Results

Actigraphy assessment revealed that participants slept within the recommended sleep durations (M=7.8±0.7). The participants reported high habitual stress but normal sleep quality. Our moderation analysis indicates that shorter sleep duration was associated with elevated HRV during the cognitively demanding tasks.

Conclusions

Our findings demonstrate an association between sleep duration and HRV in the context of a cognitive stressor, indicating that sleep and stress are related in young adults. An unexpected negative relationship between sleep duration and HRV during the cognitively demanding tasks suggests complexity in this relationship; however, we should still look to reduce stress and improve sleep where we can in young adults. This association may be better understood via direct manipulation of sleep duration.
The three ages balance for patient safety
Authors: Arnal-Velasco Daniel
Published: October 2023

The evolution of the patient safety perspectives, the technological age, the human factor age and the safety management age, have no clear cut and coexist. The current edition of the Current Opinion in Anesthesiology Technology, Education and Safety section presents an eclectic compendium of articles addressing these views from the technological improvements, human factor developments and organizational safety management impacting patient safety. Every solution, every patch to fill the cheese hole, holding the domino piece to fall, opens a new disruption elsewhere that needs to be addressed following the zero-preventable harm path.
The Association Between Family Resources and Language Among Young Children Who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Authors: Townsend Julia , Conrad Cassandra , Williams Sara , Wiley Susan , Meinzen-Derr Jareen
Published: October 2023

Objective:

Our study (1) examined demographic factors in families with children with bilateral hearing loss and how they relate to Family Resource Scale (FRS) questionnaire data and (2) examined correlations between FRS data and measures of language.

Methods:

Children aged 6 months to 10 years with bilateral hearing loss were enrolled. Parents completed the FRS questionnaire to assess their access to socioeconomic resources at the first language measurement visit. Assessments measured receptive and expressive language, nonverbal intelligence quotient, and adaptive functioning.

Results:

Among the 85 children included in the analysis, approximately 40% had hearing loss classified as mild to moderate and 25% had a cochlear implant. Participants' mean FRS score was 130 (SD 16.6) (with the highest possible score of 150 and indicating better access to resources). Significant positive correlations (p-value ≤ 0.05) were found between maternal education, paternal education, and family income and several FRS subscales (Growth and Support, Necessities in Health, Childcare, Personal Resources). Significant positive correlations were found between the Necessities in Health subscale and all the language measurements.

Conclusion:

Children whose parents reported better access to socioeconomic resources related to health care had higher language performance scores. Although early access to intervention services has improved for deaf or hard-of-hearing children, there are other variables contributing to language development, including access to socioeconomic resources. This study highlights the need for further research addressing more specific and modifiable resources to improve language performance for deaf or hard-of-hearing children.
The macrophage STING-YAP axis controls hepatic steatosis by promoting the autophagic degradation of lipid droplets
Authors: Yang Tao , Qu Xiaoye , Wang Xiao , Xu Dongwei , Sheng Mingwei , Lin Yuanbang , Ke Michael , Song Ci , Xia Qiang , Jiang Longfeng , Li Jun , Farmer Douglas G. , Ke Bibo
Published: October 2023

Background and Aims:

The hallmark of NAFLD or hepatic steatosis is characterized by lipid droplet (LD) accumulation in hepatocytes. Autophagy may have profound effects on lipid metabolism and innate immune response. However, how innate immune activation may regulate the autophagic degradation of intracellular LDs remains elusive.

Approach and Results:

A mouse model of a high-fat diet–induced NASH was used in the myeloid-specific stimulator of interferon genes (STING) knockout or STING/yes-associated protein (YAP) double knockout mice. Liver injury, lipid accumulation, lipid droplet proteins, autophagic genes, chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with massively parallel sequencing, and RNA-Seq were assessed in vivo and in vitro. We found that high-fat diet–induced oxidative stress activates STING and YAP pathways in hepatic macrophages. The acrophage STING deficiency (myeloid-specific STING knockout) enhances nuclear YAP activity, reduces lipid accumulation, and increases autophagy-related proteins ATG5, ATG7, and light chain 3B but diminishes LD protein perilipin 2 expression. However, disruption of STING and YAP (myeloid STING and YAP double knockout) increases serum alanine aminotransferase and triglyceride levels and reduces β-fatty acid oxidation gene expression but augments perilipin 2 levels, exacerbating high-fat diet–induced lipid deposition. Chromatin immunoprecipitation coupled with massively parallel sequencing reveals that macrophage YAP targets transmembrane protein 205 and activates AMP-activated protein kinase α, which interacts with hepatocyte mitofusin 2 and induces protein disulfide isomerase activation. Protein disulfide isomerase activates hypoxia-inducible factor-1α signaling, increases autophagosome colocalization with LDs, and promotes the degradation of perilipin 2 by interacting with chaperone-mediated autophagy chaperone HSC70.

Conclusions:

The macrophage STING-YAP axis controls hepatic steatosis by reprogramming lipid metabolism in a transmembrane protein 205/mitofusin 2/protein disulfide isomerase-dependent pathway. These findings highlight the regulatory mechanism of the macrophage STING-driven YAP activity on lipid control.
Ablative Treatment of Inflammatory and Other Diseases With Monoclonal Antibodies (Mabs) or Janus Kinases (Nibs) Increases Risk for Infection
Authors: Santana Eric , Rosenthal Ken S.
Published: October 2023

Monoclonal antibodies (mabs) and small molecule Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors (nibs) are useful for treating inflammatory disease, autoimmune disease, and tumors, especially leukemia. Inhibition or depletion of the cytokines or cells with these drugs can result in loss of important protection against certain microbial infections. Recurrences of tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, and zoster are especially sensitive to immune depletion. The consequences of inhibition of cytokines, molecules, pathways and cells by these drugs are described, depicted, and tabulated.