bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Exogenous proline enhances antioxidant enzyme activities but does not mitigate growth inhibition by selenate stress in tobacco BY-2 cells
Authors: Khatun Mousumi , Matsushima Daiki , Rhaman Mohammad Saidur , Okuma Eiji , Nakamura Toshiyuki , Nakamura Yoshimasa , Munemasa Shintaro , Murata Yoshiyuki
Published: July 2020

Selenium (Se) causes oxidative damage to plants. Proline is accumulated as a compatible solute in plants under stress conditions and mitigates stresses. Selenate at 250 µM increased cell death and inhibited the growth of tobacco BY-2 cells while exogenous proline at 10 mM did not mitigate the inhibition by selenate. Selenate increased accumulation of Se and ROS and activities of antioxidant enzymes but not lipid peroxidation in the BY-2 cells. Proline increased Se accumulation and antioxidant enzyme activities but not either ROS accumulation or lipid peroxidation in the selenate-stressed cells. Glutathione (GSH) rather than ascorbic acid (AsA) mitigated the growth inhibition although both reduced the accumulation of ROS induced by selenate. These results indicate that proline increases both antioxidant enzyme activities and Se accumulation, which overall fails to ameliorate the growth inhibition by selenate and that the growth inhibition is not accounted for only by ROS accumulation.

Abbreviations: APX: ascorbate peroxidase; AsA: ascorbic acid; BY-2: Bright Yellow-2; CAT: catalase; DAI: days after inoculation; DW: dry weight; FW: fresh weight; GSH: glutathione; ROS: reactive oxygen species
Role of defect saturation in improving optical response from InGaN nanowires in higher wavelength regime
Authors: Nag Dhiman , Sarkar Ritam , Bhunia Swagata , Aggarwal Tarni , Ghosh Kankat , Sinha Shreekant , Ganguly Swaroop , Saha Dipankar , Horng Ray-Hua , Laha Apurba
Published: July 2020

Growth of InGaN, having high Indium composition without compromising crystal quality has always been a great challenge to obtain efficient optical devices. In this work, we extensively study the impact of non-radiative defects on optical response of the plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE) grown InGaN nanowires, emitting in the higher wavelength regime (

λ
>
520

nm). Our analysis focuses into the effect of defect saturation on the optical output, manifested by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Defect saturation has not so far been thoroughly investigated in InGaN based systems at such a high wavelength, where defects play a key role in restraining efficient optical performance. We argue that with saturation of defect states by photo-generated carriers, the advantages of carrier localization can be employed to enhance the optical output. Carrier localization arises because of Indium phase segregation, which is confirmed from wide PL spectrum and analysis from transmission electron microscopy (TEM). A theoretical model has been proposed and solved using coupled differential rate equations in steady state to undertake different phenomena, occurred during PL measurements. Analysis of the model helps us understand the impact of non-radiative defects on PL response and identifying the origin of enhanced radiative recombination.
Design of 1178 nm diode laser with step waveguide layers for reduced voltage and low vertical divergence
Authors: Ma Xiaolong , Xu Kun , Yang Peng , Duan Xiangyang , Tian Ximin , Liu Anjin
Published: July 2020

A 1178 nm diode laser with step waveguide layers (SWGLs) into the optical cavity is designed for frequency doubling. It is found that the mode field of the fundamental mode can be modulated easily for this kind of diode laser. A strong confinement for the fundamental mode can also be achieved by adopting a low Al content in the optical cavity. Diode lasers with SWGLs can deliver a high output power. Compared with diode lasers based on the conventional large optical cavity, the low Al content results in a reduced voltage, which is helpful to improve the electro-optical conversion efficiency. Based on an asymmetric large optical cavity with SWGLs, a beam divergence of 15.5° in the vertical direction is obtained for the designed diode laser.
Search for transient variations of the fine structure constant and dark matter using fiber-linked optical atomic clocks
Authors: Roberts B M , Delva P , Al-Masoudi A , Amy-Klein A , Bærentsen C , Baynham C F A , Benkler E , Bilicki S , Bize S , Bowden W , Calvert J , Cambier V , Cantin E , Curtis E A , Dörscher S , Favier M , Frank F , Gill P , Godun R M , Grosche G , Guo C , Hees A , Hill I R , Hobson R , Huntemann N , Kronjäger J , Koke S , Kuhl A , Lange R , Legero T , Lipphardt B , Lisdat C , Lodewyck J , Lopez O , Margolis H S , Álvarez-Martínez H , Meynadier F , Ozimek F , Peik E , Pottie P-E , Quintin N , Sanner C , De Sarlo L , Schioppo M , Schwarz R , Silva A , Sterr U , Tamm Chr , Le Targat R , Tuckey P , Vallet G , Waterholter T , Xu D , Wolf P
Published: July 2020

We search for transient variations of the fine structure constant using data from a European network of fiber-linked optical atomic clocks. By searching for coherent variations in the recorded clock frequency comparisons across the network, we significantly improve the constraints on transient variations of the fine structure constant. For example, we constrain the variation to |δα/α| < 5 × 10−17 for transients of duration 103 s. This analysis also presents a possibility to search for dark matter, the mysterious substance hypothesised to explain galaxy dynamics and other astrophysical phenomena that is thought to dominate the matter density of the universe. At the current sensitivity level, we find no evidence for dark matter in the form of topological defects (or, more generally, any macroscopic objects), and we thus place constraints on certain potential couplings between the dark matter and standard model particles, substantially improving upon the existing constraints, particularly for large (≳104 km) objects.
Alignment of tree phenology and climate seasonality influences the runoff response to forest cover loss
Authors: Knighton James , Vijay Varsha , Palmer Margaret
Published: July 2020

Trees shape the critical zone and modulate terrestrial water storage yet observed streamflow responses to forest cover change vary. Differences in catchment area, soil water storage, management practices, tree species, and climate are among the many explanations proposed for heterogeneous hydrologic responses. We addressed evidence for the hypothesis that mean annual temperature (MAT) and the phase shift between precipitation and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) peaks, θ, explain a significant amount of the variation in hydrologic response to forest cover loss. We selected 50 catchments with daily streamflow records spanning eight nations and seven climate regions. Categorical clustering of catchments was performed with MAT, θ, minimum EVI, catchment area, and percentage forest loss. Similar storm event runoff ratio responses to deforestation were best clustered by MAT and θ. High MAT tropical monsoonal catchments (Brazil, Myanmar, and Liberia) exhibited minimal evidence of increasing runoff ratios (increases observed in 9% of catchments). Low MAT subarctic, cold semi-arid, and humid continental catchments (US, Canada, and Estonia) showed consistent runoff increases around the time of snowmelt (94%). The deforestation runoff responses of temperate and subtropical catchments with Mediterranean, humid, and oceanic climates depended strongly on θ. We observe increased runoff following forest loss in a majority of catchments (90%) where precipitation peaks followed peak growing season (max EVI) (US). In contrast, where precipitation peaks preceded the growing season (South Africa and Australia) there was less evidence of increased runoff (25% of catchments). This research supports the strategic implementation of native forest conservation or restoration for simultaneously mitigating the effects of global climate change and regional or local surface runoff.
Effect of surfactant SDS on the morphology and photocatalytic performance of Zn2GeO4 nanorods
Authors: Li Jun , Diao Xuemei , Xiao Yumin , Qin Lizhao , Lin Hua , Li Qing , Liao Bin
Published: July 2020

The continuous discharge of organic dye effluents from textile industries causes severe global water pollution. A sustainable and effective route needs to be developed for the treatment of textile effluent in order to enable environmental protection and water recycling. In particular, the nanomaterials-based photocatalytic degradation of organic compounds is a promising approach to minimize water pollution. Herein, a facile hydrothermal method was reported for the preparation of Zn2GeO4 nanorods (NDs) with unique size, shape, and surface chemistry using sodium lauryl sulfate (SDS) as the surfactant. The crystal structure, size, and shape of the synthesized NDs were characterized by x-ray diffraction pattern (XRD) and field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). Initially, the XRD pattern revealed that SDS plays a crucial role in the formation of highly pure Zn2GeO4 NDs with rhombohedral crystalline nature. It was clearly noticed that increasing SDS concentration results in the formation of Zn2GeO4 NDs with decreased size ranges (100 nm). Conversely, the size of Zn2GeO4 NDs increased at higher SDS concentrations. The photocatalytic activity of Zn2GeO4 NDs was evaluated by the degradation of methyl orange (MO) in aqueous solution. Under light irradiation, the Zn2GeO4 NDs prepared by using different concentrations of SDS exhibited varied photocatalytic performance. Among the tested samples, Zn2GeO4 NDs prepared with 0.1 g of SDS showed the best photocatalytic activity with a MO decomposition rate of 94.6% within 60 min. This study suggests that SDS can be used to modulate the morphology and photocatalytic performance of Zn2GeO4 NDs, and the resultant Zn2GeO4 NDs can serve as a photocatalyst in wastewater treatment.
Prediction of wear properties of graphene-Si3N4 reinforced titanium hybrid composites by artificial neural network
Authors: Mutuk Tuğba , Gürbüz Mevlüt , Mutuk Halil
Published: July 2020

In this study, we have employed artificial neural network (ANN) method to predict wear properties of titanium hybrid composites produced by powder metallurgy (PM) method. Titanium (Ti) was used as a matrix materials and graphene nano-platelets (GNPs)-Si3N4 were used as reinforcement materials in hybrid composites. A back-propagation neural network with 3-6-1 architecture was developed to predict wear rates by considering weight fraction reinforcements, load and density as model variables. The well trained ANN system predicted the experimental results in a good agreement with the experimental data. This refers that ANN can be used to evaluate wear rate of samples in a cost effective way.
Studies on mechanical property of squeeze cast and heat treated AA6061-ZrO2 composite
Authors: Annamalai A Raja , James Johny , Kuppan P , Hemakumar S , Jen Chun-Ping
Published: July 2020

This work deals with processing, characterization, and study of the mechanical property of AA6061-ZrO2 composite by stir casting unit combined with squeeze casting setup. Morphology study of the refined composite was measured with the help of Optical Microscope and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The Energy Dispersive x-ray spectroscopy was performed to observe the desirable elements present in the processed composite. The EDX investigation endorses the presence of Aluminum, Zirconium, and Oxygen, are the elements of the desirability. The processed composite displayed increased hardness value when related to the base aluminum alloy AA6061 at test conditions. The tensile tests have been performed for the refined specimen both in cast and heat treated conditions. 20%–63% improvement in tensile strength as an outcome of the inclusion of ZrO2 particles and heat treatment process was recorded, and the fashion was analyzed. Finally, all the three composite specimens were tested for wear resistance property for the support of pin on disc wear test kit. The wear trend due to the addition of ZrO2 particles was discussed in a detailed manner.
Historicities
Authors: Kalaidjian Andrew
Published: July 2020

In the works of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, a philosophy of history developed to consider how thought and culture are historically situated and to present human civilization as an organizing force that subdues nature toward a form of progressive improvement. This new sense of being situated in history subsequently shaped philosophies of “historicity” in the writings of Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, and others. It also led to less desirable political investments in collective fate and destiny. Against these teleological and culturally reductive forms of historicity, poststructuralist articulations of multiple historicities conceive of historical engagement as a cyclic or stratigraphic configuration of unlimited potential. Theorists such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Baudrillard provide more open, associative, and playful approaches to historical frameworks. An understanding of historicity requires the articulation of related terms such as historiography (the writing of history) and historicism (the analysis of culture through historical context). Historicity as a sense of historical development as well as of future potential is an important theme for discussions of diverse topics, including identity, community, empire, globalization, and the Anthropocene. Literary engagements with historicity range from the rejection of history to the interrogation of historicism as a series of competing and contradictory narratives. Historicity is a vital concept used by literary theorists to critique authoritative accounts of history, as well as a self-reflexive mode for considering institutional and disciplinary biases. The following article surveys different forms of historicity in philosophical and theoretical traditions, analyzes institutions that influence official accounts of history, and posits literary and imaginative engagements with the past as an important mode of social and cultural critique.
Mourning and Melancholia
Authors: Dalziell Tanya
Published: July 2020

Mourning and melancholia are among the primary concepts that have come to interest and structure late-20th- and early-21st-century literary theory. The terms are not new to this historical moment—Hippocrates (460–379 bce) believed that an excess of black bile caused melancholia and its symptoms of fear and sadness—but they have taken on an urgent charge as theories respond to both the world around them and shifts in theory itself. With the 20th century viewed as a historical period marked by cataclysmic events, and literary theory characterized by the collapse of the transcendental signified, attention has turned to mourning and melancholia, and questions of how to respond to and represent loss. The work of Sigmund Freud has been a touchstone in this regard. Since the publication in 1917 of his essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” theorists have been applying and critiquing the ideas Freud formulated, and examining how literature might register them. The elegy has been singled out for particular scrutiny given that this poetic form is conventionally a lament for the dead that offers solace to the survivors. Yet, focus has expanded to include other literary modes and to query both the ethics of coming to terms with loss, which is the ostensible work of mourning, and the affective and political desirability of melancholia.
Remote Sensing of African Rainfall
Authors: Dinku Tufa
Published: July 2020

Climate data support a suite of scientific and socioeconomic activities that can reinforce development gains and improve the lives of those most vulnerable to climate variability and change. Historical and current weather and climate observations are essential for many activities, including operational meteorology, identifying extreme events and assessing associated risks, developing climate-informed early warning systems, planning, and research. Rainfall is the most widely available and used climate variable. Thus, measurement of rainfall is crucial to society’s well-being. In general, measurements from ground meteorological stations managed by National Meteorological Agencies are the principal sources of rainfall data. The main strength of the station observations is that they are assumed to give the “true” measurements of rainfall. However, the distribution of the meteorological observation network over Africa is significantly inadequate, with declining numbers of stations and poor data quality. This problem is compounded by the fact that the distribution of existing stations is uneven, with most weather stations located in cities and towns along major roads. As a result, coverage tends to be worse in rural areas, where livelihoods may be most vulnerable to climate variability and change. This has resulted in critical gaps in the provision of climate services where it is needed the most. Space-based measurements from satellites are being used as a complement to or in place of ground observations. Satellite-derived precipitation estimates offer good spatial coverage and improved temporal and spatial resolution, as well as near-real-time availability. Moreover, a range of satellite rainfall products are freely available from many sources, and a couple of these products are available only for Africa. However, satellite rainfall products also suffer from many shortcomings that include accuracy, particularly at higher temporal resolutions; coarse spatial resolution; short time series; and temporal inhomogeneity due to varying inputs. This limits the use of the use these products for certain applications. Understanding satellite rainfall estimation errors is critical for deciding which products might be used for specific applications and requires rigorous evaluation of these products using ground observations. The challenge in Africa is lack of availability, accessibility, and quality of rain-gauge observations that could be used for this purpose. Despite these challenges, there have been some validation efforts over different parts of the continent. However, different and inconsistent approaches of validation have created challenges to using these evaluation results. A comprehensive validation of the main operational satellite products at a continental level is needed to overcome these challenges and make the best use of satellite rainfall products in different applications.
Attitudes toward LGBT Rights: Political Tolerance and Egalitarian Values in the United States
Authors: Flores Andrew R.
Published: July 2020

Attitudes towards political groups and their rights are often shaped by the core values held by individuals. In reference to LGBT people and their rights, research has often shown that core values play a role in understanding affect towards the group and related policies. Values such as moral traditionalism and egalitarianism have long been understood to be determinants of people’s attitudes toward LGBT rights. LGBT issues are framed relying on competing value frames, which change in their dominance over time. However, core values tend to be stable but American attitudes toward LGBT people and rights have undergone sharp increases in their favorability. One explanation for this change is an increasing political tolerance among the American public. Political tolerance is the degree to which the public supports the civil liberties of members of different social groups, and it is distinct though related to attitudes on LGBT issues of equality (e.g., marriage equality). Political tolerance encompasses attitudes toward the rights for LGBT people to exercise their free speech, political and social organization, and live free from government intrusion. In the US, adults have consistently expressed greater political tolerance for lesbian and gay people than issues of LGBT equality. Political tolerance toward lesbian and gay people has increased since the 1970s, but egalitarian values have remained rather stagnant. The effect of egalitarian values on political tolerance for lesbian and gay people was stronger in earlier years, and as Americans have become more tolerant of lesbian and gay people, the role of egalitarianism in affecting political tolerance has diminished. There are limitations of existing data, especially regarding the political tolerance of bisexuals, transgender people, and others who are generally considered to be within the broader LGBT community.
Archives in the Study of Public Policy and Administration
Authors: Jaramillo Grace
Published: July 2020

Archives, including primary documents such as meeting minutes, memoranda, white papers, blueprints, drafts for laws, and acts, are a crucial part of a consistent research inquiry that provide significant understanding of the public-policy processes in public administration. Within qualitative methods for studying public policy and public administration, archives are a key step of the process-tracing method for comparative historical analysis.

Archival research is the backbone of any process-tracing exercise. Using archives for public administration studies requires rigorous planning. It starts with the definition of a time horizon of analysis that sets the dates over which the analysis will be performed. The time horizon will also help design the types of documents and indicators needed to identify the decision-making process, along with the goals and the budget performance that will accompany the policy decision. The key elements of time, sequence, selection, and classification of archives in public-policy studies determine the causal process mechanisms within a public-policy process. Identifiers, data-mining software, and sequencing are additional tools for improving classification and interpretation.
Climate and Environmental Crises
Authors: Galaz Victor
Published: July 2020

Climate change is increasingly being framed as a “climate crisis.” Such a crisis could be viewed both to unfold in the climate system, as well as to be induced by it in diverse areas of society. Following from current understandings of modern crises, it is clear that climate change indeed can be defined as a “crisis.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5oC special report elaborates, the repercussions of a warming planet include increased food insecurity, increased frequency and intensity of severe droughts, extreme heat waves, the loss of coral reef ecosystems and associated marine species, and more. It is also important to note that a range of possible climate-induced crises (through, e.g., possible increased food insecurity and weather extremes) will not be distributed evenly, but will instead disproportionally affect already vulnerable social groups, communities, and countries in detrimental ways.

The multifaceted dimensions of climate change allow for multiple interpretations and framings of “climate crisis,” thereby forcing us to acknowledge the deeply contextual nature of what is understood as a “crisis.” Climate change and its associated crises display a number of challenging properties that stem from its connections to basically all sectors in society, its propensity to induce and in itself embed nonlinear changes such as “tipping points” and cascading shocks, and its unique and challenging long-term temporal dimensions. The latter pose particularly difficult decision-making and institutional challenges because initial conditions (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions) do not result in immediate or proportional responses (say, global temperature anomalies), but instead play out through feedbacks among the climate system, oceans, the cryosphere, and changes in forest biomes, with some considerable delays in time. Additional challenges emerge from the fact that early warnings of pending so-called “catastrophic shifts” face numerous obstacles, and that early responses are undermined by a lack of knowledge, complex causality, and severe coordination challenges.
Evaluating Success and Failure in Crisis Management
Authors: McConnell Allan
Published: July 2020

Crises and disasters come in many shapes and sizes. They range from global pandemics and global financial crises to tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanic ash clouds, bushfires, terrorist attacks, critical infrastructure failures and food contamination episodes. Threats may be locally isolated such as an explosion at a local fireworks factory, or they may cascade across multiple countries and sectors, such as pandemics. No country is immune from the challenge of managing extraordinary threats, and doing so out of their comfort zone of routine policy making. The crisis management challenge involves managing threats ‘on the ground’, as well as the political fallout and societal fears.

Populist and journalistic commentary frequently labels crisis management initiatives as having either succeeded or failed. The realities are much more complex. Evaluators confront numerous methodological challenges. These include the careful consideration of multiple and often competing outcomes, differing perceptions, issues of success for whom, and gray areas stemming from shortfalls and lack of evidence, as well as variations over time. Despite such complexity, some key themes appear continually across evaluations, from internal reviews to royal commissions and accident inquiries. These pertain to the ways in which evaluations can be shaped heavily or lightly by political agendas, the degree to which evaluating organizations are able to open up, the degree to which gray areas and shortfalls are stumbling blocks in producing findings, and the challenge of producing coherent investigative narratives when many storylines are possible. Ultimately, evaluating crisis initiatives is “political” in nature because it seeks to provide authoritative evaluations that reconcile multiple views, from experts and lawyers to victims and their families.
Judgment as the Imagination of Futures: Practical Rationality in Decisions on Complex Issues
Authors: Mazarr Michael J.
Published: July 2020

The field of judgment and decision making has seen an explosion of research and analyses since the 1990s, notably in five closely related fields: Rational choice and its variants, the concept of intuition, “dual process” theories, the “heuristics and biases” literature, and the concept of “naturalistic” decision making. Yet none of these theories captures—by design or because of the limits of the approach—the actual mechanism by which emergent judgment occurs on complex decisions. Such decisions are non-optimizable and guided by multiple and often conflicting objectives and values; their outcomes will flow from the nonlinear interaction of many variables whose causal relationships are poorly understood. As a result, critical assumptions of many classical decision making models cannot be met in such situations, and the default approach relies not so much on calculative decision making as on instinctive judgment. This term implies a mechanism that is less calculative and consequentialist that it is imaginative, creative, and unconscious. Emergent, largely intuitive judgment is the only mechanism appropriate to such complex, nonlinear situations in which both an objective maximization of utilities and an accurate assessment of likely consequences are impossible. The concept of judgment broadly defined, as a form of unconscious, emergent, and imaginative interpretation of facts and events, offers the best model for how decision makers approach non-optimizable situations.
Reflexivity and the History of Psychology
Authors: Morawski Jill
Published: July 2020

Reflexivity, a recursive process of turning back, occurs throughout science. Back-and-forth reflexive processes transpire when the scientist executes self-regard and whenever human science theory incorporates the researcher’s actions. Reflexive processes occur too in the myriad, unavoidable ways that observations of the world depend on scientists’ prior understandings of the world. The multiple forms and complexities of reflexivity pose challenges for all science, yet the challenges are especially pronounced in a science, like psychology, that generates knowledge about human nature. Confronting reflexivity is further impeded by psychology’s markedly scientific (not human scientific) goals to achieve objectivity and value neutrality, and to maintain naturalist assumptions about reality. Yet over the lifespan of scientific psychology some psychologists have faced these challenges and recommended means to acknowledge reflexivity. Their investigations have located, named, and analyzed a set of fallacies associated with disregarding reflexivity. The fallacies include assuming that the psychologist’s conception of cognitive processes are the same as their subject’s; that the psychologist can fully bracket their presuppositions from their observations; that psychological theories need not be relevant to their own scientific thoughts and behaviors; that psychology’s prescribed language for reporting findings accurately describes the phenomenon under investigation; and that psychological knowledge has no consequential effects on the world it predicts and explains. Addressing such fallacies and taking steps to remove them through sustained reflexive awareness is essential to attaining an empirically robust, veridical, and dynamic science. Taken together, the efforts of psychologists who have faced reflexivity and the fallacies related to its denial comprise a productive working template for developing a science that benefits from engaging with reflexive processes instead of disregarding them.
Qualitative Inquiry
Authors: Marecek Jeanne , Magnusson Eva
Published: July 2020

Qualitative inquiry is a form of psychological research that seeks in-depth understanding of people and their social worlds. Qualitative researchers typically study the experiences of people as meaning-making agents, relying on verbal material. Qualitative inquiry has a long history in psychology, beginning in the 19th century with founders of psychology like William James and Wilhelm Wundt. However, for much of the 20th century, qualitative inquiry has occupied a marginal position in the discipline. This marginalization is best understood in relation to the discipline’s early struggle to be regarded as legitimate. Adopting the methods of the natural sciences—notably quantification and measurement—was a means to that end. Qualitative approaches, though suppressed for much of the 20th century, were not entirely eliminated from the field. Personality theorists, for example, continued to make use of them.

The 1970s marked the advent of new forms of qualitative inquiry in psychology, which drew from a variety of intellectual and philosophical movements. These developments continued to gain acceptance and adherents. Since the turn of the 20th century, national and international organizations of qualitative researchers in psychology have been established. Venues for publishing qualitative research in psychology have increased. Nonetheless, qualitative inquiry is still marginalized in many academic psychology departments, and training in qualitative methods is seldom part of the methods curriculum.
Descartes’ Dualism of Mind and Body in the Development of Psychological Thought
Authors: Brown Deborah , Key Brian
Published: July 2020

Few practitioners or researchers in psychology would think of the 17th-century French philosopher, René Descartes, as the founding father of their discipline. Yet, it is difficult to see how psychology could have emerged as a discipline in its own right without the contributions of Descartes. Descartes’ theoretical and experimental contributions to our understanding of rationality, consciousness, sensation, feeling, attention, psychological self-regulation and voluntary action, and indeed the very concept of mind that lies at the heart of his philosophy, have been pivotal to the evolution of psychology since its emergence as a special science in the 19th-century. These contributions tend to get overshadowed by the unpalatable aspects of his dualism of mind and body and his denial of animal consciousness, doctrines for which he was and still is much pilloried. However, both doctrines are relevant to understanding how from its inception the subject matter and scope of psychological investigation was framed, for underlying the Cartesian concept of mind is not one dualism but two: a dualism of mind and body and a dualism of life and mind. The mind, for Descartes, could not be theorized on its own terms without conceiving of it at least to some extent independently of the physiological processes of the human body, on the one hand, and the life functions of biological organisms, on the other. Descartes’ legacy for psychology as a discipline is thus twofold. It created the conceptual space for the concept of mind to emerge as a threshold concept in its own right, distinct from the concept of matter that defined mechanics, and it demarcated those uniquely human capacities that enabled psychology to differentiate itself from the newly emerging evolutionary biology of the 19th-century, even though it would remain more closely aligned with biology than physics thenceforth. Without both dualisms of mind and body and life and mind, it is difficult to envisage how psychology as a special science distinct from anatomy and the life sciences could have emerged, and for this the discipline of psychology owes Monsieur Descartes a considerable debt.
Psychology and Race in Racialized Societies
Authors: Winston-Proctor Cynthia E. , Winston Michael R.
Published: July 2020

Within racialized societies, the meaning of race is an important topic of psychological study. As Helms and colleagues have pointed out, however, race has no consensual theoretical or scientific meaning in psychology, although the term race is frequently used in psychological theory, research, and practice as if it has obvious meaning. A recent cultural historical analysis of race scholarship concluded that race as a label has developed over time, leading to the treatment of race as a “thing.” Such ideological use of race as a thing has been discredited. Nevertheless, socially destructive ideological concepts of race have been embedded in racialized societies to varying degrees through social, economic, and political institutions and their practices.

In the history of the field of psychology, race has had various theoretical conceptualizations (i.e., definitions). Most of these theoretical conceptualizations can be linked to larger scientific and societal movements within racialized societies. Relatedly, psychologists have adopted various epistemological and methodological approaches to studying race, although positivist empiricism has dominated. The complexities of the theoretical conceptualization and methodological approaches in the field of psychology for studying race have led to multiple analyses of how to address “psychology’s problems with race.” Multiple features of a racialized society provide the broader context for the study race within the field of psychology.
Cold War Psychology in Eastern Europe
Authors: Kiss Julien
Published: July 2020

The Cold War took place between 1948 and 1991 and centered on the antagonism between the two great superpowers, the US and the USSR, each with its allies and areas of influence. If the US had a significant influence in the West, the USSR dominated the countries of Eastern Europe. The USSR violently imposed communist totalitarian regimes after the end of the Second World War in the countries behind the Iron Curtain: the German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. The psychological traditions consolidated up to that time were in many of these countries eradicated, meaning the restructuring or abolition of higher education, the abolition of scientific societies and journals. Many psychologists with connections to the Western academic world were purged and persecuted. There was the will to build a new socialist psychology, based strictly on Marxist ideology and Pavlovian physiology. Theories or approaches that did not reflect official ideology were forbidden and labeled as bourgeois pseudoscience. Authorities severely punished psychological practice based on such theories. There were similarities between what happened in these countries, especially in the first decade of the imposition of communism. However, after the death of Joseph Stalin, things developed somewhat differently in each country. Although in some places ideological policies in science had a progressive tendency toward liberalization, in other places there was significant negative interferences throughout the communist period. Due to this diversity, it is somewhat challenging to frame the development of psychology in Eastern Europe during the Cold War from a unitary perspective.
LGBTQ Psychology
Authors: Hegarty Peter
Published: July 2020

LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) psychology is a loosely organized subfield of psychology. The field emerged, principally in the United States, in the late 1960s in concert with the de-pathologization of adult homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Over the decade of the 1970s, psychologists stopped researching adult lesbians and gay men as a psychiatric category and initiated new research on relationships, parenting, and the prejudice experienced by this stigmatized group. The HIV/AIDS epidemic lead this subfield to grow rapidly, to focus on men, to gain far wider engagement from mainstream psychologists, and to make health outcomes central to LGBTQ psychology’s raison d’etre. The 1990s were described as a period of “coming of age” as the field began to address bisexuality more directly, to internationalize, and to become more central to strategies in the United States to use psychological evidence to support the civil rights of minorities in court cases. The development of transgender-affirmative psychologies, a literature on the particular psychological issues of LGBTQ people of color in the United States, and an emphasis on the rights of same-gender couples to legal recognition of their relationships were new and prominent themes in the 21st-century literature. This subfield of psychology has been characterized by its historical emergence in the United States, a relative lack of attention to children, an urge to affirm under-represented groups by researching them, and a frustration that descriptive research does not always bring about the desired social transformations that motivate it.
Thirst
Authors: Rowland Neil E.
Published: July 2020

Thirst is a specific and compelling sensation, often arising from internal signals of dehydration but modulated by many environmental variables. There are several historical landmarks in the study of thirst and drinking behavior. The basic physiology of body fluid balance is important, in particular the mechanisms that conserve fluid loss. The transduction of fluid deficits can be discussed in relation to osmotic pressure (osmoreceptors) and volume (baroreceptors). Other relevant issues include the neurobiological mechanisms by which these signals are transformed to intracellular and extracellular dehydration thirsts, respectively, including the prominent role of structures along the lamina terminalis. Other considerations are the integration of signals from natural dehydration conditions, including water deprivation, thermoregulatory fluid loss, and thirst associated with eating dry food. These mechanisms should also be considered within a broader theoretical framework of organization of motivated behavior based on incentive salience.
History and Social Studies Curriculum
Authors: Ross E. Wayne
Published: July 2020

Social studies education has had a turbulent history as one of the core subjects in the school curriculum. The fundamental content of the social studies curriculum – the study of human enterprise across space and time –however, has always been at the core of educational endeavors. It is generally accepted that the formal introduction of social studies to the school curriculum was instigated by the 1916 report of the National Education Association’s Committee on Social Studies, which emphasized development of citizenship values as a core aim of history and social science education. Earlier commissions of the N.E.A. and American Historical Association heavily influenced the Committee on Social Studies recommendations. The roots of the contemporary social studies curriculum, therefore, can be traced to two distinct curriculum reform efforts: the introduction of academic history into the curriculum and citizenship education. There is widespread agreement that the aim of social studies is citizenship education, that is the preparation of young people so that they possess the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for active participation in society. This apparent consensus, however, has been described as almost meaningless because social studies educators continue to be at odds over curricular content as well as the conception of what it means to be a good citizen. Since its formal introduction into the school, social studies curriculum been the subject of numerous commission and blue-ribbon panel studies, ranging from the sixteen-volume report of the American Historical Association’s Commission on Social Studies in the 1930s to the more recent movement for national curriculum standards. Separate and competing curriculum standards have been published for no less than seven areas of that are part of the social studies curriculum: United States and global history, economics, geography, civics, psychology, and social studies. Social studies curriculum is defined a lack of consensus and has been an ideological battleground with ongoing debates over its nature, purpose, and content. Historically there have been a diverse range of curricular programs that have been a prominent within social studies education at various times, including the life adjustment movement, progressive education, social reconstructionism, and nationalistic history. The debate over the nature, purpose, and content of the social studies curriculum continues today, with competing groups variously arguing for a social issues approach, the disciplinary study of history and geography, or action for social justice as the most appropriate framework for the social studies curriculum.
Animal Rights Education
Authors: Horsthemke Kai
Published: July 2020

The subject of other-than-human animals, their conscious, conative and cognitive life and also their moral status and their treatment at our (human) hands, is a surprisingly novel topic within philosophy of education, apart from the odd reference to humane education. By contrast, environmental education has received wide coverage, not only by philosophers but also by social scientists, natural scientists and politicians. The present article attempts to fill this gap, at least in part. The psychophysical continuity between humans and other animals has profound moral and pedagogical implications and suggests the desirability of animal-centered (as opposed to human-centered) education. Does antiracist and antisexist education logically entail antispeciesist education? Similarly, is there a logical link between human rights education and animal rights education? Various approaches have been suggested toward including the moral status and ethical treatment of animals as an urgent concern within pedagogy, and teaching and learning generally:

• Environmental and sustainability education, ecophilia, and biophilia.

• Humane education and theriophilia.

• Philosophical posthumanism, critical pedagogy, and ecopedagogy.

• Critical animal studies and animal standpoint theory.

• Vegan education.

Each of these has undeniable strengths and considerable weaknesses. A viable alternative to these approaches is animal rights education. The possibility of animal rights education is clearly contingent on the possibility of animals having (moral) rights – or in principle being ascribable such rights. The promise of animal rights education, in turn, depends on the possibility of animal rights education. If animals were not among the sorts of beings who could meaningfully be said to possess rights, and if animal rights education were logically impossible (other than in a considerably more diluted or trivial sense), then it would make little sense to speak of the ‘promise’ of animal rights education. On the other hand, if animal rights education is philosophically and pedagogically meaningful, then this arguably also involves considerations of desirability, benefits and interests. The account animal rights education presented here involves education in matters of both social justice and “moral feeling,” cultivation of (appropriate) moral sentiments. Given most children’s natural interest in and feeling for animals, this should be easier than is commonly assumed. However, it does require effort, commitment, and consistency on the part of caregivers and educators, parents and teachers alike.
Parties in Privatizing American Public Education
Authors: Kaplan Leslie S. , Owings William A.
Published: July 2020

The education privatizers (school choice advocates) see public education as a resource-rich marketplace, with charter schools and voucher programs as ways to redirect public dollars to support private ends. By contrast, privatization opponents believe this approach does not improve student outcomes while it undermines public schools and democratic citizenship. Understanding the education privatization agenda and recognizing the political forces shaping it, the players at national and state levels advancing it (often without public awareness), and the research findings on charter school and voucher effectiveness can help educators identify education privatization proposals and comprehend their implications for public schools and communities.

In 1999, The Economist touted education as the next big investment zone, “ripe for privatization,” similar to private takeovers in the defense and healthcare industries. Likewise, in his 2012 annual report, Pearson CEO John Fallan asserted, “education will … be the great growth industry of the 21st Century.” It is easy to see why. American public schools spent over $600 billion for the 2013–2014 school year, representing 9% of the U.S. economy. From 2005 to 2011, private venture capital in the education market grew from $13 million to $389 million. With so much public money on the table, investors find tapping into education dollars—with little oversight or liability—an attractive prospect.
Data Use in Recent School Reforms
Authors: Mausethagen Sølvi , Prøitz Tine S. , Skedsmo Guri
Published: July 2020

Typically involving the use of test scores, grades, and other forms of assessment in various educational contexts, the concept of data use has developed in parallel with the introduction of new managerial approaches to school governance, including performance management and accountability measures. This use of data for governance purposes is one way in which national authorities coordinate activities across administrative levels to improve education quality and effectiveness. Policymakers’ and researchers’ frequent use of the concepts of data and data use also usually parallels this development. However, based on systematic research mapping, the present findings identify differing ideas about data use in national and local contexts, including the role that data play and should play in school reform. Such differences relate to variations in school systems, teachers’ status, school governance traditions, curricular traditions, and research traditions. Moreover, characteristic of the literature on data use is an emphasis on the organization and development of effective data use practices. This is somewhat paradoxical, as both earlier and more recent studies emphasize the need for a stronger focus on the actual practices of the involved actors if data are to be of value in school development processes. Three important needs are important when considering data use in policy, research, and practice: the need for greater awareness of the epistemic aspects of data use; the need for context sensitivity, as data use is often presented as a universal concept across national and local contexts; and the need for researchers to communicate with other related fields to improve theory and practice.