bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Responding to Policy Change from Above: Municipal Accountability and Transparency Regimes in Ontario
Authors: Alcantara Christopher , Leone Roberto , Spicer Zachary
Published: December 2016

In 2006, the Ontario government amended the Ontario Municipal Act by passing Bill 130, the Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act. Among other things, this legislation required that municipalities adopt a number of mandatory provisions relating to accountability and transparency. Local governments were also asked to consider a number of voluntary measures. This essay examines how 12 municipal governments in Ontario responded to these mandatory and voluntary legislative requirements. Using primary documents and elite interviews with local government officials, the authors analyzed the municipal processes and outcomes produced in response to Bill 130. The findings suggest that, in general, Ontario municipalities tended to react negatively to the mandatory and optional policy changes instituted from above. None the less, there was some variation in municipal responses, much of which can be explained by focussing on variations in municipal policy learning, organizational legacies, public input, and to a lesser extent, time and cost restraints.
The Black Canadian: An Exposition of Race, Gender, and Citizenship
Authors: Kelly Jennifer R. , Wossen-Taffesse Mikael
Published: December 2016

This essay discusses “The Black Canadian,” an article written by Britton B. Cooke and published in MacLean’s Magazine in November 1911. The authors explore how the text fits within the larger story of immigration to Alberta, what discourses it enables and constrains, and what representations are brought to the surface within the article. In addition, the authors develop their analysis beyond the specific magazine text to an understanding of the intertextual nature of the piece.
Broadening the Political Constituency of Tax Reform: The Visual Rhetoric of Canadian Taxation, 1979-81
Authors: Tough David
Published: December 2016

Published between 1979 and 1981, Canadian Taxation reflected an attempt by Neil Brooks and other tax scholars to democratize debates on taxation in Canada. Contributors drew on a critique of taxation that had emerged through the Royal Commission on Taxation (1962-67) and the controversial amendments to the Income Tax Act that followed. In its earliest issues, it used language, images, and design to popularize a left-wing understanding of Canada’s tax system as benefitting the rich. Over its three-year publication run, the magazine reverted to a more austere visual style and professional tone, effectively abandoning its early democratizing ambitions. This essay studies the visual rhetoric of Canadian Taxation as a historically important attempt to make tax debates resonate outside specialist circles, and as a model for a more generous scholarship that would use rhetoric to present taxation not as a technical field of expertise but as a key activity of modern democratic citizenship.
A Just Allotment of Memory: Witnessing First Nations Testimony in Isabelle Knockwood’s Out of the Depths
Authors: Hulan Renée
Published: December 2016

Isabelle Knockwood’s memoir, Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi’kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, documents the testimony of survivors, educates non-Aboriginal readers, and reconnects the Mi’kmaw reader to traditional ways of knowing. This essay reconsiders the reception of Out of the Depths by contrasting scepticism towards historical representation with the objectives of survivors to offer testimony and document First Nations experience. In contrast to the Canadian government’s efforts to put the past behind us, the essay advocates the memoir as a model for understanding the living legacy of residential schools.
Rights of Passage: The Intersecting of Environmentalism, Arctic Sovereignty, and the Law of the Sea, 1968-82
Authors: Meren David , Plumptre Bora
Published: December 2016

This essay brings environmental and diplomatic history into conversation in order to examine the Trudeau government’s response to the 1969-70 voyages of the oil tanker Manhattan through the Northwest Passage. By passing the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and extending Canada’s territorial sea to 12 miles, Ottawa successfully instrumentalized the heightened environmental concern of the period in order to press Canadian claims to sovereignty in the Arctic. The essay demonstrates that this custodial approach was consistent with the functionalist tradition in Canadian liberal internationalism. More broadly, it reveals the promise of re-examining Canadian international history through the prism of environmental history.
Beastly Measures: Animal Welfare, Civil Society, and State Policy in Victorian Canada
Authors: Ingram Darcy
Published: December 2016

This essay analyzes the development of Canada’s animal welfare movement during the nineteenth century. Situating Canada’s experience alongside that of England and the United States, it identifies an enthusiastic but conservative response to animal welfare, which the author argues reflects the high level of dependence among the movement’s upper- and middle-class supporters on animals as resources, sources of labour, and objects of sport. In particular, it focusses on the participation of sportsmen, cattle ranchers, industrialists, foxhunters, veterinarians, and others who recognized in the movement both the material and the ethical benefits that might accrue from the improved treatment of animals. As such, the essay brings to the literature on animal welfare and animal rights a sense of the movement’s economic dimensions, or the ways in which material concerns regarding property and productivity converged with but also limited the animal welfare movement’s ethical parameters. In doing so, it accounts for the near absence in Canada of the more radical agendas that informed the movement’s civil society parameters elsewhere, and in turn the ways in which the moderate vision that informed the nation’s animal welfare nongovernmental organizations contributed to an equally moderate response on the part of the state.
Choosing the Chief: Duality, Seniority, and Beyond
Authors: McCormick Peter
Published: December 2016

It is often suggested that there is a tradition of French/English (or possibly Quebec/non-Quebec) alternation in the selection of the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, a question that is of some practical importance as the current chief justice approaches the age of mandatory retirement. This essay questions the validity of this alleged tradition, suggesting that it is at best a recent development and in any event has considerably less explanatory capacity for the past selection of chief justices than an alternative tradition, that of simple seniority. The essay considers the relative plausibility of these two alternative traditions in light of the history of the Supreme Court, and then places both within the context of a broader range of the possible models, and the central values implied by each, that could govern the choice of a chief justice for a national high court.
Indigenous Self-Governance and the Deployment of Knowledge in Collaborative Environmental Management in Canada
Authors: Bowie Ryan
Published: December 2016

This essay examines the rebuilding and revitalizing of self-governance capacities in Indigenous communities, and how this is impacting their efficacy in resource management. The origins and experiences in Canada of integrating Indigenous peoples and knowledge into institutionalized resource management are discussed, and the essay posits necessary conditions for full and effective participation in environmental management, arguing that effective self-governance is vital to moving forward on these conditions. Two collaborative processes led by Indigenous peoples will be highlighted as they demonstrate the importance of self-governance initiatives for participation in environmental management processes: the Whitefeather Forest Initiative led by Pikangikum First Nation in Northern Ontario; and the Turning Point Initiative led by the Haida in British Columbia.
L’affaire Lepage et le caractère symbolique de la politique de bilinguisme de la Ville d’Ottawa (1970-2001)
Authors: Charbonneau François , Coeytaux Samuel
Published: December 2016

Cet article retrace les étapes de l’adoption et de la transformation des politiques de bilinguisme à la Ville d’Ottawa, capitale du Canada. L’article montre que les débats sur la politique de bilinguisme depuis une quarantaine d’années portent essentiellement sur deux enjeux : la préoccupation pour l’aspect symbolique de l’affirmation de l’égalité des langues officielles et les difficultés concrètes liées à la mise en œuvre de cette égalité dans le cadre du milieu de travail ou dans la prestation des services à la population. Si l’affirmation de l’importance du bilinguisme dans les diverses politiques dont la ville s’est dotée dans les 40 dernières années s’est faite de manière relativement aisée, la mise en œuvre concrète de cette politique est dans bien des domaines, et en particulier en ce qui a trait à la capacité des employés de la ville de travailler en langue française, un échec. L’affaire Lepage, lors de laquelle un employé de la ville a été congédié parce qu’il réclamait de travailler en langue française, affaire dont il sera traité abondamment, est symptomatique de cette difficulté. Nous verrons ainsi que lorsque des moments de crises médiatiques ont fait du bilinguisme à la Ville d’Ottawa un enjeu, l’ensemble des intervenants (élus, groupes de citoyens, médias) ont été surtout préoccupés par les enjeux symboliques de cette politique, sans pour autant être en mesure d’appréhender la complexité et les défis particuliers associés à l’atteinte des objectifs de cette politique. Comme il sera suggéré dans cet article, la volonté d’agir au niveau des représentations symboliques (par la désignation « officielle » de la ville, par exemple) marque sans doute le constat d’une incapacité à penser les voies d’une réelle mise en œuvre d’un bilinguisme institutionnel.
Teen Trouble and Community Identity in Post-Second World War Northern British Columbia
Authors: Swainger Jonathan
Published: December 2016

Akin to most areas in North America and Western Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, Northern British Columbia experienced a moral panic over a perceived rise in teen trouble and juvenile delinquency. Framed in part by language centred on the nefarious influences of American crime comics, rock and roll music, ducktail haircuts, and zoot suits, the crisis can be explained by emerging generational identities, Cold War angst, and media portrayals of a society allegedly on the verge of collapse. For parents and community leaders in Prince George, British Columbia, however, the long-standing unease over the community’s reputation as a disorderly lumber town provided a crucial backdrop for these broader factors. As the community increasingly aspired to the trappings of postwar, middle-class respectability, the concern over teen trouble provided an arena to wrestle over community identity and the ways local residents wished to be seen by the outside world.
Travels in a Cold and Rugged Land: C.H. Farnham’s Quebec Essays in Harper’s Magazine, 1883-89
Authors: Little J.I.
Published: December 2016

During the 1880s, Charles Haight Farnham published eight articles on Canada in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, seven of which were focussed on Quebec. Appealing to the rising anti-modernist impulse of many of his well-educated readers, Farnham described living examples of what was assumed to be the pre-industrial past in the lower St. Lawrence and Labrador regions. Farnham’s artfully written articles, set mostly in late fall and winter, depict a cold and rugged land, albeit one in which the traditional virtues and community ties of the folk remained intact, and hard-working people led simple, fulfilling lives uncontaminated by materialism and greed. The fact that Farnham chose to travel much of the coastline by canoe also reflected the contemporary middle-class concern with the softening effects of urban life. As a liberal American Protestant, however, Farnham’s anti-modernism was qualified by his repeated criticism of what he viewed as French-Canadian submission to an oppressive and obscurantist Roman Catholic Church.
Helping “nos chers conscrits”: The Knights of Columbus Catholic Army Huts and French-Canadian Nationalism, 1917-26
Authors: Trepanier James
Published: December 2016

This essay discusses efforts to provide recreation centres for Canadian Catholic soldiers during the First World War. More specifically, it compares the efforts of two organizations, the Catholic Army Huts (CAH), operated by the Knights of Columbus and the Chez-nous du soldat, operated by the Aide aux conscrits canadiens. Both were established late in the war, and attempted to provide comforts for volunteer and conscript alike. The CAH fundraising drive in September 1918 in Ontario and Quebec elicited different reactions within French-Canadian nationalist circles in the two provinces. French-Canadian nationalist opposition to the Knights of Columbus’s efforts in Ontario reveals that, during a period of supposed French-Canadian solidarity over conscription and Regulation 17, sharp differences of opinion persisted between French Canadians in the two provinces.
“More a Diplomatic than an Esthetic Event”: Canada, Brazil, and Cultural Brokering in the São Paulo Biennial and “Isumavut”
Authors: Robertson Kirsty , Anderson Stephanie G. , Diggon Elizabeth , Moussa Ahlia , Smith Sarah E.K.
Published: December 2016

This essay looks at models of cultural brokering between Canada and Brazil, from 1950 to the present. Focussed on two exhibitions, the Sào Paulo Biennial and “Isumavut,” the essay reveals the ways that government has historically used culture to broker relationships between Canada and other nations, and more specifically, to manage an often-tense economic relationship with Brazil. Using these exhibitions, the essay documents a postwar attempt to give art and culture a role in international affairs, and to introduce Canada as part of an international community of other like-minded liberal-democratic nations. The argument then considers how debates between the National Gallery and the Department of Foreign Affairs in the 1950s over the autonomy of art within the Biennial had largely disappeared by the early 2000s when “Isumavut” provided a colourful backdrop for a series of corporate and government-organized events. The essay concludes in the present moment, asking whether the model of cultural brokering still applies when art and other government-sponsored cultural exchange programs aimed at Brazil have largely been cancelled.
A Century of Political Science in Canada
Authors: Lucas Jack
Published: December 2016

For more than a century, the president of the Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) has delivered an address to his or her colleagues at the discipline’s annual meeting. This essay surveys the CPSA presidential addresses to reflect on the content and practice of political science in Canada: what Canadian political scientists have been studying, and how they have gone about studying it. The author argues that there are resources in the presidential addresses to support both celebratory and denunciatory stories of the history of Canadian political science. The author also suggests three basic realities that any honest history of the discipline, whether celebratory or critical, must address: the two-sided nature of disciplinary fragmentation, the ongoing significance of practical disciplinary concerns, and the omnipresence of the “takers versus givers” question in Canadian political science.
The Challenge of Home for Sexual Orientation and Gendered Identity Refugees in Toronto
Authors: Murray David A.B.
Published: December 2016

Research on refugees and asylum seekers often focusses on the fraught and complex relations between homelands or nations of origin, and the new home or country of refuge, and asks important questions about the meaning(s) of home and its relationship to practices of identity, space, and belonging. The Canadian refugee determination system, however, requires a narrative where Canada plays the role of the “liberation nation.” For sexual orientation and gendered identity (SOGI) refugee claimants, this narrative focusses on homo/transphobia in their former home spaces, and movement towards a new national homeland where their sexual or gendered orientation is accepted and protected. In interviews with SOGI refugee claimants in Toronto, the “migration-to-liberation nation” narrative is articulated by most claimants, which may be due in part to their investment in articulating a narrative that meets homonormative definitions of SOGI refugee identity produced in and through the refugee determination system. Despite the possibly strategic claim to be grateful for a new home where one’s gendered or sexual orientation is accepted and protected, most interviewees also continue to communicate with friends and family in their countries of origin and have intense, complex feelings about their former homeland(s). This essay explores these diverse discourses, experiences, and meanings of home for SOGI refugees; it argues for a fluid conceptualization of homing that recognizes simultaneous, complex attachments to multiple homes constituted across transnational fields and resists homonormative discourses that forge privileged chains of attachment between nation, desire, and identity.
In versus Out: LGBT Politicians in Canada
Authors: Everitt Joanna , Camp Michael
Published: December 2016

The number of openly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered) politicians in Parliament and the provincial legislatures has grown steadily since Burnaby member of Parliament Svend Robinson declared his sexual orientation in 1988. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual Canadians still have a long way to go before they have achieved equitable representation in the mainstream political process, however. This essay explores the backgrounds of “out” federal and provincial politicians, and identifies the various factors that have affected their chances of being successful in electoral races. While things have changed in recent federal and provincial elections, this study concludes that the LGBT candidates most likely to win at the polls are those who established a reputation for community service before the public discovered their sexual orientation.
A Scout’s Life: English-Canadian Nostalgia, Colonialism, and Aboriginality in Ottawa
Authors: Davidson Tonya
Published: December 2016

For over 70 years, a statue of an unnamed Aboriginal scout stood on a pedestal at the base of a monument to Samuel de Champlain at Nepean Point, Ottawa. In this essay, the author details how this monument has been the recipient of various emotional investments by visitors, making the monument a highly ambivalent and dynamic figure. In particular, the scout has been played with as a totem of an imagined Canadian past, defaced as a symbolic casualty of French-English conflicts, and protested as an offensive artefact of racist ideologies. The scout is a figure that is mobilized through expressions of both colonial nostalgia and postcolonial resistance.
Louis Hémon’s Intertextual Use of Pêcheur d’Islande in Maria Chapdelaine: Making a Novel Set in Canada Speak about Problems in Pre-World War One France
Authors: Berrong Richard M.
Published: December 2016

This essay demonstrates that, in developing the plot outline and male protagonist of his last novel, Maria Chapdelaine (1914), Louis Hémon repeatedly evoked Pierre Loti’s then-popular narrative about Breton fishermen and their community, Pêcheur d’Islande (1886). A Breton himself, Hémon seems to have evoked Loti’s male protagonist, Yann Gaos, repeatedly in presenting his own, François Paradis, because such intertextualization allowed him to deal in a new way with the question of a perceived decline of masculinity, an issue that he had treated in several of his previous narratives and that was occupying Western European thought at the time. Such intertextualization also allowed him to address an issue that had been of personal significance to him since his adolescence: the importance of finding a way to be free of the constraints that he believed modern society was trying to impose on men.
Seeing Red: Passion in Acadian Poetry
Authors: Campbell Wanda
Published: December 2016

This essay explores aspects of passion in three Acadian poems, Herménégilde Chiasson’s “Rouge” (“Red”) which first appeared in Mourir à Scoudouc in 1974, Henri-Dominique Paratte’s “Rouge Sang” (“Blood Red”) which first appeared in Éloizes: Revue de l’Association des écrivains acadiens in 1984, and “La petite sorcière rouge...” (The little red witch), an excerpt from Dyane Léger’s L’incendiaire, published in 2008 in collaboration with Paul Savoie. Although there is a period of 34 years between the publication of the first and last work, and they range in form from the prose poem to lineated free verse, all three share the leitmotif of the passionate colour red with its many, often opposing, symbolic, historical, and literary associations; the list as a poetic device that incorporates past and present, real and surreal, poetic and political; and finally the love story, which aspires towards a happy ending, however elusive. The red of fire and blood that marked Le Grand Dérangement of 1755 is a testament to the passion of a people determined to endure.
Troubling Bodies: “The Canadian Girl,” the Ice Rink, and the Banff Winter Carnival
Authors: Adams Carly
Published: December 2016

This study considers the politics of ex/inclusion and access to the socially constituted ice rink and how ideological meanings about athleticism, physicality, femininity, and masculinity that these dynamic processes (re)produce are attributed (in often troubling ways) to bodies in specific sport spaces. By considering the political economy of women’s hockey at the Banff Winter Carnival within the context of women’s hockey in Alberta in the 1920s and 1930s, the author discusses how women’s bodily practices as hockey players have significance beyond the outdoor rinks at the carnival in that they signify the extent to which women’s bodies have become temporarily attached to the “Canadian” practice of hockey. These moments reflect political circumstances that enable this attachment and illuminate the complex tensions that develop when bodies not expected to enter certain spaces do so.
The Dilemma of Positive Rights: Access to Health Care and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Authors: MacFarlane Emmett
Published: December 2016

An important debate implicating rights and Canadian social policy concerns whether the Charter of Rights and Freedoms should largely be limited to protecting negative rights, which prevent interference from government, or whether it should include positive rights, which require governments to provide entitlements to social services like health care, housing, or some minimum standard of welfare. After examining the Supreme Court of Canada’s approach to social rights under the Charter, this essay critically assesses the arguments in favour of expanding constitutional protection for positive rights. Although the essay finds that much of the judicial caution regarding positive rights is appropriate, the court’s reasoning in several controversial health policy cases is insufficiently attentive to the positive rights implications of its ostensibly negative rights approach. This essay thus sheds new light on the debate by demonstrating how cases on abortion, supervised drug injection facilities, and assisted suicide present a difficult dilemma from both a policy and rights perspective: courts may rightly avoid creating new social and economic rights, but the rationale they advance in applying negative rights in these cases provides an equally compelling basis for a positive right to access. It is a conundrum that both courts and the elected branches of government need to do more to address.
Black Continental African Identities in Canada: Exploring the Intersections of Identity Formation and Immigrant Transnationalism
Authors: Mensah Joseph
Published: December 2016

Notwithstanding the role of immigrants’ transnationalism and identity formation in shaping their settlement and integration process, the burgeoning literature on Canadian immigration has paid only a perfunctory attention to this area of study. Similarly, despite the enormous diversity among Blacks in Canada, portrayals of Blacks as a homogenous group abound in Canadian public discourse and academic writings. It is with this conjoint lacuna in mind that the present study examines how the identities and diasporic consciousness of Black continental African immigrants in Canada are influenced by their transnational activities, highlighting the challenges involved in the definition of this ethnoracial group, as well as the changes its members have undergone as a result of living in Canada.
“Hero of the Half-Breed Rebellion”: Gabriel Dumont and Late Victorian Military Masculinity
Authors: Barrett Matthew
Published: December 2016

This essay examines late nineteenth-century concepts of military heroism and martial manliness in the context of the 1885 North-West Campaign through contemporary interpretations of Métis general Gabriel Dumont (1837-1906). Many Canadian nationalists were able to distinguish heroic values in Dumont because his military exploits seemed to conform to the philosophy of rugged, muscular manhood that many in the country and the British Empire were attempting to instill in young male citizens. The reactions to Dumont suggested that these imperialists and nationalistic militia supporters recognized a non-White enemy warrior as a potential military model who reflected a distinctly Canadian martial spirit. This depiction of Dumont as an aggressive, individual fighter, however, also sought to separate him from Métis political advocacy. Canadian appropriation of Dumont served a nationalist agenda by reframing the conflict in 1885 as a contest of martial masculinity rather than a consequence of communal Métis resistance.
Marshalling Memory: A Historiographical Biography of Ernest Alexander Cruikshank
Authors: Gordon Alan
Published: December 2016

E.A. Cruikshank was one of Canada’s most influential and respected historians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As chairman of Canada’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board for 20 years, he played a central role in constructing Canadian historical memory. In this sense, Cruikshank’s historical works reveal the mutual interplay of historical research and public memory in framing national sentiment; yet, although he had a national reputation, Cruikshank was primarily a local historian who translated local Niagara sentiments into a national history, principally through his interest in the War of 1812. Traces of his influence can still be seen. What is most striking, though, is that sympathy for Cruikshank’s vision has persisted even into this century, as the messages surrounding Canada’s official commemoration of the War of 1812’s bicentennial suggest. Thus his works continue to be instructive for understanding how history and memory reinforce one another.
Brian Moore’s Unsettling Irish Immigrant: The Luck of Ginger Coffey
Authors: Lynch Gerald
Published: December 2016

This essay recuperates Brian Moore’s mostly forgotten classic of Canadian immigrant fiction, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960), in a reading of its protagonist as a study in the necessary self-renovation of a new Canadian. Employing the scholarly work that has been done on the Irish in Canada over the past few decades, this essay contextualizes its reading of Moore’s mid-century novel in a mildly corrective history of Irish immigration to that point. Ginger Coffey will also be seen to prefigure—on the eve of Canada’s officially becoming the much-admired multicultural nation it is today—the central question facing Canadians respecting immigration. The unaccommodating setting of Ginger Coffey, its historical contexts, and its compromising immigrant’s (Ginger Coffey’s) hard-won promise of eventual integration into Canadian society challenge readers to entertain questions about the extent of Canada’s tolerance of immigrants’ tenaciously mistaken dreams.
Combined gene therapy with vascular endothelial growth factor plus apelin in a chronic cerebral hypoperfusion model in rats
Authors: Hiramatsu Masafumi , Hishikawa Tomohito , Tokunaga Koji , Kidoya Hiroyasu , Nishihiro Shingo , Haruma Jun , Shimizu Tomohisa , Takasugi Yuji , Shinji Yukei , Sugiu Kenji , Takakura Nobuyuki , Date Isao
Published: December 2016

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether combined gene therapy with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plus apelin during indirect vasoreconstructive surgery enhances brain angiogenesis in a chronic cerebral hypoperfusion model in rats.

METHODS

A chronic cerebral hypoperfusion model induced by the permanent ligation of bilateral common carotid arteries (CCAs; a procedure herein referred to as “CCA occlusion” [CCAO]) in rats was employed in this study. Seven days after the CCAO procedure, the authors performed encephalo-myo-synangiosis (EMS) and injected plasmid(s) into each rat's temporal muscle. Rats were divided into 4 groups based on which plasmid was received (i.e., LacZ group, VEGF group, apelin group, and VEGF+apelin group). Protein levels in the cortex and attached muscle were assessed with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) on Day 7 after EMS, while immunofluorescent analysis of cortical vessels was performed on Day 14 after EMS.

RESULTS

The total number of blood vessels in the cortex on Day 14 after EMS was significantly larger in the VEGF group and the VEGF+apelin group than in the LacZ group (p < 0.05, respectively). Larger vessels appeared in the VEGF+apelin group than in the other groups (p < 0.05, respectively). Apelin protein on Day 7 after EMS was not detected in the cortex for any of the groups. In the attached muscle, apelin protein was detected only in the apelin group and the VEGF+apelin group. Immunofluorescent analysis revealed that apelin and its receptor, APJ, were expressed on endothelial cells (ECs) 7 days after the CCAO.

CONCLUSIONS

Combined gene therapy (VEGF plus apelin) during EMS in a chronic cerebral hypoperfusion model can enhance angiogenesis in rats. This treatment has the potential to be a feasible option in a clinical setting for patients with moyamoya disease.
An analysis of malpractice litigation related to the management of brain aneurysms
Authors: Gupta Raghav , Griessenauer Christoph J. , Moore Justin M. , Adeeb Nimer , Patel Apar S. , Ogilvy Christopher S. , Thomas Ajith J.
Published: December 2016

OBJECTIVE

Given the highly complex and demanding clinical environment in which neurosurgeons operate, the probability of facing a medical malpractice claim is high. Recent emphasis on tort reform within the political sphere has brought this issue to the forefront of medical literature. Despite the widespread fear of litigation in the medical community, few studies have provided an analysis of malpractice litigation in the field. Here, the authors attempt to delineate the medicolegal factors that impel plaintiffs to file medical malpractice claims related to the management of brain aneurysms, and to better characterize the nature of these lawsuits.

METHODS

The online legal database WestLawNext was searched to find all medical malpractice cases related to brain aneurysms across a 30-year period. All state and federal jury verdicts and settlements relevant to the search criterion were considered.

RESULTS

Sixty-six cases were obtained. The average age of the patient was 46.7 years. Seventy-one percent were female. The cases were distributed across 16 states. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff in 40.9% of cases, with a mean payout of $8,765,405, and in favor of the defendant in 28.8% of the cases. A failure to diagnose and/or a failure to treat in a timely manner were the 2 most commonly alleged causes of malpractice. Settlements, which were reached in 25.8% of the cases, had a mean payout of $1,818,250. Neurosurgeons accounted for 6.7% of all defendants.

CONCLUSIONS

Unlike other medical specialties, a majority of the verdicts were not in the defendant's favor. The mean payouts were nearly 5-fold less in cases in which a settlement was reached, as opposed to a summary judgment. Neurosurgeons accounted for a small percentage of all codefendants.
Contribution of the straightening effect of the parent artery to decreased recanalization in stent-assisted coiling of large aneurysms
Authors: Ishii Akira , Chihara Hideo , Kikuchi Takayuki , Arai Daisuke , Ikeda Hiroyuki , Miyamoto Susumu
Published: December 2016

OBJECTIVE

The durability of embolization of large aneurysms is enhanced by use of the neck-bridging stent. However, it remains unclear what factors contribute to decreased recanalization. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the contribution of the straightening effect of the parent artery to the durability of stent-assisted coiling for large aneurysms.

METHODS

Of the 182 aneurysms treated by embolization since the introduction of the neurovascular stent, 82 consecutive unruptured aneurysms with a diameter greater than 7 mm were selected. There were 52 aneurysms treated with a stent (Group S) and 30 treated without a stent (Group NS). Occlusion status was evaluated 12 months after embolization with digital subtraction angiography. The vascular angle of the parent artery was measured before, immediately after, and 12 months after embolization. The rates of recanalization were compared between Group S and Group NS. In Group S, the rates of recanalization were further compared between those aneurysms with and without a significant angle change.

RESULTS

The rate of major recanalization was 9.6% in Group S and 26.7% in Group NS. The volume embolization ratio was 32.6% in Group S and 31.6% in Group NS, with no statistically significant difference. However, the angulation change before and after coiling was significantly higher in Group S (10.6°) than in Group NS (0.9°). The difference in the angulation was more evident 12 months after coiling (19.1° in Group S and 1.5° in Group NS). In Group S, recanalization was found in 14.3% of 35 stented aneurysms without a significant angular change when a significant angular change was defined as more than 20°. In contrast, all 17 aneurysms with ≥ 20° of angular change remained occluded.

CONCLUSIONS

Significant angular change of ≥ 20° most likely leads to decreased recanalization following stent-assisted embolization of large aneurysms.
Clinical and surgical management of a congenital Type II split cord malformation presenting with progressive cranial neuropathies: case report
Authors: Maloney Patrick R. , Murphy Meghan E. , Sullan Molly J. , Van Abel Kathryn M. , Cofer Shelagh A. , Cheville John C. , Wetjen Nicholas M.
Published: December 2016

Split cord malformation (SCM) is a rare abnormality of notochord development. The majority of cases occur in the thoracolumbar region, with more than 30 cases of cervical SCM reported. The clinical impact of SCMs involving the cervical cord is therefore largely unknown. In addition, the concomitant finding of brainstem involvement is presumably incompatible with life in the majority of patients, resulting in a paucity of data regarding this clinical scenario. In this paper the authors present the first case, to their knowledge, of an incomplete cervical SCM involving the brainstem and discuss its clinical impact, diagnosis, and management.
Development of an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) approach for lumbar spinal fusion
Authors: Wang Michael Y. , Chang Peng-Yuan , Grossman Jay
Published: December 2016

OBJECTIVE

Over the past decade, Enhancing Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) programs have been implemented throughout the world across multiple surgical disciplines. However, to date no spinal surgery equivalent has been described. In this report the authors review the development and implementation of a “fast track” surgical approach for lumbar fusion.

METHODS

The first 42 consecutive cases in which patients were treated with the new surgical procedure were reviewed. A combination of endoscopic decompression, expandable cage deployment, and percutaneous screw placement were performed with liposomal bupivacaine anesthesia to allow the surgery to be performed without general endotracheal anesthesia.

RESULTS

In all cases the surgical procedure was performed successfully without conversion to an open operation. The patients' mean age (± SD) was 66.1 ± 11.7 years, the male/female ratio was 20:22, and a total of 47 levels were treated. The mean operative time was 94.6 ± 22.4 minutes, the mean intraoperative blood loss was 66 ± 30 ml, and the mean hospital length of stay was 1.29 ± 0.9 nights. Early follow-up showed a significant improvement in the mean Oswestry Disability Index score (from 40 ± 13 to 17 ± 11, p = 0.0001). Return to the operating room was required in 2 cases due to infection and in 1 case due to cage displacement. An iterative quality improvement program demonstrated areas of improvement, including steps to minimize infection, improve postoperative analgesia, and reduce cage osteolysis.

CONCLUSIONS

ERAS programs for improving spinal fusion surgery are possible and necessary. This report demonstrates a first foray to apply these principles through 1) a patient-focused approach, 2) reducing the stress of the operation, and 3) an iterative improvement process.
SCNT Method and the Application for Patent Eligibility on Cloned Animals
Authors: Swazo Norman K.
Published: December 2016

Patents recognize economic right and are important for both individual and social economic benefit.  Nonetheless, mere economic right does not eliminate the requirement for moral assessment when adjudicating intellectual property claims, especially in the case of claims associated with applications of biomedical technology [e.g., somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) methods].  This is so for applications for patent in the case of live-born animal clones, as governed in the setting of the judicial system of the USA.  Here recent federal court decisions in the USA are reviewed, and the ethical ambiguities of this judicial review are engaged in light of the current prohibitions on human reproductive cloning.  It is concluded that the legal proscription of patents on animal clones bodes well for human accountability to present and future generations in the event of human reproductive cloning.
Planetary Protection for Mars: Time for Reconsideration
Authors: Alexandrov Svetoslav
Published: December 2016

In this manuscript I discuss the ethics of the protection of hypothetical organisms on Mars in terms of upcoming manned space missions and subsequent colonization.
Neutron spectroscopy and strongly correlated electrons: a view from the inside
Authors: Alekseev P A
Published: December 2016

Neutron spectroscopy results concerning the characteristic features of electronic states in strongly correlated electron systems are reviewed. It is shown that the effects of crystal electric field, exchange interaction, and local-itinerant electron hybridization, separately or in combination, manifest themselves in the spectral features of magnetic neutron scattering. The review discusses information that can be obtained from these spectra to be used to investigate the nature of heavy-fermion, intermediate-valence, and a number of other nontrivial types of ground states occurring in this class of systems. Problems interpreting experimental results are pointed out, suggesting the need for the development of the existing models.
Application of dynamic mass spectrometers for investigations in the field of thermonuclear synthesis
Authors: Aruev N N
Published: December 2016

This review discusses the design, analytical characteristics, and some applications of two types of dynamic mass spectrometers that have been developed at the Ioffe Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences: the magnetic resonance mass spectrometer (MRMS) and time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS), the latter of which the inventors named the mass reflectron. With the aid of an MRMS, it was possible to measure the half-life of tritium, which is a fusion fuel candidate, and to start investigating how deuterium plasma interacts with the structural materials of the spherical tokamak Globus-M. The research done shows that mass reflectrons can be used successfully in the analysis of tritium-containing fusion fuel gas mixtures.
Passivity-Based Control for a Micro Air Vehicle Using Unit Quaternions
Authors: Guerrero-Sanchez Maria , Abaunza Hernan , Castillo Pedro , Lozano Rogelio , Garcia-Beltran Carlos , Rodriguez-Palacios Alejandro
Published: December 2016

In this paper the development and practical implementation of a Passivity-Based Control (PBC) algorithm to stabilize an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) described with unit quaternions are presented. First, a mathematical model based on Euler-Lagrange formulation using a logarithmic mapping in the quaternion space is introduced. Then, a new methodology: a quaternion-passivity-based control is derived, which does not compute excessive and complex Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) for synthesizing the control law, making a significant advantage in comparison with other methodologies. Therefore, the control design to a system as the quad-rotor is easily solved by the proposed methodology. Another advantage is the possibility to stabilize quad-rotor full dynamics which may not be possible with classical PBC techniques. Experimental results and numerical simulations to validate our proposed scheme are presented.
The Preparation and Characterization of Immobilized TiO2/PEG by Using DSAT as a Support Binder
Authors: Nawawi Wan , Zaharudin Raihan , Ishak Mohd , Ismail Khudzir , Zuliahani Ahmad
Published: December 2016

Immobilized TiO2 was prepared by adding a small composition of polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a binder, and this paper reported for the very first time the formation of C=O from oxidized PEG, which acted as an electron injector in enhancing photoactivity. Water-based TiO2 with PEG formulation was deposited by using a brush technique onto double-sided adhesive tape (DSAT) as a support binder to increase the adhesiveness of immobilized TiO2. The photocatalytic activity of immobilized TiO2-PEG was measured by photodegradation of 12 mg·L−1 methylene blue (MB) dye. The optimum condition of immobilized TiO2-PEG was observed at TiO2/PEG-2 (TP2) with 10:0.1 for the TiO2/PEG ratio, which resulted in a 1.8-times higher photodegradation rate as compared to the suspension mode of pristine TiO2. The high photodegradation rate was due to the formation of the active C=O bond from oxidized PEG binder in immobilized TiO2-PEG as observed by Fourier transform infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses. The presence of C=O has escalated the photoactivity by forming an electron injector to a conduction band of TiO2 as proven by higher photoluminescence intensity obtained for TP2 as compared to pristine TiO2. The TP2 sample has also increased its adhesiveness when DSAT is applied as a support binder where it can be recycled up to eight times and comparable to recent photocatalysis cycle developments.
Rovibrationally Resolved Time-Dependent Collisional-Radiative Model of Molecular Hydrogen and Its Application to a Fusion Detached Plasma
Authors: Sawada Keiji , Goto Motoshi
Published: December 2016

A novel rovibrationally resolved collisional-radiative model of molecular hydrogen that includes 4,133 rovibrational levels for electronic states whose united atom principal quantum number is below six is developed. The rovibrational X 1 Σ g + population distribution in a SlimCS fusion demo detached divertor plasma is investigated by solving the model time dependently with an initial 300 K Boltzmann distribution. The effective reaction rate coefficients of molecular assisted recombination and of other processes in which atomic hydrogen is produced are calculated using the obtained time-dependent population distribution.
Cross Sections and Rate Coefficients for Vibrational Excitation of HeH+ Molecule by Electron Impact
Authors: Ayouz Mehdi , Kokoouline Viatcheslav
Published: December 2016

Cross sections and thermally-averaged rate coefficients for vibration (de-)excitation of HeH + by an electron impact are computed using a theoretical approach that combines the multi-channel quantum defect theory and the UK R-matrix code. Fitting formulas with a few numerical parameters are derived for the obtained rate coefficients. The interval of applicability of the formulas is from 40 to 10,000 K.
Spectrum and Energy Levels of Four-Times Ionized Yttrium (Y V)
Authors: Reader Joseph
Published: December 2016

The analysis of the spectrum of four-times-ionized yttrium, Y V, was extended to provide a large number of new spectrum lines and energy levels. The new analysis is based on spectrograms made with sliding-spark discharges on 10.7 m normal- and grazing-incidence spectrographs. The measurements cover the region 184–2549 Å. The results revise levels for this spectrum by Zahid-Ali et al. (1975) and by Ateqad et al. (1984). Five hundred and seventy lines were classified as transitions between 23 odd-parity and 90 even-parity levels. The 4s24p5, 4s4p6, 4s24p44d, 5s, 5p, 5d, 6s configurations are now complete. Results for the 4s24p46d and 7s configurations are tentative. Ritz-type wavelengths were determined from the optimized energy levels, with uncertainties as low as ±0.0004 Å. The observed configurations were interpreted with Hartree-Fock calculations and least-squares fits of the energy parameters to the observed levels. Oscillator strengths for all classified lines were calculated with the fitted parameters. The results are compared with values for the level energies, percentage compositions, and transition probabilities from recent ab initio theoretical calculations. The ionization energy was revised to 607,760 ± 300 cm−1 (75.353 ± 0.037 eV).
Evaluation of Teaching Signals for Motor Control in the Cerebellum during Real-World Robot Application
Authors: Pinzon Morales Ruben , Hirata Yutaka
Published: December 2016

Motor learning in the cerebellum is believed to entail plastic changes at synapses between parallel fibers and Purkinje cells, induced by the teaching signal conveyed in the climbing fiber (CF) input. Despite the abundant research on the cerebellum, the nature of this signal is still a matter of debate. Two types of movement error information have been proposed to be plausible teaching signals: sensory error (SE) and motor command error (ME); however, their plausibility has not been tested in the real world. Here, we conducted a comparison of different types of CF teaching signals in real-world engineering applications by using a realistic neuronal network model of the cerebellum. We employed a direct current motor (simple task) and a two-wheeled balancing robot (difficult task). We demonstrate that SE, ME or a linear combination of the two is sufficient to yield comparable performance in a simple task. When the task is more difficult, although SE slightly outperformed ME, these types of error information are all able to adequately control the robot. We categorize granular cells according to their inputs and the error signal revealing that different granule cells are preferably engaged for SE, ME or their combination. Thus, unlike previous theoretical and simulation studies that support either SE or ME, it is demonstrated for the first time in a real-world engineering application that both SE and ME are adequate as the CF teaching signal in a realistic computational cerebellar model, even when the control task is as difficult as stabilizing a two-wheeled balancing robot.