bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Transnational and Multinational Corporations
Authors: Shever Elana
Published: September 2018

The anthropology of transnational and multinational corporations intertwines anthropological concerns with capitalism, personhood, institutions, development, and globalization to critically examine one of the most powerful phenomena in the world. Anthropological scholarship demonstrates that transnational and multinational corporations are total social facts that shape and are shaped by the world around them. Transnational and multinational corporations affect large‐scale political–economic processes and human subjectivities across the globe. They are also themselves affected by social systems and cultural forces they do not control. As anthropology has shifted from primarily studying corporations from the perspective of their office buildings and factory floors to increasingly examining how they operate across spatial borders and institutional boundaries, it has revealed transnational and multinational corporations to be culturally constructed, unstable, and context‐specific political–economic and social organizations that need to be continually regenerated even as their power endures.
Gender Trouble: Judith Butler and Anthropology
Authors: Jenkins Fiona , Jolly Margaret
Published: September 2018

Judith Butler's iconic work
Gender Trouble
(1990) has profoundly shaped critical inquiry across many fields. In anthropology, the impact was considerable, especially for those analyzing gender and sexuality. Butler's interrogation of the sex/gender distinction found fertile ground in conjunction with challenges anthropologists were already making to the European origins of the nature/culture opposition. Her view that bodies materialize within the space of social normativity has proven to be productive in thinking about the diversity and performativity of gender practice and relations.
Norm Psychology
Authors: Chudek Maciej
Published: September 2018

Norm psychology is a theory at the intersection of theoretical evolutionary biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, and cross‐cultural anthropology. Theoretical work about how humans could possibly have evolved by natural selection to be a culture‐sharing, highly cooperative animal suggests that we should possess a norm psychology: a suite of cognitive dispositions, emotions, and drives that lead us to notice, attend to, encode in memory, conform to, and enforce social norms. This evolutionary account demonstrates how the emergence of cultural learning, widespread cooperation with nonrelatives, and norm psychology are closely interconnected. Emerging evidence from across disciplines confirms both the assumptions and predictions of this account.
Optimal Foraging Theory
Authors: Parker Christopher H. , Hawkes Kristen
Published: September 2018

Optimal foraging theory is a set of concepts and models that aim to explain the wide variation in foraging strategies among individuals and between species, guided by the assumption that living things are designed by a history of natural selection. The use of foraging models in anthropology was prompted by the geographic and temporal variation in resource use among people who live on wild foods. Foraging models provide a theoretical basis for linking the variation both among and within populations to features of local ecology—with initially unexpected implications for what has happened in human evolution.
Positive Deviance
Authors: Omidian Patricia A.
Published: September 2018

Positive deviance (PD) is a research and program development method designed to solve difficult and seemingly unresolvable problems at the local level. Its basic assumption is that one or more persons in the affected community will have already found a solution to that vexing problem. As a participatory approach, it recognizes that those who are impacted by the problem have a stake in how that problem is solved and must be enlisted in the search for people who are “positive deviants”—local actors who creatively solve the dilemma using the same resources that are available to everyone else. The PD approach has been used to address childhood malnutrition, the eradication of diseases like polio, and reduce the incidence of MRSA in hospitals.
Cultural Brokers
Authors: Eversole Robyn
Published: September 2018

Cultural brokers are intermediaries who enable communication and relationship building across social and cultural divides. Cultural brokers are familiar with the language, practices, and worldviews of multiple social groups. They not only facilitate cross‐cultural communication and action but can also actively shape it. Cultural brokers have played important mediation roles in a range of settings. They have been observed in international development work acting as intermediaries between international development agencies and local communities. Cultural brokers often serve as “translation agents,” shaping different groups' understandings of and interactions with each other. This role is not always particularly visible or acknowledged, but it is a key enabler of relationship building across boundaries. Anthropologists have studied brokerage, especially in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and have often acted as cultural brokers themselves. The cross‐cultural skills of development brokers are increasingly valued as contemporary professionals grapple with the need to acknowledge and work with cultural diversity.
Anthropology of Education, Anthropology in Education, and Anthropology for Education
Authors: Bloome David , Beauchemin Faythe , Brady John , Buescher Eileen , Kim Min‐Young , Schey Ryan
Published: September 2018

The intersection of anthropology and education has an intellectual history that can be traced back to the socialization studies of early anthropologists. The evolution of the field can be viewed through three heuristics. Anthropology of education refers to theory building in anthropology; anthropology in education refers to theory building in education; and anthropology for education refers to the enactment of educational change.
Structural Adjustment Policies
Authors: Bracking Sarah
Published: September 2018

Structural adjustment policies defined an era of development in the global South following the debt crisis of the early 1980s and ending with the move to poverty‐reduction strategy papers at the end of the 1990s. They were technically designed to balance the external payments of countries by attracting inward foreign direct investment and by increasing export competitiveness and growth. Structural adjustment programs were sponsored by the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) and ubiquitously included capital account and trade openness, devaluation, a reduction in the public sector and privatization of publicly owned companies. Political conditionality was used to link adherence to the programs with the successful receipt of development finance and loans. The policy packages contributed to deindustrialization and had widespread adverse effects on levels of employment and wellbeing in many implementing countries. They also had wider social, political, and cultural effects, causing structural and ideological change toward marketization and neoliberalism.
Identity in Anthropology
Authors: Finke Peter , Sökefeld Martin
Published: September 2018

Identity is a key term in anthropology but it is also a contested one, dealing with the question of who we are in relation to others. It relates, on the one hand, to categories of the individual or sameness with oneself and, on the other, to collective distinctions of otherness. It is both a practice and a process of cognitive classification. It is fluid and transcends boundaries but, to a certain degree, has to be stable in order for others to identify one as theirs. Furthermore, it is at the same time a public discourse and an obvious phenomenon in the world and is thus an object of inquiry if not an analytical category. Most prominent among the many identity aspects we employ is probably the ethnic one, which hinges on a bundle of markers used to distinguish each other in presumed cultural terms, always embedded in power games that try to secure political support and loyalty.
Peasants
Authors: Müller Birgit
Published: September 2018

The attempt to define “peasant” and “peasantry” has a long, complicated, and contentious history. The “peasant condition” is historically one of subordination, domination, and exploitation. In the medieval societies of Europe, peasants were tied as persons to their lords. Anthropologists have pointed out that today's “peasants” everywhere have become involved in market relations and debate whether, contrary to “farmers,” they aim at subsistence and resilience, not at reinvestment. “Peasant” and “entrepreneur” have become ideal types. Both constitute alternative responses to conditions of boom‐and‐bust cycles of external markets, to the developmental cycle of domestic groups, and to socialist or capitalist agricultural policies. Peasant organizations are contesting the intensification of government depeasantization policies, which aim to subsidize the substitution of small producers with large ones. Even though small agricultural producers may not all strive for resilience and food sovereignty, these concepts have become mobilizing categories that connect peasant organizations to wider activist circles.
Interviews with Eminent Anthropologists: An Online Resource
Authors: Macfarlane Alan
Published: September 2018

Since the 1980s, Alan Macfarlane and his colleagues have conducted a set of interviews with eminent anthropologists from around the world. These are in‐depth filmed interviews, from twenty minutes to four hours in length. There are detailed summaries of all of them with the films, which makes it easier to search for specific topics or people. There are approximately 100 such interviews, which form the core of a wider set of over 200 covering all of the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts. This entry describes how the archive was set up, its main features, and how the questioning was done. At the end is a list of the anthropologists who have been interviewed (or, occasionally filmed in seminars or lectures).
Philosophical Anthropology
Authors: Garlitz Dustin
Published: September 2018

This entry identifies the important themes and key thinkers that have shaped the development of philosophical anthropology. It first explicates the historical foundations of philosophical anthropology and then analyzes the place that philosophical anthropology holds in the emergence of social theory and in contemporary Continental thought. Accordingly, philosophical anthropology's relationships with other academic discourses are emphasized, as are its disciplinary roles in scholarship throughout the social sciences and humanities, from anthropology to philosophy and theory.
Nursing and Anthropology
Authors: Prescott Megan , Nichter Mark
Published: September 2018

This entry examines issues related to the application of anthropological concepts within the discipline and practice of nursing, as well as the study of nursing as a field of inquiry within anthropology. Nurse anthropologists incorporated anthropological concepts into nursing curriculum and practice through championing theories of transcultural nursing, and pioneered the use of ethnographic and qualitative methods within nursing research. Within cultural and medical anthropology, nursing was a field through which to understand broader cultural and societal values related to gender, care practices across cultures, and women's transnational labor migration. Future research is needed to explore the role of nurses in strengthening health systems and addressing health disparities; the ways in which nurses negotiate the competing demands of practicing evidence‐based nursing and patient‐centered care, and the changing roles and labor conditions of nurses worldwide.
Nongovernmental Organizations and Civil Society in Development
Authors: Webb Martin
Published: September 2018

The term “civil society” has a long career. It has roots in eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century philosophy and social theory but has reemerged as one of the key concepts through which development policy and practice have been reimagined since the end of the Cold War. The idea of civil society, although contested, provides the theoretical underpinnings for a three‐sector model of development in which state, market, and voluntary associations are all seen to have a role to play. As development policy and donor funding have been reorganized to incorporate actors beyond the state, the numbers of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in development has soared. While the idea of civil society as a sphere of popular resistance, voluntary organization, and charitable giving valorizes NGO action in development, the role of NGOs as service providers in a competitive market for development aid means that notional boundaries between state, market, and civil society become blurred.
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Authors: de Pina‐Cabral João
Published: September 2018

The roots of anthropology, as the scientific examination of the human condition, are truly ancient, but its emergence as a separate discipline is associated with the globalization that accompanied the modern era. This entry begins by outlining the roots of modern anthropology and then moves to the end of the nineteenth century, when Darwinian influence led to the growth of academic anthropology. After that, it focuses on the development of ethnographic methodology as the distinctive form of empirical engagement in the discipline. Subsequently, the entry outlines the theoretical development of social and cultural anthropology during the twentieth century and the way in which this came to a moment of decisive crisis in the early 1970s. Finally, it argues that anthropology came to find a renewed identity in the dawning of the twenty‐first century, after returning to a concern with action and away from the concern with text that had accompanied the passing of the postcolonial period.
V
elho,
G
ilberto (1945–2012)
Authors: O'donnell Julia
Published: September 2018

Gilberto Velho was the pioneer of urban anthropology in Brazil. His works focused on the study of modern/contemporary complex societies and significantly impacted the development of urban studies in Brazil while also receiving international recognition. Among the numerous issues analyzed by Velho during the course of his long academic career, three major topics stand out: research on urban environments, the relationship between the individual and society, and the question of “deviant” behaviors.
Courts
Authors: Osanloo Arzoo
Published: September 2018

Anthropologists of law have long observed and written about the role of courts as key sites in which actors seek redress for grievances. As part of that broad endeavor, important emphases of scholarly research include studies of social actors and disputing practices across geographical settings, within formal and informal judicial venues, and on multiple scales (including the local, national, and transnational). This work has shown that what goes on in courts is far more complex than conflict resolution, and sometimes the result is something altogether different. Focusing on disputing processes, moreover, scholars explore the diverse roles played by the court's various actors: judges, lawyers, witnesses, and, of course, litigants. Ethnographies of courts, moreover, follow disputes outside purely judicial sites to explore how legal processes affect individuals' everyday lives and shape the social constructions of justice and reason, tracking, thus, the dynamism of the law in action.
Sex and Gender Roles, Division of Labor in
Authors: Robinson Kathryn
Published: September 2018

The sexual division of labor refers to the differentiation of tasks and their allocation between men and women, which are reproduced as normative social arrangements. It can refer to the tasks themselves, the organization of those tasks, and the distribution of the products of work. Feminist analysis notes a critical connection between the sexual division of labor and the position of women in any given society. Some kind of sex‐based differentiation of involvement in production is deemed to exist in all societies and the analysis of the division of tasks on the basis of sex is linked conceptually to the Marxist legacy that emphasizes the division of labor as a foundation for class difference in capitalist societies. Reflecting this Marxist analogy, the sexual division of labor is analyzed as an aspect of the functioning of a system (a sex‐gender system or a gender regime) commonly labeled as “patriarchal” that ultimately benefits the rule of men over women.
Primate Intentional Communication
Authors: Zuberbühler Klaus , Gomez Juan‐Carlos
Published: September 2018

Human language goes beyond the exchange of linguistic information, in that communication is governed by underlying intentions that are purposely expressed, epistemically monitored, and dynamically interpreted. The question of whether nonhuman primate communication is also intentional has been the topic of much research, mainly because results have considerable implications for theories of language evolution. Although there is no unified definition of intentionality, a particularly influential proposal has been that intention may be appearing in various grades with increasing levels of cognitive complexity. There is good evidence that primates use both vocal and visual signals in goal‐directed, first‐order intentional ways, while the data for mind‐directed, second‐order intentionality are more controversial and slim for ostensive and shared intentionality. The discussion of intentional communication in primates is therefore directly intertwined with how competent nonhuman primates are in attributing mental states to each other and with the currently unresolved debate about the nature and mechanisms of theory of mind and intentionality in humans.
Cosmologies
Authors: Abramson Allen
Published: September 2018

The anthropological study of cosmologies examines how human collectivities conceptualize and relate to the genesis, structure, and development of particular worlds. Classically, this kind of cosmological study entailed the ethnographic disclosure of different worlds, followed characteristically by analyses that conceptually folded indigenous cosmologies into nature. In the process, cosmos would become an idiom for ecological, economic, and cognitive imperatives. This naturalistic approach persists in contemporary anthropology, notably in approaches to the cultural localization and individual embodiment of worlds at large, but is increasingly challenged by different modes of understanding. These new understandings recognize the power of cosmological thought in its cultural plurality, the multiplication of human worlds in an era of globalization, and the possibility that worlds may be disordered, ruptured, and systemically open as well as, at other levels, harmoniously structured.
Belief
Authors: Coleman Simon
Published: September 2018

While belief has been an object of study and has been deployed as an analytical concept throughout the history of anthropology, considerable debate and doubt have emerged over its cross‐cultural utility and clarity as a term. Much critique has centered on the idea of belief as a personal, internalized conviction—a set of associations that may derive too closely from Western, Protestant assumptions. However, past as well as recent work has explored the links between belief and embodiment, seeing both as emergent not only from the cognitive make‐up of humans but also from social practice, including but extending beyond conventional religious ritual.
Action Anthropology
Authors: Rubinstein Robert A.
Published: September 2018

Action anthropology is an approach that seeks to develop the understanding of social and cultural life while helping communities address the challenges they face. In contrast to applied anthropology, when seeking to help the communities with whom they work, action anthropologists facilitate the communities' own decision making about what actions should be taken to address those challenges rather than implementing decisions made outside of the community or for the community by the anthropologist. In seeking new theoretical understanding, action anthropologists work on problems identified in collaboration with communities, rather than only pursuing questions that emerge independently from social theory, in contrast to basic research. Action anthropology originated in the work of Sol Tax and his students in the Fox Project, conducted with the Meskwaki Indians in the 1950s. It has since been used with communities throughout the world to promote social change and develop anthropological theory.
Geochronology
Authors: Deino Alan L. , Peppe Daniel J.
Published: September 2018

Geochronology is the study of the time relationships between rock units; it makes it possible for us to quantify the age of formative events in human history. Typically, though with some exceptions, fossils and artifacts are not dated directly. Instead their ages are assigned by determining the age of the rocks that are enclosing them. There are four major methods used in geochronology: relative dating, absolute dating, magnetostratigraphy, and tephrostratigraphy. The age determinations made using geochronology studies are an essential part of many paleoanthropological endeavors, as they establish references points for fossil occurrences and the pace of paleoenvironmental change and hominin evolution.
HIV/AIDS
Authors: Moyer Eileen
Published: September 2018

HIV/AIDS is among the most intensively studied health topics in anthropology. Given that it is a stigmatized disease associated with promiscuity, drug use, poverty, and death, preventing and treating HIV is as much a social puzzle as a biomedical one. The sociality of HIV/AIDS presents serious challenges for public health officials, pharmaceutical companies, and health care practitioners, leading to the emergence of community‐based responses, treatment activism, patient rights groups, and unlikely partnerships between people with HIV and biomedicine. Anthropological research has contributed to improving societal understandings of the social, economic, and political factors that make particular populations vulnerable to HIV; HIV‐related stigma; the relationship between unprotected sex and economic, gender, and age‐based inequalities; the “cultural baggage” embedded in public and global health interventions; and the new social forms that have arisen in the context of prevention, care, and treatment interventions.
International Organizations, Anthropology of
Authors: Müller Birgit
Published: September 2018

Through their advisers, projects, and funds, international organizations are active in parts of the world where anthropologists have traditionally done fieldwork among “indigenous” and rural populations. But also in the newer fields of anthropological enquiry (in enterprises, urban settings, tourism, state organizations, and the domain of intellectual property rights and cultural policies), the guidelines, codes of conduct, and other soft laws produced by international organizations have an impact on practices and policies. Since the 1990s, the organizations themselves—as circuits of power where normative frameworks are produced and globally diffused, resources are distributed, and knowledge is circulated through transnational expert networks—have also become fields of anthropological enquiry.
Neglected Tropical Diseases
Authors: Parker Melissa
Published: September 2018

The term “neglected tropical diseases” was first coined in 2005. It describes a heterogeneous group of predominantly parasitic and bacterial infections that cause significant morbidity, if not mortality, among politically and economically marginal populations, particularly in sub‐Saharan Africa. Anthropological research has foregrounded the sociopolitical processes enabling academics and activists to create a distinct brand identity, thereby successfully promoting the mass distribution of drugs as a technically effective and morally appropriate approach to prevention and treatment. However, the comparative study of drug coverage has revealed that a one‐size‐fits‐all approach is misplaced and inadequate. The uptake of drugs is often low, with a complex array of historical, political, economic, and social issues influencing the distribution and consumption of medicines. The reluctance to refine global health policies in the light of anthropological and epidemiological evidence is a topic of increasing concern.
Interaction
Authors: Enfield N. J. , Sidnell J.
Published: September 2018

Social interaction is central to the lives of many species. In humans it involves higher‐level cognition and complex patterns of mutual engagement, with mechanisms for social fission and fusion in the context of large social groups. Human interaction is a domain of order in itself, articulating a link between the social cognition and motivations of individuals and the higher‐level structures of society and culture. Core features of human interaction include conversational turn taking; repair of problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding; and the formulation and interpretation of social action through language and related semiotic tools.
Language and Identity
Authors: Zenker Olaf
Published: September 2018

Language and identity constitutes a transdisciplinary research area dealing with how identities are indexed, expressed, and constructed through variable language uses. Contemporary research demonstrates the complex nature of linguistic practices and emphasizes the dynamic and constructed nature of identities in their multiple dimensions (which may be related to nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and disability, and so on). Identities are expressed and constructed through language usage; this may include “indexicality,” when certain linguistic forms systematically co‐occurring with particular identities transform into indices of the latter. At the same time, languages can also become the objects of ideological constructions of identity, depicting linguistic forms as identity markers allegedly expressing, if not constituting, the very nature of the identity at issue (a process described as “iconization”). In practice, both indexicality and iconization often come together and reinforce each other, frequently creating the appearance of a seemingly “natural” connection between language and identity.
Irrigation Systems
Authors: Mitchell William P.
Published: September 2018

Two proposals—one by Karl Wittfogel (that hydraulic agriculture in arid environments engendered Chinese “oriental despotism” and therefore Marx's “Asiatic mode of production”) and another by Julian Steward (that irrigation led to the independent evolution of primal imperial states in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and Peru)—stimulated considerable anthropological research in the 1970s and 1980s into what came to be called “the hydraulic hypothesis.” Subsequent critiques, combined with a waning in evolutionary and ecological research, led to fewer irrigation studies. However, twenty‐first‐century concerns with indigenous water rights, climate change, commercial agriculture, neoliberal water laws, flood control, and water availability have stimulated new research.
Voodoo/
Vodou
Authors: Richman Karen
Published: September 2018

The term “voodoo” has been used to symbolize the quintessential other; this stereotype does not represent the religion of ordinary Haitians. Their vernacular religion is a heterogeneous system organized around descent groups that trace their identities to resistance to plantation slavery, economic freedom, and ownership of land. Members of ritual units include the living, the ancestors, and their inherited Ginen (African) spirits, or
lwa
, whose powerful sway stems from their ability to afflict members wherever they res ide. The only remedy is collective ritual, involving food offerings, prayer, music, and dance, all of which are mobilized to create an embodied connection between related persons, ancestors, and spirits. The stylized performance promotes reciprocity and disciplines individualism's threat to the unit's social and moral life.
Refugees, Anthropology, and Law
Authors: Fassin Didier
Published: September 2018

Refugees are represented through images, discourses, and statistics that shape their public presence. Anthropology questions these representations through various approaches, three of which are discussed in this entry. Genealogy explores the ancient sources and ambiguous origins of hospitality. Geography shows the unequal distribution of the demographic burden and the various configurations for the protection of forced migrants across the planet. Ethnography analyzes both the management of asylum by state bureaucracies or international agencies and the experience of asylum seekers from their home country to their host country. Anthropology thus reveals the temporal and spatial continuities and intermittences in the form of life of people fleeing persecution, oppression, pauperization, and misfortune.
Ecological Modeling
Authors: Fischer Michael D.
Published: September 2018

An ecological model relates interactions within and between people and other life forms in an ecosystem context. Anthropologists use ecological modeling to address issues such as sustainability of cultural practices, how population structures are likely to respond to policies, and the ecological impacts of human activities. In anthropology, ecological modeling initially arose in response to cultural ecology as developed by Julian Steward and Leslie White, but it eventually positioned agency and cultural processes as the principal drivers in ecosystems. Ecological models tend toward explanatory rather than descriptive accounts, with detail often specified at the level of individual interactions. Ecological modeling makes possible research that might otherwise be unethical or impractical.
Social Anthropology: Emerging Perspectives on Human Origins
Authors: James Wendy
Published: September 2018

The evolution of our species has been a topic largely based on the material findings of archaeology, paleontology, and genetics. Much less attention has been paid to the lives of early human individuals or to the nature of interactions between them. But interest in such questions has recently increased within the social sciences and humanities, along with interdisciplinary debate. This entry focuses on the emergence of those “modern” intellectual, social, and emotional capacities recognized as distinguishing our lives as interactive human beings today, and presents some of the new approaches being developed within social anthropology.
T
urner,
E
dith (1921–2016)
Authors: Engelke Matthew
Published: September 2018

Edith Turner was an anthropologist of religion who conducted research in many parts of the world from the 1950s onwards. Best known for her contributions to the study of pilgrimage, ritual, and spiritual healing, she approached anthropology not so much as a discipline but as a way of life, refusing to maintain the self/other divide that characterizes the more orthodox approach.
Property
Authors: Thelen Tatjana
Published: September 2018

Property has been a central topic in anthropology since its very beginnings as an academic discipline. In contrast to public discourses and some other disciplines that conceive of property as a relation or right of a specific individual to a “thing,” anthropology sees property as a relation between humans consisting of a bundle of rights. These might include use rights or transfer rights pertaining to the same object that are held by different persons. Property, as a way to conceive and regulate social relations, links such realms as gender, kinship, economy, and politics to ideas about justice and morality, as well as about collective and individual subjectivities. In consequence, property relations constitute important elements of social reproduction and of change.
Sound, Anthropology of
Authors: Cox Rupert
Published: September 2018

The anthropology of sound asks and describes what it means to identify the physical phenomenon of vibration through a transmitting medium as an aspect of experience, conveying both particular forms of knowledge and social, political, and economic significations. It explores the possible relationships between the capacities for speech and hearing and modes of social and cultural organization as formulations of difference. It considers how it may be possible to invoke a conceptualization of sound that is irreducible to linguistic and musical structures but is conditioned by ecology, matter, and media. In this field, which draws from the anthropologies of music and language and intersects with ethnomusicology and the anthropologies of media, science, space, and the senses, sound is both a subject of study and a means of representation, with the main proponent of the field, Steven Feld, advocating sound‐recording practice as a necessary, sensory resource for ethnographic communication.
Informal Learning on YouTube
Authors: Lange Patricia G.
Published: September 2018

YouTube offers multiple channels for informal learning. Participants may learn from video content in the form of lectures, tutorials, walk‐throughs, guides, vlogs, and informational videos. Video makers and viewers also learn through interactive forms of participation such as providing feedback, critiques, and additional information through comments on videos. The staggeringly large corpus of videos on the site invites open‐ended and playful forms of self‐paced exploration that may exist on a continuum from supplementing formal instruction to facilitating informal, highly circumscribed one‐time engagements in which a viewer learns how to execute a specific task. YouTube also enables forms of incidental learning in which participants discover new information, content, or skills serendipitously, while engaged in other activities. Concerns about informal learning on YouTube relate to hostile commentary, the risk to one's reputation of learning in public, and lack of systematic assessment of both mentors' abilities and learners' progress.
Architectural Localism as Damage Control in the Face of Globalism and Digitisation
Authors: McGrath Brian
Published: September 2018

With everything seeming to go global and digital, how can architecture retain a healthily humanist perspective? Having identified four waves of globalisation since the 1980s, Brian McGrath, Professor of Urban Design at New York's Parsons School of Design, explores how architects from the US to Southeast Asia have recently been addressing their various challenges by evolving a new localism – whether through acknowledging typomorphological rules of place, using portable architecture to lighten impact, supporting creative local entrepreneurship, or taking a political stance.
Designing Upstream: Rebuilding Agency Through New Forms of Public Practice
Authors: Williams Finn
Published: September 2018

What went wrong with public‐sector architecture? In the immediate postwar period, the UK's municipal architects' departments were a hotbed of innovation, while today's planning authorities tend to be regarded as bureaucratic and stale. The social enterprise Public Practice was set up to counter this trend by recruiting talented professionals in architecture and related fields to fixed‐term contracts in public authorities, while reserving a tenth of their time for collective research. Finn Williams, one of its co‐founders, sets out the background, political and economic, and describes how it works.
Participative Architecture: The Way to More Environmental Justice
Authors: Hofmann Susanne
Published: September 2018

Do too many cooks spoil the broth? Not necessarily, if the metaphor is applied to architecture. As Berlin‐based practice Die Baupiloten has established, involving end users in design can have many benefits to both process and product – creative, qualitative, financial, social and practical. So what are the ingredients that make for a successful participatory design strategy? Die Baupiloten's founder and director Susanne Hofmann reveals the four‐stage approach that the firm has established, and describes how it has been applied in projects from schools to multigenerational communal housing.
One‐Step Liquid Metal Transfer Printing: Toward Fabrication of Flexible Electronics on Wide Range of Substrates
Authors: Guo Rui , Tang Jianbo , Dong Shijin , Lin Ju , Wang Hongzhang , Liu Jing , Rao Wei
Published: September 2018

As soft conductive materials with high liquid fluidity, the room‐temperature liquid metal alloys (LMs) offer a superior alternative to the fabrication of flexible electronics. So far, techniques aiming at patterning LMs are seriously limited by the alloy's high surface tension and poor wettability with many substrates. Additionally, LMs based mass production with fast and efficient printing on desired target still encounters tremendous unsolved challenges. Here, a one‐step liquid metal transfer printing method with wide range substrate adaptability, comprising of polymer‐based adhesive glue, its printing machine, the LMs ink, and the soft substrate is presented. It is demonstrated that even on those substrates with weak wettability to LMs, the liquid metal transfer printing still works well to create complex conductive geometries, multilayer circuits, and large‐area conductive patterns with excellent transfer efficiency, facile fabrication process, and remarkable electrical stability, which is beneficial to quickly construct wearable electronics, 3D folding conductive structures, flexible actuators, soft robots, etc. Moreover, its advantages of self‐healing and recyclable ability make the strategy possible to prepare reconfigurable circuits and further reduce the cost of fabrication and environmental pollution. This study suggests an important way for future widespread practices of liquid metal soft functional electronics.
Fabrication of highly conductive graphene particle‐coated fiber yarns using polymeric binders through efficient coating techniques
Authors: Mohan Velram Balaji , Jayaraman Krishnan , Bhattacharyya Debes
Published: September 2018

Electrically conductive yarns have been produced by fabricating graphene particles (both graphene nanoplatelets and reduced graphene oxide) on glass, flax, and polypropylene yarns using binding materials (epoxy resin and thermoplastic starch solution) and a dip coating process. Three different dip coating processes have been developed to identify an efficient method of coating in terms of improving electrical conductivity. Morphological study has been carried out to understand the mechanism at the interphase between binder and conductive particles, and it has been found that Van der Waals force and adhesive bonding are higher with epoxy‐based samples than those of starch‐based. Glass fiber yarns (with epoxy binder and rGO/GNP) have been identified as having the highest electrical conductivity of 0.1 S/cm.
Tetranuclear Dysprosium(III) Quintuple‐Decker Single‐Molecule Magnet Prepared Using a π‐Extended Phthalocyaninato Ligand with Two Coordination Sites
Authors: Katoh Keiichi , Morita Takaumi , Yasuda Nobuhiro , Wernsdorfer Wolfgang , Kitagawa Yasutaka , Breedlove Brian K. , Yamashita Masahiro
Published: September 2018

The magnetic properties and spin relaxation processes of a tetranuclear dysprosium(III) fused phthalocyaninato (Pc4−) quintuple‐decker single‐molecule magnet (SMM) (1) with non‐equivalent octa‐coordination geometries are reported. The structure of 1 is regarded as a dimer of Dy3+‐Pc triple‐decker SMMs with different magnetic relaxation characteristics, corresponding to the octa‐coordination geometry sites Dy1 with C4 symmetry (ϕ1=23°) and Dy2 with D4d symmetry (ϕ2=45°). In an Hdc of 1750 Oe and T range of 1.8–3.75 K, the quantum tunnelling of the magnetization was suppressed, and the direct process was enhanced. The effects of the coordination geometry on the spin relaxation phenomena are examined.
Homogeneously Catalyzed Synthesis of (Higher) Alcohols (C1–C4) from the Combination of CO2/CO/H2
Authors: Schmitz M. , Erken C. , Ohligschläger A. , Schnoor J.‐K. , Westhues N. F. , Klankermayer J. , Leitner W. , Liauw M. A.
Published: September 2018

A detailed overview for homogeneously catalyzed strategies and synthesis pathways using a combination of CO2, CO, and H2as active building blocks to selectively obtain C1–C4 alcohols is presented. Conceptual strategies applying homologation, carbonylation, hydrocarboxylation, and hydrogenation reactions will be discussed, finally combining the individual reaction approaches towards potential new pathways to the envisaged alcohol products. Also, tailored reactor concepts with adapted recycling/separation methods for the molecular catalyst systems will be shown and discussed.
Copper‐Mediated Cyanation of Aryl C—H Bond with Removable Bidenate Auxiliary Using Acetonitrile as the Cyano Source
Authors: Yu Zhengwei , Zhang Saisai , Shen Zengming
Published: September 2018

Copper‐mediated cyanation of aryl C—H bond with removable bidenate auxiliary as a directing group has been developed, in which green and cheap acetonitrile is used as the “CN” source. By switching the reaction conditions, the C—H cyanated products and N‐Ar‐phthalimides can be provided in acceptable yields with high chemoselectivity, respectively. The use of quaternary ammonium salt is essential for cyanation reaction.
Intramolecular Proton and Charge Transfer of Pyrene‐based trans‐Stilbene Salicylic Acids Applied to Detection of Aggregated Proteins
Authors: Zhang Jun , Wang Jun , Sandberg Alexander , Wu Xiongyu , Nyström Sofie , LeVine Harry , Konradsson Peter , Hammarström Per , Durbeej Bo , Lindgren Mikael
Published: September 2018

Two analogues to the fluorescent amyloid probe 2,5‐bis(4′‐hydroxy‐3′‐carboxy‐styryl)benzene (X‐34) were synthesized based on the trans‐stilbene pyrene scaffold (Py1SA and Py2SA). The compounds show strikingly different emission spectra when bound to preformed Aβ1–42 fibrils. This remarkable emission difference is retained when bound to amyloid fibrils of four distinct proteins, suggesting a common binding configuration for each molecule. Density functional theory calculations show that Py1SA is twisted, while Py2SA is more planar. Still, an analysis of the highest occupied molecular orbitals (HOMOs) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals (LUMOs) of the two compounds indicates that the degree of electronic coupling between the pyrene and salicylic acid (SA) moieties is larger in Py1SA than in Py2SA. Excited state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) coupled‐charge transfer (ICT) was observed for the anionic form in polar solvents. We conclude that ICT properties of trans‐stilbene derivatives can be utilized for amyloid probe design with large changes in emission spectra and decay times from analogous chemical structures depending on the detailed physical nature of the binding site.
Can Mitochondrial DNA be CRISPRized: Pro and Contra
Authors: Loutre Romuald , Heckel Anne‐Marie , Smirnova Anna , Entelis Nina , Tarassov Ivan
Published: September 2018

Mitochondria represent a chimera of macromolecules encoded either in the organellar genome, mtDNA, or in the nuclear one. If the pathway of protein targeting to different sub‐compartments of mitochondria was relatively well studied, import of small noncoding RNAs into mammalian mitochondria still awaits mechanistic explanations and its functional issues are often not understood thus raising polemics. At the same time, RNA mitochondrial import pathway has an obvious attractiveness as it appears as a unique natural mechanism permitting to address nucleic acids into the organelles. Deciphering the function(s) of imported RNAs inside the mitochondria is extremely complicated due to their relatively low abundance, which suggests their regulatory role. We previously demonstrated that mitochondrial targeting of small noncoding RNAs able to specifically anneal with the mutant mitochondrial DNA led to a decrease of the mtDNA heteroplasmy level by inhibiting mutant mtDNA replication. We then demonstrated that increasing level of expression of such antireplicative recombinant RNAs increases significantly the antireplicative effect. In this report, we present a new data investigating the possibility to establish a CRISPR‐Cas9 system targeting mtDNA exploiting of the pathway of RNA import into mitochondria. Mitochondrially addressed Cas9 versions and a set of mitochondrially targeted guide RNAs were tested in vitro and in vivo and their effect on mtDNA copy number was demonstrated. So far, the system appeared as more complicated for use than previously found for nuclear DNA, because only application of a pair of guide RNAs produced the effect of mtDNA depletion. We discuss, in a critical way, these results and put them in a broader context of polemics concerning the possibilities of manipulation of mtDNA in mammalians. The findings described here prove the potential of the RNA import pathway as a tool for studying mtDNA and for future therapy of mitochondrial disorders. © The Authors. IUBMB Life published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 70(12):1233–1239, 2018
Winter climate variability in the southern Appalachian Mountains, 1910–2017
Authors: Eck Montana A. , Perry L. Baker , Soulé Peter T. , Sugg Johnathan W. , Miller Douglas K.
Published: September 2018

Located in the mid‐latitudes and exhibiting the greatest topographic relief in the eastern United States, the southern Appalachian Mountains (SAM) contain some of the most diverse climatological environments in the United States. This diversity is most pronounced in the winter season when temperature and snowfall can vary drastically across the region. In this study, we identify long‐term trends and variation of temperature and snowfall in the SAM of the southeastern United States during climatological winter (DJF) from 1910 to 2017. Along with recognizing statistically significant climatic trends, we also identify the influence of several teleconnection patterns, namely the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) that further scientific understanding of how this region has remained a climatic anomaly. Results of this study indicate the SAM have experienced a statistically significant long‐term cooling trend since the early 20th century, with recent decades suggesting a reversal towards a warming pattern. Snowfall exhibited high interannual variability, with the 1960s and 1970s producing anomalously high amounts of snowfall. Several atmospheric forcing couplings are identified that align with anomalous conditions in the region. Most notably, negative temperature anomalies and higher snowfall amounts were frequently found during El Niño and negative NAO seasons, with the opposite being true during La Niña and positive NAO winters. The influence of these teleconnection patterns was spatially dependent, with lower elevations and eastern‐facing slopes being highly dependent on the phase of ENSO for snowfall, whereas higher elevations and western‐facing slopes were more reliant on the NAO. The identification of pattern couplings is critical to improving understanding of the anomalous climate of the SAM, enhancing seasonal forecasting, and predicting future climate change in the region.