bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Classical Kinetic Theory
Authors: Morawetz Klaus
Published: February 2018

The classical non-ideal gas shows that the two original concepts of the pressure based of the motion and the forces have eventually developed into drift and dissipation contributions. Collisions of realistic particles are nonlocal and non-instant. A collision delay characterizes the effective duration of collisions, and three displacements, describe its effective non-locality. Consequently, the scattering integral of kinetic equation is nonlocal and non-instant. The non-instant and nonlocal corrections to the scattering integral directly result in the virial corrections to the equation of state. The interaction of particles via long-range potential tails is approximated by a mean field which acts as an external field. The effect of the mean field on free particles is covered by the momentum drift. The effect of the mean field on the colliding pairs causes the momentum and the energy gains which enter the scattering integral and lead to an internal mechanism of energy conversion. The entropy production is shown and the nonequilibrium hydrodynamic equations are derived. Two concepts of quasiparticle, the spectral and the variational one, are explored with the help of the virial of forces.
Nonequilibrium Green’s Functions
Authors: Morawetz Klaus
Published: February 2018

The method of the equation of motion is used to derive the Martin–Schwinger hierarchy for the nonequilibrium Green’s functions. The formal closure of the hierarchy is reached by using the selfenergy which provides a recipe for how to construct selfenergies from approximations of the two-particle Green’s function. The Langreth–Wilkins rules for a diagrammatic technique are shown to be equivalent to the weakening of initial correlations. The quantum transport equations are derived in the general form of Kadanoff and Baym equations. The information contained in the Green’s function is discussed. In equilibrium this leads to the Matsubara diagrammatic technique.
Approximations for the Selfenergy
Authors: Morawetz Klaus
Published: February 2018

The systematic expansion of the selfenergy is presented with the help of the closure relation of chapter 7. Besides Hartree–Fock leading to meanfield kinetic equations, the random phase approximation (RPA) is shown to result into the Lennard–Balescu kinetic equation, and the ladder approximation into the Beth–Uehling–Uhlenbeck kinetic equation. The deficiencies of the ladder approximation are explored compared to the exact T-matrix by missing maximally crossed diagrams. The T-matrix provides the Bethe–Salpeter equation for the two-particle correlation functions. Vertex corrections to the RPA are presented. For a two-dimensional example, the selfenergy and effective mass are calculated. The structure factor and the pair-correlation function are introduced and calculated for various approximations.
Material Texts
Authors: Kornicki Peter Francis
Published: February 2018

This chapter deals with the forms in which Chinese texts reached neighbouring societies and were reproduced there. Thanks to the spread of paper-making technology, the materials with which to make manuscripts were plentiful, and in fact manuscripts continued to form an important part of book production even after the advent of print. The earliest kind of printing was xylography (woodblock printing), which was probably first put to use in China in the seventh century and rapidly spread to Korea, Japan, and elsewhere. In the eleventh century typography (movable type printing) was invented in China, but it was not put to much use there: rather, it was in the Tangut empire and Korea that typography, under the auspices of the state, came to be used extensively for book production. Typography also reached Japan and Vietnam, but had only a limited impact and in both societies xylography remained dominant.
Written Vernacular Translation
Authors: Kornicki Peter Francis
Published: February 2018

Unlike vernacular reading, which required readers to construct their own translations as they read, written vernacular translation produced a fixed text. Translation was widespread in East Asia, albeit rather less so in Japan; it was mostly undertaken by the societies that imported texts from China, rather than being undertaken in China as a kind of cultural export. After the invention of han’gŭl in the middle of the fifteenth century, an extensive range of Buddhist, Confucian, and other works was translated into Korean: as in Vietnam, most of these took the form of hybrid texts which included both the Sinitic original and the translation, and the object seems to have been to provide a translation for the sake of beginners learning how to read Sinitic texts. In Japan such hybrid editions were much rarer and it was more common for translations to replace the original.
Crime Control and Everyday Life in the Victorian City
Authors: Churchill David
Published: February 2018

This book provides the first detailed study of policing and civilian crime control in nineteenth-century England. It provides a sustained, empirically rich critique of existing accounts, which present the modern history of crime control as a process whereby the state wrested governmental power from the civilian public. According to the orthodox interpretation, the formation of new, ‘professional’ police forces in the nineteenth century is integral to the decline of an early modern, participatory, discretionary culture of self-policing, and its replacement by a modern, bureaucratic system of crime control. This book critically challenges the established view, and presents a fundamental reinterpretation of changes to crime control in the age of the new police. It breaks new ground by providing a highly detailed, empirical analysis of informal, civilian crime control—which reveals the tremendous activity which ordinary people displayed in responding to crime—alongside a rich survey of formal policing and criminal justice. With unique conceptual clarity, it seeks to reorient modern criminal justice history away from its established preoccupation with state systems of policing and punishment, and move towards a more nuanced analysis of the governance of crime. More widely, the book provides a valuable vantage point from which to rethink the role of civil society and the state in modern governance, the nature of agency and authority in Victorian England, and the historical antecedents of the pluralized modes of crime control which characterize contemporary society.
Assets, Gender, and Rural Livelihoods
Authors: Djurfeldt Agnes Andersson
Published: February 2018

In this chapter, cross-sectional data are used to assess changes in key assets and how this varies by sex of head of household using a regional perspective. Gender-based asset gaps vary regionally and also shift over time. Agricultural assets were generally biased against female farm managers. Changes in land size had a negative effect on female-managed farms (FMFs) when compared with male-managed farms. Gender biases with respect to land lie primarily in the size of cultivated areas, which is related to labour. The share of male labour is lower on FMFs. This is connected to smaller land sizes and lower use of particular irrigation techniques. Housing standard, consumer durables, and savings are less gender biased. Female farm managers in general command less male labour, and the land that they cultivate appears to be adjusted to their labour resources. Incomes generated by these households are invested in housing, consumer durables, and savings.
Agricultural Intensification Response to Agricultural Input Subsidies in Tanzania: A Spatial-Temporal and Gender Perspective, 2002–15
Authors: Msuya Elibariki E. , Isinika Aida Cuthbert , Dzanku Fred Mawunyo
Published: February 2018

In Tanzania, structural adjustment policies implemented during the 1980s removed all agricultural subsidies. However, declining productivity and production of maize and rice—the main food crops—forced the government to restore subsidies in 2003. This chapter examines the impact of the agricultural input subsidy programme, looking at farmers’ response to subsidized inorganic fertilizer and improved maize and rice seed—discerning gender and temporal impacts. Farmers in Iringa and Morogoro were highly responsive to the fertilizer and seed components of the input subsidy, and their response was sensitive to the magnitude of the subsidy. Farmers in Morogoro were less responsive to both technologies due to dominance of rice production. Adoption was lower for female-managed farms, with corresponding lower livelihood outcomes, attributed to lower resource endowment. It is therefore recommended that underperforming farmers, including female farm manages in lower wealth ranks, required initiative to improve their productivity and production.
A Feeling for Things, Past and Present
Authors: Downes Stephanie , Holloway Sally , Randles Sarah
Published: February 2018

This chapter gives an overview of the state of cross-disciplinary research into objects and emotions. It considers major intellectual works from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, art and design history, history, literary studies, philosophy, and psychology from the perspective of the history of emotions, in order to assess which current major directions in these fields may be most useful for those seeking to write affective histories of the material world. By investigating the critical history of objects and emotions and reflecting on the state of the field today, the authors offer an interdisciplinary frame for the essays that follow, outlining various methodologies and their implications for emotions research in the humanities in general.
Scalar field with λϕ4 interaction
Authors: Kachelriess Michael
Published: February 2018

The generating functionals Z[J] and W[J] for the λϕ4 theory are evaluated perturbatively and expressed through Feynman diagrams. The resulting Feynman rules are derived and the three basic one-loop diagrams of the λϕ4 theory are calculated. The main idea of renormalisation is illustrated using as example ϕϕ → ϕϕ scattering at O(λ2).
Global symmetries and Noether’s theorem
Authors: Kachelriess Michael
Published: February 2018

Noethers theorem shows that continuous global symmetries lead classically to conservation laws. Such symmetries can be divided into spacetime and internal symmetries. The invariance of Minkowski space-time under global Poincaré transformations leads to the conservation of the four-momentum and the total angular momentum. Examples for conserved charges due to internal symmetries are electric and colour charge. The vacuum expectation value of a Noether current is shown to beconserved in a quantum field theory if the symmetry transformation keeps the path-integral measure invariant.
Conclusions
Authors: Schifano Norma
Published: February 2018

Chapter 6 summarizes the main contributions of the book, as well as topics for future research. From an empirical point of view, the book has shown that four distinct macro-typologies of verb movement can be identified which can be predicted on the basis of independent morphological properties of the languages under investigation, thus casting new light on the long-debated issue of the interplay between ‘rich’ morphology and verb movement. From a methodological point of view, the volume has shown the importance of formulating analyses which are not language-specific but have a wider empirical basis. From a theoretical perspective, it has underlined the advantages of using a hybrid minimalist-cartographic framework. Questions for future research include whether it is possible to extend and adapt the present approach to other language families, such as Germanic, and investigating whether the proposed approach makes the correct predictions once diachronic variation too is taken into account.
The Correspondence of Charles Hutton
Authors: Wardhaugh Benjamin
Published: February 2018

This book contains complete transcriptions, with notes, of the 133 surviving letters of Charles Hutton (1737–1823). The letters span the period 1770–1823 and are drawn from nearly thirty different archives. Most have not been published before. Hutton was one of the most prominent British mathematicians of his generation. He played roles at the Royal Society, the Royal Military Academy, the Board of Longitude, the ‘philomath’ network, and elsewhere. He worked on the explosive force of gunpowder and the mean density of the earth, winning the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1778; he was also at the focus of a celebrated row at the Royal Society in 1784 over the place of mathematics there. He is of particular historical interest because of the variety of roles he played in British mathematics, the dexterity with which he navigated, exploited, and shaped personal and professional networks in mathematics and science, and the length and public profile of his career. Hutton corresponded nationally and internationally, and his correspondence illustrates the overlapping, intersection, and interaction of the different networks in which Hutton moved. It therefore provides new information about how Georgian mathematics was structured socially and how mathematical careers worked in that period. It provides a rare and valuable view of a mathematical culture that would substantially cease to exist when British mathematics embraced continental methods from the early nineteenth century onwards.
Introduction
Authors: Zehfuss Maja
Published: February 2018

This chapter traces the rise of Western war as ethical war since the end of the Cold War, that is, war that is claimed to be for the benefits of others, even where defence and security may also be a concern. It highlights that, against the prevailing hope for peace in the 1990s, the commitment to ethics came to justify and enable wars. It has also affected the practice of Western war, making a critical engagement with the phenomenon of ethical war urgent. The chapter further sets out the plan for the book, introducing the problematic of the politics of ethics.
The Paradox of Ethical War and the Politics of Ethics
Authors: Zehfuss Maja
Published: February 2018

This chapter sets out the paradox that confounds many of us in relation to ethical war: it risks killing those it seeks to protect. It then shows how just war thinking—the dominant approach to the ethics of war—proposes to negotiate the dilemma. Two problems with this approach are identified. First, despite the thrust of constraining war and its violence, just war thinking works to legitimize war. Second, just war thinking ultimately fails to provide a persuasive rationale for deaths in war; this is visible in their representation as ‘tragic’. The chapter introduces Jacques Derrida’s thinking about ethics, politics, and responsibility in the context of the aporia as a way to rethink the problematic. The final section highlights the politics of ethics, that is, the problem of ethics conceived as separate from politics which enables and enhances war while obscuring that this is the case.
Contracts for the Benefit of Third Parties in Malaysia
Authors: Fung David
Published: February 2018

This chapter examines the Malaysian position on privity and third party beneficiaries. Given that the Malaysian Contracts Act 1950 (‘MCA 1950’) is virtually a copy of the Indian Contract Act 1872, the issues are, unsurprisingly, similar. The absence of a clear statement of the rule in the MCA 1950 meant that its existence was susceptible to challenge. It was only in Kepong Prospecting Ltd v Schmidt, when the Privy Council pronounced on the fundamentality of the privity rule, that the matter was finally settled. This chapter demonstrates the ingenuity and the limitations of the common law. The strategy of finding an express trust of a promise finds a familiar trajectory in the use of that strategy in England. The need to prove the three certainties of intention to create a trust, beneficiaries, and subject matter emphasizes the clear intention to create property rights. An alternative explored by the author relates to the institutional constructive trust which requires a proprietary base by which the constructive trust may be found.
Contracts for the Benefit of Third Parties: Hong Kong
Authors: Mason Lee
Published: February 2018

This chapter analyses the law on third party beneficiaries in Hong Kong long characterized by strict adherence to the traditional common law doctrine of privity. The law relating to third party rights was only reformed by way of Ordinance in 2016, along the lines of the statutory reform of English law in 1999. A small number of specifically enumerated types of contract are excluded from the scope of the Ordinance; other contracts may be concluded to confer enforceable contractual rights on third parties. Whether a third party may enforce a term of a contract depends on the interpretation of the contract: if the third party right was not expressly conferred there is a presumption that the conferral was intended; but this can be rebutted if the parties made it clear that they did not intend it to be enforceable. The third party must be identified by name, as a member of a class, or answering a particular description and may claim the same remedies for breach as a party to the contract.
Contract Formation in Taiwan
Authors: Ying-Chieh WU
Published: February 2018

This chapter examines the rules of offer and acceptance in the formation of contract in Taiwan law. An offer is binding unless: the offer states otherwise, the revocation reaches the offeree before or at the same time as the offer, or if the offeree does not respond within a reasonable time. An acceptance only becomes effective when it reaches the offeror. The postal rule does not apply, but if the postal acceptance is delayed for reasons not attributable to the offeree, the offeror who knows of the delay must inform the offeree of it, otherwise the offeror will be bound at the time that the acceptance would normally have arrived. In a ‘battle of forms’ situation there is no binding contract if the different terms are core to the contract. Silence may amount to acceptance if communication of acceptance is waived by the offeror or by custom, or acceptance by conduct is inferred. There is no general requirement of form for a valid contract, but exceptionally, formalities are necessary.
Formation of Contract and Third Parties in Cambodia
Authors: Tayseng Ly
Published: February 2018

This chapter gives an overview of the law on contract formation and third party beneficiaries in Cambodia. Much of the discussion is tentative since the new Cambodian Civil Code only entered into force from 21 December 2011 and there is little case law and academic writing fleshing out its provisions. The Code owes much to the Japanese Civil Code of 1898 and, like the latter, does not have a requirement of consideration and seldom imposes formal requirements but there are a few statutory exceptions from the principle of freedom from form. For a binding contract, the agreement of the parties is required and the offer must be made with the intention to create a legally binding obligation and becomes effective once it reaches the offeree. The new Code explicitly provides that the parties to the contract may agree to confer a right arising under the contract upon a third party. This right accrues directly from their agreement; it is not required that the third party declare its intention to accept the right.
Formation of Contract and Stipulations for Third Parties in Indonesia
Authors: Bell Gary F
Published: February 2018

Indonesia is one of the most legally diverse and complex countries in the world. It practises legal pluralism with three types of contract law in force: adat (customary) contract laws, Islamic contract laws (mostly concerning banking), and the European civil law of contract, transplanted from the Netherlands in 1847, found mainly in the Civil Code (Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Perdata). This chapter focuses on European civil law as it is the law used for the majority of commercial transactions. The civil law of contract is not well developed and there is a paucity of indigenous doctrine and jurisprudence, since most significant commercial disputes are settled by arbitration. The contours of the law are consistent with the French/Dutch legal tradition. In the formation of contracts, the subjective intention of the parties plays a greater role than in the common law. As with most jurisdictions with a Napoleonic tradition, the offer must include all the essential element of the contract, there is no concept of ‘invitations to treat’ or of ‘consideration’, the common law posting rule is rejected, and the contract is formed only when the acceptance is received. There are generally few requirements of form but some contracts must be in writing and some in a notarial deed.
The Christian Family as a Public Body
Authors: Chow Alexander
Published: February 2018

Chapter 7 underscores the important place of ecclesiology in the formation of a Chinese public theology. I argue that the contemporary Chinese church has become a surrogate for the Chinese family. As such, this offers unique strengths and challenges for Chinese public theology, which can be further developed with a reconsideration of certain aspects of Confucianism and Christianity—mindful of the theological understandings of personhood, the Trinity, and ecclesiology, as offered by the seminal thinking of John Zizioulas.
Optimal Control Theory
Authors: Prussing John E.
Published: February 2018

Optimal Control Theory is reviewed in detail. We consider a dynamic system that operates between a specified initial time and a final time which may be specified or unspecified. Necessary conditions for a minimum cost functional are derived. Terminal constraints are considered. Pontryagin Minimum Principle is discussed.
‘Mungo Here, Mungo There’
Authors: Nussbaum Felicity
Published: February 2018

This chapter provides a definitive account of one of Dibdin’s best-known works, The Padlock, which has long been recognized as an important landmark in the representation of black characters in eighteenth-century theatre. The Padlock is most frequently associated with the librettist Isaac Bickerstaff, but this chapter redirects attention to the interaction of Bickerstaff’s words with Dibdin’s music, and to Dibdin’s celebrated performances as Mungo in one of the first comic plays to feature a major character in blackface on the British stage. Placing Mungo in the context of Dibdin’s numerous depictions of racial others (both Black and Oriental), the author argues that Dibdin’s racial performances reflect tensions surrounding slavery, social class, and imperial expansion, but remain stubbornly equivocal about these tensions as they turn captivity, servitude, and chattel slavery into the subject of comedy.
Loyalism, Celebrity, and the Politics of Personality
Authors: Kennerley David
Published: February 2018

Just as he began to achieve commercial success with his solo shows, Dibdin became embroiled in a series of libel trials following accusations in the press that his songs were plagiarized from Isaac Bickerstaff. Focusing on his response to these accusations, this chapter analyses Dibdin’s performances, exploring the ways in which his one-man shows traded on intimacy and personality. It offers a fresh interpretation of the political meanings of Dibdin’s songs, which have conventionally been depicted as straightforward propaganda. Loyalist, but by no means a ministerial mouthpiece, Dibdin used his carefully crafted reputation for independence and sincerity to offer satirical criticism of those in authority, and to claim to speak honestly about the true interests of the nation. This chapter exposes the increasingly pronounced effect of celebrity upon both contemporary theatre and political culture, and reassesses Dibdin’s widely influential brand of loyalism in this most turbulent decade in British politics.
The Changing Theatrical Economy
Authors: Valladares Susan
Published: February 2018

This chapter brings Charles Dibdin the Younger centre stage, facilitating an assessment of longer-term changes in the late Georgian cultural economy. The focus is the decline of Dibdin’s management of Sadler’s Wells in the years after 1814. The theatre’s wartime success rested on its spectacular, patriotic, aquatic pantomimes, yet a combination of the tense postwar political climate, the changing social constituency of the area in which the theatre was situated, and an increasing disinclination towards the mixed performances the theatre offered all played a part in the losses the theatre sustained in the late 1810s. The author draws a parallel between the decline of Sadler’s Wells and Dibdin’s poetic romance Young Arthur (1819), which, while enthusiastically received by some, was too much of a ‘medley’ to satisfy others. In both the literary and theatrical fields, tastes were changing, leaving practitioners uncertain of their place in this new theatrical economy.
Hollow Law?
Authors: Nowakowska Natalia
Published: February 2018

In the ‘core’ lands of the Polish Crown (korona), the chief instrument of King Sigismund’s Reformation policy was the anti-Lutheran edict. He issued eleven such edicts (1520–40), at a more prolific rate than any other prince in Christendom, the first predating even Pope Leo X’s famous Exsurge Domine bull against Luther. This chapter seeks to account for a central paradox: the edicts were draconian in content, but went entirely unenforced by the Crown, which repeatedly ignored local requests to implement them. The symbolic functions of anti-Reformation edicts, both internationally and domestically, are explored, for example in signalling royal piety. However, the timing and wording of these edicts (which speak of disorder, but not of ‘heresy’) reveal their key purpose to have been not the policing of religious belief, but the prevention of Lutheranism in the King’s primary understanding of that word—a revolt by the lower social orders.
International Student Mobility
Authors: Kritz Mary M. , Gurak Douglas T.
Published: February 2018

This chapter examines the role that sending country structural factors play in influencing the proportion of tertiary students studying abroad. It examines how outbound mobility ratio (OMR) responds to sending county supply and demand for tertiary education, population size, per capital GDP, development, education expenditures, and other factors. In all Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and fixed-effect model specifications, the OMR had a negative relationship to tertiary supply. While countries with larger populations send more students abroad, they have smaller OMRs. Fixed-effects models also showed that changes in tertiary supply and the percentage of GDP spent on tertiary education were negatively related to OMRs. The chapter reviews government scholarship programmes sponsored by Global South countries and the practices they pursue to encourage student return and strengthen tertiary capacity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). These programmes in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are changing international student flows.
Pathways of Political Change
Authors: Clark J. C. D.
Published: February 2018

Paine showed throughout his career a historically well-informed awareness of the shortcomings of English monarchs after 1688 and 1714, whom he regarded as usurpers: it was a practical critique that fed his antipathy to monarchy in general. Rather than republicanism, this chapter establishes Paine’s personal links with the ‘Patriot’ opposition to Sir Robert Walpole’s ministry, a movement that had a religiously freethinking element and drew on reconfigured Jacobitism. By contrast, Paine employed none of the other political languages available to him. Instead, Paine spoke a language of anti-Jacobitism; this chapter explores how many of his contemporaries trod a path ‘from Jacobite to Jacobin’. Nor were these old world preoccupations only; this chapter shows how they were shared in the American colonies.
The Unexpected Revolution
Authors: Clark J. C. D.
Published: February 2018

Chapter 4 offers a new view of the American Revolution in terms more of negations than of affirmations: not the instantiation of modernizing natural rights theories or republicanism, but the result of older and passionate negations on both sides of the Atlantic, often religious. It reinterprets Paine’s Common Sense against the older contexts proposed in this book, and argues that the pamphlet, although important, was not transformative and ubiquitous. It traces Paine’s subsequent writings while in America, responding to and interpreting the course of the Revolution, and concludes that Paine’s understanding of that important episode was less than has been thought; rather, he largely remained within an English frame of reference, as did, indeed, most American colonists. He understood the American Revolution, then, in English terms.
God Visible
Authors: Daley, SJ Brian E.
Published: February 2018

This book considers the early development and reception of what is today the most widely professed Christian conception of Christ. The development of this doctrine admits of wide variations in expression and understanding, varying emphases in interpretation that are as striking in authors of the first millennium as they are among modern writers. The seven early ecumenical councils and their dogmatic formulations are crucial way stations in defining the shape of this study. It argues that the scope of previous enquiries, which focused on the declaration of the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 that Christ was one Person in two natures, the Divine of the same substance as the Father, and the human of the same substance as us, now seems excessively narrow and distorts our understanding. Daley sets aside the Chalcedonian formula and instead considers what some major Church Fathers—from Irenaeus to John Damascene—say about the person of Christ.
Epilogue
Authors: Daley, SJ Brian E.
Published: February 2018

The heart of Christian theological reflection on Christ is the paradoxical assertion that the transcendent God has become personally present in the midst of humanity, as Jesus of Nazareth, himself fully human as well as divine. The definition of Chalcedon tried to capture this paradox in philosophical language, in a way that remains foundational—but not exhaustive—for Christian thought. The Chalcedonian formula may be seen as an attempt to reaffirm the faith of Nicaea and the traditions that had led to it, but also as needing the further precisions offered—in response to later debates—in the centuries that followed. The formulations of what are generally recognized as the classical “ecumenical councils” provide a developing confession of faith in the person of Christ, which brings with it a distinctive understanding of God and the world, of human fulfillment, and of the shape and practices of the Christian community.
Memory and the Intentional Stance
Authors: Brigard Felipe De
Published: February 2018

Despite Dennett’s vast scholarship, he seemed to only have directly addressed the topic of memory in a relatively unknown coauthored article published in a somewhat obscure volume. The current chapter attempts to reconstruct the ideas from this old article, and argues that it offers a viable and coherent view of episodic memory with substantial empirical support. Specifically, the chapter uncovers three empirically supported theses. A functional thesis, according to which our memory system not only processes information about past events but also uses this information to construct useful anticipations of possible future events. A computational thesis, according to which statistical regularities, along with individual limitations and goals, probabilistically constrain the search space examined during memory retrieval. And a metaphysical thesis, according to which memories do not exist as subpersonal-level brain structures encoding particular intentional contents but rather as personal-level psychological phenomena only accessible from the intentional stance.
Dennett on Breaking the Spell
Authors: Baker Lynne Rudder
Published: February 2018

Dennett’s has recently attempted to break the “spell” that prevents people from submitting their religious beliefs and practices to scientific investigation. But what spell is being broken? Religion is not a unified phenomenon. By supposing that it is, Dennett is led to adopt an implausible mimetic theory of religious belief, and to mistakenly assume that the presence of a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device would impugn religious belief. More troublingly, although religious beliefs and practices should be studied scientifically, it would be a mistake to treat science as the exclusive arbiter of reality. Dennett makes human beings (persons) seem like aggregates of parts. Such a view seems to have no room for human dignity, except as artifacts of an intentional stance. A plausible theory of human dignity would take people to be ontologically significant unities, who, on my view, have first-person perspectives essentially.
Introduction
Authors: Siddiqi Asiya
Published: February 2018

Among the old manuscripts stored at the High Court of Bombay is a set that consists of the petitions of insolvents who were bankrupted by the financial crisis that gripped Bombay in the 1860s. The government had no wish to see the traders and merchants who were the lifeblood of the economy languishing in prison. Starting in 1828, the British colonial government had introduced a serious of acts for the relief of insolvent debtors. This set of insolvency petitions and related documents contains a wealth of information on the lives of Bombay’s inhabitants, both men and women, from a wide range of economic classes. This study explores how people’s lives were shaped by different aspects of colonial Indian society, including law, finance, trade, literacy, religion, and occupation. It reveals the workings of the complex and dynamic economic and social relationships among Bombay’s people in the late nineteenth century.
Burden of History
Authors: Misra Udayon
Published: February 2018

The work attempts to show how the shadow of Partition continues to fall over the society and politics of the state of Assam and how issues such as immigration, demographic change, language, and identity as well as citizenship that occupied the centre stage in the years immediately before and after the Partition have not only retained their relevance but have also gained an extra sense of urgency in the contemporary politics of the region. It is interesting to note that in the archive of the colonial state, the reader is often confronted with the region’s colonial past. The quest to define the Assamese identity still continues as it did in the 1940s and 1950s, and the historical effects of Partition have certainly had a long afterlife in the region. Not only did the Partition radically transform the political geography of the region and turn it overnight into a landlocked one, its aftereffects continued to be felt in the socio-political and economic life of the region in diverse ways. This book focuses primarily on the issues of immigration, land, language, and identity, which are seen as the unresolved issues of Partition politics. It attempts to show how after seven decades of Independence, the issues that almost exclusively engaged the public mind in the pre-Partition days continue to do so in today’s Assam. It is as if Assam has been caught in a rather eerie time warp.
Deconstructing the Discourse on University Social Responsibility
Authors: Srivastava Anamika
Published: February 2018

With the rise of knowledge economy, the economic development is dependent upon the production, appropriation, profitization, and distribution of knowledge. When knowledge becomes capital, its dissemination in the society out of benevolence of the universities becomes uncertain. It is because the linkages between the economy and the universities’ core activities of teaching and research have become strong as never before, their linkages with the community and society at large have become blurred. By unravelling the national and international discourse on university social responsibility and related constructs, this chapter shows the importance of university-society linkages in the current economic paradigm, reinstituted not just through a few departments and clinical programmes of the universities but also through their core activities of teaching and research.
Global Studies in Indian Universities
Authors: Chaulia Sreeram
Published: February 2018

In this chapter, the author examines the teaching of global and international affairs in India and highlights the need for change. The author states that there is an urgent need to focus on global affairs teaching beyond South Asia and the USA and highlights the advantages of doing so. Until India does not build up a corpus of wide-ranging thematic and geographical area experts within its academia, it has no future as a prominent global player.
Introduction
Authors: Furst Eric M. , Squires Todd M.
Published: February 2018

General concepts of rheology and microrheology are presented, including basic concepts of the microrheology measurement, the characteristics of soft materials, rheological functions and principles of conventional rheometric measurements, as well as several common rheological properties that will be encountered throughout the text. Microrheology encompasses a set of rheometric methods or techniques with unique capabilities|a part of the experimental toolbox for characterizing the rheological properties of materials to aid their understanding, or help in the design of new materials. There are limitations to microrheology that are important to understand from the outset. Colloidal particles are central to all microrheology measurements. Basic concepts of colloid science, including typical probe chemistries, colloidal stability, characterization, and preparation are presented.
Neuraxial Anesthesia in Obstetric Patients Receiving Thromboprophylaxis With Unfractionated or Low–Molecular-Weight Heparin: A Systematic Review of Spinal Epidural Hematoma
Authors: Leffert L.R. , Dubois H.M. , Butwick A.J. , Carvalho B. , Houle T.T. , Landau R.
Published: February 2018

(Anesth Analg. 2017;125(1):223–231)

National guidelines stipulate that pregnant women at risk for venous thromboembolism, such as women undergoing cesarean delivery (4-fold increased risk compared with vaginal delivery), receive thromboprophylaxis via mechanical means, low–molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) and or unfractionated heparins (UFHs). Because of a limited number of studies addressing the boundaries for safe use of neuraxial anesthesia in obstetric patients receiving thromboprophylaxis, or anticoagulated patients, the authors of the present review report on all cases of spinal epidural hematoma (SEH) after neuraxial blockade in this population of obstetric patients.
Syphilis During Pregnancy: A Preventable Threat to Maternal-fetal Health
Authors: Rac M.W. , Revell P.A. , Eppes C.S.
Published: February 2018

(Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2017;216(4):352–363)

Even with an available cure, syphilis remains a growing, global health concern for women during pregnancy. Between 2012 and 2014 there was a 38% increase in the rate of congenital syphilis. Syphilis presents a clear danger as stillbirths occur in about 25% of pregnancies along with other adverse outcomes. While syphilis in pregnant women in several counties has been eliminated through a World Health Organization initiative, rates in the United States have increased. African American women have a 10 times higher rate of congenital infection than white women. Syphilis infection rates have increased in all geographical areas. Lack of prenatal care, lack of diagnostic screening, and lack of treatment are the primary issues. Syphilis has significant effects on the infants born to infected mothers. More than 50% of infants may be infected and adverse outcomes are seen in as many as 75% of untreated pregnancies.
Pregnancy-related Mortality in the United States, 2011 to 2013
Authors: Creanga A.A. , Syverson C. , Seed K. , Callaghan W.M.
Published: February 2018

(Obstet Gynecol. 2017;130(2):366–373)

A pregnancy-related death is defined as the death of a woman during or within 1 year ofpregnancy that was caused by a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy. In the United States, the pregnancy-related mortality ratio has increased from 10 deaths per 100,000 live births in the 1990s to 16 deaths per 100,000 live births in the aggregate period of 2006 to 2010. Reasons for this increase are not entirely clear. Therefore, in this observational study, the authors examined pregnancy-related mortality, causes of death, and populations at risk in the United States for the time period between 2011 and 2013.
A National Survey of Neurological Monitoring Practice After Obstetric Regional Anaesthesia in the UK
Authors: Roderick E. , Hoyle J. , Yentis S.M.
Published: February 2018

(Anaesthesia. 2017;72:755–759)

Neuraxial anaesthesia is widely used for both labor analgesia and cesarean delivery in the United Kingdom. The risk of neurological complications with these procedures is very low in the obstetric population. However, when they do occur, early detection and management are especially important as their consequences could be critical to the patient. The Third National Audit Project of the Royal College of Anaesthetists recommended that local guidelines be put in place that provide recommendations for patient monitoring to identify early signs and symptoms as well as a process for involving anesthesiologists when problems are identified. National guidelines have been developed that address postoperative monitoring of non-obstetric patients who have received neuraxial anesthesia. However, those guidelines intentionally exclude parturients, and national guidelines specific to the obstetric population still do not exist.
Relationship Between Labor and Delivery Unit Management Practices and Maternal Outcomes
Authors: Plough A.C. , Galvin G. , Li Z. , Lipsitz S.R. , Alidina S. , Henrich N.J. , Hirschhorn L.R. , Berry W.R. , Gawande A.A. , Peter D. , McDonald R. , Caldwell D.L. , Muri J.H. , Bingham D. , Caughey A.B. , Declercq E.R. , Shah N.T.
Published: February 2018

(Obstet Gynecol. 2017;130(2):358–365)

The specific management practices of labor and delivery units and their sensitivity to operational pressures have not been well assessed in the context of improved patient outcomes. In the present review, the authors assessed whether or not labor and delivery unit management practices that proactively mitigated unit challenges were independently associated with lower risk of primary cesarean delivery, prolonged length of stay, and adverse maternal outcomes in low-risk patients.
Double-balloon Catheter Versus Prostaglandin E2 for Cervical Ripening and Labour Induction: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Authors: Du Y.M. , Zhu L.Y. , Cui L.N. , Jin B.H. , Ou J.L.
Published: February 2018

(BJOG. 2017;124:891–899)

Induction of labor is occurring more frequently, and many studies have been performed to determine the most effective and safest induction techniques. An important component of successful labor induction is effective cervical ripening. Both mechanical and pharmacologic methods of cervical ripening have been used. One of the mechanical techniques involves the use of a double-balloon catheter specifically designed for this use. In this systematic review and meat-analysis, the effectiveness of the double-balloon catheter was compared with prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) to achieve cervical ripening and successful labor induction.
Vaginal Birth After Cesarean: Neonatal Outcomes and United States Birth Setting
Authors: Tilden E.L. , Cheyney M. , Guise J.M. , Emeis C. , Lapidus J. , Biel F.M. , Wiedrick J. , Snowden J.M.
Published: February 2018

(Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2017;216(4):403.e1–403.e8)

Many hospitals are not willing to let a woman try to deliver vaginally if she has previously had a cesarean delivery (CD). As a result, women with prior CDs who want to avoid a second CD increasingly seek to have vaginal deliveries in free standing birthing centers or at home. This retrospective analysis of records for US births from 2007 to 2010 compared vaginal births occurring in a hospital setting with those occurring outside of hospitals in women who had previously had a CD. Statistical analysis was limited to singleton, full term live births with vertex presentation. Unadjusted, absolute and relative risk differences for different birth settings were calculated, and multivariate regression analyses were performed.
Neuraxial Opioids for Postcesarean Delivery Analgesia: Can Hydromorphone Replace Morphine? A Retrospective Study
Authors: Marroquin B. , Feng C. , Balofsky A. , Edwards K. , Iqbal A. , Kanel J. , Jackson M. , Newton M. , Rothstein D. , Wong E. , Wissler R.
Published: February 2018

(Int J Obstet Anesth. 2017;30:16–22)

Previous small-scale studies have investigated the use of neuraxial hydromorphone in place of morphine for pain relief following cesarean delivery with some success. Generally, the results suggested similar efficacy. However, no large studies comparing neuraxial hydromorphone to morphine for postcesarean analgesia have been conducted. Because of a shortage of preservative-free morphine in 2012, the University of Rochester Medical Center switched to using neuraxial hydromorphone from March to November of 2012 for pain relief after cesarean delivery. This retrospective study was therefore undertaken to compare the effectiveness and side effects of neuraxial hydromorphone to morphine.
Interprofessional Communities of Practice in Continuing Medical Education for Promoting and Sustaining Practice Change: A Prospective Cohort Study
Authors: Barker Megan , Lecce Julia , Ivanova Anna , Zawertailo Laurie , Dragonetti Rosa , Selby Peter
Published: February 2018

Introduction:

Standard knowledge delivery formats for CME may have limited impact on long-term practice change. A community of practice (CoP) is one tool that may enhance competencies and support practice change. This study explores the utility of an interprofessional CoP as an adjunct to a CME program in tobacco addiction treatment (Training Enhancement in Applied Counselling and Health [TEACH] Project) to promote and sustain practice change.

Methods:

A prospective cohort design was utilized to examine the long-term impact of the TEACH CoP on practice change. An online survey was administered to TEACH-trained practitioners to assess perceived feasibility, importance, and confidence related to course competencies, involvement in TEACH CoP activities, engagement in knowledge transfer (KT), and implementation of new programming. Chi-square tests were used to detect differences in KT and program development associated with CoP participation. Course competency scores from immediate postcourse surveys and long-term follow-up surveys were compared.

Results:

No significant differences in participant characteristics were found between those who did (n = 300) and did not (n = 122) participate in the TEACH CoP. Mean self-perceived competency scores were greater immediately after course than at long-term follow-up; however, self-ratings of competency in pharmacological interventions and motivational interviewing were higher at follow-up. TEACH CoP participation was associated with significantly greater engagement in KT and implementation of new programming after training.

Discussion:

The findings from this evaluation suggest the value of interprofessional CoPs offered posttraining as a mechanism to enhance practice. CME providers should consider offering CoPs as a component of training programs to promote and sustain practice change.