bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Unmet need for referred services as measured by general practice
Authors: McGeoch Graham , Holland Kieran , Kerdemelidis Melissa , Elliot Nikki , Shand Brett , Fink Catherine , Dixon Anne , Gullery Carolyn
Published: June 2018

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION
Unmet needs are a key indicator of the success of a health system. Clinicians and funders in Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand were concerned that unmet health need was hidden.

AIM
The aim of this survey was to estimate the proportion of patients attending general practice who were unable to access clinically indicated referred services.

METHODS
The survey used a novel method to estimate unserviced health needs. General practitioners (GPs, n = 54) asked their patients (n = 2135) during a consultation about any health needs requiring a referred service. If both agreed that a service was potentially beneficial and not available, this was documented on an e-referral system for review. The outcomes of actual referrals were also reviewed.

RESULTS
The patient group was broadly representative of the Canterbury population, but over-sampled female and middle-aged people and under-sampled Māori. Data adjusted to regional demographics showed that 3.6% of patients had a GP-confirmed unserviced health need. Elective orthopaedic surgery, general surgery and mental health were areas of greatest need. Unserviced health needs were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) associated with greater deprivation, middle-age, and receiving high health-use subsidies.

DISCUSSION
To our knowledge, this is the first survey of GP and patient agreement on unserviced referred health needs. Measuring unserviced health needs in this way is directly relevant to service planning because the gaps identified reflect clinically indicated services that patients want and need. The survey method is an improvement on declined referral rates as a measure of need. Key factors in the method were using a patient-initiated GP consultation and an e-referral system to collect data.
Factors associated with sexually transmissible infection testing practices among men who have sex with men in Jamaica: results from a cross-sectional, tablet-based survey
Authors: Logie Carmen H. , Kenny Kathleen S. , Lacombe-Duncan Ashley , Wang Ying , Levermore Kandasi , Jones Nicolette , Ellis Tyrone , Marshall Annecka
Published: June 2018

Background Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at elevated risk for sexually transmissible infection (STI) acquisition globally. Yet, limited research has explored STI testing practices among MSM in contexts where same-sex practices are criminalised, such as in Jamaica. Methods: A cross-sectional, tablet-based survey with MSM in Kingston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay, Jamaica, was conducted. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the adjusted risk ratio for lifetime STI testing and lifetime STI diagnosis. Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the relative odds of having had an STI test 3–5 months ago and 6–12 months ago in comparison with <3 months ago. Results: Three-quarters (74.8%) of the 556 participants reported receiving an STI test (44% <3 months ago; 32% 3–5 months ago; 13% 6–12 months ago; 10% >12 months ago); 12.1% reported ever receiving an STI diagnosis. In adjusted multivariable analyses, STI testing was associated with sociodemographic (education, location), individual (depression, perceived risk), social (relationship status, sexual stigma) and structural (healthcare provider access) factors. In multinomial analysis, reporting a less recent STI test (>3 months ago) versus <3 months ago was associated with increased likelihood of sexual stigma and food insecurity. Lifetime STI diagnosis was associated with sociodemographic (location), individual (HIV infection) and social (lower social support) factors. Conclusions: Findings document associations between structural factors and delayed timing of STI testing. Further research is necessary to explore how to address social ecological factors in sexual health interventions with MSM in Jamaica.
Short-term effects of wildfire on Patagonian headwater streams
Authors: Williams Subiza Emilio A. , Brand Cecilia
Published: June 2018

In March–April 2015, the El Cristo fire burned 1228 ha of mixed Nothofagus forest in Los Alerces National Park (Argentine Patagonia). We compared physicochemical variables and community structure of burned and unburned headwater streams. Sampling began shortly after the fire was extinguished and comprised periodic water quality assessments and four visits to collect periphyton and invertebrate samples (May, August, October and December). Water temperature, total dissolved solids, total suspended solids and specific conductance were significantly higher in burned sites, whereas nutrient and oxygen concentrations exhibited no major differences. Chlorophyll a (used as a surrogate for autotrophic periphyton biomass) also did not differ significantly. Macroinvertebrate richness, abundance and diversity showed no differences across sites, but taxonomic composition and densities of sensitive taxa were markedly lower at burned streams. Oligochaetes and amphipods, however, were significantly more abundant in the disturbed reaches. Analysis of functional feeding groups revealed that the relative abundances of shredders and collector-filterers were lower at burned sites, possibly reflecting a shift in detrital input.
Polyhedra and packings from hyperbolic honeycombs
Authors: Pedersen Martin Cramer , Hyde Stephen T.
Published: June 2018

Significance

The simplest 2D regular honeycombs are familiar patterns, found in an extraordinary range of natural and designed systems. They include tessellations of the plane by squares, hexagons, and equilateral triangles. Regular triangular honeycombs also form on the sphere; they are the triangular Platonic polyhedra: the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron. Regular hyperbolic honeycombs adopt an infinite variety of topologies; these must be distorted to be situated in 3D space and are thus frustrated. We construct minimally frustrated realizations of the simplest hyperbolic honeycombs.
Close-packed block copolymer micelles induced by temperature quenching
Authors: Chen Liwen , Lee Han Seung , Lee Sangwoo
Published: June 2018

Significance

Close-packed structures are the fundamental crystal symmetries in nature, but selective access to these crystal symmetries in self-assembling materials has remained challenging. This work demonstrates that three representative metastable and stable close-packed structures of block copolymer micelles can be selectively induced using different thermal processing protocols controlling nucleation conditions and size of crystal grains. We find that the least stable hcp transformed into intermediate randomly stacked hcp layers and eventually into the most stable fcc. Our finding is an experimental observation of Ostwald’s rule for close-packed structures, showing the transition orders of close-packed uniform spheres and also illustrates an important example for accessing metastable crystal structures available in the free-energy landscape often hidden in the transition kinetics.
The universally conserved GTPase HflX is an RNA helicase that restores heat-damagedEscherichia coliribosomes
Authors: Dey Sandip , Biswas Chiranjit , Sengupta Jayati
Published: June 2018

The ribosome-associated GTPase HflX acts as an antiassociation factor upon binding to the 50S ribosomal subunit during heat stress in Escherichia coli. Although HflX is recognized as a guanosine triphosphatase, several studies have shown that the N-terminal domain 1 of HflX is capable of hydrolyzing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), but the functional role of its adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) activity remains unknown. We demonstrate that E. coli HflX possesses ATP-dependent RNA helicase activity and is capable of unwinding large subunit ribosomal RNA. A cryo–electron microscopy structure of the 50S–HflX complex in the presence of nonhydrolyzable analogues of ATP and guanosine triphosphate hints at a mode of action for the RNA helicase and suggests the linker helical domain may have a determinant role in RNA unwinding. Heat stress results in inactivation of the ribosome, and we show that HflX can restore heat-damaged ribosomes and improve cell survival.
A20 and ABIN-1 synergistically preserve intestinal epithelial cell survival
Authors: Kattah Michael G. , Shao Ling , Rosli Yenny Y. , Shimizu Hiromichi , Whang Michael I. , Advincula Rommel , Achacoso Philip , Shah Sanjana , Duong Bao H. , Onizawa Michio , Tanbun Priscilia , Malynn Barbara A. , Ma Averil
Published: June 2018

A20 (TNFAIP3) and ABIN-1 (TNIP1) are candidate susceptibility genes for inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune or inflammatory diseases, but it is unclear how these proteins interact in vivo to prevent disease. Here we show that intestinal epithelial cell (IEC)-specific deletion of either A20 or ABIN-1 alone leads to negligible IEC loss, whereas simultaneous deletion of both A20 and ABIN-1 leads to rapid IEC death and mouse lethality. Deletion of both A20 and ABIN-1 from enteroids causes spontaneous cell death in the absence of microbes or hematopoietic cells. Studies with enteroids reveal that A20 and ABIN-1 synergistically restrict death by inhibiting TNF-induced caspase 8 activation and RIPK1 kinase activity. Inhibition of RIPK1 kinase activity alone, or caspase inhibition combined with RIPK3 deletion, abrogates IEC death by blocking both apoptosis and necroptosis in A20 and ABIN-1 double-deficient cells. These data show that the disease susceptibility proteins A20 and ABIN-1 synergistically prevent intestinal inflammation by restricting IEC death and preserving tissue integrity.
TOR complex 2–regulated protein kinase Ypk1 controls sterol distribution by inhibiting StARkin domain–containing proteins located at plasma membrane–endoplasmic reticulum contact sites
Authors: Roelants Françoise M. , Chauhan Neha , Muir Alexander , Davis Jameson C. , Menon Anant K. , Levine Timothy P. , Thorner Jeremy
Published: June 2018

In our proteome-wide screen, Ysp2 (also known as Lam2/Ltc4) was identified as a likely physiologically relevant target of the TOR complex 2 (TORC2)–dependent protein kinase Ypk1 in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Ysp2 was subsequently shown to be one of a new family of sterol-binding proteins located at plasma membrane (PM)–endoplasmic reticulum (ER) contact sites. Here we document that Ysp2 and its paralogue Lam4/Ltc3 are authentic Ypk1 substrates in vivo and show using genetic and biochemical criteria that Ypk1-mediated phosphorylation inhibits the ability of these proteins to promote retrograde transport of sterols from the PM to the ER. Furthermore, we provide evidence that a change in PM sterol homeostasis promotes cell survival under membrane-perturbing conditions known to activate TORC2-Ypk1 signaling. These observations define the underlying molecular basis of a new regulatory mechanism for cellular response to plasma membrane stress.
Robust clustering of noisy high-dimensional gene expression data for patients subtyping
Authors: Coretto Pietro , Serra Angela , Tagliaferri Roberto
Published: June 2018

Motivation

One of the most important research areas in personalized medicine is the discovery of disease sub-types with relevance in clinical applications. This is usually accomplished by exploring gene expression data with unsupervised clustering methodologies. Then, with the advent of multiple omics technologies, data integration methodologies have been further developed to obtain better performances in patient separability. However, these methods do not guarantee the survival separability of the patients in different clusters.

Results

We propose a new methodology that first computes a robust and sparse correlation matrix of the genes, then decomposes it and projects the patient data onto the first m spectral components of the correlation matrix. After that, a robust and adaptive to noise clustering algorithm is applied. The clustering is set up to optimize the separation between survival curves estimated cluster-wise. The method is able to identify clusters that have different omics signatures and also statistically significant differences in survival time. The proposed methodology is tested on five cancer datasets downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas repository. The proposed method is compared with the Similarity Network Fusion (SNF) approach, and model based clustering based on Student’s t-distribution (TMIX). Our method obtains a better performance in terms of survival separability, even if it uses a single gene expression view compared to the multi-view approach of the SNF method. Finally, a pathway based analysis is accomplished to highlight the biological processes that differentiate the obtained patient groups.

Availability and implementation

Our R source code is available online at https://github.com/angy89/RobustClusteringPatientSubtyping

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
MetaPOAP: presence or absence of metabolic pathways in metagenome-assembled genomes
Authors: Ward Lewis M , Shih Patrick M , Fischer Woodward W
Published: June 2018

Genome-resolved metagenomics allows the construction of draft microbial genomes from short-read shotgun metagenomics (Metagenome-Assembled Genomes, or MAGs); however, even high-quality MAGs are typically somewhat incomplete and contain a small amount of contaminant sequence, making accurate prediction of metabolic potential challenging. Here, we describe MetaPOAP, an algorithm for probabalistic assessment of the statistical likelihoods for the presence or absence of metabolic pathways in MAGs.

Availability and implementation

MetaPOAP is available as Python scripts on GitHub or from the Fischer lab webpage, https://github.com/lmward/MetaPOAP.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Effects of Substance Use and Sex Practices on the Intestinal Microbiome During HIV-1 Infection
Authors: Fulcher Jennifer A , Hussain Shehnaz K , Cook Ryan , Li Fan , Tobin Nicole H , Ragsdale Amy , Shoptaw Steven , Gorbach Pamina M , Aldrovandi Grace M
Published: June 2018

Background

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection alters the human intestinal microbiome; however, behavioral factors driving these changes remain poorly defined. Here we examine the effects of substance use and sex behavior on the microbiome during HIV-1 infection.

Methods

Archival rectal swab specimens, urine drug test results, and responses to substance use and sex behavior questionnaires were obtained from 37 HIV-positive participants at 2 time points, separated by 6 months, in a cohort examining the effects of substance use in men who have sex with men (MSM). Microbiome profiling was performed using 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing, and associations with behavioral factors were examined using 0-inflated negative binomial regression. Further analysis of selected variables of interest was performed using propensity scores to account for multiple confounders.

Results

Using permutational multivariate analysis of variance, we found that receptive anal intercourse, methamphetamine use, and marijuana use were among the most important drivers of microbiome variation. Propensity score–adjusted analyses revealed that methamphetamine use and marijuana use displayed unique associations; methamphetamine use was associated with an increased abundance of Porphyromonas and Granulicatella organisms and a decreased abundance of Ruminococcus, Collinsella, and Parabacteroides organisms, whereas marijuana use was associated with an increased abundance of Ruminococcus, Clostridium cluster IV, Solobacterium, and Fusobacterium organisms and a decreased abundance of Acidaminococcus, Prevotella, Dialister, Anaerostipes, and Dorea organisms.

Conclusions

Drug use and sex behavior are important factors associated with intestinal dysbiosis during chronic HIV-1 infection among young MSM.
Survey parameters for detecting 21-cm-Ly α emitter cross-correlations with the Square Kilometre Array
Authors: Hutter Anne , Trott Cathryn M , Dayal Pratika
Published: June 2018

Detections of the cross-correlation signal between the 21 cm signal during reionization and high-redshift Lyman-α (Ly α) emitters (LAEs) are subject to observational uncertainties which mainly include systematics associated with radio interferometers and LAE selection. These uncertainties can be reduced by increasing the survey volume and/or the survey luminosity limit, i.e. the faintest detectable Ly α luminosity. We use our model of high-redshift LAEs and the underlying reionization state to compute the uncertainties of the 21-cm-LAE cross-correlation function at $z$ ≃ 6.6 for observations with SKA1-Low and LAE surveys with Δ$z$ = 0.1 for three different values of the average inter-galactic medium (IGM) ionization state (⟨χHi⟩ ≃ 0.1, 0.25, 0.5). At $z$ ≃ 6.6, we find SILVERRUSH type surveys, with a field of view of 21 deg2 and survey luminosity limits of Lα ≥ 7.9 × 1042 erg s−1, to be optimal to distinguish between an IGM that is 50 , 25 , and 10 per  cent neutral, while surveys with smaller fields of view and lower survey luminosity limits, such as the 5 and 10 deg2 surveys with WFIRST, can only discriminate between a 50  and 10 per  cent neutral IGM.
Cellular Immune Responses 6 Years Following 1, 2, or 3 Doses of Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine in Fijian Girls and Subsequent Responses to a Dose of Bivalent HPV Vaccine
Authors: Toh Zheng Quan , Cheow Kathleen Wen Bei , Russell Fiona M , Hoe Edwin , Reyburn Rita , Fong James , Tuivaga Evelyn , Ratu Felisita T , Nguyen Cattram D , Matanitobua Silivia , Reitsma Andrea , Tabrizi Sepehr N , Garland Suzanne M , Mulholland Edward K , Licciardi Paul V
Published: June 2018

Background

This study examined the cellular immunity of 0, 1, 2, and 3 doses of Gardasil vaccine (4vHPV) in girls after 6 years and their responses to a subsequent dose of Cervarix vaccine (2vHPV).

Methods

A subset of girls (n = 59) who previously received 0, 1, 2, or 3 doses of 4vHPV 6 years earlier were randomly selected from a cohort study of Fijian girls (age 15–19 years). Blood was collected before and 28 days after a dose of 2vHPV. The HPV16- and HPV18-specific cellular immune response was determined by IFNγ-ELISPOT and by measurement of cytokines in peripheral blood mononuclear cell supernatants.

Results

Six years after 4vHPV vaccination, HPV18-specific responses were significantly lower in the 1- (1D) or 2-dose (2D) recipients compared with 3-dose recipients (2D: IFNγ-ELISPOT: P = .008; cytokines, IFNγ: P = .002; IL-2: P = .022; TNFα: P = .016; IL-10: P = .018; 1D: IL-2: P = .031; IL-10: P = .014). These differences were no longer significant post-2vHPV. No significant differences in HPV16 responses (except IL-2, P < .05) were observed between the 2- or 1-dose recipients and 3-dose recipients.

Conclusions

These data suggest that cellular immunity following reduced-dose schedules was detectable after 6 years, although the responses were variable between HPV types and dosage groups. The clinical significance of this is unknown. Further studies on the impact of reduced dose schedules are needed, particularly in high–disease burden settings.
Cicely Saunders
Authors: Clark David
Published: June 2018

Cicely Saunders founded St Christopher’s Hospice in London in 1967 as a centre for teaching, research, and care. Its influence quickly spread around the world. Cicely Saunders — A Life and Legacy shows how she played a crucial role in shaping a new discourse of care at the end of life. From the nihilism of ‘there is nothing more we can do’, medicine and healthcare gradually adopted a more purposeful approach to care in the face of advanced disease and at the end of life. This came to be known as palliative care. This biography links for the first time the ideas and practice of Cicely Saunders to the spreading global interest in hospice and palliative care. It explores her deep reflection on the nature of suffering at the end of life, the possibilities of a more informed approach to the medical management of pain and other symptoms, and above all the importance of remaining focussed on the personal and spiritual concerns of the individual patient as death approaches. It is a story of a remarkable personal and professional life and of a seismic shift in twentieth-century medical history.
Rich Russians
Authors: Schimpfössl Elisabeth
Published: June 2018

This book looks at representatives of the top 0.1 per cent of Russian society: their stories, trajectories, ideas about life, and how they see their role and position at the top of Russian society. They are explored through their own stories: eighty interviews with multimillionaires and billionaires, and their spouses and children, conducted between 2008 and 2017. These people grew up and lived through a historically unique period of economic turmoil and social change following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When taken in a wider historical context, however, we see the repetition of a time-honored process whereby new money becomes respectable money. Rich Russians applies the sociological frameworks of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu in substantiating the claim that bourgeois Russians have acquired all sorts of cultural and social resources that help consolidate their power individually and as a group. They have elaborated more distinguished and refined tastes, rediscovered their family history, and begun actively engaging in philanthropy. Most importantly, they have worked out a narrative for themselves justifying why they deserve their elitist position in society—because of who they are and their superior qualities over others—and why they should be treated as equals by the West. This new, empirically grounded research helps us to understand the Russian bourgeois elite and its increasingly complex relations with Western societies.
A Perceptual Approach to Quality Peace
Authors: Regan Patrick M.
Published: June 2018

This chapter tackles the problem of finding data-derived indicators to measure the quality of peace, versus a definition of peace simply as the absence of war. Conceptually, peace is seen as an equilibrium condition where resort to violence is minimal and where the highest quality of peace exists when the idea of armed violence approaches the unthinkable. The author draws upon the early work of Quincy Wright and Kenneth Boulding and progresses from there, establishing first their definitions of and conditions for peace. To put his theories to work, he introduces two proxy indicators: black market currency exchanges and bond market prices. Specifically, he examines and compares the premiums attached to the black market values of currencies in less stable economies and relates them to factors that promote destabilization of the equilibrium. Similarly, he compares the strip spreads on sovereign bonds as an indicator of government stability and instability.
The Phenomenal Basis of Intentionality
Authors: Mendelovici Angela
Published: June 2018

Some mental states seem to be "of" or "about" things or to "say" something. For example, a thought might represent that grass is green, and a visual experience might represent a blue cup. This is intentionality. The aim of this book is to explain this phenomenon. Once we understand intentionality as a phenomenon to be explained, rather than a posit in a theory explaining something else, we can see that there are glaring empirical and in-principle difficulties with currently popular tracking and functional role theories of intentionality, which aim to account for intentionality in terms of tracking relations and functional roles. This book develops an alternative theory, the phenomenal intentionality theory (PIT), on which the source of intentionality is none other than phenomenal consciousness, the subjective, felt, or qualitative aspect of mental life. While PIT avoids the problems that plague tracking and functional role theories, it faces its own challenges in accounting for the rich and complex contents of thoughts and the contents of nonconscious states. In responding to these challenges, this book proposes a novel version of PIT, one on which all intentionality is phenomenal intentionality, though we in some sense represent many non-phenomenal contents by ascribing them to ourselves. This book further argues that phenomenal consciousness is an intrinsic feature of mental life, resulting in a view that is radically internalistic in spirit: Our phenomenally represented contents are literally in our heads, and any non-phenomenal contents we in some sense represent are expressly targeted by us.
The Evolution of Moral Progress
Authors: Buchanan Allen , Powell Russell
Published: June 2018

The idea of moral progress played a central role in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century but is rarely encountered in moral and political philosophical discourse today. One reason for this is that traditional liberal theorists of moral progress, like their conservative detractors, tended to rely on underevidenced assumptions about human psychology and society. For the first time in history, we are developing robust scientific knowledge about human nature, especially through empirical psychological theories of morality and culture that are informed by evolutionary theory. In addition, the social sciences now provide better information about which social arrangements are feasible and sustainable and about how social norms arise, change, and come to shape moral thought and behavior. Accordingly, it is time to revisit the question of moral progress. On the surface, evolutionary accounts of morality paint a pessimistic picture, suggesting that certain types of moral progress are unrealistic or inappropriate for beings like us. In brief, humans are said to be “hard-wired” for rather limited moral capacities. However, such a view overlooks the great plasticity of human morality as evidenced by our history of social and political moral achievements. To account for these changes while giving evolved moral psychology its due, we develop a dynamic, biocultural theory of moral progress that highlights the interaction between adaptive components of moral psychology and the cultural construction of moral norms and beliefs; and we explore how this interaction can advance, impede, and reverse moral progress.
She Preached the Word
Authors: Knoll Benjamin R. , Bolin Cammie Jo
Published: June 2018

She Preached the Word is a landmark study on women’s ordination in contemporary American religious congregations. In this groundbreaking work, Benjamin Knoll and Cammie Jo Bolin draw upon a novel collection of survey data and personal narrative interviews to answer several important questions, including: Who supports women’s ordination in their congregations? What are the most common reasons for and against women’s ordination? What effect do female clergy have on young women and girls, particularly in terms of their psychological, economic, and religious empowerment later in life? How do women clergy affect levels of congregational attendance and engagement among members? What explains the persistent gender gap in America’s clergy? The authors find that female clergy indeed matter, but not always in the ways that might be expected. They show, for example, that while female clergy have important effects on women in the pews, they have stronger effects on theological and political liberals. Throughout this book, Knoll and Bolin discuss how the persistent gender gap in the wider economic, social, and political spheres will likely continue so long as women are underrepresented in America’s pulpits. Accessible to scholars and general readers alike, She Preached the Word is a timely and important contribution to our understanding of the intersection of gender, religion, and politics in contemporary American society.
Contract Law
Authors: Zamir Eyal , Teichman Doron
Published: June 2018

This chapter presents an overview of the behavioral analysis of contract law. It first presents a behavioral theory of contracts that highlights the role of values such as promise-keeping and trust, and examines how the role played by those values depends on whether the contract is a product of negotiation or not (i.e., a standard-form contract). The chapter then discusses specific issues in contract law from a behavioral viewpoint—including pre-contractual negotiations (with special emphasis on the role of default rules and other reference points), contract formation, contract interpretation and supplementation, performance, and remedies for breach of contract, including agreed-upon remedies.
Consumer Contracts
Authors: Zamir Eyal , Teichman Doron
Published: June 2018

This chapter presents an overview of the behavioral analysis of the law of consumer contracts. The chapter reviews various marketing techniques that build upon consumers’ bounded rationality, including the manner of presenting information, limited availability, low-ball and bait-and-switch techniques, and lenient return policies. It also analyzes several pricing techniques, such as price framing, multidimensional prices, deferred and contingent payments, and odd pricing. The chapter then turns to examining the content of consumer contracts, and highlights how pricing methods, non-salient clauses, and modifications might also exploit consumers’ limited rationality. In light of this overview, the chapter examines market-based (primarily competition and reputation) and legal solutions (primarily disclosure and mandatory regulations) to the challenges posed by consumer contracts.
Administrative, Constitutional, and International Law
Authors: Zamir Eyal , Teichman Doron
Published: June 2018

Public choice theory—the application of standard economics to the behavior of public officials and citizens—has long been criticized as mischaracterizing people’s motivations and behavior. The chapter analyzes how behavioral studies might contribute to a better understanding and developing of public law, including constitutional and administrative law. It critically discusses the behavioral analysis of governmental institutions and rule-making, citizens’ judgments and choices, and human rights (including issues in freedom of speech, the fight against terrorism, and affirmative action). Finally, the chapter critically examines recent behavioral analyses of public international law, the challenges they face, and the contributions they make.
Infusing Perception with Imagination
Authors: Brown Derek H.
Published: June 2018

This chapter explores the broad thesis that most if not all perceptual experiences are infused or soaked with imaginings. To begin, the author articulates a sense of imagination useful for this discussion, avoids some pitfalls, and incorporates the result into a schematic guidance principle. The thought behind the principle is that imaginative contributions to perceptual experiences are self-generated ingredients to perception that have a reasonably direct, ampliative impact on the relevant perceptual experiences. This framework is then applied to three sets of case studies: object-kind and object-sameness experiences (Strawson 1970); colour (Macpherson 2012); and amodal completion (Nanay 2010) and perceptual constancy. Although the case studies have interesting differences, they all conform to the guidance principle. Since each has the potential to independently justify the thesis that perceptual experiences are infused with imaginings, they collectively provide sound motive to provisionally endorse it.
Superimposed Mental Imagery
Authors: Briscoe Robert Eamon
Published: June 2018

Human beings have the capacity to ‘augment’ reality by superimposing mental imagery on the visually perceived scene, a capacity that is here referred to as make-perceive. In the first part of this chapter, the author shows that make-perceive enables us to solve certain problems and pursue certain projects more effectively than bottom-up perceiving or top-down visualization alone. The second part addresses the question of whether make-perceive may help to account for the phenomenal presence of occluded or otherwise hidden features of perceived objects. The author argues that phenomenal presence isn’t well explained by the hypothesis that hidden features are represented using projected mental images. In defending this position, he points to important phenomenological and functional differences between the way hidden object features are represented respectively in mental imagery and amodal completion.
How Imagination Gives Rise to Knowledge
Authors: Kind Amy
Published: June 2018

Though philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Sartre have dismissed imagination as epistemically irrelevant, this chapter argues that there are numerous cases in which imagining can help to justify our contingent beliefs about the world. The argument proceeds by the consideration of case studies involving two particularly gifted imaginers, Nikola Tesla and Temple Grandin. Importantly, the lessons that we learn from these case studies are applicable to cases involving less gifted imaginers as well. Though not all imaginings will have justificatory power, the chapter shows how the sorts of cases in which imagining plays an epistemic role can be easily distinguished from the sorts of cases in which it does not.
The Geography of Fundamentality
Authors: Bliss Ricki , Priest Graham
Published: June 2018

The dominant view amongst contemporary analytic metaphysicians working on notions of metaphysical dependence and the overarching structure of reality is one according to which that reality is hierarchically structured (the hierarchy thesis), well-founded (the fundamentality thesis), populated by merely contingent fundamentalia (the contingency thesis), and consistent (the consistency thesis). The introduction to this volume addresses the reasons commonly offered in defence of these theses and evaluates their merits. If it is correct that these are the core commitments of the metaphysical foundationalist, then it is proposed that the view is not nearly on such firm footing as one might suppose. The chapter also argues that the alternatives to this view—metaphysical infinitism and metaphysical coherentism—ought to be taken more seriously.
Inheritance Arguments for Fundamentality
Authors: Trogdon Kelly
Published: June 2018

According to metaphysical foundationalism, it’s necessary that any non-fundamental entity be fully grounded by fundamental entities. Jonathan Schaffer has recently proposed an argument for metaphysical foundationalism that appeals to the notion of reality inheritance. After clarifying the argument, Chapter 9 argues that it is unsuccessful. It suggests that there are more plausible arguments that appeal to the notion of causal capacity inheritance instead. But, as these arguments target special cases of metaphysical foundationalism, it is concluded that if considerations involving inheritance are to provide a route to metaphysical foundationalism, the route will be indirect.
On Shaky Ground? Exploring the Contingent Fundamentality Thesis
Authors: Wildman Nathan
Published: June 2018

The relationship between fundamentality and modality remains criminally underexplored. In particular, there are several significant questions about fundamentality’s modal strength that remain unanswered. For example, if something is fundamental is it necessarily so? That is, could something be fundamental in one possible world and derivative in another? And how would the acceptance of contingent fundamentality square with commitments to contingentism (or, for that matter, necessitism) about the existence of the fundamentalia? Chapter 14 makes some headway towards addressing these questions. It does so by exploring the contingent fundamentality thesis, according to which it is possible that something is possibly fundamental and possibly derivative. In this way, the chapter represents a starting point for examining broader issues about the relationship between fundamentality and modality.
Some Varieties of Non-Causal Explanation
Authors: Woodward James
Published: June 2018

This chapter explores the possibility of weakening the “interventionist” criteria for causal explanation described in Woodward’s Making Things Happen (2003) to yield various forms of non-causal explanation. These include the following: (1) retaining the idea that explanations must answer what-if-things-had-been-different questions (the w-question requirement), but dropping the requirement that the answers to such questions must take the form of claims about what would happen under interventions; (2) retaining the w-question requirement, but dropping the requirement that the generalization (if any) connecting explanans and explanandum be contingent and instead allowing generalizations that hold for mathematical or conceptual reasons to play this role; (3) dropping the w-question requirement to accommodate the role of information about irrelevance in explanation.
Introduction
Authors: Dunn Jeffrey , Ahlstrom-Vij Kristoffer
Published: June 2018

What makes an action right or wrong? One of the most influential answers over the past couple of centuries is that of the consequentialist. There are a variety of consequentialist views and there are a variety of ways of stating precisely what it is for a view to count as consequentialist. Nevertheless, consequentialists agree that, in some sense, rightness is to be understood in terms of goodness. Act utilitarianism is perhaps the most well-known version of consequentialism. According to such a view, an action is right if and only if no alternative to that action has a set of consequences with greater total value. The most familiar version of such a view is of the hedonist variety, where total value is understood as pleasure minus pain,...
Adaptive Misbeliefs, Value Trade-Offs, and Epistemic Responsibility
Authors: Snow Nancy E.
Published: June 2018

Snow focuses on a class of beliefs that have been called ‘adaptive misbeliefs’—beliefs that are false or ungrounded, but nevertheless helpful for action—and argues that they are not epistemically justified by the greater pragmatic value they accrue for the believer. She then argues that this verdict remains even if the greater value is epistemic value rather than pragmatic value. This work is consonant with earlier work critical of epistemic consequentialism concerning epistemic trade-offs, but adds to it by rendering it plausible that there are actual cases of adaptive misbelief that instantiate such problematic trade-offs. Snow also adds that we should be able to not only judge whether an agent’s belief is justified, but also whether the agent is believing responsibly or irresponsibly. If she’s right about this, then it is a further challenge for the epistemic consequentialist to say something about this sort of epistemic verdict.
The “Consequentialism” in “Epistemic Consequentialism”
Authors: Driver Julia
Published: June 2018

Driver compares ethical and epistemic consequentialism in order to get clearer on the latter’s view on the relationship between the epistemic right and the epistemic good. She notes that the process reliabilist is a kind of epistemic consequentialist that is able to avoid a number of objections to consequentialism adapted from the ethical literature. It does this by evaluating beliefs indirectly with reference to processes, and then processes directly with reference to the beliefs they tend to produce. But she worries that such a picture may be unmotivated: why think that beliefs are to be evaluated in one way, while processes are to be evaluated in another? One answer lies in a sophisticated form of consequentialism on which the good of true belief is taken to be a regulative aim, and where that notion of goodness is separate from issues concerning epistemic blame.
Moral Perception Defended
Authors: Audi Robert
Published: June 2018

This chapter extends Robert Audi's theory of moral perception and answers some objections from the literature. It distinguishes the perceptible from the perceptual; develops a structural analogy between perception and action; explains how moral perception can be causal; clarifies respects in which moral perception is representational; and indicates how it can ground moral knowledge. The presentational character of moral perception is described, particularly the phenomenological integration between moral sensibility and non-moral perception of the natural properties that ground moral properties. The question whether moral perception is inferential is approached by clarifying the notion of inference and pursuing an analogy between moral perception and perception of emotion. Aesthetic perception is also considered as instructively analogous to moral perception. The final sections explore cognitive penetration in relation to moral perception, conceptual and developmental aspects of moral perception, and the latitude Audi’s account of it allows in the epistemology and ontology of ethics.
Moral Perception, Thick Concepts, and Perspectivalism
Authors: Bergqvist Anna
Published: June 2018

This chapter examines the implications of Iris Murdoch’s distinctive conception of value experience for the possibility of a value objectivism and what is sometimes called the ‘absolute conception’, which is implicit in many contemporary debates about thick evaluative concepts. It argues for a robust realist reading of the claim that the salient concepts of an individual’s life-world can be revelatory of value without appeal either to Platonism or value constitutivism. The chapter distinguishes two readings of the concept of ‘non-perspectival value’, an epistemic and a non-epistemic one, and argues that commitment to the thesis that value is in some sense always ‘value for us’ does not as such rule out value’s being non-perspectival in the sense of existing independently of any actual world views or perspectives in the non-epistemic sense. What is needed is a separate argument that speaks to the practicality of thick moral concepts as action-guiding concepts.
Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866-1900
Authors: Renker Elizabeth
Published: June 2018

The terms “poetry” and “realism” have a complex and often oppositional relationship in American literary histories of the postbellum period. The core narrative holds that “realism,” the major literary “movement” of the era, developed apace in prose fiction, while poetry, stuck in a hopelessly idealist late-romantic mode, languished and stagnated. Poetry is almost entirely absent from scholarship on American literary realism except as the emblem of realism’s opposite: a desiccated genteel “twilight of the poets.” Realist Poetics in American Culture, 1866–1900 refutes the familiar narrative of postbellum poetics as a scene of failure, and it recovers the active and variegated practices of a diverse array of realist poets across print culture. The triumph of the twilight tale in the twentieth century obscured, minimized, and flattened the many poetic discourses of the age, including but not limited to a significant body of realist poems currently missing from U.S. literary histories. Excavating an extensive archive of realist poems, this volume offers a significant revision to the genre-exclusive story of realism and, by extension, to the very foundations of postbellum American literary history dating back to the earliest stages of the discipline.
Applying New Mathematics
Authors: Bueno Otávio , French Steven
Published: June 2018

Here we present our first case study: the introduction of group theory into quantum mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s. It is helpful in this context to distinguish the ‘Weyl’ and ‘Wigner’ programmes, where the former is concerned with using group theory to provide secure foundations for the emerging quantum physics and the latter emphasizes its practical applications. We suggest the application of the mathematics to the physics depended on certain structural ‘bridges’ within the mathematics itself and also that both this mathematics and the physics were in a state of flux. Given those features, we argue that the partial structures approach offers a suitable framework for representing these developments. One can resist Steiner’s claim that the mathematics is doing all the work in these cases, as it is only because of prior idealizing moves on the physics side that the mathematics can be brought into play to begin with.
Democracy When the People Are Thinking
Authors: Fishkin James S.
Published: June 2018

Democracy requires a connection to the “will of the people.” What does that mean in a world of “fake news,” relentless advocacy, dialogue mostly among the like-minded, and massive spending to manipulate public opinion? What kind of opinion can the public have under such conditions? What would democracy be like if the people were really thinking in depth about the policies they must live with? This book argues that “deliberative democracy” is not utopian. It is a practical solution to many of democracy’s ills. It can supplement existing institutions with practical reforms. It can apply at all levels of government and for many different kinds of policy choices. This book speaks to a recurring dilemma: listen to the people and get the angry voices of populism or rely on widely distrusted elites and get policies that seem out of touch with the public’s concerns. Instead, there are methods for getting a representative and thoughtful public voice that is really worth listening to. Democracy is under siege in most countries. Democratic institutions have low approval and face a resurgent threat from authoritarian regimes. Deliberative democracy can provide an antidote. It can reinvigorate our democratic politics. This book draws on the author’s research with many collaborators on “Deliberative Polling”—a process he has conducted in twenty-seven countries on six continents. It contributes both to political theory and to the empirical study of public opinion and participation, and should interest anyone concerned about the future of democracy and how it can be revitalized.
Introduction to Part One
Authors: Spelman Henry
Published: June 2018

The introduction situates this work within scholarship and outlines an approach to some larger issues including literature, literary history, canons, periodization, and historical contexts. It then broaches the question of how Pindaric epinician related to its public and offers a preview of the next five chapters. Studying Pindar’s ode within a literary culture rather than the immediate circumstances of their production and initial reception might lead one to different and incompatible conclusions or elucidate other facets of complex realities. One of the goals of this work is to contextualize within literary history Pindar’s project of creating works that could be decontextualized from their first performance.
Event and Artefact
Authors: Spelman Henry
Published: June 2018

This chapter examines the interplay between first performance and subsequent reception in fifth-century lyric and especially in Pindar’s epinicians. It describes how poems trace their own travels from unrepeatable event to perpetuated artefact and draws conclusions about the shape of the literary culture behind Pindar’s odes. Six sections discuss six passages that map their journey from performance into permanence. A concluding section then uses these passages as case studies and primary evidence in order to draw overarching conclusions about the relationship between the rhetoric of performance and the realities of literary practices. By studying Pindar’s depictions of the life of his work we can better see how his poems found a place in a poetic culture stretching through time and space. Pindar brings the view sub specie aeternitatis into the moment of performance and also transmits the view from a certain hic et nunc into perpetuity.