bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
7. Making typography legible
Authors: Luna Paul
Published: November 2018

Reading is a complex process whereby we identify and transform a written message into meaning so that we can respond to it. How do we evaluate how easy a piece of typography is to read? Investigations by psychologists into reading can identify the factors that make type legible under different circumstances, and suggest the best solutions to facilitate reading. Designers and psychologists working together can focus on user needs and, through iterative design, develop the most appropriate solutions. ‘Making typography legible’ explains the guidelines for legibility. There are several variables that affect legibility: the relationship of line length to line spacing, the arrangement of type, and the choice of typeface.
Prevalence and Epidemiological Characteristics of Asymptomatic Malaria Based on Ultrasensitive Diagnostics: A Cross-sectional Study
Authors: Girma Seble , Cheaveau James , Mohon Abu Naser , Marasinghe Dewdunee , Legese Ruth , Balasingam Nirujah , Abera Adugna , Feleke Sindew M , Golassa Lemu , Pillai Dylan R
Published: November 2018

Background

As the global public-health objectives for malaria evolve from malaria control towards malaria elimination, there is increasing interest in the significance of asymptomatic infections and the optimal diagnostic test to identify them.

Method

We conducted a cross-sectional study of asymptomatic individuals (N = 562) to determine the epidemiological characteristics associated with asymptomatic malaria. Participants were tested by rapid diagnostic tests (CareStart, Standard Diagnostics [SD] Bioline, and Alere ultrasensitive RDT [uRDT]), loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to determine malaria positivity. Hemoglobin values were recorded, and anemia was defined as a binary variable, according to World Health Organization guidelines.

Results

Compared to reference qRT-PCR, LAMP had the highest sensitivity (92.6%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 86.4–96.5), followed by uRDT Alere Malaria (33.9%, 95% CI 25.5–43.1), CareStart Malaria (14.1%, 95% CI 8.4–21.5), microscopy (5.0%, 95% CI 1.8–10.5), and SD Bioline (5.0%, 95% CI 1.8–10.5). For Plasmodium falciparum specimens only, the sensitivity for uRDT Alere Malaria was 50.0% (95% CI 38.8–61.3) and SD Bioline was 7.3% (95% CI 2.7–15.3). Based on multivariate regression analysis with qRT-PCR as the gold standard, for every 3.2% increase in the prevalence of asymptomatic malaria, hemoglobin decreased by 1 gram per deciliter (prevalence ratio 0.968, 95% CI 0.940–0.997; P = .032). Deletions (4.8%) in hrp2 were noted.

Conclusions

While uRDT Alere Malaria has superior sensitivity to rapid diagnostic tests and microscopy in detecting asymptomatic malaria, LAMP is superior still. Ultrasensitive diagnostics provide the accurate prevalence estimates of asymptomatic malaria required for elimination.
Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)-1 Transmission Among Persons With Acute HIV-1 Infection in Malawi: Demographic, Behavioral, and Phylogenetic Relationships
Authors: Dennis Ann M , Cohen Myron S , Rucinski Katherine B , Rutstein Sarah E , Powers Kimberly A , Pasquale Dana K , Phiri Sam , Hosseinipour Mina C , Kamanga Gift , Nsona Dominic , Massa Cecilia , Hoffman Irving F , Pettifor Audrey E , Miller William C
Published: November 2018

Background

Understanding sexual networks involving acute human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infections (AHI) may lead to prevention opportunities to mitigate high rates of onward transmission. We evaluated HIV-1 phylogenetic and behavioral characteristics among persons with AHI and their referred partners.

Methods

Between 2012 and 2014, 46 persons with AHI in Malawi participated in a combined behavioral and biomedical intervention. Participants referred sexual partners by passive referral. Demographics and sexual behaviors were collected through interviews and HIV-1 genetic relationships were assessed with phylogenetics.

Results

Among 45 AHI participants with HIV-1 sequences, none was phylogenetically-linked with another AHI index. There were 19 (42%) AHI participants who referred a single partner that returned for testing. Most partners (n = 17) were HIV-infected, with 15 (88%) presenting with an established infection. There were 14 index-partner pairs that had sequences available; 13 (93%) pairs were phylogenetically-linked dyads. The AHI index was female in 7/13 (54%) dyads. Age-disparate relationships among dyads were common (≥5-year age difference in 67% of dyads), including 3/6 dyads involving a male index and a younger woman. Index participants with a referred partner were more likely to report no casual partners and to be living with their current partner than participants not in dyads.

Conclusions

Passive-partner referral successfully identified partners with genetically-similar HIV infections—the likely source of infection—but only 40% of index cases referred partners who presented for HIV-1 testing. Future work evaluating assisted partner notification may help reach susceptible partners or more people with untreated HIV-1 infections connected to acute transmission.

Clinical Trials Registration

NCT01450189
Comparison of 3 Days Amoxicillin Versus 5 Days Co-Trimoxazole for Treatment of Fast-breathing Pneumonia by Community Health Workers in Children Aged 2–59 Months in Pakistan: A Cluster-randomized Trial
Authors: Sadruddin Salim , Khan Ibad ul Haque , Fox Matthew P , Bari Abdul , Khan Attaullah , Thea Donald M , Khan Amanullah , Khan Inamullah , Ahmad Ijaz , Qazi Shamim A
Published: November 2018

Background

Globally, most deaths due to childhood pneumonia occur at the community level. Some countries are still using oral co-trimoxazole, despite a World Health Organization recommendation of oral amoxicillin for the treatment of fast-breathing pneumonia in children at the community level.

Methods

We conducted an unblinded, cluster-randomized, controlled-equivalency trial in Haripur District, Pakistan. Children 2–59 months of age with fast-breathing pneumonia were treated with oral amoxicillin suspension (50 mg/kg/day) for 3 days in 14 intervention clusters and oral co-trimoxazole suspension (8 mg trimethoprim/kg and 40 mg sulfamethoxazole/kg/day) for 5 days in 14 control clusters by lady health workers (LHW). The primary outcome was treatment failure by day 4 for intervention clusters and by day 6 for control clusters. The analysis was per protocol.

Results

Out of the 15 749 cases enrolled in the study, 9153 cases in intervention and 6509 cases in control clusters were included in the analysis. Treatment failure rates were 3.6% (326) in intervention clusters and 9.1% (592) in control clusters. After adjusting for clustering, the risk of treatment failure was lower in intervention clusters (risk diﬀerence [RD] -5.5%, 95% confidence interval [CI] -7.4–-3.7%) than in control clusters. Children with incomplete adherence had a small increase in treatment failure versus those with complete adherence (RD 2.9%, 95% CI 1.6–4.1%). No deaths or serious adverse events occurred.

Conclusions

A 3-day course of oral amoxicillin, administered by LHWs, is an effective and safe treatment for fast-breathing pneumonia in children 2–59 months of age. A shorter course of amoxicillin improves adherence to therapy, is low in cost, and puts less pressure on antimicrobial resistance.

Clinical Trials Registration

ISRCTN10618300.
‘No time for health:’ exploring couples’ health promotion in Indian slums
Authors: Gaiha Shivani Mathur , Gillander Gådin Katja
Published: November 2018

Joint involvement of couples is an effective strategy to increase contraceptive use and improve reproductive health of women. However, engaging couples to understand how their gender attitudes affect their personal and family health is an idea in search of practice. This mixed-methods study explores opportunities and barriers to couples' participation in health promotion in three slums of Delhi. For each couple, surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted with husbands and wives individually to contrast self and spousal work, time, interest in health, sources of information related to health and depth of knowledge (n = 62). Urban poverty forces men to work long hours and women to enter part-time work in the informal sector. Paid work induces lack of availability at home, lack of interest in health information and in performing household chores and a self-perception of being healthy among men. These factors inhibit men's' participation in community-based health promotion activities. Women's unpaid work in the household remains unnoticed. Women were expected to be interested in and to make time to attend community-based health-related activities. Men recalled significantly less sources of health information than their spouse. Men and their wives showed similar depth of health-related knowledge, likely due to their spousal communication, with women acting as gatekeepers. Health promotion planners must recognize time constraints, reliance on informal interpersonal communication as a source of health information and the need to portray positive masculinities that address asymmetric gender relations. Innovative, continuous and collaborative approaches may support couples to proactively care about health in low-resource settings.
Hearing Voices
Authors: Burford Mark
Published: November 2018

Among the most commented upon aspects of Jackson’s singing was a perceived incongruity between her compelling vocal performances and her lack of formal training. Jackson herself distinguished between the home-grown voices she heard all around her in New Orleans and voices that had been honed through music lessons—that is, between what some have characterized as “vernacular” and “cultivated” musical practices, respectively. What becomes apparent from comments over the course of years is Jackson’s ambivalence. If in some contexts she defiantly identified with black vernacular voices—on one occasion calling herself “the world’s most primitive singer”—in others, she seemed to lament not having had the financial means to access the formalized vocal training received, for instance, by friend and musical colleague J. Robert Bradley. In the end, however, Jackson’s performances complicate recognized class-based categories far more than they corroborate them.
The Snake and the Mongoose at the Horizon of Indian History
Authors: McGovern Nathan
Published: November 2018

This chapter explains what we can know about the history of India in the time period under consideration (appx. 5th–2nd centuries BCE) and situates the firm evidence we have for antagonism between two groups known as “Brahmans” and śramaṇas within that context. It frames this period as straddling a “horizon” situated at the reign of Aśoka (269–232 BCE), whose inscriptions are the earliest form of writing in India and thus provide the first secure date for Indian history. The literary sources for this book (Buddhist, Jain, and Brahmanical) allow us to peer beyond this horizon, but present complications because they were originally preserved orally and thus come down to us in a post-Aśokan form.
War for Peace
Authors: Idris Murad
Published: November 2018

Peace is the elimination of war, but peace also authorizes war. We are informed today that this universal ideal can only be secured by the wars that it eliminates. The paradoxical position of peace—opposed to war, authorizing war—is encapsulated by the claim that “war is for the sake of peace.” War for Peace is a genealogy of the political theoretic logics and morals of “peace.” It examines peace in political theory, as an ideal that authorizes war, in the writings of ten thinkers, from ancient to contemporary thought: Plato, Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Thomas Aquinas, Desiderius Erasmus, Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius, Ibn Khaldūn, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and Sayyid Quṭb. It argues that the ideal of peace functions parasitically, provincially, and polemically. In its parasitical structure, peace is accompanied by other ideals, such as friendship, security, concord, and law, which reduces it to a politics of consensus. In its provincial structure, the universalized content of peace reflects its idealizers’ desires, fears, interests, and constructions of the globe. In its polemical structure, the idealization of peace is the product of antagonisms and it then enables hostility. As idealizations of peace are disseminated across political thought, a core that valorizes peace and necessitates war insistently remains. War for Peace uncovers the genealogical basis of peace’s moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present.
Very Serious Books
Authors: Forster Chris
Published: November 2018

This chapter draws on the records of the British Home Office to reconsider the censorship of two novels by women in the late 1920s: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness and the Norah James’s less well-known Sleeveless Errand. It argues that the suppression of these novels was a function of the way they were positioned and received as “serious” works, capable of effecting social change. The chapter argues that specific circumstances in the late 1920s also shaped the perception of the novels. A perception that World War I had radically imbalanced the British population by creating two million "surplus women" created an context where representations of women's sexuality were perceived as especially dangerous. Hall’s representation in The Well of Loneliness of the book as a medium with authority and social agency made both novels seem especially dangerous in this context, and thus, in the eyes of the Home Office, worthy of suppression.
Obscenity and the Voice
Authors: Forster Chris
Published: November 2018

This chapter argues that an oral mode of textual circulation, which T. S. Eliot discovered both in obscene, comic, bawdy folk song and in music hall performance, provided him with a vision of social cohesion that contrasts with the fragmentation that is otherwise central to his work. The ability of these genres to figure an otherwise lost social cohesion, however, reflects the fact that they are spaces where men bonded and created a sense of homosocial community. Eliot’s published comments on obscenity confirm his valuation of the comic or humorous obscene as a mode and index of social health; but the instances where Eliot discovers this cohesion are predicated on the exclusion of women.
Feeling From Music
Authors: Winner Ellen
Published: November 2018

This chapter addresses the emergence of feelings in the music listener. We hear a sad piece and feel sad, but we are not sad about the music, and nothing bad has happened to us. Some philosophers have therefore concluded that music cannot elicit emotion. Instead, perhaps we are confusing the emotion we hear expressed in the music with the emotion we feel. But research shows that people do feel emotions from music, and they distinguish the emotions they hear in the music from the emotions the music makes them feel. There is no empirical support for the philosophical position that we do not experience emotion from music. However, emotions from music are softened by aesthetic distance—we know these emotions are caused by the music and not by a life event. The chapter concludes with a consideration of some conflicting evidence about whether the emotional response to music is innate or influenced by one’s musical culture.
Drawn to Pain
Authors: Winner Ellen
Published: November 2018

Aristotle said we don’t like to look at painful things in life but get pleasure from seeing these things in art. This chapter examines what research tells us about why we willingly expose ourselves to sad music, paintings of suffering, horror movies, and tragic narratives. Studies show that the sadder we feel when experiencing these forms of art, the more we enjoy the experience and the more moved we feel. Thus, when we experience art with painful content, we experience positive as well as negative emotions. The positive emotions are made possible because of aesthetic distance. That is, we know that our emotions are caused by art, not “real life.” In addition, the experience of negative emotions promotes meaning making as we try to make something positive out of a painful experience. And meaning making is an important function of art.
Does Making Art Improve Well-Being?
Authors: Winner Ellen
Published: November 2018

This chapter considers the claim that making art is therapeutic. Evidence that the arts are therapeutic comes from studies showing that art making in young children living in poverty relieves physiological indices of stress. And when we draw, mood improves. Why? Both Aristotle and Freud believed that the arts are cathartic. For Aristotle, watching a tragedy arouses pity and fear, which at the end “flood” out of us, leaving us calm. For Freud, making art involved sublimating forbidden urges in a socially acceptable way, resulting in tension release. But research shows another mechanism at work: making art pulls us away from negative affect, distracting us from our problems. Whether more intensive involvement in the arts can relieve stress, not via distraction but through the process of venting and working through difficulties, remains a distinct possibility.
Motor City Music
Authors: Slobin Mark
Published: November 2018

The book combines memoir, interview, and archival sources to survey the musical life of the author’s hometown, Detroit, in his youth during the city’s heyday, 1940s–1960s. After an opening chapter on the formation of personal musical identity, the focus shifts to the formative role of the public school system in educating and shaping the careers of waves of highly talented youth, many of whom became leading figures in African American and classical music nationally. Next comes a panorama of the “neighborhood” subcultural musics of European, southern white, and southern black immigrants to Detroit, followed up by a close-up of the Jewish community’s special case. “Merging Traffic” considers the way that industry, labor, the counterculture, Motown, and the media brought many streams of music together. A final retrospective chapter cites the work of Detroit writers and artists who, like the author, have been looking back at the city’s impact on their work. This is the first-ever comprehensive survey of the musical life of any American city in a given time period.
Becoming Zarathustra
Authors: Kellens Jean
Published: November 2018

This chapter examines the role of ritual and sacrifice in the most sacred Zoroastrian literature, the Gâthâs in order to explore the complex relationship between the figure of Zarathustra and the human ritual officiant. The chapter presents a very Lincoln-ian sort of history of the field of Zoroastrian studies itself, interrogating the contexts and biases of particular scholars in their various readings and misreadings of the tradition. At the same time, it offers a new way of thinking about the figure of Zarathustra himself, who is best understood not as the semi-historical “founder” of Zoroastrianism but rather as the mythical personality into which the human officiant is himself transfigured through the ritual operations.
Global Migration Governance
Authors: Micinski Nicholas R. , Weiss Thomas G.
Published: November 2018

Global migration governance has evolved dramatically over the last quarter-century through increased international forums, bilateral and regional initiatives, and global responses. This article describes why international cooperation on migration has been so difficult by examining the factors that encourage and discourage cooperation. In the face of increasing pressure, the United Nations and other international organizations have taken up the challenge to build a more reliable and institutionalized architecture that moves beyond coordination and recent crises. This article considers two recent efforts: the Global Migration Group and the 2016 New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees. Both cases show the conflicting interests of UN member states and competition among UN agencies and international NGOs. While there is much noise and activity around global governance of migration, it is unclear that the emerging norms and institutions will bring greater coherence or have more of an impact on refugee and migration policies worldwide.
United States
Authors: Woolley Samuel C. , Guilbeault Douglas
Published: November 2018

Do bots have the capacity to influence the flow of political information over social media? This chapter answers this question through two methodological avenues: a) a qualitative analysis of how political bots were used to support United States presidential candidates and campaigns during the 2016 election, and b) a network analysis of bot influence on Twitter during the same event. Political bots are automated software programs that operate on social media, written to mimic real people in order to manipulate public opinion. The qualitative findings are based upon nine months of fieldwork on the campaign trail, including interviews with bot makers, digital campaign strategists, security consultants, campaign staff, and party officials. During the 2016 campaign, a bipartisan range of domestic and international political actors made use of political bots. The Republican Party, including both self-proclaimed members of the “alt-right” and mainstream members, made particular use of these digital political tools throughout the election. Meanwhile, public conversation from campaigners and government representatives is inconsistent about the political influence of bots. This chapter provides ethnographic evidence that bots affect information flows in two key ways: 1) by “manufacturing consensus,” or giving the illusion of significant online popularity in order to build real political support, and 2) by democratizing propaganda through enabling nearly anyone to amplify online interactions for partisan ends. We supplement these findings with a quantitative network analysis of the influence bots achieved within retweet networks of over 4 million tweets, collected during the 2016 US election. The results of this analysis confirm that bots reached positions of measurable influence during the 2016 US election.
Feeding a Thousand Souls
Authors: Nagarajan Vijaya
Published: November 2018

The Hindu notion of “feeding a thousand souls” each day as a ritual duty is central to the creation of the kōlam. This chapter traces this idea of “feeding a thousand souls” to ancient Sanskrit literature, Manu’s Code of Law, and the Mahabharata. There are five sacrifices or offerings that a householder should perform daily to alleviate the karmic debt of daily living: feed the animals, give food away until there is none left, feed the ancestors, feed the gods and goddesses, and offer hospitality to unexpected guests. In recent times, the material used to make the kōlam has changed from edible rice flour to inedible stone flour and acrylic stick-ons. This chapter explores the consequences of this change.
Lying, Acting, and Asserting
Authors: Maitra Ishani
Published: November 2018

This chapter defends the intent-to-deceive conception of lying against the challenge posed by bald-faced lies. It argues that bald-faced lies aren’t lies, because they’re not assertions. The chapter begins by arguing that lies must be assertions. Next, it sketches a view of assertion according to which a constitutive rule of asserting is being responsive to evidence in a particular way. Then, focusing on two well-known examples of bald-faced lies, it argues that those speakers don’t assert anything; rather, they do something more like what an actor does. The argument thus removes an important objection to the intent-to-deceive tradition. It also offers a different way of thinking about lying. Defenders of bald-faced lies sometimes describe them as attempts to ‘go on record’. This chapter defends an alternate view according to which lying involves taking a kind of (epistemic) responsibility for the content of one’s utterance.
Negligent Falsehood, White Ignorance, and False News
Authors: Saul Jennifer
Published: November 2018

There has been considerable attention in philosophy to the deliberate propagation of falsehoods, either through their assertion (as in lying); or through implicating them by way of true assertions (as in misleading). But there are other important ways that falsehoods are propagated. This chapter focuses on ways that falsehoods may be negligently propagated by true utterances, with a particular focus on what happens when this occurs in communities. The kind of case the chapter is centrally interested in is one in which a collection of true utterances may together convey a falsehood: Individual news stories of crimes committed by black men may be true, but disproportionate selection of these stories for broadcast convey significant and immensely damaging falsehoods. The chapter also discusses the role of false news in the US Presidential election in 2016.
Introduction
Authors: Yaari Nurit
Published: November 2018

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.
Hanoch Levin
Authors: Yaari Nurit
Published: November 2018

This chapter focuses on the theatrical oeuvre of Hanoch Levin, the most prolific of Israeli playwrights. Like Aloni, Levin learned theatre craft at the theatre and soon began to direct his own plays. He tried out new materials and learned the stage language while writing and directing his plays. In each play that he wrote in a new style, he used a particular dramatic template that he deconstructed and rebuilt, so that each étude became a play in its own right. Analysing his interpretation of tragedies by Euripides and Aeschylus—Everyone Wants to Live (Alcestis), The Emperor (Ion), and The Moaners (Agamemnon), the chapter discusses the ways he studied their dramaturgical techniques, and expressed their attitudes towards human destiny, human suffering, and social hierarchy. In his plays, he responded to their choices from a modern, contemporary attitude and with profound understanding of the many facets of contemporary human behaviour.
Decommemorating
Authors: Beiner Guy
Published: November 2018

Commemoration of controversial historical episodes can trigger adverse hostile reactions of ‘decommemorating’, which aim to stamp out memory but in practice signify an oblique form of engaging with remembrance. In the wider context of a fin-de-siècle craze for commemoration, the centenary of the 1798 rebellion was celebrated by nationalists in Ulster in 1898. The commemorations were contested on many levels, showing infighting between rival nationalist factions, as well as conflicts between nationalists and unionists. Overt displays of public remembrance antagonized loyalists, provoking mass rioting and the destruction of a monument for a folk heroine. In turn, renewed interest among cultural revivalists resulted in new productions of cultural memory. Decommemorating triggered a surge of re-commemorating, which came to an end with the outbreak of the Irish Revolution.
How to Make the Case for Brute Facts
Authors: Taylor Elanor
Published: November 2018

Ontologically brute facts are facts with no explanation. Although such facts appear to be mysterious, some philosophers have argued that we should embrace ontologically brute facts. This raises a methodological question: what is an adequate ground for belief in ontological bruteness? This chapter explores this question. It begins by considering three failed attempts to make the case for bruteness and draws cautionary lessons from these failures. It then offers a positive proposal according to which if a naturalistic, general metaphysical theory with strong abductive support posits ontologically brute facts, then this is an adequate (but defeasible) case for ontological bruteness.
Naturalism, Emergence, and Brute Facts
Authors: Bickhard Mark H.
Published: November 2018

This chapter argues that, under a reasonable interpretation, naturalism and brute facts are in tension with each other. This, of course, does not entail that there are no brute facts: naturalism could be false. The British Emergentist tradition proposed that emergence was dependent on brute fact laws, and intended that this proposal was more ‘naturalistic’ than alternatives on offer at the time. The author argues that there is an alternative model of emergence that does not require brute facts—at least not in the British Emergentist sense—and, thus, is more consistent with naturalism. Nevertheless, the possibility of brute facts remains.
No Platforming
Authors: Simpson Robert Mark , Srinivasan Amia
Published: November 2018

This paper explains how the practice of “no platforming” might be reconciled with a liberal politics. While opponents say that no platforming flouts ideals of open public discourse, and defenders that it is a justifiable harm-prevention measure, both sides mistakenly treat the debate like a run-of-the-mill free speech conflict, rather than a specific issue of academic freedom. Content-based restrictions on speech in universities are ubiquitous. This is no affront to a liberal conception of academic freedom, whose purpose is not just to protect the speech of academics, but also to protect academics’ rights to determine which views and speakers have sufficient disciplinary credentials to receive a hearing in academic contexts. No platforming should therefore be acceptable to liberals, in principle, in cases where it is used to support a university culture that maintains rigorous disciplinary standards, by denying attention and credibility to speakers who fall short of those standards.
Whole, but not One
Authors: Marmodoro Anna
Published: November 2018

A number of contemporary metaphysicians find Aristotle’s hylomorphism a promising and yet wanting account of what there is, and have engaged in ‘reconditioning’ it into a sound metaphysics (e.g. Jaworski 2016, Koons 2014, Rea 2011, among others). Jonathan Lowe’s four-category ontology aligns with this way of thinking, notwithstanding its explicit rejection of the notion of matter that is typically attributed to Aristotle. This chapter offers a taxonomy of the most recent versions of hylomorphism that have been developed in the literature, and locates Lowe’s views within it. It further addresses the question of whether Aristotle’s hylomorphism does in fact need the ‘reconditioning’ it has recently received in the literature; the chapter argues for a negative answer. It finally focuses on the thorny issue of matter: here the questions addressed are: what Aristotle meant by ‘matter’; how many kinds of matter did he introduce into his system; and how does his system compare to Lowe’s matterless four-category ontology. As a version of hylomorphism, Lowe’s ontology is more Aristotelian than Lowe believed.
The New Testament and Intellectual Humility
Authors: Macaskill Grant
Published: November 2018

This book examines how the New Testament scriptures might form and foster intellectual humility within Christian communities. It is informed by recent interdisciplinary interest in intellectual humility, and concerned to appreciate the distinctive representations of the virtue offered by the New Testament writers on their own terms. It argues that the intellectual virtue is cast as a particular expression of the broader Christian virtue of humility, which proceeds from the believer’s union with Christ, through which personal identity is reconstituted by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Hence, we speak of ‘virtue’ in ways determined by the acting presence of Jesus Christ, overcoming sin and evil in human lives and in the world. The Christian account of the virtue is framed by this conflict, as believers within the Christian community struggle with natural arrogance and selfishness, and come to share in the mind of Christ. The new identity that emerges creates a fresh openness to truth, as the capacity of the sinful mind to distort truth is exposed and challenged. This affects knowledge and perception, but also volition: for these ancient writers, a humble mind makes good decisions that reflect judgments decisively shaped by the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ. By presenting ‘humility of mind’ as a characteristic of the One who is worshipped—Jesus Christ—the New Testament writers insist that we acknowledge the virtue not just as an admission of human deficiency or limitation, but as a positive affirmation of our rightful place within the divine economy.
Marriage, Fertility, and Women’s Agency in Tunisia
Authors: Assaad Ragui , Ghazouani Samir , Krafft Caroline
Published: November 2018

Three important interconnected spheres shape women’s lives in Tunisia: marriage, fertility, and agency over their lives and those of their families. This chapter focuses on the forces that shape women’s choices and the patterns of their lives and how these choices and patterns have evolved over time. Specifically, the chapter examines marriage decisions, such as whether and at what age women marry, and what living arrangements they adopt at marriage. We also investigate the crucial decisions women and their husbands make vis-à-vis procreation, along with fertility correlates, such as age and education level. Finally, we examine the scope of women’s agency over a variety of decisions, as well as the links between women’s employment and marital status. Relying on the Tunisia Labor Market Panel Survey (TLMPS) 2014 data, this chapter highlights differences between urban and rural areas, different regions in Tunisia, and across women of different socio-economic statuses.
The Nostalgic Imagination
Authors: Collini Stefan
Published: November 2018

This unusual book explores the historical assumptions at work in the style of literary criticism that came to dominate English studies in the twentieth century. Stefan Collini shows how the work of critics renowned for their close attention to ‘the words on the page’ was in practice bound up with claims about the nature and direction of historical change, the interpretation of the national past, and the scholarship of earlier historians. Among the major figures examined in detail are T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, William Empson, and Raymond Williams, while there are also original discussions of such figures as Basil Willey, L. C. Knights, Q. D. Leavis, and Richard Hoggart. In the period between Eliot’s The Sacred Wood and Williams’s The Long Revolution, the writings of such critics came to occupy the cultural space left by academic history’s retreat into specialized, archive-bound monographs. Their work challenged the assumptions of the Whig interpretation of English history and entailed a revision of the traditional relations between ‘literary history’ and ‘general history’. Combining close textual analysis with wide-ranging intellectual history, this book both revises the standard story of the history of literary criticism and illuminates a central feature of the cultural history of twentieth-century Britain.
Are the Children of Prisoners Socially Excluded?
Authors: Oldrup Helene , Frederiksen Signe
Published: November 2018

This chapter seeks to build on and extend the increasingly child-oriented perspective on prisoners’ children. It does so by focusing on the social exclusion experienced by this particular group of children, as social relationships are crucial to child well-being. The study is set in Denmark, where it is estimated that five to six per cent of every birth cohort experiences parental imprisonment during childhood and that the share of children facing this strain is similar to that of children taken into care or living in poverty. Thus, the chapter examines whether the child is socially excluded from important relationships in children’s lives, and less on the child’s encounter with the criminal justice system. This is done not only by adopting a child-centred perspective, but also by using children as informants in a survey from a representative sample of Danish children of prisoners.
The Systemic Invisibility of Children of Prisoners
Authors: Knudsen Else Marie
Published: November 2018

This chapter argues that the children of prisoners are rendered invisible from the micro to the macro level, through a series of interconnected processes the chapter refers to as ‘systemic invisibility’. This study, moreover, is situated in the Canadian context, particularly in the experiences of Canadian children of prisoners. While these children make up a sizeable population, and the experience and outcomes of parental incarceration appear to be significant, they are often hidden from view, subject to layers of invisibility. Starting from children’s own families, to their relationship with their schools and communities, to the policies and practices of the prison systems in which they are so tightly intertwined, and finally to the broader social policy context, the chapter discusses the ways in which parental incarceration is kept secret, enigmatic, and poorly understood. Finally, the chapter considers the meanings and reasons behind these connected layers of invisibility.
The neurobiology of gut feelings
Authors: Aziz Qasim , Ruffle James K.
Published: November 2018

“It’s a gut feeling.” Indeed, how and why do we get “gut feelings?” After the brain, the gut is the second most innervated bodily organ, diffusely interconnected with gastrointestinal afferent neurons. Whilst sensory neurons from the gut ascend by means of the spinal cord and vagal nerve to subcortical and higher cortical areas of the brain, caudally descending motor efferents from brain to gut seek to modulate gastrointestinal function. Such is the construct of the “brain–gut axis,” a bi-directional body nexus permitting constant information transfer between both brain and gut so as to provide us with visceral interoception. This chapter reviews the neurobiology of gut feelings and discuss their role in both physical and mental health and disease.
Cardiac interoception in neurological conditions and its relevance for dimensional approaches
Authors: Yoris Adrián , García Adolfo M. , Salamone Paula Celeste , Sedeño Lucas , García-Cordero Indira , Ibáñez Agustín
Published: November 2018

Dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches have revealed multiple cognitive/emotional alterations shared by several neuropsychiatric conditions. While this has been shown for externally triggered neurocognitive processes, the disruption of interoception across neurological disorders remains poorly understood. This chapter aims to fill this gap while proposing cardiac interoception as a potential common biomarker across disorders. It focuses on key aspects of interoception, such as the mechanisms underlying different interoceptive dimensions; the relationship among interoception, emotion, and social cognition; and the roles of different interoceptive pathways. It considers behavioral and brain evidence in the context of an experimental and clinical agenda to evaluate the potential role of interoception as a predictor of clinical outcomes, a marker of neurocognitive deficits across diseases, and a general source of insights for breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of multiple disorders. Finally, future directions to improve the dimensional and transdiagnostic assessment of interoception are outlined.
Divest–Invest: A Moral Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment
Authors: Lenferna Alex
Published: November 2018

This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble. It then argues that in order to avoid grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm, there is a collective moral responsibility to transition away from fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreement’s targets of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels with the aspiration of holding warming to 1.5°C. It uses that argument as the basis for the following three distinct but reinforcing moral arguments in favor of divesting from fossil fuels: (1) investing in fossil fuels contributes to grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm and injustice; (2) divesting from fossil fuels helps fulfill our moral responsibility to promote climate action; and (3) investing in fossil fuels morally tarnishes those who do so by making them complicit in the injustices of the fossil fuel industry. The chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble.
The Controllability Precautionary Principle: Justification of a Climate Policy Goal Under Uncertainty
Authors: Pissarskoi Eugen
Published: November 2018

How can we reasonably justify a climate policy goal if we accept that only possible consequences from climate change are known? Precautionary principles seem to offer promising guidelines for reasoning in such epistemic situations. This chapter presents two versions of the precautionary principle (PP) and defends one of them as morally justifiable. However, it argues that current versions of the PP do not allow discrimination between relevant climate change policies. Therefore, the chapter develops a further version of the PP, the Controllability Precautionary Principle (CPP), and defends its moral plausibility. The CPP incorporates the following idea: in a situation when the possible outcomes of the available actions cannot be ranked with regard to their value, the choice between available options for action should rest on the comparison of how well decision makers can control the processes of the implementation of the available strategies.
Long-Term Climate Justice
Authors: Nolt John
Published: November 2018

Anthropogenic global climate change resulting mainly from the burning of fossil fuels during the historically brief fossil fuel era will displace, sicken, injure, and kill large numbers of people over the coming centuries, perhaps millennia. This is an unprecedented injustice. This chapter aims to articulate the sense which these extremely long-term harms constitute injustice and to show that prominent contemporary theories of justice do not adequately account for that injustice. Distributional theories are largely blind to it because they do not consider harms, and long-term human rights theories falter, both because they posit mutually unfulfillable rights and because they lack a persuasive moral psychology. As remedies, this chapter suggests, first, a long-term consequentialism of rights, perhaps differing little from plain objective welfare consequentialism, and, second, a moral psychology inspired by the Hebraic prophetic tradition and analyzed by John Stuart Mill.
Can a Civilisation Know Its Own Institutional Decline?
Authors: Mungiu-Pippidi Alina , Martínez Barranco Kukutschka Roberto
Published: November 2018

This chapter asks if current indicators of low trust and moral decay in Europe can be better traced to facts than similar perceptions on record from the Western Roman Empire during its decline. The answer is provided by complementing individual-level analysis of corruption survey data with national-level data, using three novel fact-based indicators. The findings provide a general validation of public perception by more objective indicators. Most individuals seem to report what they observe and experience, uninfluenced by media or social status, so these negative perceptions are likely to reflect the overall practices that people observe as well as the integrity policy framework. The chapter argues that public perception does not need direct evidence to have objective evidence, and indirect indicators offer sufficient grounds for the perception of corruption and decaying standards. Nevertheless, the chapter also shows that objectivity is uneven across respondents of a survey.
Innovations in Objectively Measuring Corruption in Public Procurement
Authors: Fazekas Mihály , Cingolani Luciana , Tóth Bence
Published: November 2018

While there is continued interest in measuring governance, disagreement on how best to do so has only grown over time. To provide pointers at innovative and rigorous indicator building, this chapter documents innovations in measuring a particularly challenging governance dimension: corruption in public procurement. In hopes of inspiring future research, the chapter critically reviews objective corruption proxies using administrative data on government purchases falling in four broad categories: tendering risk indicators, political connections indicators, supplier risk indicators, and contracting body risk indicators. The findings indicate that the best measurement instruments focus on the transaction level (micro level) while allowing for consistent aggregations for time series and cross-country comparisons. Such actionable indicators capture behaviour as directly as possible rather than remaining at the country level. They also retain the relational or transactional aspects of governance, revealing a much more dynamic picture than widely used population and expert surveys.
Dependence on Extractive Industries in Lower-income Countries
Authors: Roe Alan , Dodd Samantha
Published: November 2018

This chapter synthesizes statistical information evidencing the proposition that extractive industries are of great significance in many low- and middle-income developing economies, and so to their development prospects. It examines the scale of the current dependence of low- and middle-income economies on both types of extractive resources: metals, and oil and gas. The chapter also assesses how country levels of dependence have changed in the past twenty years, showing that there has been a clear upward trend based on exports. The chapter outlines how the upward trend has continued in many countries despite the recent commodity price collapse, and assesses some of the consequences of that collapse.
Political Economy and Governance
Authors: Dietsche Evelyn
Published: November 2018

This chapter reviews the political economy of extractive resources and the resources governance agenda. The consensus that good sector governance improves the developmental impacts of extractive resources exploitation is premised on the understanding that institutions matter for development. However, there is no straightforward answer to the question of what exactly ‘institutions’ are, how they change, or how they can be made to change to become more supportive of an extractives-led development agenda. The chapter suggests turning from the negative question ‘how can poor outcomes be prevented?’ towards the positive question ‘how can positive institutional change be brought about?’ It presents the main strands of a substantial body of literature that can help to inform answers to this question.
Oil Discovery and Macroeconomic Management
Authors: Bawumia Mahamudu , Halland Håvard
Published: November 2018

This chapter analyses the evolution of fiscal and monetary variables in Ghana, from the discovery of oil in 2007 through to 2014. It documents the deterioration of fiscal and monetary discipline over this period, which resulted in a rebound of debt, a deterioration of the external balance, and a decrease in public investment. The chapter goes on to analyse the potential causes of this deterioration, including the political economy context, and the fiscal and monetary institutional framework. The suggested causes include the politics of Ghana’s dominant two-party system. Finally, the chapter discusses what Ghana could have done differently to avoid the various damaging effects associated with the oil discovery. It does not aim to provide specific fiscal policy recommendations for Ghana, but rather to give an empirical account of Ghana’s experience that may be useful for other countries that discover oil.