bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gender Stereotyping in Political Decision Making
Authors: Bauer Nichole M.
Published: March 2019

Women are under-represented at every level of elected office in the United States. As of 2018, women held just under 20% of seats in Congress, 25% of state legislative seats across the country, only six women serve as governor, and, of course, a woman has yet to win the presidency. The political under-representation of women is not unique to the American context. Indeed, women’s under-representation is a feature of other Western Democracies. Even under the leadership of female prime ministers, women hold only 32% of seats in the United Kingdom parliament and 31% of seats in the German parliament. Conventional wisdom suggests that feminine stereotypes may disadvantage female candidates. Feminine stereotypes characterize women as sensitive, emotional, and weak, and these are qualities voters do not traditionally associate with political leadership. Rather, voters associate political leadership with masculine traits such as being tough, aggressive, or assertive. The extent to which voters use these stereotypes in political decision making in the American context is not entirely clear.

There are three ways that feminine and masculine stereotypes can affect political decision making: candidate strategies, campaign news coverage, and vote choice decision. The alignment between masculine stereotypes and political leadership frequently pressures female candidates to emphasize masculine qualities over feminine qualities in campaign messages. Motivating these masculine messages is the perception that voters see female candidates as lacking the masculine qualities voters desire in political leaders. Male candidates, because of the alignment between masculinity and leadership roles, do not face this pressure. Female candidates will, however, highlight feminine stereotypes when these strategies will afford them a distinct electoral advantage. The use of masculinity in candidate strategy leads the news media, in turn, to use masculine stereotypes rather than feminine stereotypes in their coverage of both female and male candidates.

The ways that candidates and the news media engage with gender stereotypes affects how voters use these concepts to form impressions of female and male candidates. Voters will use feminine stereotypes as heuristics to form impressions of the ideological and issue priorities of female candidates. Feminine stereotypes can hurt the electoral prospects of female candidates, but the negative effect of feminine stereotypes only occurs under a limited set of conditions. Voters will use feminine stereotypes to rate female candidates negatively when female candidates explicitly emphasize feminine qualities, such as being warm or compassionate, in campaign messages. But, voters respond positively to female candidates who emphasize positive masculine qualities. In sum, whether gender stereotypes affect voter decision-making depends on the extent to which voters see messages, either from campaigns or the news media, that reflect femininity or masculinity.
Piracy and Maritime Security in Africa
Authors: Dua Jatin
Published: March 2019

In a seemingly virtual era, maritime commerce and shipping retain a central role in contemporary global capitalism. Approximately 90% of global imports and exports currently travel by sea on around 93,000 merchant vessels, carrying almost 6 billion tons of cargo. Oceanic mobility and long-distance networks of trade are made possible and sustained by the life and labor of over 1.25 million seafarers currently working at sea as well as regimes of global security and governance. Yet, this oceanic world and its role in shaping politics, sociality, and regulation remains, for the most part, obscured and hidden out of sight in everyday life. As one of the oldest perils at sea, maritime piracy is not only a daily threat to seafaring and global shipping but makes visible this oceanic world and the larger networks of security and regulation that govern maritime commerce.

In recent years, coastal Africa, specifically the waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea, has seen an unprecedented rise in incidents of maritime piracy. The geopolitical and global trade importance of these areas has led to numerous national, regional, and international military and legal responses to combat this problem. While often seen as a seaborne symptom of failed states or criminality, maritime piracy has a more complex relationship with land- and sea-based governance. Occurring primarily in spaces that are politically fragmented but reasonably stable maritime piracy is better understood as a practice of extraction and claim making on mobility that emerges from deeper historical contexts and is linked to land-based economies and politics. Emphasizing maritime piracy in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea within these wider historical and geographic contexts highlights the imbrication of the political and economic in shaping the emergence and transformations of this practice. This is not to deny the violence that constitutes maritime piracy, but to locate piracy within larger processes of mobility, governance, and political economy on the African continent and beyond. In addition to impacting local communities, seafarers, and global shipping, maritime piracy is key to apprehending challenges to global governance from the vantage point of the world’s oceans.
China’s Economic Impact on Africa
Authors: Shinn David H.
Published: March 2019

China’s economic impact on Africa in the 21st century has been enormous. China became Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009 and has subsequently widened the gap with Africa’s second largest trading partner. China is Africa’s largest bilateral source of loans and an important provider of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-equivalent aid, although well behind the European Union and the United States. Annual foreign direct investment flows by Chinese companies are growing and are now in the same league as companies from other major investing nations. Increasingly, African leaders are focusing their economic relationships on China and, because of China’s economic success, some of them are also looking to China as an economic and political model. The future in Africa of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the use of the renminbi (RMB) as an international currency are less clear.

China’s influence on African economies comes with challenges. China has developed a significant trade surplus with Africa. Although resource-rich African countries have sizable trade surpluses with China, most African countries, especially the resource-poor ones, have trade deficits, some of which are huge. The influx of inexpensive Chinese products is also stifling Africa’s ability to produce similar goods. African governments welcome Chinese loans, which are usually used for infrastructure projects, but there are signs these loans are contributing to a debt problem in an increasing number of countries. Most Chinese aid to Africa consists of the concessionary component of these loans. Small Chinese traders have flocked to Africa, competing head-to-head with African counterparts. This has led to growing antagonism with African market traders, although African consumers welcome the competition.

While Western countries collectively are much more important to African economies than is China, Beijing has become the single most important bilateral economic partner in a number of countries and is challenging the United States and Europe for economic leadership across the continent. China’s most significant competition in the coming years may be less from the United States and other Western and Western-affiliated countries such as Japan and more from developing countries such as India, Brazil, the Gulf States, Turkey, and Indonesia.
Zimbabwe: Regional Politics and Dynamics
Authors: Raftopoulos Brian
Published: March 2019

The persistent and changing forms of military interventions in global politics present continuing challenges for democratic agendas. Authoritarian regimes in Africa bolstered by militarist structures limit the possibilities for democratic alternatives. This can lead to desperate hopes that some form of militarism is a necessary prerequisite for democratic transition sometimes with the assistance of a popular sense of appeal. The outcome of such interventions is often a prelude to yet another round of authoritarian politics. In countries like Zimbabwe embedded in a Southern African region with a history of armed liberation struggles the narratives of a liberating militarism remain strong, as does the official ownership of the liberation narratives and the purported trajectory they should follow. However as these liberation parties face growing challenges from opposition voices that contest for their own claims on liberation histories, divisions and factions within the dominant parties have increased. The future of these struggles remains uncertain but there is a growing danger that a global preference for any form of political stabilization will marginalize the more difficult challenges of developing democratic alternatives.
Dynamic Process Tracing Methods in the Study of Political Decision Making
Authors: Chen Philip
Published: March 2019

Understanding how individuals make political decisions in a complex and ever-changing world requires recognition of the dynamic nature of the environment, as well as theoretical and methodological strategies to address these complications. As the scholarly understanding of the limits of human cognition expands, researchers can no longer rely on decision-making models that assume unlimited time, resources, and/or abilities of voters. Fortunately, dynamic process tracing models demonstrate the information processing component of decision-making, turning the focus away (slightly) from the decision outcome and toward the ways that people come to these decisions. These models derive from weaker, but more accurate, assumptions about the cognitive abilities of humans and provide critical insight into both the factors that voters consider when making decisions and the ways voters incorporate those factors into their decisions. In addition, thanks to the work of Lau and Redlawsk, these processes are directly observable with their Dynamic Process Tracing Environment (DPTE).

Researchers relying on dynamic process tracing models are now able to assess the influence of political and demographic factors on the pattern, content, and amount of information voters access and rely on when making political decisions. These models offer a more realistic view of voter abilities than rational choice models, as well as providing greater insight into the process of decision-making (rather than the outcome of the process) than much of the work deriving from the Michigan model of public opinion. Additionally, the DPTE offers advantages over earlier static information board studies.

Rather than seeing one’s self in conflict with decades of public opinion research, however, scholars in the dynamic process tracing tradition would be wise to consider their work as complementary. A focus on political variables as outcomes misses a crucial cognitive step: the evaluation of environmental stimuli through the lenses of short- and long-term predispositions. As scholars seek to understand why voters possess certain attitudes, they should ask how those attitudes were formed in the first place. Dynamic process tracing models allow for theorizing about and empirically testing components of the decision-making process previously left uninvestigated.
Trust and Social Relations in African Politics
Authors: Burbidge Dominic
Published: March 2019

Africa is a place of low social trust. This fact is significant for understanding the politics and economics of the region, whether for questions of national unity or economic coordination and growth. One of the central ways in which trust and social relations have come to be examined within the social sciences is through the notion of social capital, defined as the norms and networks that enable collective action. Use of the concept of social capital has mushroomed in popularity within academia since the 1980s and has been used within African studies to interpret the developmental effects of social relations. It is important to review how researchers have been synthesizing the study of African societies with the social capital approach, and offer suggestions on how this can be better achieved. Specifically, there is contradiction between the view that social capital is useful for economic development and the view that social capital means a community can decide its own economic goals. Students of social capital in Africa must accept that the cultural and normative diversity of the continent necessitates appreciation of the diverse aims of social networks. This means a rejection both of modernist theories of development and postmodern reduction of human relations to forms of power exchange. Future research on trust and social capital in Africa must give weight to community articulations of motivations to trust, what activities count as communal, and what new economic cultures are being formed as a result of present communal varieties.
Environmental Governance and the (Re-)Making of the African State
Authors: Ramutsindela Maano , Büscher Bram
Published: March 2019

State formation processes that are historically associated with the emergence of the modern state as well as the post-colony have been punctuated by the rise of environmentalism, especially the need for nation-states to respond to, as well as manage environmental challenges. Responses to these challenges by multiple actors such as the state, industry, environmental nongovernmental organizations, and financial institutions culminate in environmental governance and in the co-constitution of environment and state making. The state–environment relations have produced new forms of governmentality that refocus the activities of the state toward globally defined environmental agendas. In Africa attempts by multiple actors to manage the environment have transformed the state in five principal ways: (1) They enable global capitalism to enroll African environments in a niche area for capital accumulation but also tie up African governments to environmentally related business interests; (2) environmental governance in Africa and elsewhere leads to resistance and contestations over natural resources that in turn shape the relationship between the state and its citizens; (3) global environmental issues have led to environmental solidarity among African states, which they use to negotiate environmental agreements at the international stage; (4) environmental threats such as the poaching of wildlife in Africa integrate African states into global security frameworks that in effect threaten or corrode the integrity of the African state; and (5) environmental challenges and the opportunities that come with environmental solutions create conditions for competition among African states as well as the formation of new alliances among states. These outcomes highlight the significance of the state–environment nexus in the continuous (re-)making of the African state.
Foreign Policy and Religion: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Israel
Authors: Hummel Daniel G.
Published: March 2019

Religion has played a constant role in the United States–Israel relationship. Christian and Jewish interests have shaped U.S. foreign policy, especially after the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The role of religion Israel has historically depended on three interlinking factors: the influence of domestic political considerations in the calculations of American policymakers, the prominence of the Middle East in U.S. diplomatic and strategic thinking, and the beliefs and attitudes of individual policymakers, both their own religious convictions and their assessment of how important religious beliefs are to the American people.

Religion has alternately strengthened and strained the U.S. relationship with the Zionist movement and the state of Israel. At some moments, such as the 1930s, religious attitudes and prejudices worked against closer cooperation. At other times, such as the Israeli–Egyptian peace summit of 1978, religious forces played a prominent role. As a state with special religious significance for many Americans, Israel provides a window into how religion functions in U.S. foreign policy, how its function has changed over time, and how religion has acted as an independent variable in political and policy outcomes.
Multilevel Modeling and Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling in Lifespan Developmental Analyses
Authors: Fine Kimberly L. , Grimm Kevin J.
Published: March 2019

Multilevel modeling is a data analytic framework that is appropriate when analyzing data that are dependent due to the clustering of observations in higher-level units. Clustered data appear in a variety of disciplines, which makes multilevel modeling a necessary data analytic tool for many researchers. Longitudinal data are a special kind of clustered data as the repeated observations are clustered within individuals. Multilevel models can be applied to longitudinal data to examine how individuals change over time and how individuals differ in their change processes over time. For longitudinal data, linear multilevel models, where the fixed- and random-effects parameters enter the model in a linear fashion, and nonlinear multilevel models, where at least one fixed-and/or random-effect parameter enters the model in a nonlinear fashion are commonly estimated to examine different forms of the individual change process. Multilevel structural equation modeling is an extension of multilevel modeling that allows for multivariate outcomes, and this framework is very useful for modeling multivariate longitudinal data (e.g., multivariate growth models and second-order growth models).
Group Processes Within Gangs
Authors: Lauger Timothy R.
Published: March 2019

Street gangs are, by definition, social groups that contain patterns of interactions between gang members, associates, and other gangs in their social environment. The structure and content of these interaction patterns, or group processes, are essential for both understanding gang life and explaining collective and individual behavior. For example, variations in organizational sophistication, internal cohesion, and individual-level social integration influence the day-to-day experiences of gang members and can affect criminal behavior. Social ties between gang members are also mediums for street socialization and the development and/or transmission of gang culture. As prospective gang members age and become exposed to street life, they gravitate to peers and collectively learn about how to negotiate their social environment. They connect to other gang members and model the gang’s ideals to become accepted by the group. Routine interactions in the gang communicate the nuances of gang culture and explain the group’s expectations for violent behavior. These lessons are reinforced when conflicts with other groups arise and contentious interactions escalate into serious threats or actual violence. Cultural meanings developed in the gang can alter how a member perceives social situations, various social roles (e.g., gender roles), and his or her sense of self. Interactions within the gang develop the gang’s collective identity, which becomes an ideal standard for members to pursue. Gang members perform this idealized notion of “gang member” in public settings, often acting as if they are capable of extreme violence. For some members these performances may be fleeting and largely disconnected from the ideals to which they truly aspire, while others may fully embrace the ideals of the gang. Such variation is contingent on social processes within the gang and how socially integrated an individual is to other members. Researching social processes within gangs provides a wealth of information about how life in the gang influences gang member behavior.
Crustacean Visual Circuits Underlying Behavior
Authors: Tomsic Daniel , Sztarker Julieta
Published: March 2019

Decapod crustaceans, in particular semiterrestrial crabs, are highly visual animals that greatly rely on visual information. Their responsiveness to visual moving stimuli, with behavioral displays that can be easily and reliably elicited in the laboratory, together with their sturdiness for experimental manipulation and the accessibility of their nervous system for intracellular electrophysiological recordings in the intact animal, make decapod crustaceans excellent experimental subjects for investigating the neurobiology of visually guided behaviors. Investigations of crustaceans have elucidated the general structure of their eyes and some of their specializations, the anatomical organization of the main brain areas involved in visual processing and their retinotopic mapping of visual space, and the morphology, physiology, and stimulus feature preferences of a number of well-identified classes of neurons, with emphasis on motion-sensitive elements. This anatomical and physiological knowledge, in connection with results of behavioral experiments in the laboratory and the field, are revealing the neural circuits and computations involved in important visual behaviors, as well as the substrate and mechanisms underlying visual memories in decapod crustaceans.
Professional Experience for International Students within the Australian Teacher Education Context
Authors: Barton Georgina , Hartwig Kay
Published: March 2019

The business of international students in the higher education sector is a crucial part of many countries’ economic development and intercultural richness. In fact, in Australia participation of international students in university study accounts for the third highest export industry behind iron ore and coal with similar trends seen in other countries. Given that such a large proportion of students across the globe are international, it is important that higher educators are able to support them appropriately through their study. Research literature has identified a number of issues international students face including homesickness, being away from family and friends, financial hardship, accommodation concerns, and cultural difference including language. Further concerns may arise when international students undertake a professional experience in an authentic workplace such as in a work integrated learning (WIL) experience or practicum or internship. For international students studying teacher education students are expected to complete a number of professional experiences within the schooling sector. Research about teacher education international students’ experience in schools has often focused on negative aspects related to this component of study rather than the success that many students enjoy. In fact, supervisors or the work colleagues who are responsible for assessing international students often report mutual benefits through hosting. International students in teacher education face several difficult issues as well as success, and this includes international students in Australia and domestic students undertaking professional experience overseas. A model of effective practice for all stakeholders in teacher education professional experience can be useful.
The Empire of Ghana
Authors: Gestrich Nikolas
Published: March 2019

The Empire of Ghana is one of the earliest known political formations in West Africa. Within the context of a growing trans-Saharan trade, Arabic sources begin to mention “Ghāna,” the name of a ruler as well as of the city or country he ruled, in the 9th century. Repeatedly named in connection with fabulous riches in gold, Ghāna had acquired a preeminent role in the western Sahel and was a leader among a large group of smaller polities. Ghāna’s influence waned, and by the mid-14th century its ruler had become subordinate to the Empire of Mali. Over the course of a complex history of research, the Empire of Ghana became equated with the Soninké people’s legend of Wagadu and the archaeological site of Kumbi Saleh in southern Mauritania was identified as its capital. Yet between historical sources, oral traditions, and archaeological finds, little is known with certainty about the Empire of Ghana. Most questions on this early West African empire remain unanswered, including its location, development, the nature and extent of its rule, and the circumstances of its demise.
Rodrigues, Deolinda
Authors: Paredes Margarida
Published: March 2019

Deolinda Rodrigues is a prominent figure in the Angolan history of the Liberation Struggle. Her thought and life history are relatively unknown in and outside Angola. Reflection on her life and thought is also hampered by the fact that there are few analytical works of literature produced about her life and literary work. Rodrigues is also marginalized in the nationalist historiography on Angola.

Rodrigues’s story is an important one. She was a political activist and nationalist thinker and a woman who struggled in Angola while in exile against the gendered stereotypes of the day and of her compatriots. Studying her life and work opens up late colonial life in Angola for those from the educated classes who fought for their country’s independence from the political, social, economic, and intellectual oppression of Portuguese imperialism. While Rodrigues is considered a heroine in Angola, few Angolans know much about her writing or thinking. Outside Angola she is virtually unknown, yet her life points to the intersection of radical black politics, liberation movements, gendered forms of nationalism, and international beneficence networks that can enrich our understanding of each of these elements.

Rodrigues’s autobiographical work, posthumously published by her brother, Roberto de Almeida, “Diário de um Exílio sem Regresso” (Diary of an exile with no return), 2003 edition, and “Cartas de Langidila e outros Documentos” (Langidila’s letters and other documents), 2004 edition, have made this study possible.
Economics of Agglomeration
Authors: Thisse Jacques-François
Published: March 2019

Despite the drop in transport and commuting costs since the mid-19th century, sizable and lasting differences across locations at very different spatial scales remain the most striking feature of the space-economy. The main challenges of the economics of agglomeration are therefore (a) to explain why people and economic activities are agglomerated in a few places and (b) to understand why some places fare better than others.

To meet these challenges, the usual route is to appeal to the fundamental trade-off between (internal and external) increasing returns and various mobility costs. This trade-off has a major implication for the organization of the space-economy: High transport and commuting costs foster the dispersion of economic activities, while strong increasing returns act as a strong agglomeration force.

The first issue is to explain the existence of large and persistent regional disparities within nations or continents. At that spatial scale, the mobility of commodities and production factors is critical. By combining new trade theories with the mobility of firms and workers, economic geography shows that a core periphery structure can emerge as a stable market outcome.

Second, at the urban scale, cities stem from the interplay between agglomeration and dispersion forces: The former explain why firms and consumers want to be close to each other whereas the latter put an upper limit on city sizes. Housing and commuting costs, which increase with population size, are the most natural candidates for the dispersion force. What generates agglomeration forces is less obvious. The literature on urban economics has highlighted the fact that urban size is the source of various benefits, which increase firm productivity and consumer welfare.

Within cities, agglomeration also occurs in the form of shopping districts where firms selling differentiated products congregate. Strategic location considerations and product differentiation play a central role in the emergence of commercial districts because firms compete with a small number of close retailers.
Frameworks for Priority Setting in Health and Social Care
Authors: Collins Marissa , McHugh Neil , Baker Rachel , Morton Alec , Frith Lucy , Syrett Keith , Donaldson Cam
Published: March 2019

Health and social care organizations work within the context of limited resources. Different techniques to aid resource allocation and decision-making exist and are important as scarcity of resources in health and social care is inescapable. Healthcare systems, regardless of how they are organized, must decide what services to provide given the resources available. This is particularly clear in systems funded by taxation, which have limited budgets and other limited resources (staff, skills, facilities, etc.) and in which the claims on these resources outstrip supply.

Healthcare spending in many countries is not expected to increase over the short or medium term. Therefore, frameworks to set priorities are increasingly required. Four disciplines provide perspectives on priority setting: economics, decision analysis, ethics, and law. Although there is overlap amongst these perspectives, they are underpinned by different principles and processes for priority setting. As the values and viewpoints of those involved in priority setting in health and social care will differ, it is important to consider how these could be included to inform a priority setting process. It is proposed that these perspectives and the consideration of values and viewpoints could be brought together in a combined priority setting framework for use within local health and social care organizations.
New Technologies and Costs in Healthcare
Authors: Atella Vincenzo , Kopinska Joanna
Published: March 2019

New sanitation and health technology applied to treatments, procedures, and devices is constantly revolutionizing epidemiological patterns. Since the early 1900s it has been responsible for significant improvements in population health by turning once-deadly diseases into curable or preventable conditions, by expanding the existing cures to more patients and diseases, and by simplifying procedures for both medical and organizational practices. Notwithstanding the benefits of technological progress for the population health, the innovation process is also an important driver of health expenditure growth across all countries. The technological progress generates additional financial burden and expands the volume of services provided, which constitutes a concern from an economic point of view. Moreover, the evolution of technology costs and their impact on healthcare spending is difficult to predict due to the revolutionary nature of many innovations and their adoption. In this respect, the challenge for policymakers is to discourage overadoption of ineffective, unnecessary, and inappropriate technologies. This task has been long carried out through regulation, which according to standard economic theory is the only response to market failures and socially undesirable outcomes of healthcare markets left on their own. The potential welfare loss of a market failure must be confronted with the costs of regulatory activities. While health technology evolution delivers important value for patients and societies, it will continue to pose important challenges for already overextended public finances.
US Colonial Education in Guam, 1899–1950
Authors: Flores Alfred P.
Published: March 2019

Following the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the illegal overthrow and annexation of Hawai‘i, the US government transplanted its colonial education program to places in the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. Specifically, American Sāmoa, Guam, Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the US Virgin Islands would all have some aspect of the native boarding school system implemented. In many ways, the colonial education system in Guam was emblematic and exceptional to native boarding schools in the continental United States. Utilizing Guam as a case study reveals how the US military used schools as a site to spread settler colonial policies in an attempt to transform Chamorros into colonial subjects who would support American occupation.
Working-Class Environmentalism in America
Authors: Dewey Scott
Published: March 2019

“Working-Class Environmentalism in America” traces working Americans’ efforts to protect the environment from antebellum times to the present. Antebellum topics include African American slaves’ environmental ethos; aesthetic nature appreciation by Lowell, Massachusetts “mill girls” working in New England’s first textile factories; and Boston’s 1840s fight for safe drinking water. Late-19th-century topics include working-class support for creating urban parks, workers’ early efforts to confront urban pollution and the “smoke nuisance,” and the exploration of conservationist ideas and policies by New England small farmers and fishermen in the late 1800s.

In the early 20th century, working-class youth, including immigrants and African Americans, participated in the youth camping movement and the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of America, while working-class adults and their families, enjoying new automobility and two-day weekends, discovered picnicking, car-camping, and sport hunting and fishing in newly created wilderness preserves. Workers also learned of toxic dangers to workplace safety and health from shocking stories of 1920s New Jersey “radium girls” and tetraethyl lead factory workers, and from 1930s Midwestern miners who went on strike over deadly silicosis. The 1930s United States rediscovered natural resource conservation when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed millions of working-class youth. Lumber workers advocated federal regulation of timber harvesting.

Postwar America saw the United Auto Workers (UAW), United Steelworkers (USWA), Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and other labor unions lobbying for wilderness and wildlife preservation, workplace and community health, and fighting air and water pollution, while the United Farmworkers (UFW) fought reckless pesticide use, and dissidents within the United Mine Workers (UMW) sought to ban surface coal mining. Radical organizations explored minority community environmentalism and interracial cooperation on environmental reform. Following post-1970s nationwide conservative retrenchment, working-class activists and communities of color fought toxic wastes and explored environmental justice and environmental racism at places like Love Canal, New York and Warren County, North Carolina and formed the Blue-Green Alliance with environmentalists.
US War in Iraq since 2003
Authors: Sayle Timothy Andrews
Published: March 2019

In March 2003 US and coalition forces invaded Iraq. US forces withdrew in December 2008. Approximately 4,400 US troops were killed and 31,900 wounded during the initial invasion and the subsequent war. Estimates of Iraqi casualties vary widely, ranging from roughly 100,000 to more than half a million. The invasion was launched as part of the US strategic response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and ended the rule of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. After the collapse of the regime, Iraq experienced significant violence as former regime loyalists launched insurgent attacks against US forces, and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), a group linked to al-Qaeda, also attacked US forces and sought to precipitate sectarian civil war. Simultaneously with the increasing violence, Iraq held a series of elections that resulted in a new Constitution and an elected parliament and government. In 2007, the United States deployed more troops to Iraq to quell the insurgency and sectarian strife. The temporary increase in troops was known as “the Surge.” In November 2008, the US and Iraqi governments agreed that all US troops would withdraw from Iraq by December 2011. In 2014, AQI, now calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), attacked and captured large swaths of Iraq, including several large cities. That year, the United States and allied states launched new military operations in Iraq called Operation Inherent Resolve. The government of Iraq declared victory over ISIL in 2017.
Theories and Experiences of Guerrilla Warfare across the Americas
Authors: May Rachel
Published: March 2019

The strategy of irregular warfare has been used since ancient times, but the term “guerrilla warfare” seems to have originated in early-19th-century Spain during the Napoleonic wars. “Guerrilla” is the diminutive of the Spanish word for war—guerra. During the Napoleonic wars, British troops used the term guerrillero (warrior) to refer to the Spanish and Portuguese rebels. The form of irregular warfare waged by these resistance fighters, who were engaging French troops during the Napoleonic invasion and occupation, became known as “guerrilla warfare.” The term was then used to refer to rebel troops in the Americas who led the battles for independence against Spanish troops. More recently, “guerrilla warfare,” as both a strategy and an ideology, is most closely associated with the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the subsequent publication of the treatise and manual Guerrilla Warfare by Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Guevara did not invent the idea of guerrilla warfare, but the unique (and ultimately successful) approach to making revolution in Cuba and Guevara’s important treatise on the subject did change the general understanding and meaning of the concept. Guevara’s explanation of guerrilla warfare in the context of the armed revolutionary struggle in Cuba changed the trajectory of Marxist revolutionary thought and actions in the 20th century as well.
Digital Resources: Guaman Poma’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno
Authors: Adorno Rolena
Published: March 2019

Recorded in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2007, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615) offers remarkable glimpses into ancient Andean institutions and traditions as well as those of colonialized Andean society in the Spanish viceroyalty of Peru. Housed at the Royal Library of Denmark since the 1660s and first published in photographic facsimile in 1936, the autograph manuscript (written and drawn by its author’s own hand) has been the topic of research in Andean studies for several decades. Prepared by an international team of technicians and scholars, the digital facsimile was placed online on the newly created Guaman Poma Website at the Royal Library in 2001. Thanks to its free global access, research has accelerated, offering new and ongoing challenges in such fields as history, art history, environmental studies, linguistics, literary, and cultural studies in Andeanist, Latin Americanist, and post-colonialist perspectives. The work’s 1,200 pages (of which 400 are full-page drawings) offer Guaman Poma’s novel account of pre-Columbian Andean and modern Spanish conquest history as well as his sometimes humorous but most often harrowing exposé of the activities of all the castes and classes of the colonial society of his day. Guaman Poma’s account reveals how social roles and identities could evolve under colonial rule over the course of a single individual’s lifetime. As a Quechua speaker who learned Spanish, and thus called an “indio ladino” by the colonizers, Guaman Poma’s Quechua-inflected Spanish prose may present reading challenges in both its handwritten form and searchable typeset transcription, but his 400 drawings welcome casual as well as scholarly and student readers into the rooms and onto the roadways of that multi-ethnic—Andean, African, Spanish, and Spanish creole—world.
American Structuralism
Authors: Thomas Margaret
Published: March 2019

American structuralism is a label attached to a heterogeneous but distinctive style of language scholarship practiced in the United States, the heyday of which extended from around 1920 until the late 1950s. There is certainly diversity in the interests and intellectual stances of American structuralists. Nevertheless, some minimum common denominators stand out. American structuralists valued synchronic linguistic analysis, independent of—but not to the exclusion of—study of a language’s development over time; they looked for, and tried to articulate, systematic patterns in language data, attending in particular to the sound properties of language and to morphophonology; they identified their work as part of a science of language, rather than as philology or as a facet of literary studies, anthropology, or the study of particular languages. Some American structuralists tried to establish the identity or difference of linguistic units by studying their distribution with respect to other units, rather than by relying on identity or difference of meaning. Some (but not all) American structuralists avoided cross-linguistic generalizations, perceiving them as a threat to the hard-won notion of the integrity of individual languages; some (but not all) avoided attributing patterns they discovered in particular languages to cultural or psychological proclivities of speakers. A considerable amount of American structuralist research focused on indigenous languages of the Americas. One outstanding shared achievement of the group was the institutionalization of linguistics as an autonomous discipline in the United States, materialized by the founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924.

This composite picture of American structuralists needs to be balanced by recognition of their diversity. One important distinction is between the goals and orientations of foundational figures: Franz Boas (1858–1942), Edward Sapir (1884–1939), and Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949). The influence of Boas, Sapir, and Bloomfield was strongly felt by the next generation of language scholars, who went on to appropriate, expand, modify, or otherwise retouch their ideas to produce what is called post-Bloomfieldian linguistics. Post-Bloomfieldian linguistics displays its own internal diversity, but still has enough coherence to put into relief the work of other language scholars who were close contemporaries to the post-Bloomfieldians, but who in various ways and for various reasons departed from them. American structuralism has at least this much heterogeneity.

This article illustrates the character of American structuralism in the first half of the 20th century. Analysis of a corpus of presidential addresses presented to the Linguistic Society of America by key American structuralists grounds the discussion, and provides a microcosm within which to observe some of its most salient features: both the shared preoccupations of American structuralists and evidence of the contributions of individual scholars to a significant collaborative project in the history of linguistics.
Social Media
Authors: Rodriguez Maria , Shelton Jama
Published: March 2019

Social media are defined as applications and websites that allows users to share content, usually of their own making. More than just a teenage pastime, social media users include individuals and organizations, across a broad range of social positionalities. Key social work organizations, such as the NASW and AWSB, have begun noting the proliferation of social media usage in education and practice and have begun developing guidelines to govern their use. The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), in their Grand Challenges of Social Work initiative, has also highlighted social media as an important area of growth for research and education. Despite the field’s nascent enthusiasm, practical and ethical concerns persist.
Novel Metabolites Are Associated With Augmentation Index and Pulse Wave Velocity: Findings From the Bogalusa Heart Study
Authors: Li Changwei , He Jiang , Li Shengxu , Chen Wei , Bazzano Lydia , Sun Xiao , Shen Luqi , Liang Lirong , Shen Ye , Gu Xiaoying , Kelly Tanika N
Published: March 2019

BACKGROUND

Metabolomics study may help identify novel mechanisms underlying arterial stiffening.

METHODS

We performed untargeted metabolomics profiling among 1,239 participants of the Bogalusa Heart Study. After quality control, 1,202 metabolites were evaluated for associations with augmentation index (AI) and pulse wave velocity (PWV), using multivariate linear regression adjusting for age, sex, race, education, smoking, drinking, body weight, body height, physical activity, and estimated glomerular filtration rate. Heart rate, blood pressure and antihypertensive medication usage, lipids, and fasting glucose were sequentially adjusted in the sensitivity analyses for significant metabolites. Weighted correlation network analysis was applied to build metabolite networks.

RESULTS

Six novel metabolites were negatively associated with AI, of which, 3-methyl-2-oxobutyrate had the lowest P value and the largest effect size (β = –6.67, P = 5.99 × 10–6). Heart rate contributed to a large proportion (25%–58%) of the association for each metabolite. Twenty-one novel metabolites were identified for PWV, of which, fructose (β = 0.61, P = 6.18 × 10–10) was most significant, and histidine had the largest effect size (β = –1.09, P = 2.51 × 10–7). Blood pressure played a major contribution (9%–54%) to the association for each metabolite. Furthermore, 16 metabolites were associated with arterial stiffness independent of traditional risk factors. Network analysis identified 2 modules associated with both AI and PWV (P < 8.00 × 10–4). One was composed of metabolites from the glycerolipids synthesis and recycling pathway, and the other was involved in valine, leucine, and isoleucine metabolism. One module related to sphingomyelin metabolism was associated with PWV only (P = 0.002).

CONCLUSIONS

This study has identified novel and important metabolites and metabolic networks associated with arterial stiffness.
PgpRules: a decision tree based prediction server for P-glycoprotein substrates and inhibitors
Authors: Wang Pei-Hua , Tu Yi-Shu , Tseng Yufeng J
Published: March 2019

P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is a member of ABC transporter family that actively pumps xenobiotics out of cells to protect organisms from toxic compounds. P-gp substrates can be easily pumped out of the cells to reduce their absorption; conversely P-gp inhibitors can reduce such pumping activity. Hence, it is crucial to know if a drug is a P-gp substrate or inhibitor in view of pharmacokinetics. Here we present PgpRules, an online P-gp substrate and P-gp inhibitor prediction server with ruled-sets. The two models were built using classification and regression tree algorithm. For each compound uploaded, PgpRules not only predicts whether the compound is a P-gp substrate or a P-gp inhibitor, but also provides the rules containing chemical structural features for further structural optimization.

Availability and implementation

PgpRules is freely accessible at https://pgprules.cmdm.tw/.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.