bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Biographies of a Scientific Subject: The Intelligence Test
Authors: Mülberger Annette
Published: November 2020

The intelligence test consists of a series of exercises designed to measure intelligence. Intelligence is generally understood as mental capacity that enables a person to learn at school or, more generally, to reason, to solve problems, and to adapt to new (challenging) situations. There are many types of intelligence tests depending on the kind of person (age, profession, culture, etc.) and the way intelligence is understood. Some tests are general, others are focused on evaluating language skills, others on memory, on abstract and logical thinking, or on abilities in a wide variety of areas, such as, for example, recognizing and matching implicit visual patterns. Scores may be presented as an IQ (intelligence quotient), as a mental age, or simply as a point on a scale. Intelligence tests are instrumental in ordering, ranking, and comparing individuals and groups.

The testing of intelligence started in the 19th century and became a common practice in schools and universities, psychotechnical institutions, courts, asylums, and private companies on an international level during the 20th century. It is generally assumed that the first test was designed by the French scholars A. Binet and T. Simon in 1905, but the historical link between testing and experimenting points to previous tests, such as the word association test. Testing was practiced and understood in different ways, depending not only on the time, but also on the concrete local (cultural and institutional) conditions. For example, in the United States and Brazil, testing was immediately linked to race differences and eugenic programs, while in other places, such as Spain, it was part of an attempt to detect “feebleness” and to grade students at certain schools.

Since its beginning, the intelligence test received harsh criticism and triggered massive protests. The debate went through the mass media, leading to the infamous “IQ test wars.” Thus, nowadays, psychologists are aware of the inherent danger of cultural discrimination and social marginalization, and they are more careful in the promotion of intelligence testing. In order to understand the role the intelligence test plays in today’s society, it is necessary to explore its history with the help of well-documented case studies. Such studies show how the testing practice was employed in national contexts and how it was received, used, or rejected by different social groups or professionals. Current historical research adopts a more inclusive perspective, moving away from a narrative focused on the role testing played in North-America. New work has appeared that explores how testing was taking place in different national and cultural environments, such as Russia (the former Soviet Union), India, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Argentina, Chile, and many other places.
Armed Robbery (Commercial)
Authors: Hornsby Rob , Hobbs Dick
Published: November 2020

The United Kingdom has seen the rise and subsequent demise of armed robbery by serious and organized criminals. The emergence of armed robbery must be considered within a context of criminal progression forged by the wider political economy and its developments, which shape the opportunities and characteristics of professional criminals. The shift from a cash-based economy towards a credit-constructed economic milieu witnessed the demise of craft crimes such as safe-cracking and the growth of project-based criminality such as armed robbery. The subsequent decline in professional armed robbers attacking banks, post offices, building societies, and cash-in-transit targets can be regarded as the result of control-of-crime strategies and situational crime prevention tactics. There has been increasing use of security measures, including (but not exclusively) within the banking sector, such as in-house closed-circuit television (CCTV), indelible dyes for tainting stolen money, and wider “risk society” measures including, for example, widespread street CCTV, automated number plate recognition, and an increasing shift to credit or debit card transactions. This approach to situational crime control has been successful, leading “elite” professional criminals to seek alternative illicit opportunities and leaving contemporary armed robbers, generally amateurs, deskilled and often desperate individuals.
Green Criminology in International Perspectives
Authors: Gladkova Ekaterina , Hutchinson Alison , Wyatt Tanya
Published: November 2020

Green criminology is now an established subfield of criminology. Having emerged in the 1990s, green criminology has rapidly grown, particularly in the last 10 years. Scholarship remains rooted in the critical and radical traditions that inspired its creation and challenge the orthodoxy of most criminological scholarship. This means that research in green criminology does not stick within the confines of only what is deemed criminal by the state but also uncovers harmful and injurious behaviors, particularly of the powerful, such as states and corporations. These once-hidden harms are approached from an environmental justice perspective that exposes the injury and suffering of marginalized people and also to the environment itself (ecological justice) and to nonhumans (species justice). More recent iterations of green criminology feature culture in addition to political economic explanations of crimes and harms against the environment and other species. Both theories of green crimes criticize capitalist societies and the ongoing problems of commodification and excessive consumption. In addition, new contributions, particularly from the Global South, are challenging the hegemony of Western criminological and environmental discourses, offering new (to the West) insights into relationships with nature and with other people. These studies have the potential to shape new prevention strategies and intervention mechanisms to disrupt green crimes and harms. This is urgent as the magnitude of environmental degradation is increasing—ranging from the threat of climate change, the possible extinction of a million species in the near future, and the ubiquity of plastic pollution, to name just a few forms of environmental destruction that humans have been, and are, perpetrating against the Earth.
Aspirations to Gender Equality in Philosophy, Political Activism, and Education
Authors: Bynum Gregory
Published: November 2020

Late 20th-century and early 21st-century social movement toward gender equality in society has been significant. Parents and educators commonly expect that all youngsters should have the same life opportunities regardless of gender. In education, girls and young women are excelling, often equaling and even surpassing boys and men in academic performance and in earning college degrees and graduate degrees. Further, women are more frequently assuming traditionally “masculine” professional roles (doctor, lawyer, manager, legislator, governor, and others) while men more frequently assume traditionally “feminine” roles, successfully taking on more child care and housework, and working in nursing and other traditionally “feminine” fields.

At the same time, preferences for gender hierarchy are still strongly expressed in many areas of society. At the top of leading social institutions including government and business, men still possess far more political, economic, and intellectual leadership power and authority in comparison to women; and in reaction to political and economic power imbalances, women’s rights activists sometimes express the idea of female superiority instead of arguing for gender equality. In the area of socialization, girls and women continue experiencing high levels of gender-specific pressure to conform to narrow ideals of physical beauty and emotional supportiveness, while boys and men continue experiencing pressure to avoid communicating about their vulnerabilities and emotions, possibly stunting their emotional development and impairing their mental health. In this context, gender equality emerges as a vital, early-21st-century educational imperative that is essential in actualizing what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has designated the right of all people to an education for the “full development of the human personality.” In the gender equality imperative’s emergence in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the following elements are all interrelated: philosophical perspectives and sociopolitical developments indicating a need for gender equality, thinking and practices opposed to gender equality, and the development of pro-gender-equality educational understandings and practices.
Ideology and Education
Authors: Backer David
Published: November 2020

“Ideology” has fallen out of favor as a term of art. Terms like “equity,” “bias,” “gap,” “discourse,” “norm,” various “isms,” “consciousness,” “experience,” and “policy” tend to appear in scholarly and mainstream education dialogue when it comes to social-political practices. Yet the term is important both historically and for the present day. After its first formal usage in the 18th century, intellectuals produced several concepts of ideology. Ideology transformed from a science of ideas to propaganda; from critiques of truth and falsity to necessary strategy; from a focus on consciousness to a focus on practice. These transformations impacted educational research, particularly in the postwar period during a renewed emphasis on schooling’s social context. Revisiting the various concepts of ideology, particularly ideology as a practice, is valuable for educators and scholars today.
Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada
Authors: Johnston Lisa , Shoemaker Leah , Land Nicole , Di Santo Aurelia , Jagger Susan
Published: November 2020

The field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Canada has been informed by a myriad of influences and these factors continue to shift and shape the curriculum, pedagogy, research, and practice in Canadian ECEC. Historically, following many of the theories and practices embraced by the United States, early child-care centers, day nurseries, and kindergartens were established to alleviate pressures on overcrowded schools and allow for mothers to work outside of the home. At the same time, Canadian child care took on a broader role in social welfare and later social justice, working to reduce inequities and inequality. These motivations have not been shared across all ECEC, and this is particularly evident in Indigenous early education. Here, Indigenous children and families have endured the horror of the residential school system and its legacy of colonialism, trauma, and cultural genocide. Along with these underpinning histories, Canadian ECEC has been informed by, is continuing to be shaped by, and is beginning to be guided by a number of models and movements in early learning. These include developmentalism, child-centered pedagogies, Reggio Emilia approaches, children’s rights, holistic education, the reconceptualist movement, and postdevelopmentalism, and many of these approaches are not mutually exclusive. Finally, the policies and practices at federal, provincial, and municipal levels and the unique tensions between these levels of government structure Canadian ECEC policy and practice. Provincial and Indigenous early learning frameworks are created to enhance educator understandings and application of program principles, values, and goals, and these embrace responsive relationships with children and families, reflective practice, the importance of the environment and play in learning, and respect of diversity, equity, and inclusion, to name but a few shared principles. Taken together, the complexity of ECEC in Canada is clear, with historical approaches and attitudes continuing to preserve structures that devalue children and those who work with them, while concurrently efforts continue to honor the rights and voices of all children, advocate for professionalization in the field of ECEC, and reveal and reconcile past and current truths and injustices in Indigenous children’s education and care, in order to support and heal all children, families, and communities.
Educational Reforms in Kenya
Authors: Kavua Martin Mwongela
Published: November 2020

Educational reforms have been made from time to time since independence in Kenya. These reforms have been effected through commissions of education in the context of the country. Among education commissions that have steered reforms in Kenya are the Kenya Education Commission, the National Commission on Education Objectives and Policy, the Presidential Working Party on the Second University, the Commission of Inquiry into the Educational System of Kenya, and the Taskforce on the Realignment of the Sector to the New System. The main challenges facing the education sector have been issues of access, equity, quality, relevance, availability of educational resources, and efficiency in managing them. Moreover, the education system has been blamed for some of the challenges in the education sector, necessitating system change from the 8+4+4 to the 2+6+3+3+3 system. Challenges facing education reforms include inconsistency in carrying out reforms fueled by lack of a guiding philosophical framework, a top-down decision-making process, limited backing for inclusive education in policy, and curriculum-based challenges. Going forward, a bottom-up approach to education reforms, an evidence-based decision-making for reforms in education, and an implementation of inclusive education may play a significant role in reforming the education system.
School Reform for Multicultural Society in South Korea
Authors: Chang Insil , Ahn Lydia Harim
Published: November 2020

The advancement of globalization around the world shifted South Korea’s rapid change into a multicultural society. As a result, the characteristically homogenous school environment in Korea has seen an increase in students from diverse cultural backgrounds. Currently, the total number of multicultural students is 109,387 (1.9%), a large comparative shift from previously when there were solely Korean students in classrooms. In addition, multicultural areas with schools where over 50% of students are multicultural are increasing in Korea. However, because of the national curriculum guidelines in Korea, all classrooms operate in the same way regardless of student backgrounds. The language barrier and other cultural differences pose difficulties for multicultural students to keep up in coursework.

Overall, schools that are accustomed to the traditional national curriculum have difficulties in school reform regardless of the changes in student demographics ratio. However, in an endeavor for school reform, the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education has designated for school reform multicultural international innovation schools where multicultural students make up over 30% of the students. These schools have at least 50% autonomy in curricula, whereas other Korean schools have to follow the national school curricula. There are three elementary school curricula designed as multicultural international innovation schools in Gyeonggi-do. This article examines school reform in a multicultural society by focusing on how three primary schools are designated as multicultural international reform schools.
Reforms of the Matriculation EFL Tests in China
Authors: Lin Jia
Published: November 2020

In 2013, the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China initiated fundamental reforms of the Matriculation English as a Foreign Language Tests (the Matriculation EFL Tests hereafter) in order to solve problems in college admissions and K–12 education. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Education, provinces announced their specific reform plans. This round of reforms features holding the Matriculation EFL Tests multiple times per year and involving nongovernment testing companies in test development and administration. This indicates China is on the way to aligning with international educational assessment standards and practices. Meanwhile, some proposed reforms are unexpectedly deviating from the longstanding English fever and have triggered heated debates and disputes in China. Proposed reforms of the Matriculation EFL Tests reflect China’s current language policy and the trend of de-Westernization. These reforms will have both positive and negative influences on test development, the K–12 EFL curriculum, instruction, and learning. Social impacts and potential influences on social justice caused by this round of reforms also deserve attention.
The Normans and the Italian City-States in North Africa
Authors: King Matt
Published: November 2020

At their closest points, Sicily and Tunisia are separated by less than 100 miles across the Strait of Sicily. Using intermediate islands as guides, it is possible to cross this distance without losing sight of land. The proximity of Sicily and the Italian Peninsula to North Africa facilitated substantial interactions between peoples in these regions across the central Middle Ages—from roughly 1000 until 1300. During this period, Norman Sicily and Italian city-states like Venice, Genoa, and Pisa had substantial interactions with Muslim lords across North Africa. Walled funduqs provided isolated and secure facilities for merchants to conduct business in Muslim ports. Mendicant missionaries tended to these traders and, at times, voluntarily martyred themselves by denouncing Islam and proselytizing in the streets of Muslim cities. These traders and monks operated against a backdrop of intermittent conflict. State-sponsored raiding from both Muslim North Africa and Christian Italy proved a persistent threat to merchants and their wares. On occasion, these raids devolved into more substantial campaigns aimed at conquest, including a handful of papally-sponsored crusades. The longest-lived Christian foray into North Africa during these years resulted in Norman Sicily seizing control over a strip of land in modern-day Tunisia from roughly 1148 to 1160 and forming the Norman “Kingdom of Africa.”
Women in Ugandan Politics and History: Collective Biography
Authors: Tripp Aili Mari
Published: November 2020

In the precolonial era, certain women played key governance roles, for example, the queen’s sister and the king’s mother in Buganda, the largest of Uganda’s four kingdoms. At one time they had as much power as the king in Buganda. However, women’s authority declined in Buganda in the 1700s and 1800s with the rise of the hereditary chiefs (batongole) and the demise of the influence of the clans. The coming of the British further undermined their roles. While on the one hand, British colonial engagement with local authorities privileged men, colonial education gave rise to Ugandan women’s leadership in local and national organizations, which provided women with a venue for political mobilization. The first women were appointed to the legislature at the end of British rule in 1954; all of them were British. As a result of pressure from women’s organizations, African women were soon thereafter appointed to the legislature starting in 1956. The number of women in political office remained low until the takeover of President Yoweri Museveni in 1986, when Uganda became a leader in Africa in advancing women in positions in the legislature and executive. The Museveni government’s adoption of reserved seats for women at all levels from local councils to the parliament in 1989 ensured that at least one-third of seats were held by women. The increase in numbers of women in parliament had some impact on the adoption of women’s rights legislation; however, ultimately women remained constrained by patronage and the undemocratic nature of the political system in Uganda.
Adaptive Learning in Macroeconomics
Authors: Evans George W. , McGough Bruce
Published: November 2020

While rational expectations (RE) remains the benchmark paradigm in macro-economic modeling, bounded rationality, especially in the form of adaptive learning, has become a mainstream alternative. Under the adaptive learning (AL) approach, economic agents in dynamic, stochastic environments are modeled as adaptive learners forming expectations and making decisions based on forecasting rules that are updated in real time as new data become available. Their decisions are then coordinated each period via the economy’s markets and other relevant institutional architecture, resulting in a time-path of economic aggregates. In this way, the AL approach introduces additional dynamics into the model—dynamics that can be used to address myriad macroeconomic issues and concerns, including, for example, empirical fit and the plausibility of specific rational expectations equilibria.

AL can be implemented as reduced-form learning, that is, the implementation of learning at the aggregate level, or alternatively, as discussed in a companion contribution to this Encyclopedia, Evans and McGough, as agent-level learning, which includes pre-aggregation analysis of boundedly rational decision making.

Typically learning agents are assumed to use estimated linear forecast models, and a central formulation of AL is least-squares learning in which agents recursively update their estimated model as new data become available. Key questions include whether AL will converge over time to a specified RE equilibrium (REE), in which cases we say the REE is stable under AL; in this case, it is also of interest to examine what type of learning dynamics are observed en route. When multiple REE exist, stability under AL can act as a selection criterion, and global dynamics can involve switching between local basins of attraction. In models with indeterminacy, AL can be used to assess whether agents can learn to coordinate their expectations on sunspots.

The key analytical concepts and tools are the E-stability principle together with the E-stability differential equations, and the theory of stochastic recursive algorithms (SRA). While, in general, analysis of SRAs is quite technical, application of the E-stability principle is often straightforward.

In addition to equilibrium analysis in macroeconomic models, AL has many applications. In particular, AL has strong implications for the conduct of monetary and fiscal policy, has been used to explain asset price dynamics, has been shown to improve the fit of estimated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, and has been proven useful in explaining experimental outcomes.
Cultural Diplomacy
Authors: Clarke David
Published: November 2020

Cultural diplomacy designates a policy field, in which states seek to mobilize their cultural resources to achieve foreign policy goals. The nature of those goals, and of the cultural resources mobilized to achieve them, has been subject to historical change, and a range of terminology has been used to designate this kind of policymaking in different national and historical contexts. Nevertheless, the term cultural diplomacy is a viable one for designating this particular area of foreign policy, which is often understood as one component of a state’s broader public diplomacy or, following Joseph Nye’s terminology, its “soft power.”

Cultural display and exchange have arguably always played a role in the relations between peoples. With the emergence of the modern state system in the early modern period, such display and exchange became an expression of formal diplomatic relations between courts, yet it is only in the 19th century that we see the emergence of cultural diplomacy in the sense it is understood today: It is no longer a matter of communication between rulers, but rather an expression of national identity directed at an international public. Throughout the 19th century, cultural diplomacy was closely associated with the rivalry of the Great Powers, particularly in the colonial context. However, following the end of the First World War, cultural diplomacy increasingly came to be understood as a means to pursue ideological competition, a trend that became central to the cultural diplomacy of the Cold War. Nevertheless, scholarship’s focus on the cultural dimensions of the confrontation between the two Cold War superpowers has drawn attention away from other varieties of cultural diplomacy in the “Third World” or “Global South,” which sought to establish forms of solidarity between postcolonial nations.

The post–Cold War world has been characterized by a shift in the rhetoric surrounding cultural diplomacy, which now frequently contains an economic dimension, as states compete for markets, investments, and attention in the context of neoliberal globalization. Nevertheless, we also see a pluralization of strategies of cultural diplomacy, in which a range of actors tailor their approach to cultural foreign policy according to their own perceived position in a multipolar world. Nevertheless, despite the continued popularity of cultural diplomacy in policymaking circles and the significant attention it has received from researchers in the 21st century, the assessment of the impact of cultural diplomacy remains a challenge.
The Global Diffusion of the English School
Authors: Zhang Yongjin
Published: November 2020

The English School’s global positioning is one of the most significant intellectual achievements accomplished by the second generation of the English School scholars. It is at the same time an important process of social production of ideas/knowledge in international relations (IR). Sociopolitical changes and economic transformations since the late 1990s have indirectly set off a period of intellectual change by opening up structural opportunities for reorienting and reconfiguring major debates in the global discipline of IR. More specifically, this means the restructuring of the attention space—the intellectual territory of limited size—in IR. The English School scholars collectively have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by this restructuring to successfully establish the English School as one of a small number of contending occupants in the inevitably limited attention space of IR. Successful global diffusion of the English School ideas, however, is also conditional upon local social and intellectual conditions. As an empirical examination of the diffusion of the English School to Asia shows, the English School is influential in Asia, as it serves a particular social purpose. It is taken as an inspiration for the social production of knowledge and intellectual innovation in Asian IR, as it encourages and legitimates its opposition to the dominance of mainstream Western IR theories, promising new and alternative sites of IR knowledge construction. Whether or not one sees this opposition as a “post-Western turn” to theorizing IR, its ambitious goals have been stated as decentralizing Western understandings about the world and to de-essentializing Western way of theorization, to disrupt the structural hierarchies between Western and non-Western perspectives in order to reorient IR toward a more democratic and less hegemonic direction, and to bring about non-hegemonic, diverse spaces of learning.
Women, Gender, and the Economies of Colonial North America
Authors: Hartigan-O'Connor Ellen
Published: November 2020

North American women were at the center of trade, exchange, economic production, and reproduction, from early encounters in the 16th century through the development of colonies, confederations, and nations by the end of the 18th century. They worked for the daily survival of their communities; they provided the material basis for economic and political expansion. There were no economies without them and no economy existed outside of a gender system that shaped and supported it. Connections of family, household, and community embedded the market economies in each region of North America. Gender acted through credit networks, control over others’ labor, and legal patterns of property ownership.

Colonialism, by which Europeans sought to acquire land, extract resources, grow profitable crops, and create a base of consumers for European manufactured goods, transformed local and transatlantic economies. Women’s labor in agriculture, trade, and reproduction changed in the context of expanding international economies, created by the transatlantic slave trade, new financial tools for long-distance investment, and an increasing demand for tropical groceries (tea, coffee, and sugar) and dry goods. Women adjusted their work to earn the money or goods that allowed them to participate in these circuits of exchange. Captive women themselves became exchangeable goods. By the end of the 18th century, people living across North America and the Caribbean had adopted revised and blended ideas about gender and commerce. Some came to redefine the economy itself as a force operating independently of women’s daily subsistence, a symbolic realm that divided as much as connected people.
The Nineteenth-Century South in Film
Authors: Hulbert Matthew Christopher
Published: November 2020

Representations of the 19th-century South on film have been produced in America from the Silent Era to the present. These movies include some of the most critically acclaimed and influential in American cinematic history—Gone with the Wind (1939), Glory (1989), 12 Years a Slave (2013)—and have produced some of the most iconic onscreen characters—Scarlett O’Hara, Josey Wales, Uncle Remus, Django Freeman—and onscreen moments—Rhett Butler not giving a damn, Mede boiling to death in a giant cauldron—in all of American popular culture. Depictions of the 19th-century South on film have also accounted for some of American film’s most notorious offerings—see the section entitled Anti-Slavery: Blaxploitation—and some of its biggest financial disappointments, such as Raintree County (1957) or Gods and Generals (2003).

The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939) set standards for how southerners and other Americans would imagine the 19th-century South and subsequent films have been responding ever since. Prior to the apex of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s, Lost Cause themes dominated at the box office. After integration, the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), and the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy, movies about the 19th-century South gradually shifted toward African American and female protagonists. Films also became increasingly graphic, violent, and sexualized in the late 1960s and 1970s as the pendulum swung fully away from the moonlight and magnolia, pro-slavery narratives of Gone with the Wind. In the 1990s, Hollywood began to carve out a middle position; however, neither extreme—exemplified by The Birth of a Nation and Mandingo, respectively—ever completely disappeared.

Filmic coverage of the antebellum (1820–1860) and war years (1861–1865) dominates portrayals of the 19th-century South. These movies home in on major themes involving the legacy of slavery in America, the legacy of the Civil War, American territorial expansion, and American exceptionalism. Moreover, the South is habitually depicted as unique compared to the rest of the nation—for its hospitality, pace of living, race relations, mysteriousness, exoticism—and southerners are represented as innately more violent than their northern counterparts. Generally, the messaging of these films has been untethered from contemporary academic interpretations of the region, slavery, or the Civil War—yet their scripts and visuals have played, and continue to play, an outsized role in how Americans imagine the South and use the South to forge regional and national identities.
Female Sterilization in Costa Rica, 1940 to 2020
Authors: Carranza María
Published: November 2020

Sterilization is an increasingly familiar phenomenon to women worldwide, and it is the most prevalent contraceptive practice in the world. Costa Rica, where the use of contraceptives is generalized, is among those countries in the world with the highest prevalence of female sterilization. In Costa Rica, female sterilization is homogeneously distributed, common among women living in rural and urban zones, as well as among those of diverse educational levels. In contrast to what one may expect given the legacy of abusive birth control practices in Latin America, the “problem” of sterilization in Costa Rica has been framed by women and doctors alike not as the “need” for curbing its use but rather as a “struggle” for broadening access as much as possible. Interestingly, current rates of sterilization have been attained in the absence of a formal program offering sterilization for contraceptive purposes and in the context of a very restrictive legal framework for its provision. It was not until July 1999 that sterilization for contraceptive purposes was explicitly regulated and permitted. Before that year, it was only so-called therapeutic sterilization that was legally allowed. Sterilization was supposed to be offered only for health reasons. Notably, successive moves intended precisely to broaden access to this surgery within the state hospital system have been realized through regulation formally restricting its provision. This sometimes counterintuitive history of the provision and regulation of sterilization in Costa Rica is analyzed.
Digital Resources: Museo de Mujeres Artistas Mexicanas, MUMA
Authors: Aceves-Sepulveda Gabriela
Published: November 2020

The Museum of Mexican Women Artists (MUMA) is a virtual museum dedicated to the promotion of Mexican women in visual arts from the 20th century onward. It was founded by Mexican feminist activist and artist Lucero González (b. 1947), who envisioned it as a feminist digital network for artists, curators, and critics to build connections with initiatives across the country and in other parts of the world. It is currently run by a council of nine women who collectively come together to plan its yearly activities and to invite others to participate.

Since 2008, MUMA has hosted a new exhibition every three months by different female curators and artists working mostly on drawing, painting, performance, photography, video, and sculpture. To date, it has organized more than forty online exhibitions and a number of temporary events including exhibitions, reading groups, and public forums across the country. While it has an exclusive focus on women, one of its objectives is to promote intergenerational encounters to discuss the intersections of art and gender and question the binary construction of sexual difference.

MUMA is an important addition to the growing resources on the gendered dimensions of art, feminist art, and art curation in Mexico from the 20th century onward. It offers online galleries showcasing artworks by female artists working in Mexico and contemporary theoretical essays on feminist art and curation, as well as reinterpretations of early 20th-century women’s art. Its bilingual (English and Spanish) website showcases the artistic portfolios of more than 350 artists working in Mexico. Each artist portfolio includes a gallery of artworks, an artist’s statement, and a link to a personal artist website. The exhibition section contains image links to each show. Each exhibition can be viewed in a single window and showcases the works in the exhibition along with a curatorial essay. The program section consists of an archive of all the group’s exhibitions, including theoretical texts and events organized chronologically by year since 2008. The website also has an international news section on relevant art and academic activities, a library section with curatorial texts, book excerpts and theoretical essays, and a list of partner organizations and alliances. MUMA offers an email newsletter to its subscribers with information on current exhibitions and direct links to new artists’ portfolios. It has a search engine that allows the user to explore the website via six different categories which can yield results that cross reference texts, news, links, exhibitions, and artist portfolios.

Throughout its more than twenty years of existence, MUMA’s hybrid model as a virtual museum and digital archive with a temporary physical presence—and as a collective organization—has significantly amplified the visibility of women artists in Mexico.
In the Shadow of the Special Period: Santeria and Everyday Life in Centro Havana
Authors: Vázquez Lázara Menéndez
Published: November 2020

Santería or Regla Ocha-Ifa belongs to the so-called religions of African origin in Cuba. Since its practice in the colonial period, it has displayed its ability to accommodate change. This is clearly shown in the practice and perception of Santeria, starting with the last decade of the 20th century, in the Habana neighborhood popularly known as the borough of Centro Habana. This essay focuses on the borough of Centro Habana, which is as much a geographical space as a relational one, and because it is considered “marginal” within the imaginary of the city. Without losing sight of its organizational and constitutive particularities, the identification of individuals’ ways of thinking and acting does not always represent changes in worldview or in the belief systems with which they interact. One interviewee stated: “The orisha is a good travelling companion.”
Digit Preference in Office Blood Pressure Measurements, United States 2015–2019
Authors: Foti Kathryn E , Appel Lawrence J , Matsushita Kunihiro , Coresh Josef , Alexander G Caleb , Selvin Elizabeth
Published: November 2020

BACKGROUND

Blood pressure (BP) measurement error may lead to under- or overtreatment of hypertension. One common source of error is terminal digit preference, most often a terminal digit of “0.” The objective was to evaluate national trends in terminal digit preference in office BP measurements among adults with treated hypertension.

METHODS

Data were from IQVIA’s National Disease and Therapeutic Index, a nationally representative, serial cross-sectional survey of office-based physicians. The analysis included office visits from 2015 to 2019 among adults aged ≥18 years receiving antihypertensive treatment. Annual trends were examined in the percent of systolic and diastolic BP measurements ending in zero by patient sex, age, and race/ethnicity, physician specialty, and first or subsequent hypertension treatment visit.

RESULTS

From 2015 to 2019, there were ~60 million hypertension treatment visits annually (unweighted N: 5,585–9,085). There was a decrease in the percent of visits with systolic (41.7%–37.7%) or diastolic (42.7%–37.8%) BP recordings ending in zero. Trends were similar by patient characteristics. However, a greater proportion of measurements ended in zero among patients aged ≥80 (vs. 15–59 or 60–79) years, first (vs. subsequent) treatment visits, visits to cardiologists (vs. primary care physicians), and visits with systolic BP ≥140 or diastolic BP ≥90 (vs. <140/90) mm Hg.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite modest improvement, terminal digit preference remains a common problem in office BP measurement in the United States. Without bias, 10%–20% of measurements are expected to end in zero. Reducing digit preference is a priority for improving BP measurement accuracy and hypertension management.
Orthognathic Surgery to Improve Facial Profile: Assessment, 3-Dimensional Planning, and Technique
Authors: Park Kitae E , Maniskas Seija , Allam Omar , Pourtaheri Navid , Steinbacher Derek M
Published: November 2020

A concave profile with class III malocclusion is most often due to a combination of maxillary hypoplasia and mandibular hyperplasia. Surgical correction entails normalization of jaw positions and is more challenging in the setting of concurrent asymmetry and open bite. Treatment should optimize both facial harmony and occlusion. Orthognathic surgery for class III deformities occurs at skeletal maturity and should address all aspects of the condition while preventing unnecessary emotional stress from delayed treatment. In this article, the authors describe the 3-jaw orthognathic surgery technique to address maxillary hypoplasia, mandibular prognathism, open bite, and mandibular asymmetry in a single procedure. The process of preoperative 3-dimensional (3D) virtual surgical planning, detailed surgical technique, fat grafting, and a comparison of preoperative and postoperative 3D aesthetic outcomes is presented. Additionally, a retrospective review of postoperative outcomes of 54 patients who received 3-jaw orthognathic surgery is presented as well.
Temporal Clustering of Hate Crimes in the Aftermath of the Brexit Vote and Terrorist Attacks: A Comparison of Scotland and England and Wales
Authors: Piatkowska Sylwia J , Lantz Brendan
Published: November 2020

This study examines the temporal clustering of hate crimes in Scotland, England and Wales in the wake of the Brexit vote and the 2017 terrorist attacks. Using an interrupted time-series design, we analyzed hate crime data by motivation type and month as provided by area police forces under the Freedom of Information Act. The results revealed a significant increase in crimes based on religious bias in Scotland, England and Wales after the 2017 terrorist attacks. There is also evidence of a significant increase in racial hate crime in the aftermath of the European Union referendum but only in England and Wales. We suggest that these findings underscore the role of political legitimization in predicting hate crimes.
Place-making: Toward a place-aware community practice agenda
Authors: Shwartz-Ziv Tamar , Strier Roni
Published: November 2020

Since its very inception, the field of social work has acknowledged the importance of place in shaping communal identity, construing shared meanings and generating collective actions. Nevertheless, the analytical framework of place-making, which enjoys growing interest in other disciplines, has little impact on social work and its incorporation into social work community practice is still embryonic. The place-making perspective is particularly relevant to the multiple challenges faced by community practice in the twenty-first century. This qualitative study aims to encourage the inclusion of place-making analytical perspective in community practice research by examining community practitioners’ engagement in place-making processes within the complex context of Israeli Jewish–Arab mixed cities. Based on semi-structured interviews with thirty community practitioners in the public services, the findings reveal that participants were highly engaged in four main interrelated aspects of place-making: shaping the ethnocultural meanings of place, managing the meaning of space in power relations, re-constructing the conflicted meaning of space and framing the history of place. The study illustrates the usefulness of the place-making analytical framework in community practice, especially in the context of increasing contested and divided urban realities.
5′ UTR CGG repeat expansion inGIPC1is associated with oculopharyngodistal myopathy
Authors: Xi Jianying , Wang Xilu , Yue Dongyue , Dou Tonghai , Wu Qunfeng , Lu Jun , Liu Yiqi , Yu Wenbo , Qiao Kai , Lin Jie , Luo Sushan , Li Jing , Du Ailian , Dong Jihong , Chen Yan , Luo Lijun , Yang Jie , Niu Zhenmin , Liang Zonghui , Zhao Chongbo , Lu Jiahong , Zhu Wenhua , Zhou Yan
Published: November 2020

Oculopharyngodistal myopathy is a late-onset degenerative muscle disorder characterized by ptosis and weakness of the facial, pharyngeal, and distal limb muscles. A recent report suggested a non-coding trinucleotide repeat expansion in LRP12 to be associated with the disease. Here we report a genetic study in a Chinese cohort of 41 patients with the clinical diagnosis of oculopharyngodistal myopathy (21 cases from seven families and 20 sporadic cases). In a large family with 12 affected individuals, combined haplotype and linkage analysis revealed a maximum two-point logarithm of the odds (LOD) score of 3.3 in chromosomal region chr19p13.11-p13.2 and narrowed the candidate region to an interval of 4.5 Mb. Using a comprehensive strategy combining whole-exome sequencing, long-read sequencing, repeat-primed polymerase chain reaction and GC-rich polymerase chain reaction, we identified an abnormal CGG repeat expansion in the 5′ UTR of the GIPC1 gene that co-segregated with disease. Overall, the repeat expansion in GIPC1 was identified in 51.9% independent pedigrees (4/7 families and 10/20 sporadic cases), while the repeat expansion in LRP12 was only identified in one sporadic case (3.7%) in our cohort. The number of CGG repeats was <30 in controls but >60 in affected individuals. There was a slight correlation between repeat size and the age at onset. Both repeat expansion and retraction were observed during transmission but somatic instability was not evident. These results further support that non-coding CGG repeat expansion plays an essential role in the pathogenesis of oculopharyngodistal myopathy.
Cytomegalovirus-Specific Immunoglobulin G Is Associated With Chronic Lung Disease in Children and Adolescents from Sub-Saharan Africa Living With Perinatal Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Authors: Hameiri Bowen Dan , Sovershaeva Evgeniya , Charlton Bethany , Schive Cecilie , Odland Jon , McHugh Grace , Bandason Tsitsi , Mayini Justin , Ferrand Rashida A , Yindom Louis-Marie , Rowland-Jones Sarah L
Published: November 2020

In a cross-sectional study of 296 children and adolescents from Zimbabwe living with perinatal human immunodeficiency virus, individuals with the top tertile of cytomegalovirus-specific immunoglobulin G titer had an increased odds of chronic lung disease (odds ratio, 3.33; 95% confidence interval, 1.37–8.85; P = .010).
Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice: Presentation of Experimental Techniques
Authors: Palliyaguru Dushani L , Vieira Ligo Teixeira Camila , Duregon Eleonora , di Germanio Clara , Alfaras Irene , Mitchell Sarah J , Navas-Enamorado Ignacio , Shiroma Eric J , Studenski Stephanie , Bernier Michel , Camandola Simonetta , Price Nathan L , Ferrucci Luigi , de Cabo Rafael
Published: November 2020

Aging is associated with functional and metabolic decline and is a risk factor for all noncommunicable diseases. Even though mice are routinely used for modeling human aging and aging-related conditions, no comprehensive assessment to date has been conducted on normative mouse aging. To address this gap, the Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice (SLAM) was designed and implemented by the National Institute on Aging (NIA/NIH) as the mouse counterpart to the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA). In this manuscript, we describe the premise, study design, methodologies, and technologies currently employed in SLAM. We also discuss current and future study directions. In this large population mouse study, inbred C57BL/6J and outbred UM-HET3 mice of both sexes are longitudinally evaluated for functional, phenotypic, and biological health, and collection of biospecimens is conducted throughout their life span. Within the longitudinal cohorts, a cross-sectional arm of the study has also been implemented for the well-controlled collection of tissues to generate a biorepository. SLAM and studies stemming from SLAM seek to identify and characterize phenotypic and biological predictors of mouse aging and age-associated conditions, examine the degrees of functional and biomolecular variability that occur within inbred and genetically heterogeneous mouse populations with age, and assess whether these changes are consistent with alterations observed in human aging in BLSA. The findings from these studies will be critical for evaluating the utility of mouse models for studying different aspects of aging, both in terms of interpreting prior findings and designing and implementing future studies.