bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Thermodynamics today – and tomorrow
Authors: Sherwood Dennis , Dalby Paul
Published: August 2018

This last chapter explores the frontiers of how thermodynamics is currently being applied to biology, moving from the scale of the molecule to the scale of the cell. The key theme is ‘self-assembly’ – the process by which macromolecules spontaneously assemble into larger structures such as cell membranes, cell organelles, cells, and ultimately organisms. The starting point is the simplest process of self-assembly, the formation of a liquid from the condensation of a gas, which draws on some results from Chapter 15, and develops the concept of nucleation, this leads to a discussion of protein aggregation, and how virus particles are formed. The chapter, and the book, ends with a key challenge for the future: how can we deliberately design self-assembling systems that can perform valuable functions?
Conversion
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: August 2018

Although religious conversion is rare (most people are born and socialized into their faiths), it provides an important challenge for social science. This chapter considers the relative merits of explanations (such as brainwashing) that see conversion as something done to the convert and more activist paradigms that see conversion as an accomplishment of the religious seeker. It also considers the extent to which we can take what people say when accounting for their actions as the raw material for our explanations. It argues against the view that talk is only ever another narrative. Although an account of one’s past (given in court, for example) may well be shaped by a desire to influence hearers, it can still be used as material for inferring motives. In everyday life we untangle layers of motives and distinguish between different degrees of self-understanding and honesty. We can do the same in social science.
Social Theory and Religion
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: August 2018

Students of religious groups or activities are often pressed to provide an appropriate theoretical background for their work. The practical difficulty is that much social theory is actually philosophy with little empirical basis. This chapter considers the merits of four different sorts of social theory: normative theory that tells us what is good and bad; zeitgeist metaphors that capture the nature of modernity with some eye-catching word or phrase (for example, Baumann’s ‘liquid modernity’); agenda-setters (such as feminism or postcolonial theory) that want new questions asked in new ways; and sociological explanation grounded in reasonable extrapolations from empirical research. The drawbacks to the first three are identified as a way of advertising the virtues of the last type of theory.
Conservation Drones
Authors: Wich Serge A. , Koh Lian Pin
Published: August 2018

In this book, we introduce the use of drones for wildlife conservation. We provide a broad overview of when drone technology can be useful for wildlife conservation before going into the different types of drones that are available and the basic configuration of such systems. After this we discuss the various types of sensors that are being used to obtain data and the various applications for those sensors by us and others. We discuss the various applications of sensors and discuss research that we and others have conducted with those. The usage of drones for surveillance is discussed as well with a particular focus on poaching and other illegal activities. Drones are commonly used for mapping areas and we provide an overview of considerations for mapping missions as well as on how to process the data collected during mapping missions into products. We discuss examples such as the creation of orthomosaics and digital surface models, and their use in land cover classification and for object detection. We also provide an overview of how drones have been used to count animals and derive distribution and density from such data. We end with some thoughts on the future of drones.
Processes in Microbial Ecology
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

Processes in Microbial Ecology discusses the major processes carried out by viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and other protists—the microbes—in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems. The book shows how advances in genomic and other molecular approaches have uncovered the incredible diversity of microbes in natural environments and unraveled complex biogeochemical processes carried out by uncultivated bacteria, archaea, and fungi. The microbes and biogeochemical processes are affected by ecological interactions, including competition for limiting nutrients, viral lysis, and predation by protists in soils and aquatic habitats. The book links up processes occurring at the micron scale to events happening at the global scale, including the carbon cycle and its connection to climate change issues. The book ends with a chapter devoted to symbiosis and other relationships between microbes and large organisms, which have large impacts not only on biogeochemical cycles, but also on the ecology and evolution of large organisms, including Homo sapiens.
Genomes and meta-omics for microbes
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

The sequencing of entire genomes of microbes grown in pure cultures is now routine. The sequence data from cultivated microbes have provided insights into these microbes and their uncultivated relatives. Sequencing studies have found that bacterial genomes range from 0.18 Mb (intracellular symbiont) to 13 Mb (a soil bacterium), whereas genomes of eukaryotes are much bigger. Genomes from eukaryotes and prokaryotes are organized quite differently. While bacteria and their small genomes often grow faster than eukaryotes, there is no correlation between genome size and growth rates among the bacteria examined so far. Genomic studies have also highlighted the importance of genes exchanged (“horizontal gene transfer”) between organisms, seemingly unrelated, as defined by rRNA gene sequences. Microbial ecologists use metagenomics to sequence all microbes in a community. This approach has revealed unsuspected physiological processes in microbes, such as the occurrence of a light-driven proton pump, rhodopsin, in bacteria (dubbed proteorhodopsin). Genomes from single cells isolated by flow cytometry have also provided insights about the ecophysiology of both bacteria and protists. Oligotrophic bacteria have streamlined genomes, which are usually small but with a high fraction of genomic material devoted to protein-encoding genes, and few transcriptional control mechanisms. The study of all transcripts from a natural community, metatranscriptomics, has been informative about the response of eukaryotes as well as bacteria to changing environmental conditions.
The ecology of viruses
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

In addition to grazing, another form of top-down control of microbes is lysis by viruses. Every organism in the biosphere is probably infected by at least one virus, but the most common viruses are thought to be those that infect bacteria. Viruses come in many varieties, but the simplest is a form of nucleic acid wrapped in a protein coat. The form of nucleic acid can be virtually any type of RNA or DNA, single or double stranded. Few viruses in nature can be identified by traditional methods because their hosts cannot be grown in the laboratory. Direct count methods have found that viruses are very abundant, being about ten-fold more abundant than bacteria, but the ratio of viruses to bacteria varies greatly. Viruses are thought to account for about 50% of bacterial mortality but the percentage varies from zero to 100%, depending on the environment and time. In addition to viruses of bacteria and cyanobacteria, microbial ecologists have examined viruses of algae and the possibility that viral lysis ends phytoplankton blooms. Viruses infecting fungi do not appear to lyse their host and are transmitted from one fungus to another without being released into the external environment. While viral lysis and grazing are both top-down controls on microbial growth, they differ in several crucial respects. Unlike grazers, which often completely oxidize prey organic material to carbon dioxide and inorganic nutrients, viral lysis releases the organic material from hosts more or less without modification. Perhaps even more important, viruses may facilitate the exchange of genetic material from one host to another. Metagenomic approaches have been used to explore viral diversity and the dynamics of virus communities in natural environments.
Processes in anoxic environments
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

During organic material degradation in oxic environments, electrons from organic material, the electron donor, are transferred to oxygen, the electron acceptor, during aerobic respiration. Other compounds, such as nitrate, iron, sulfate, and carbon dioxide, take the place of oxygen during anaerobic respiration in anoxic environments. The order in which these compounds are used by bacteria and archaea (only a few eukaryotes are capable of anaerobic respiration) is set by thermodynamics. However, concentrations and chemical state also determine the relative importance of electron acceptors in organic carbon oxidation. Oxygen is most important in the biosphere, while sulfate dominates in marine systems, and carbon dioxide in environments with low sulfate concentrations. Nitrate respiration is important in the nitrogen cycle but not in organic material degradation because of low nitrate concentrations. Organic material is degraded and oxidized by a complex consortium of organisms, the anaerobic food chain, in which the by-products from physiological types of organisms becomes the starting material of another. The consortium consists of biopolymer hydrolysis, fermentation, hydrogen gas production, and the reduction of either sulfate or carbon dioxide. The by-product of sulfate reduction, sulfide and other reduced sulfur compounds, is oxidized back eventually to sulfate by either non-phototrophic, chemolithotrophic organisms or by phototrophic microbes. The by-product of another main form of anaerobic respiration, carbon dioxide reduction, is methane, which is produced only by specific archaea. Methane is degraded aerobically by bacteria and anaerobically by some archaea, sometimes in a consortium with sulfate-reducing bacteria. Cultivation-independent approaches focusing on 16S rRNA genes and a methane-related gene (mcrA) have been instrumental in understanding these consortia because the microbes remain uncultivated to date. The chapter ends with some discussion about the few eukaryotes able to reproduce without oxygen. In addition to their ecological roles, anaerobic protists provide clues about the evolution of primitive eukaryotes.
Introduction to geomicrobiology
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

Geomicrobiology, the marriage of geology and microbiology, is about the impact of microbes on Earth materials in terrestrial systems and sediments. Many geomicrobiological processes occur over long timescales. Even the slow growth and low activity of microbes, however, have big effects when added up over millennia. After reviewing the basics of bacteria–surface interactions, the chapter moves on to discussing biomineralization, which is the microbially mediated formation of solid minerals from soluble ions. The role of microbes can vary from merely providing passive surfaces for mineral formation, to active control of the entire precipitation process. The formation of carbonate-containing minerals by coccolithophorids and other marine organisms is especially important because of the role of these minerals in the carbon cycle. Iron minerals can be formed by chemolithoautotrophic bacteria, which gain a small amount of energy from iron oxidation. Similarly, manganese-rich minerals are formed during manganese oxidation, although how this reaction benefits microbes is unclear. These minerals and others give geologists and geomicrobiologists clues about early life on Earth. In addition to forming minerals, microbes help to dissolve them, a process called weathering. Microbes contribute to weathering and mineral dissolution through several mechanisms: production of protons (acidity) or hydroxides that dissolve minerals; production of ligands that chelate metals in minerals thereby breaking up the solid phase; and direct reduction of mineral-bound metals to more soluble forms. The chapter ends with some comments about the role of microbes in degrading oil and other fossil fuels.
Symbioses and microbes
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

The book ends with a chapter devoted to discussing interactions between microbes and higher plants and animals. Symbiosis is sometimes used to describe all interactions, even negative ones, between organisms in persistent, close contact. This chapter focuses on interactions that benefit both partners (mutualism), or one partner while being neutral to the other (commensalism). Microbes are essential to the health and ecology of vertebrates, including Homo sapiens. Microbial cells outnumber human cells on our bodies, aiding in digestion and warding off pathogens. In consortia similar to the anaerobic food chain of anoxic sediments, microbes are essential in the digestion of plant material by deer, cattle, and sheep. Different types of microbes form symbiotic relationships with insects and help to explain their huge success in the biosphere. Protozoa are crucial for wood-boring insects, symbiotic bacteria in the genus Buchnera provide sugars to host aphids while obtaining essential amino acids in exchange, and fungi thrive in subterranean gardens before being harvested for food by ants. Symbiotic dinoflagellates directly provide organic material to support coral growth in exchange for ammonium and other nutrients. Corals are now threatened worldwide by rising oceanic temperatures, decreasing pH, and other human-caused environmental changes. At hydrothermal vents in some deep oceans, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria fuel an entire ecosystem and endosymbiotic bacteria support the growth of giant tube worms. Higher plants also have many symbiotic relationships with bacteria and fungi. Symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in legumes and other plants fix more nitrogen than free-living bacteria. Fungi associated with plant roots (“mycorrhizal”) are even more common and potentially provide plants with phosphorus as well as nitrogen. Symbiotic microbes can provide other services to their hosts, such as producing bioluminescence, needed for camouflage against predators. In the case of the bobtail squid, bioluminescence is only turned on when populations of the symbiotic bacteria reach critical levels, determined by a quorum sensing mechanism.
Antimicrobial resistance: the 70-year arms race between humans and bacteria
Authors: Bañuls Anne-Laure , Nguyen Thi Van Ahn , Nguyen Quang Huy , Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh , Tran Hoang Huy , Godreuil Sylvain
Published: August 2018

Antimicrobial resistance started to become a human health issue in the 1940s, following the discovery of the first antibiotics. The golden age of antibiotics (the 1950s through 1970s) marked the beginning of the arms race between humans and bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance is now among the greatest threats to human health; occurring in every region of the world and with the potential to affect anyone, anywhere. We describe the main mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, as well as how the bacteria evolve into “superbugs.” We detail the role of human activities on the emergence and spread of highly drug-resistant bacteria. Currently, data to identify the specific causes, and to establish the baseline in low-income countries, are lacking. Because of the continual increase of multidrug resistance, the situation is urgent. The chapter ends with a view to the future, with a discussion of the specific problems of low-income countries and initiatives taken.
Using pathogen interactions: challenges and opportunities
Authors: Nacher Mathieu
Published: August 2018

The germ theory of disease, mostly based on single causal pathogenesis, has improved life expectancy and changed human life. Distilling general guidelines on a new generation of public health interventions that acknowledge and use ecology and evolution to reduce the burden of disease remains difficult. Interactions are numerous; their consequences vary, depending on the context, making forecasting difficult. “Last-mile” problems are pervasive, with implementation problems keeping medical knowledge from reaching those most in need. Much of the avoidable burden of infectious disease results from lack of access to modern prevention and treatment methods, from the lack of health structures in poor countries. This chapter concerns major causes of death and disability and suggests that if used strategically, this knowledge could alleviate the burden of infectious diseases. Understanding pathogen-pathogen interactions (e.g., gastrointestinal nematodes and malaria, schistosomiasis and malaria and Wolbachia and filariae) may open opportunities for public health gains.
Malaria eradication in Italy: the story of a first success
Authors: Pombi Marco , Modiano David , Corbellini Gilberto
Published: August 2018

The Italian experience represents a historical example that education and sociopolitical vision can effectively contribute to the conquest of malaria. Until the end of 19th century, the infection spread mostly in the Central and Southern parts of Italy, with about 7 percent of the population affected and 20,000 annual deaths. Malaria showed different facies, owing to a complex vectorial system with remarkable ecological and behavioral differences. With the involvement of a critical mass of scientists and physicians, the etiology of malaria and the biological and socioeconomics determinants of the transmission dynamics were identified. This provided the opportunity to break the “malaria transmission chain” by an integrated approach. Moreover, Italy was the first country to develop special legislation for the fight against malaria, representing an example of integration between scientific, political, social and economic knowledge. In 1970, after decades of fight, the World Health Organization officially declared Italy free from malaria.
Optimizing public health strategies in low-income countries: the challegens to apply the scientific knowledge for disease control and for which diseases
Authors: Roche Benjamin , Broutin Hélène , Simard Frédéric
Published: August 2018

The objective of this book is to review the fundamental knowledge in ecology and evolution of infectious disease, as well as how it can be translated into opportunities to improve public health strategies in low-income countries, as well as in accounting and prompting for multisector interactions with the fields of economics, sociology and geopolitics, among others. The chapter explores challenges to applying the scientific knowledge for disease control, and it considers which disease to target. The chapter goes over the main recommendations arising from evolutionary ecology for infectious disease–control programs in low-income settings, and it highlights some crucial points that need to be considered to facilitate and accelerate integration of this fundamental knowledge to improve the efficiency of pathogen control.
Afterword II Fundamental knowledge in the evolutionary ecology of infectious diseases
Authors: Roche Benjamin , Broutin Hélène , Simard Frédéric
Published: August 2018

In Part II, the main academic knowledge gathered to date on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases with relevance for infectious diseases control in low-income countries has been reviewed. We have seen that many pathogens affecting human populations rely strongly on environmental determinants, such as climate, water, abiotic characteristics and inter-specific relationships, among other factors. This is especially important for low-income countries that are mostly located in tropical areas and, therefore, are exposed to high variability in terms of climatic conditions in environments ranging from the deep evergreen equatorial forests to arid deserts....
Afterword IV Case studies
Authors: Roche Benjamin , Broutin Hélène , Simard Frédéric
Published: August 2018

Through malaria elimination in Italy at the end of 19th century (when the epidemiological situation could be seen as similar to the one present in low-income countries today) and control strategies against Buruli ulcer and schistosomiasis in Africa, we have shown examples demonstrating that the translation of evolutionary ecology knowledge to infectious diseases control in low-income countries can be successful. These successes have reached different stages, from increasing our understanding of the whole infectious system dynamics toward implementation of innovative control strategies in the short term (Buruli ulcer), to improving transmission control by reducing abundance of host population (schistosomiasis in Senegal), as well as ensuring complete disease elimination locally, through a combination of massive reduction of vector populations at key periods and human-population protection and education (malaria in Italy)....
Trust, negotiation, and public involvement
Authors: Stern Marc J.
Published: August 2018

People in just about every profession or pastime must navigate the diverse ideas and values of others to accomplish their goals. The theories in this chapter provide strategies for structuring interactions between stakeholders, for enhancing trust and understanding between diverse parties, for promoting collaboration, and for addressing conflict. Each theory is summarized succinctly and followed by guidance on how to apply it to real world problem solving.
Publish or perish
Authors: Pacchioni Gianfranco
Published: August 2018

How many new papers are published each year? Based on the analysis of De Solla Price, from 1960 till more recent evaluations, an exponential growth rate has led to 2–2.4 million new publications annually. According to the latest estimates, the total number of existing articles doubles every 8–9 years. Why is this? There are various reasons, some positive, some not. One is the increased number of collaborations between scientists, as well as the case of hyper-collaborations, where some papers list thousands of authors. But the main reason is the constant pressure to produce papers, leading to the notion of ‘publish or perish’. This chapter also discusses cases of misconduct, stories of plagiarism, and some quantitative data about how diffuse plagiarism is.
The Sabbath: Biblical Scholarship and Ecclesiastical Discipline
Authors: Touber Jetze
Published: August 2018

Chapter 5 takes a long-term view of one seventeenth-century conflict, the meaning of the Sabbath, so as to gauge philology’s potential to redefine the significance of biblical texts. As the debates over the Fourth Commandment and the Lord’s Day dragged on, the terms of the debate remained discouragingly constant: the Fourth Commandment was appealed to as being either universally obliging or historically contingent. Within this static spectrum, though, we observe some surprising movements. Around 1670 the sabbatarian debate was caught up in several developments of broader purport, notably the controversial catechism of Balthasar Bekker and the ‘Egyptian thesis’ launched by John Spencer. By the end of the seventeenth century, even though the same basic arguments were propounded as they had been a century earlier, the leeway for philological sophistication had broadened subtly, in the hope of warding off more recent and more menacing instances of biblical scholarship, such as Spinoza’s.
Galileo Unbound
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: August 2018

Galileo Unbound: A Path Across Life, The Universe and Everything traces the journey that brought us from Galileo’s law of free fall to today’s geneticists measuring evolutionary drift, entangled quantum particles moving among many worlds, and our lives as trajectories traversing a health space with thousands of dimensions. Remarkably, common themes persist that predict the evolution of species as readily as the orbits of planets or the collapse of stars into black holes. This book tells the history of spaces of expanding dimension and increasing abstraction and how they continue today to give new insight into the physics of complex systems. Galileo published the first modern law of motion, the Law of Fall, that was ideal and simple, laying the foundation upon which Newton built the first theory of dynamics. Early in the twentieth century, geometry became the cause of motion rather than the result when Einstein envisioned the fabric of space-time warped by mass and energy, forcing light rays to bend past the Sun. Possibly more radical was Feynman’s dilemma of quantum particles taking all paths at once—setting the stage for the modern fields of quantum field theory and quantum computing. Yet as concepts of motion have evolved, one thing has remained constant, the need to track ever more complex changes and to capture their essence, to find patterns in the chaos as we try to predict and control our world.
The Measure of Life
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: August 2018

This final topic of the book extends the ideas of dynamics in abstract spaces of high dimension to encompass the idea of a trajectory of life. Health and disease become dynamical systems defined by all the proteins and nucleic acids that comprise the physical self. Concepts from network theory, autonomous oscillators and synchronization contribute to this viewpoint. Healthy trajectories are like stable limit cycles in phase space, but disease can knock the system trajectory into dangerous regions of health space, as doctors turn to new developments in personalized medicine try to return the individual to a healthy path. This is the ultimate generalization of Galileo’s simple parabolic trajectory.
Sacrifice and the Inner Organs of the Cold-War Citizen
Authors: Piette Adam
Published: August 2018

The cold war as a historical continuum within the citizen imagination existed as a set of internalized mechanisms for the imperilling and domination of the subject. This transpires in some of the more extreme fictions that attempted to stage this anxiety as a fear for internal organs, as a sacrificial logic threatening innocent citizen ‘insides’. This chapter discusses examples of those stagings: Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy; Elizabeth Bowen’s The Little Girls (1964); J. G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition (1969); and Douglas Oliver’s The Harmless Building (1973) and its staging of inner-organ anxiety and warfare. The chapter will be underpinned by René Girard’s theories on scapegoating and mimetic desire, along with Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ and his essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities exploring sacrificial history. The reading of those theoretical works will be used to revise Agamben’s characterization of homo sacer to enable a targeted interpretation of cold-war sacrificial codes.
‘Atrocities against his Sacred Poet’
Authors: Wheatley David
Published: August 2018

In The Midnight Verdict (1993), Seamus Heaney combines extracts from two texts taking the poet into the underworld: Ovid’s description in Metamorphoses of Orpheus’ pursuit of Eurydice and subsequent death, and Brian Merriman’s Cúirt an Mheán-Oídhche (The Midnight Court). As a poet of conflict, Heaney was forced to produce his art amid hostile crossfire. Heaney’s fellow Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon draws heavily on ironized self-sacrifice as a response to conflict in his ‘Rage for Order’ (1979). When Thomas Kinsella attempts to tackle the Northern Irish Troubles by apportioning blame to guilty parties, in Butcher’s Dozen (1972), his response to Bloody Sunday, the results are uneven. In a series of readings centred on themes of gender and the self-representation of the poet, this chapter identifies what redress Heaney, Mahon, and Kinsella find for the ‘the atrocities against his sacred poet’ of which Bacchus complains in The Midnight Verdict.
The public health end-of-life care movement: history, principles, and styles of practice
Authors: Karapliagou Aliki , Kellehear Allan , Wegleitner Klaus
Published: August 2018

This chapter briefly outlines the history, key concepts, and main practice methods from public health approaches to end-of-life care. Although linked to psychosocial care approaches, its main methods draw not from psychology or health services inspired approaches but rather from health promotion, community development, and civic engagement. Key methods covered include community volunteering, social networking, community engagement, and compassionate communities and cities. The aim of these kinds of approaches is to embed palliative care practice as a social and civic practice in all sectors of society and to ensure that palliative care as a policy is represented in all civic policies (e.g. schools, workplaces, faith groups, and cultural activities) and not solely in health care.
Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of depression in advanced disease
Authors: Hotopf Matthew
Published: August 2018

Depression in palliative care is common, under-recognised and has significant impacts for sufferers. There are effective treatments but often a shortage of staff to provide them. This chapter sets out a number of key issues to consider when assessing and treating individual patients and considers the way in which palliative care services can innovate to provide a population level response to depression. Palliative care staff can be trained to deliver basic depression care and follow simple protocols to initiate, monitor and adjust antidepressant treatment. These approaches have been tested in trials in cancer care but the challenge is to take these approaches from research trials conducted in centres of excellence with good resources, to other settings.
Psychotherapeutic interventions
Authors: Grassi Luigi , Nanni Maria Giulia , Caruso Rosangela
Published: August 2018

Psychotherapy is an integrative and integrated part of modern patient/relation-centered care in the advanced and terminal phases of physical illness. Psychiatric disorders (e.g. depressive spectrum, stress-related, and anxiety disorders), other clinically significant psychosocial conditions (e.g. demoralization, existential pain) and interpersonal, psychological, and spiritual needs have to be addressed by psychological intervention. Supportive-Expressive Group Psychotherapy (SEGT), Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy (MCT), Managing Cancer and Living Meaningfully Therapy (CALM), cognitive-existential therapy, dignity therapy (DT) and other psychotherapeutic interventions have been developed over the last 40 years. These treatments have proved to be effective in increasing the patients’ sense of dignity, purpose, and meaning, and to reduce demoralization, anxiety, and existential distress at the end of life. Also Family Focused Grief Therapy (FFGT) and grief therapy have shown to be effective in overcoming anxiety, depression, and complicated grief symptoms both before and after loss. Psychotherapy should thus be considered a mandatory ingredient of palliative care.
Contractarian Justice and Severe Cognitive Disabilities
Authors: Freeman Samuel
Published: August 2018

This chapter defends a moral contractarian approach to the problem of justice towards persons with severe and profound cognitive disabilities. Critics such as Martha Nussbaum argue that contract views are incapable of justifying the rights of the severely cognitively disabled since they do not have the capacities for practical reasoning, social cooperation, and productive activity. But the moral contract method is not restricted to arguing only for the rights and claims of normally functioning individuals. It can be generalized and regarded as an impartial moral perspective from which to justify duties of justice owed to all persons. Trustees or guardians for the severely cognitively disabled can then act as representatives of their interests, and impartially agree to principles of justice specifically designed to address their special needs and basic capabilities. The approach is Rawlsian, though the arguments go beyond Rawls’ view and draw on Scanlon’s contractualism and other considerations.
Spirit and Society
Authors: Freedman Linda
Published: August 2018

Blake’s religious dissent made him a natural ally for reformers whose works were driven by personal religious quest. This chapter looks at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalist reading of Blake, Lydia Maria Child’s reprinting of ‘The Little Black Boy’ in the context of Abolitionism, the appearance of several of the Poetical Sketches, and a commentary on The Little Vagabond in the context of social utopianism. It exposes the irony as well as the importance of the kinship liberal Americans felt with Blake. By the end of the century, Blake was becoming known in literary circles. Thomas Wentworth Higginson drew a comparison between Blake and Emily Dickinson in his introduction to the 1890 edition of the latter’s Poems and Amy Lowell turned to Blake as a master of poetic form, with a brilliant pictorial imagination and a sensitive ear, but most importantly, a great mind.
‘Energy is Eternal Delight’
Authors: Freedman Linda
Published: August 2018

Gary Snyder’s ecopoetical reading of Blake married Blake’s energetic principle with anarchist politics and a deep appreciation of Zen Buddhism and contrasted it with the deadening impact of fossil fuel technology on the earth. Michael McClure equated Blakean delight with animality and biological unpredictability which he used to oppose the uncompromising rigidity of political ideology and systemic control. Latent in the history of the earth, animal sensuality, and continually shifting systems of biological reorganization, McClure and Snyder perceived Blakean delight as the energetic lifeblood of the world. The outrage to Blake’s thinking is not as strong as first appears. Blake opposed the idea that you could learn anything from the natural world but he enjoined his readers to marry vision with action. Juxtaposing Snyder and McClure with George Oppen shows how broadly Blake inspired poets who wanted to fight the real and pressing problems of their day.
Harmony as licensing
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: August 2018

This chapter develops an explicit theory of vowel harmony based on unary elements and lateral and positional licensing which is embedded in a general dependency-based theory of phonological structure (called ‘Radical CV Phonology’). Harmony is analyzed in terms of a licensing requirement, which results in ‘agreement’, both intra-morphemically and inter-morphemically, that is, within the domain of the word In essence, the view put forward is that lexical vowel harmony involves the selection of lexically listed allomorphs. Licensing will be the selection mechanism for the proper allomorph. The chapter discusses the treatment of morpheme-internal harmony, trigger and targets in harmony, and the notion of cyclicity.
Labial harmony
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: August 2018

This chapter analyzes labial harmony systems such as Turkish, other Turkic languages, and several other languages. Labial harmony rarely occurs by itself, often co-occurring with palatal harmony in Turkic languages. After a detailed analysis of vowel harmony in Standard Turkish—which pays extensive attention to disharmonic roots—the chapter offers a typology of labial harmony systems in Turkic languages in general, based on several typological studies. Other topics that receive special attention are epenthetic vowels, labial attraction, defective patterns, dependencies among different harmonies, diphthongs, stand-alone labial harmony, and the decline of labial harmony in a wide variety of Turkic languages.
Typology of African tongue root systems
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: August 2018

The focus of this chapter is African languages and the various manifestations of tongue root harmony. While there is general agreement on the fact that a typical manifestation of vowel harmony involves the position of the tongue root, there is much controversy both on the phonetic detail of the tongue root distinction and on the nature of the phonological primes that are needed to account for tongue root harmony. Specific topics addressed include: the markedness paradox, patterns of merger, and opacity and transparency. There is also a discussion of vowel harmony in Bantu-C.
Other cases of vowel harmony
Authors: van der Hulst Harry
Published: August 2018

This Chapter discusses a number of cases of vowel harmony ‘on various continents’ and in various language families which have been reported as being either ‘unique’ (sometimes just because of their language family affiliation) or controversial in terms of their properties. Although the data on these languages is too limited to allow very specific analysis, the chapter will discuss them on the basis of the available data, and suggest ways of fitting them into the model that has been tested in the preceding six chapters. Among others, the following languages will be discussed: Middle Korean, Chukchi, Nez Perce, Karajá, Djingili, Kimaragang, Maltese, Assamese, Telugu, Pasiego Spanish, and Chamorro.
The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy
Authors: Brundin Abigail , Howard Deborah , Laven Mary
Published: August 2018

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores private devotional life in the Italian Renaissance home between 1400 and 1600, and suggests that piety was not confined to the Church and the convent but infused daily life within the household. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources help to cast light on the practice of religion in the home. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life—childbirth, marriage, infertility, sickness, accidents, poverty, and death. The book moves beyond traditional research on the Renaissance in important ways. First, it breaks free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome to investigate practices of piety across the Italian peninsula. In particular, new research into the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland offers fresh insights into the devotional life of the laity. Moreover, it goes beyond the study of elites to include artisanal and lower-status households, and points to the role of gender and age in shaping religious experience. Drawing on a wide range of textual, material, and visual sources, this book recovers a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday. Its multidisciplinary approach enables unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.
Regional Perspectives
Authors: Brundin Abigail , Howard Deborah , Laven Mary
Published: August 2018

Chapter 1 introduces the three locations which are focal points of this book’s research: the Veneto, the Marche, and Naples. Each was shaped by geography as well as history and exhibited a distinct cultural orientation: whereas the republic of Venice had strong links to Northern Europe through the transalpine trade routes, the region of the Marche was defined by its position within the Papal States and its relationship with the Adriatic, while Naples was for most of the period dominated by Spain. The three regions were independent in cult as well as culture. Each had its own shrines, miraculous images, centres of local pilgrimage, and favourite saints. All three showed a strong interest in religious reform long before the Reformation, and each reacted differently to the turmoil of the Counter Reformation.
Practical Truth
Authors: Charles David
Published: August 2018

This paper concerns Aristotle’s discussion of practical truth in Nicomachean Ethics VI.2.1139a17–b5. The essay falls into five sections. In the first three, I outline two styles of interpretation of Aristotle’s remarks and suggest that one of them (which I call ‘the third way’) gives a better reading than that offered by its major competitor (which I call ‘the two-component’ view). In the fourth I consider some texts in the remainder of NE VI which provide additional support for the third way of reading. In a brief concluding section, I seek to locate Aristotle’s view of practical truth, so understood, in a broader philosophical context.
Frankfurt
Authors: Schamp Eike W.
Published: August 2018

The European banking crisis and the subsequent euro crisis triggered considerable shocks in Germany’s financial world which fully revealed the weaknesses of the German banking sector. Changing regulation and the low-interest-rate policy from the European Central Bank put the bank’s business models into question. Furthermore, delays became apparent in the improvement of Frankfurt’s sector-specific infrastructure. Frankfurt’s resilience in the crises results from the entangled agency by various actors at local, national, and European levels. Employment in the financial sector at large remained rather stable. Frankfurt increased its role as a European centre in bank and insurance supervision and considerably improved its infrastructure in higher education and research as well as in the digital economy. Although still fragile in various aspects, Frankfurt may become a potential winner on the European continent from the forthcoming Brexit.
Singapore
Authors: Lai Karen P.Y.
Published: August 2018

This chapter examines the spatial and temporal dynamics shaping the development of financial markets and activities to account for the rise of Singapore as an international financial centre (IFC). The analysis draws upon the preceding 1997 Asian financial crisis as industry changes and policy response back then set the stage for subsequent industry shifts, which have shaped the responses and impacts of firms, regulators, and consumers following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Key industry shifts include banking liberalization and changing forms of financial consumption in Singapore. The growing prominence of financial markets and emerging sectors, such as Islamic banking and finance (IBF) and offshore renminbi (RMB), and fintech are also examined in terms of their importance for Singapore’s future role as an IFC.
The London Restaurant, 1840-1914
Authors: Assael Brenda
Published: August 2018

This book offers the first scholarly treatment of the history of public eating in London in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. The quotidian nature of taking a meal in public during the working day or evening should not be allowed to obscure the significance of the restaurant (defined broadly, to encompass not merely the prestigious West End restaurant, but also the modest refreshment room, and even the street cart) as a critical component in the creation of modern metropolitan culture. The story of the London restaurant between the 1840s and the First World War serves as an exemplary site for mapping the expansion of commercial leisure, the increasing significance of the service sector, the introduction of technology, the democratization of the public sphere, changing gender roles, and the impact of immigration. The book incorporates what I term ‘gastro-cosmopolitanism’ to highlight the existence of an international, heterogeneous, and even hybrid, culture in London in this period that requires us to think, not merely beyond the nation, but beyond empire. The restaurant also had an important role in contemporary debates about public health and the (sometimes conflicting, but no less often complementary) prerogatives of commerce, moral improvement, and liberal governance. This book considers the restaurant as a business and a place of employment, as well as an important site for the emergence of new forms of metropolitan experience and identity. While focused on London, it illustrates the complex ways in which cultural and commercial forces were intertwined in modern Britain, and demonstrates the rewards of writing histories which recognize the interplay between broad, global forces and highly localized spaces.
Introduction
Authors: Assael Brenda
Published: August 2018

This chapter presents the book’s broader arguments and isolates the specific ways in which the study makes a critical intervention in the historiography of modern Britain. It also introduces the different categories of source material, and then isolates four key motifs in the book. First, it demonstrates how the London restaurant raises important issues about geography and scale in the writing of the history, not merely of London, but of Britain and its relationship to the wider world. Second, it recovers categories of social actors (waiting staff, cooks, managers, and restaurant proprietors) who have been overlooked in the existing practices of social history. Third, this study of the restaurant requires us to acknowledge the service sector in the creation of metropolitan modernity. Fourth, it demonstrates the rewards of focusing on the more quotidian and congenial, as opposed to sensational or fraught, aspects of urban life.
Gastro-Cosmopolitanism and the Restaurant
Authors: Assael Brenda
Published: August 2018

Chapter 5 presents the restaurant as a valuable site for mapping patterns of transnational, global and cultural exchange. London’s diners were exposed to a variety of new, often hybrid, culinary cultures, which call into question simplistic binaries between Britain and the world beyond. The presence in London’s restaurants of French menus, Indian dishes, Italian cooks, Swiss proprietors, German waiters, and Chinese and American diners illustrates the complexity of the relationship between populations and places. London’s ‘gastro-cosmopolitanism’, my shorthand for this multilayered culture, reveals not merely the extent to which Britain’s imperial metropolis was exposed to transnational forces, but that these influences were genuinely global and not confined to Britain’s formal empire. More generally, the chapter suggests the value of appreciating the materially grounded, rather than merely discursive, aspects of cosmopolitanism in Britain in this period.
Dining in the Restaurant
Authors: Assael Brenda
Published: August 2018

Chapter 6 offers a sketch of those who ate out in London. It emphasizes the diversity of diners, defined in terms of both social class and, critically, gender. Here diners are mapped onto broader patterns of social change in the metropolis, notably suburbanization, the expansion of the service sector, and changing leisure patterns. The chapter pays attention to the increased presence of women eating out in order to locate the restaurant in wider discussions about the interconnections between the domestic and public spheres, and the emergence of new forms of hetero-sociability. By inserting the restaurant diner into our understanding of Victorian and Edwardian metropolitan culture, the chapter qualifies, and even repudiates, some of the dominant scholarly interpretations of how identities were fashioned and performed at this time.
Managing psychopharmaceutical drugs under prescription regimes
Authors: Babor Thomas F. , Caulkins Jonathan , Fischer Benedikt , Foxcroft David , Humphreys Keith , Medina-Mora María Elena , Obot Isidore , Rehm Jürgen , Reuter Peter , Room Robin , Rossow Ingeborg , Strang John
Published: August 2018

There is extraordinary cross-national variation in the availability of prescription psychoactive drugs, with most prescription drug use being concentrated in developed countries. A variety of measures aim to prevent abuses such as ‘doctor shopping’ and diversion of psychopharmaceuticals from the medical and pharmacy systems. The evidence suggests that prescription regimes affect the prescribing practices of doctors, often resulting in substitution. Price can be used to channel demand between two drugs that are substitutes for each other, moving demand from a drug with more adverse consequences to a less risky alternative. Advice to physicians on prescribing, has limited effect unless it concerns a new and serious side effect and alternative medicines can be prescribed. The development of a strong pharmacy system can limit illicit diversion of prescription medications, but cannot always prevent periodic epidemics of prescription drug misuse.