bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Matthes Erich Hatala
Published: August 2024

This chapter explains the scope and approach taken in the book. The book aims to be informed by interdisciplinary literature about conservation practice, but rather than being about any particular conservation field, it is about the very idea of conservation, and how it shapes our approach to saving anything that we care about. By adopting a bird’s-eye view on conservation across diverse disciplines and contexts, the book aims to identify common themes in how conservation is understood, and also to point out how differences across contexts can inform and shape our everyday conservation practices. By revealing the normative questions that we confront when we are faced with the need to save things, the chapter identifies a key and distinctive role for philosophy in exploring the ethics of conservation.
From Appropriation to Participation
Authors: Matthes Erich Hatala
Published: August 2024

This chapter develops our understanding of the importance and shape of participatory conservation by looking at contexts in which participation is precluded; namely, contexts in which conservation candidates have been appropriated from individuals or communities. It examines three of the major moral objections that often attend appropriation (misrepresentation, exploitation, and lack of meaningful participation), and demonstrates that lack of meaningful participation is an especially significant problem in the context of conservation. Through discussion of a range of cases that are characterized by different failures of participation, the chapter illustrates the consequences of pursuing conservation on terms that prevent relevant parties from exercising their agency.
The Evolution and Seduction of Pseudoscience
Authors: Stea Jonathan N.
Published: August 2024

This chapter details the evolution and seduction of mental health–related pseudoscience. It begins by providing historical and modern-day examples of snake oil, couching them in the context of the author’s personal and clinical experiences. It illustrates the nature of pseudoscience, delineating between unequivocal cases (e.g., naturopathy, energy healing) and controversial ones that are more scientifically plausible but still plagued by some pseudoscientific features and low-quality evidence to support their use (e.g., mindfulness meditation, psychedelics). It goes on to show the reasons that we find pseudoscience attractive, foreshadowing the commercialization of pseudoscience in the wellness and alternative medicine industries. The chapter closes with real examples about the various ways that pseudoscience is harmful to our mental health.
The Fruits of False Views
Authors: McNicholl Adeana
Published: August 2024

Far from being simple morality tales, preta narratives were important sites for refining and developing Buddhist thinking about karma. Preta tales were a particularly potent location for the theorization of karma due to the genre’s concern about where the departed go after death and how to assist them in the next world. Preta narratives underscore the importance of understanding that there are fruits for our actions in the next world and that offerings on behalf of the dead are efficacious. Pretas themselves make these arguments, acting as a mirror and model for both rival views and the Buddhist view of karma. Having been led astray by false views, pretas are endowed with an embodied knowledge of actions and their fruits that enables them to share their insights with others.
Consuming the Fruits of One’s Own Actions
Authors: McNicholl Adeana
Published: August 2024

Together the chapters in Part II argue that preta narratives construct and model an aesthetically informed affective process of ethical cultivation in which the generation of ethical selves corresponds to the cultivation of ideal bodies. Preta stories construct what Susanne Mrozik terms a “physio-moral discourse” that casts bodies as sites for practicing, performing, and fashioning ethical selves and closely ties moral and physical transformation. As a result, preta tales help constitute hierarchies of human embodied difference in relation to class, caste, gender, and sexuality, even as they destabilize these same hierarchies. This process of embodied ethical transformation is inherently tied to the affective ethos modeled and produced in narrative literature. Preta stories model and elicit aesthetically informed affective embodied experiences that are themselves educational and ethically formative. The production of affective dispositions in these texts at once reinforce hierarchical somatic discourses while destabilizing them altogether.
“Which ditch do you want to die in?”
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

This chapter describes the often-complex relations between chaplains and doctors. Hospice and palliative care physicians, concentrating on comfort rather than further aggressive care, generally tend to recognize and support spiritual dimensions in medicine more than their colleagues do. Physicians who have themselves become chaplains soon recognize underlying tensions, not just synergies, between these two roles. Some physicians misunderstand what chaplains do, seeing them as merely addressing religion, narrowly construed, rather than wider concerns about meaning, hope, and purpose. Physicians’ awkwardness discussing these realms can taint their perceptions of chaplains and hamper referrals of patients to them. Hospitals’ cultures vary, affecting how they organize and support pastoral care. Catholic more than secular hospitals tend, for instance, to integrate chaplains into leadership decisions. Institutional affiliation can also shape patients’ and families’ expectations of chaplaincy services.
“More than just smiling and saying Jesus”
Authors: Klitzman Robert L.
Published: August 2024

Enhanced education and practice can aid not only doctors but also chaplains. Pastoral care training has improved but can be further strengthened. The field would benefit from further specialized training in counseling; heightened racial, ethnic, and religious diversity; innovations such as tele-chaplaincy; more board certification; and perhaps state licensing. Researchers have been trying to quantify chaplains’ benefits, and these efforts have had some successes but also limitations. Standardized satisfaction questionnaires to measure the impact of pastoral care have yielded mixed results, partly because many other factors can also affect patients’ overall experiences of a hospitalization. Another approach would be to publish more qualitative descriptions of chaplains’ work, presenting narratives of success and hope. The field should consider, too, changing the term “chaplain,” which derives from Christianity and is far less familiar to patients from other faiths. Muslim countries prefer the term “spiritual counselor.” “Spiritual staff” is another option.
The Libertarian Spectrum (Part II) Event-Causal Views, Centered and Non-centered
Authors: Kane Robert
Published: August 2024

The author’s view is usually depicted in the current literature as an event-causal libertarian view. But for reasons explained in Chapter 5, it was never strictly an event-causal view, but rather an agent-causal/event-causal or AC/EC view of the kind described there. And for reasons spelled out in Chapter 6, the view was also not strictly speaking a “centered” view. Undetermined self-forming free actions need not occur only in terminating deliberations, but in many other places in the practical lives of agents. This chapter discusses a variety of influential event-causal libertarian views in the current literature by different authors, comparing them to and contrasting them from the AC/EC view of this book. It explains which aspects of these event-causal views can be retained in this AC/EC view and which cannot. Doing so, the chapter argues, throws additional light on this view and free will issues generally.
Rejection and Incompatibility
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

Part II (chapters 4–7) offers a systematic typology and critical reconstruction of the Muslim human rights discourse. It identifies and discusses four argumentative stances: (a) Rejection: the argument that human rights do not conform to Islam and must therefore be rejected, (b) Incompatibility: the view that Islam cannot be reconciled with human rights, (c) Appropriation: the view that human rights are only valid “within the framework of the sharīʿa,” and (d) Assimilation: the argument that there is no problem with reconciling Islam with human rights.
The Purpose of Islamic Law (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa)
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

Part III (Chapters 8-10) initiates the attempt to formulate a conception of human rights that is both anchored in the Islamic legal tradition and capable of garnering universal consent by engaging the theory of Islamic legal purposes (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa). It first reconstructs the central ideas of this theory by engaging the works of classical Islamic jurists. It then addresses several points of criticism and open questions, and finally takes a critical look at the contemporary reception of the maqāṣid idea.
Human Needs
Authors: Bassiouni Mahmoud
Published: August 2024

This chapter analyzes what human needs are and which human needs exist. It defines human needs in a way to denote the universal, objective, and necessary conditions of human existence. Accordingly, needs are universal in the sense that they exist independently of historical or cultural differences in every human being; they are objective in the sense that their existence can be empirically investigated and confirmed; and they are necessary to the extent that they include only those goods without which human beings would be threatened in their existence. Based on a survey of various theories within the disciplines of motivational psychology, sociology, and peace and conflict studies, the chapter identifies five such goods: health, security, belonging, recognition, and meaning.
The Art of State Persuasion
Authors: Wang Frances Yaping
Published: August 2024

Why do nations actively publicize previously overlooked disputes? And why does this domestic mobilization sometimes fail to result in aggressive policy measures? This book delves into China’s strategic use of state propaganda during crucial crisis events, particularly focusing on border disputes. The author aims to explain the diverse strategies employed in Chinese state media, analyzing why certain disputes are amplified while others are downplayed. This variation, as proposed by the author, is contingent on the degree of alignment between Chinese state policy and public opinion. When public sentiment is more moderate than the state’s foreign policy objectives, the government initiates a mobilization campaign. Conversely, if public opinion is more hawkish than state policy, the authorities deploy a pacification campaign to mollify public sentiment. Through a comprehensive examination of medium-N and case-study analyses, the author elucidates these arguments. The research incorporates extensive textual analyses of media reports, interviews with officials and journalists, and archival data. The book also elucidates the mechanics of mobilization and pacification media campaigns, enabling policymakers to distinguish varying state foreign policy intentions. This book not only acknowledges the significance of public opinion but also illustrates how fluctuating public sentiment is delicately managed by the state through diverse discursive tactics. By highlighting the existence and relevance of pacification campaigns, this book enhances our understanding of propaganda and challenges the traditional view of China’s propaganda as uniformly aggressive, bringing to light a more nuanced picture especially in the domain of foreign policy.
Introduction
Authors: Wang Frances Yaping
Published: August 2024

The introduction sets the stage for the book by presenting two central puzzles: the barking dog/silent dog puzzle, which asks why and when authoritarian states choose to amplify certain interstate disputes while downplaying others; and the barking without biting puzzle, which asks why authoritarian states sometimes fail to follow up domestic mobilization with aggressive foreign policies. The chapter highlights the importance of examining authoritarian media campaigns: that they are common, consequential, and valuable for policy interpretation. The focus on authoritarian states, especially China, is deemed appropriate and necessary. The chapter also introduces the book’s principal argument and summarizes the evidence supporting this argument. Finally, it provides an overview of the subsequent chapters in the book.
The (Mis)Alignment Theory
Authors: Wang Frances Yaping
Published: August 2024

Chapter 1 outlines a theoretical framework to elucidate why and how media campaigns are implemented, centering on their underlying motivations and methods. Authoritarian states employ these media campaigns to adjust public opinion so that it actively endorses or passively tolerates the foreign policy preferences of the state. This need for alignment essentially originates from the paradoxical and cyclical interplay in authoritarian states between public opinion and foreign policy, wherein public opinion is significant to the extent that the state allows and shapes it to be so. Within this larger theoretical framework, the author distinguishes two types of propaganda campaigns that work to shift public opinion in opposite directions.
The Sino-Vietnamese Border War
Authors: Wang Frances Yaping
Published: August 2024

Chapter 3 discusses the 1979–1990 Sino-Vietnamese border war and its accompanying propaganda campaign, which has proven to be an archetypical mobilization case. The misalignment between apathetic public opinion before the war and hardline state policy intent called for the state to launch the most aggressive and long-lasting propaganda campaign in modern Chinese history. The propaganda campaign was pivotal in agitating the general public, local communities in the border provinces, and soldiers toward support for the war, dedicating labor, resources, and even lives. A wealth of historical evidence substantiates the observable implications related to the leaders’ concerns about weak public opinion, clear and authoritative propaganda directives and mobilizing orders, and broadly inflammatory media content aimed at inciting public sentiment, border residents, and soldiers against Vietnam.
The Nonbarking Dog
Authors: Wang Frances Yaping
Published: August 2024

Chapter 5 examines two distinct events: the cable cutting incidents of 2011 and the oil rig crisis of 2014, both marked by a conspicuous absence of media campaigns. This absence is particularly notable as media campaigns are often crucial in shaping public opinion. The chapter suggests that in these instances, there was an unusual congruence between public opinion and the state’s policy objectives, making any effort to influence an already hawkish public redundant. Similarly, there was no incentive to mollify a disinterested populace. This absence of media engagement demonstrates the state’s strategic considerations in public communication, which are heavily influenced by the prevailing public sentiment and specific policy aims.
Tracking the Allocation of Resources Over Time
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This chapter analyzes whether presidential campaigns actually allocate resources according to their strategic plans. Are some states and media markets “zeroed out,” as these plans would suggest? Do candidates visit states and media markets that are not battlegrounds? If so, when, and why? The chapter examines adherence to strategy by party and across time. The analysis is statistical, with assessments of resource allocation across different strategic categorizations. The analysis confirms that presidential candidates and their campaigns have always allocated their most important resources strategically, although this tendency was particularly evident in the eras of zero-sum and micro-targeting campaigning. While still adhering to their electoral plans overall, presidential candidates in the era of micro-targeting do occasionally appear in electorally “safe” states and media markets to raise money. Due to their swollen war chests, even campaigns in the most recent era will also sometimes spend money outside of their battleground universe.
Putting It All Together: Resource Allocation and Vote Outcomes
Authors: Shaw Daron R. , Althaus Scott L. , Panagopoulos Costas
Published: August 2024

This final empirical chapter considers the impact of candidate appearances and television advertising buys on vote outcomes in states and media markets. Effects are estimated separately for Republican and Democratic campaigns using statistical models that account for confounding variables, most notably past votes as well as current national trends. This analysis finds modest effects associated with state-level analyses and slightly larger effects associated with available market-level data. Consistent with a “middling” perspective of campaign effects, similarities in Electoral College strategies and high levels of execution—especially in the most recent era—can produce rough parity in the ability of campaigns to significantly affect statewide results and Electoral Vote totals, often leading to outcomes where one campaign’s impact is effectively checked by the other’s. Nonetheless, close elections such as those in 1960, 1968, 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2016 might have tipped the other way with shifts in resource allocation across battleground states.
Case Study: Hyperintensionalism
Authors: Williamson Timothy
Published: August 2024

This chapter applies the approach developed in the first two chapters to the current trend for hyperintensional frameworks in metaphysics, on which necessary equivalents can differ in reference. It argues that such frameworks exhibit strong evidence of overfitting. This is shown in detail for impossible worlds semantics, truthmaker semantics, and the theory of structured Russellian propositions, all of which are far more complicated than standard intensional alternatives. Hyperintensionalism is primarily motivated by alleged counterexamples to intensionalism; such a ‘data-driven’ approach is vulnerable to overfitting. In particular, key judgments on flagship examples for hyperintensionalism are shown to be explicable as outputs of a heuristic for assessing ‘because’ statements (constitutive as well as causal) in terms of how well they do as answers to ‘Why?’ questions. This heuristic generates demonstrably incorrect verdicts on some closely related cases because it projects merely presentational differences between answers to apparent differences in the non-representational world.
A Flood of Questions
Authors: Conca Ken
Published: August 2024

This chapter introduces the book After the Floods: The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City. Ellicott City is a historic mill town in central Maryland that recently suffered two fatal flash flood disasters within 22 months. Despite advantages of wealth, expertise, open government, and a strong community identity, the floods triggered intense conflicts, which provide a cautionary tale about the difficulty of reworking a watershed for flood resilience. The chapter sketches the book’s primary themes, including challenges around knowledge and expertise, the difficulties of conducting a participatory dialogue, the tensions embedded in divergent place-based identities, and the tendency of external actors to instrumentalize both the flood problem and the search for solutions.
The First Flood
Authors: Conca Ken
Published: August 2024

This chapter provides an account of the 2016 flash flood in Ellicott City, a historic mill town in central Maryland that would suffer an equally devastating flood episode just two years later. The flood caused two fatalities, as well as millions of dollars in damage and lost commerce, and triggered an effort by county government to produce a “watershed resilience master plan” combining flood resilience, historic preservation, and economic reinvigoration. Causes of the flood are generally agreed to include the hilly landscape, the thin clay soils over granite bedrock, the heavily built character of the watershed, and climate change, although how some of these elements fit together and share responsibility remains highly contested.
After the Second Flood
Authors: Conca Ken
Published: August 2024

This chapter examines the response to the fatal flash flood striking Ellicott City, a historic mill town in central Maryland, in 2018. Coming soon on the heels of an eerily similar episode in 2016, the flood triggered contentious proposals that divided the community. This chapter focuses on one such controversy—a proposal by the County Executive and a County Council member to tear down a sizable portion of the town’s historic district. The chapter sketches the tactics and repertoires of plan proponents and opponents, culminating in a dramatic council hearing that revealed some deep cleavages in people’s understandings of the town’s history and the particular characteristics that made it special. The demolition plan narrowly passed through a divided County Council, only to trigger electoral changes that would set the quest for flood resilience on a different trajectory.
Development and Its Discontents
Authors: Conca Ken
Published: August 2024

This chapter sketches the history of housing development in Ellicott City and the surrounding Howard County. Polarization between pro- and antidevelopment forces, which had long simmered across the county, came to a head in Ellicott City after the 2018 flash flood. Many community members blamed development for the flooding despite assurances from expert modelers and county officials that development was not the culprit. The chapter sketches efforts by an activist legislator to rein in development impacts. Particular attention is paid to how pro- and antidevelopment factions framed ambiguous model analytics into truth-telling claims, and the inability of county governance to see changes across the watershed in a holistic, comprehensive manner.
Bayesian analysis
Authors: Neuhäuser Markus , Ruxton Graeme D.
Published: August 2024

The book finishes with a chapter on Bayesian statistics. In a Bayesian analysis a prior distribution and a sample of data are combined to provide a refined posterior distribution. Hence, the posterior distribution can be seen as a fusion between the prior distribution and the observations. In this chapter, ways to obtain the posterior distribution but also some general comments on the particular issues of small samples for Bayesian approaches (particularly enhanced importance on selection of an appropriate prior) are discussed, and entry points into the relevant literatures are given. The highest density interval and the region of practical equivalence are introduced as useful concepts.
A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will
Authors: Tse Peter Ulric
Published: August 2024

A Neurophilosophy of Libertarian Free Will presents a defense of libertarian free will that is informed by neuroscience, physics and philosophy. It argues that causation in living systems is dominated by cybernetic feedback loops and criterial reparameterizations that help animals find adequate ways of fulfilling their goals. Humans have two kinds of libertarian free will, one of which is concerned with the ability to weigh options that is shared with other complex animals. The second kind of free will is concerned with envisioning a new self and then working toward realizing that vision over extended durations. It is argued that imagination, not downstream behavior, is where the action is in free will.
Vocabulary
Authors: Beal Jennifer S. , Dostal Hannah M. , Easterbrooks Susan R.
Published: August 2024

Chapter 4 presents a review of making meaning through word decoding and encoding when reading and writing print. The first section includes phonological decoding (signed and spoken), phonology, phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, fingerspelling, working memory, and a review of phonological decoding and deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners. Similarly, making meaning through morphological, structural, and contextual decoding follow. Evidence-based instructional strategies are embedded across these areas of decoding. Case vignettes demonstrate the use of lexicalized fingerspelling, the semantic association strategy, and the use of context clues when reading with diverse DHH learners.
Pugna pro patria
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

Chapter 4 reinterprets the role and significance of the pagan suicide Cato as the first saved soul in Dante’s Christian Purgatory from the perspective of the Disticha Catonis’s popularity in medieval education. This collection of moralizing aphorisms spuriously attributed to Cato was one of the most popular school texts of medieval Europe. The Disticha Catonis were often quoted in contemporary political discussions about a citizen’s duty to die for the homeland. The chapter shows how the political reception of this school text influenced Dante’s representation of Cato in the Commedia. In particular, it argues that Dante distanced his discussion of Cato across Convivio, Commedia, and Monarchia, from contemporary reception of the Disticha, as this becomes evident by means of a comparison with Brunetto Latini’s and Remigio de’ Girolami’s use of the same source. Against the exploitation of Cato and his distichs for factional and patriotic propaganda, throughout his oeuvre Dante increasingly turns this republican hero into a defender of freedom and a providential figure in the history of Rome’s universal empire.
Epilogue
Authors: Gianferrari Filippo
Published: August 2024

The Epilogue closes the book on Dante’s intertextual criticism of Henry of Settimello’s Elegia in the crucial scene of the protagonist’s reunion with Beatrice at the top of Mount Purgatory. Here, as it is well known, Dante reworks the topoi of conversion and retractation by engaging with the two most authoritative texts on the subject, Augustine’s Confessiones and Boethius’s Consolatio. As both texts present the act of re-examining one’s own education, and particularly the place of elegiac poetry in Latin training, as part of their spiritual and ethical conversion, in Purgatorio 30–33, Dante questions Henry’s educational model of elegiac poetry. Thus, through Beatrice’s character, Dante puts forth an alternative model of Christian comic poetry and presents his own poetics of vernacular learning as an alternative to the instruction offered by established venues of higher education. Dante’s intertextual dialogue with Henry’s Elegia here may also suggest a new reading of Beatrice’s obscure attack against a “school” that led Dante astray, as a criticism of contemporary milieus of learning. Finally, Dante’s engagement with Henry’s subtexts here sums up the book’s fundamental arguments: first, Dante taps into the cultural literacy he shared with his lay audience to promote his own alternative educational program in the vernacular; and, second, Dante’s innovative vernacular poetics, based on the close imitation of the ancient auctores maiores, creatively reworked the classical reception showcased by medieval schoolbooks.
Analysing Political Parties and Democracy
Authors: Poguntke Thomas , Scarrow Susan E. , Webb Paul D.
Published: August 2024

This chapter presents the major aspects relevant for the analysis of political parties and their role in democratic governance. In particular, we suggest that parties should be analysed as products of their (changing) environment, as professionalized organizations, as actors that create and maintain organized linkages to other collective actors, as recipients of public funding, as legislators who may act more or less cohesively and, last but not least, as communicators. In doing so, this chapter also provides an overview of the major theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of political parties and makes a case for the contextual richness offered by parallel case studies covering parties on four continents.
The United Kingdom Party System
Authors: Bartle John , Allen Nicholas , Quinn Thomas
Published: August 2024

This chapter discusses the two-party hegemony that has dominated the United Kingdom (UK) party system for around 100 years, examining the history of the system and how the dominance of the Conservative and Labour parties has allowed the two to mould a system to their collective advantage. While there is incontrovertible evidence that the public is discontented with the parties and the choices that they provide, the plurality electoral system and the shaping of legislation by the two parties mean there is little prospect of fundamental change. The framework conditions protect the system from incursions by challenger parties and give the two parties time to adapt to changing conditions and new demands, with varying degrees of success.
The Long Way towards Polarized Pluralism
Authors: Angenendt Michael , Brause Simon D.
Published: August 2024

In this chapter, we examine the challenges that the German party system and established parties faced in the early 2020s, tracing the path towards polarized pluralism. Through longitudinal data, we illustrate the major trends since the post-war period, with an emphasis on the system’s polarization, fragmentation, and electoral competition. We also address the challenges that parties face as organizations in a changing political environment. The German party system has undergone significant changes, putting parties under increased competitive pressure. These changes include heightened volatility, weakened catch-all parties, and a rise in politicization, leading to diversified political competition through the emergence of the populist radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the success of the Green party. Currently, the party system is more polarized and pluralistic than ever, with new and diverse coalition models reflecting the altered competition. While the situation does not necessarily indicate a democratic crisis, the increasing polarization, particularly evident in eastern German federal states, could threaten the system’s future stability.
Fragmentation and Anti-Establishment Politics
Authors: Cirhan Tomáš , Kopecký Petr
Published: August 2024

If one would look for trends characterizing the Czech party system in the 2020s, it would be fragmentation and a wave of new anti-establishment parties. Although relatively stable and electorally predictable in the past, the Czech party system has registered fundamental changes in recent years. The influx of many newcomers changed the number of parties in the parliamentary arena and influenced the issues structuring political competition. No longer driven by the ideological struggle, the conflict began to be drawn along the lines of the political establishment versus anti-establishment parties. Many of the latter were often short-lived, haunted by intra-party divisions and conflicts. We focus on these recent party system transformations, mainly on the surge of anti-establishment parties exemplifying the most significant of these changes. Our findings highlight how several of their organizational features influence their survival, pre-disposing their political fates. Our analysis shows what the fragmented party system means for government formation and democratic development.
Gothic jains, OE geon*, OHG jenēr, and congeners
Authors: Stiles Patrick V.
Published: August 2024

A plethora of pre-forms has traditionally been posited to account for Gothic jains, Old English geon* (later English yon), and Old High German jenēr—demonstratives with remote deixis—together with obviously related forms. It is proposed that all the shapes of the Germanic languages in fact descend from a single precursor: Proto-Germanic *jaina- with strong adjective inflection, as most clearly seen in Gothic. The other dialects have monophthongized *ai to OE long ā and Continental West Germanic long ē (unexpectedly in the case of High German, but not without parallels) and then shortened the stem vowel in weakly accented environments. This study shows once again that the doublets, triplets, or quadruplets of reconstructed forms found in the handbooks can be reduced, if one is willing to take the time to consider how they may be derived from some single starting point.
“A Stonie Race Indeed”
Authors: Werth Tiffany Jo
Published: August 2024

“A Stonie Race Indeed” pivots from England’s petrogenesis to the stony genesis of its human inhabitants. From its biblical and classical heritage, the early modern world gained a lithic double helix that informed its understanding of human genesis, evolution, and devolution. The biblical and Ovidian accounts of human creation were syncretized to form the bedrock for a “stonie race.” Although humans might wish to distinguish themselves from their base matter, its persistent presence served to curb their hubris. This chapter follows how stone might engender, but also degender, humankind. For a focal case study, the chapter considers Edmund Spenser’s iron man, Talus, from Book 5 of The Faerie Queene, whose joint nature dramatizes human obduracy. As an allegorical figure of justice whose violence still horrifies readers, Talus, in this chapter’s reading, is less inhuman machine and more troublingly human.
“Upon this Rock”
Authors: Werth Tiffany Jo
Published: August 2024

“‘Upon this Rock’: Founding England’s Church,” turns to a key institution—the Church of England—that set England apart from its Continental Christian neighbors and traces a transcorporeal lithic geography that undergirds a succession of spiritual empires—from 1) Judaism in Jerusalem, to 2) Catholicism in Rome to, finally, 3) Protestantism in London. It opens with the Jewish Old Testament heritage of the Foundation Stone below the sacred site known as Dome of the Rock (in Arabic Haram al-Sharif). Appropriating this lithic biblical heritage, the Catholic Church in Rome drew authority from its claim to St. Peter, the rock upon whom Christ founded his church. Petrine authority consequently informed the Catholic consecration of stone altars upon which Mass was performed. Reformation theologians, like John Calvin, argued that the only church cornerstone is Christ himself, not some geographical rock. In London, and across England, the cornerstone’s identity would periodically ignite controversies over church altars that, subsequently, spread to the printed frontispieces of foundational devotional texts of the Anglican Church.
When Recognition is Declaratory
Authors: Kilibarda Pavle
Published: August 2024

Contemporary practice leaves little doubt that certain entities are to be regarded and treated as States under international law regardless of whether one or more States recognise them. This is not so because of effectivity, as argued under the declaratory doctrine, but because one or more rules of international law that apply to the situation require them to be treated as States. Such entities will possess legal statehood regardless of whether they possess material statehood. It is widely accepted today that membership in the United Nations acts as an imprimatur of statehood, and this may be true of some other international organisations as well. It may also be true when exercising a recognised right to external self-determination or in case of consensual separation. Chapter 9 examines several possibilities in this regard, seeking to develop a normative theory of recognition that casts the act’s legal value in light of other applicable rules that could lead to opposability.
The Many Ideas of Labour Law
Authors: Collins Hugh
Published: August 2024

Taking an overview of justifications for labour law, five themes are identified which increasingly displace the background private law rules that govern work. These themes are: (1) correction of market failure resulting from structural inequality of bargaining power between employers and workers by the special regulatory technique of collective bargaining; (2) protection of workers against abuse of the hierarchical relation of subordination by employers; (3) protection against or the mutualization of risks of employment insecurity for workers in a market economy; (4) to remedy social injustice by redistributing incomes and power within productive organizations; and (5) to help individuals to secure personal fulfilment through work by measures that improve the content of jobs and improve workers’ work/life balance. Concluding reflections examine likely trends in the market for labour in a knowledge and service economy and how the law of work may become ineffective if it does not become transnational regulation.
The Decent Work Agenda and the Developing World
Authors: von Broembsen Marlese
Published: August 2024

With a focus on developing countries, the chapter offers a critical reflection on the ILO’s decent work agenda (DWA)—its central tenets, its relationship to global development agendas, and its operationalization at the national level through Decent Work Country Programmes (DWCPs). The DWA introduced a paradigmatic shift within the ILO, namely that workers in the informal economy should also enjoy decent work. The chapter focuses on informal self-employed workers, which in many developing countries constitute most of the workforce. Yet these workers are excluded from the scope of labour laws and are denied rights to collective bargaining, occupational health and safety, and social protection. The chapter discusses the case of South Africa, where organizations of informal self-employed workers have influenced the priorities and activities of the current DWCP, illustrating that the DWA represents one pathway for workers in the informal economy to realize labour rights.
The Legal Uncertainties of Gig Work
Authors: Dubal Veena
Published: August 2024

This chapter explores the ‘question of Uber’ and the issue of gig worker status, focusing on the example of California. Despite years of litigation and political battles over the employment of on-demand workers, the status of app-deployed ride-hail and food delivery workers is unresolved in the state—and continues to be contested at the US federal level. Irrespective of app-deployed workers’ eventual employment status, a central legal issue in the future of digitalized gig work, it is argued, will remain the legal determination of worker pay—and more specifically how to define working time under algorithmically-managed systems.
Evolutionary Approaches to Social Cognition
Authors: Neel Rebecca , Neuberg Steven L.
Published: August 2024

This chapter provides a starting point for social cognition researchers interested in adopting evolutionary approaches or those who seek to expand their theoretical and empirical toolkit. Evolutionary approaches offer numerous tools for discovering and explaining social cognitive phenomena. This chapter gives an overview of six of these tools: levels of analysis, ecological approaches, internal regulatory variables, approaches to bias and error, evolutionary mismatch, and phylogeny. The chapter explains how each tool may be used to understand social cognition, with examples and guidance for application. It then reviews recent applications of evolutionary approaches to understanding how humans navigate different domains of social life, such as kinships, friendships, status and hierarchies, romantic relationships, and violence and disease. Finally, it highlights the insights these approaches have generated for understanding stereotypes and stereotyping.
Abstract 19: Cord Blood HLA Diversity and Impact on Matching
Authors: Frenet Emeline Masson , Sung Dorothy , Brown Annalyn , Liu WenJun , Watanabe Chiseko , Lu Ling , Shi Patricia , Bryan Ayanna
Published: August 2024

Introduction

HLA matching is a key factor for Cord Blood Unit (CBU) selection. HLA haplotype frequencies vary widely among donors, and can be difficult to accurately determine without family typing.

Maternal HLA typing is performed as part of preparation for CBU shipment. It is a unique opportunity to identify HLA haplotypes in the CBU without relying on statistical tools.

Objectives

To identify parental haplotypes and assess their frequency and the impact on matching at transplant.

Methods

The past 100 units shipped from our bank were evaluated. HLA typing was performed for CBU and mother, at A, B, C, DRB1 and DQB1 (G level). Maternal typing was used to assign haplotypes (Figure 1-A), then frequencies were determined using published work on donor populations (Maiers M et al, Hum Immunology 2007). In order to assess the rarity of the combinations, we calculated the probability of finding an identical CBU in global inventory (n=803,869). Combinations with at least one possible CBU were assigned “Common” (C), less than one “Rare” (R). CBU with undocumented haplotypes were classified as “Unique” (U) (Figure 1-B).

Results

Parental haplotypes were successfully assigned for 97 CBU, identifying 194 haplotypes (Figure 1-A); 55 (28%) were not previously described.

50 CBU were classified as U (52%), 23 as R and 24 as C (Figure 1-B). U CBU were more frequently from minority donors (70%), as compared to the R and C groups (35% and 50%, respectively, p=0.01), and they were more likely to be NCBI funded (63%, vs 15% for R and 22% for C, p=0.02). R CBU had lower allele match than C, but the difference was not statistically different with U CBU, which achieved a match 6/8 or higher in 40% of cases (Figure 1C).

Discussion

More than 50% of the CBU had at least one undocumented haplotype. Both common and rare haplotypes in CBU achieved high allele match, predictive of good clinical outcome. This probably reflects the two categories of patients receiving CBU transplants: the ones with a common HLA and many donors but needing urgent transplant, and the ones with rare HLA making donor search futile and CBU the only option.

Figure 1
Abstract 30: In-Depth Characterization of B-Lineage Populations Arising During Cord Blood CD34+ HSPC Differentiation for ETV6::RUNX1 Progenitor Identification
Authors: Bhave Rigveda , Lindner Carla-Johanna , Jepsen Vera , Rüchel Nadine , Vasileiou Eleni , Tuononen Tiina , Heinäniemi Merja , Borkhardt Arndt , Fischer Ute , Kogler Gesine
Published: August 2024

Introduction

ETV6::RUNX1 (E::R) B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL) frequently arises from a t(12;21)(p13;q22) translocation occurring during fetal development, leading to the formation of dormant preleukemic clones, which only progress to leukemia after accumulating subsequent secondary mutations. Multiple studies have indicated that this pre-leukemic population lies in the CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cell (HSPC) compartments, however, the exact identity of this progenitor is unknown [Greaves M., 2018].

Objectives

An in vitro model for differentiation of cord blood (CB)-derived CD34+CD45(low) HSPCs towards the B-lineage was established. We aim to (a) immunophenotypically elucidate HSPC and B-progenitor sub-populations arising in our model system, (b) detect variances in differentiation potential between GIPFEL-screened E::R+/- CB-HSPCs [Schafer et. al., 2018] and (c) investigate the biological origin of E::R clones.

Methods

To recapitulate fetal haematopoiesis in vitro, CD34+CD45(low) HSPCs were isolated from CBs (n=5) using magnetic sorting and co-cultured on a human bone marrow MSC (BM-MSC) line in media supplemented with cytokines (Figure 1a.). Flow cytometry protocols were established to distinguish between the HSPC and B-progenitor populations obtained over 35 days of differentiation (Figure 1b.). Single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-Seq) was performed from the mononuclear cell fraction of E::R+ (n=3) and E:R- (n=3) CBs, and will be used to analyze the impact of the translocation on B-lymphopoiesis in cord blood.

Results

CB-HSPCs were isolated (CD34+ purity 70-90%) and differentiated towards B-cells (~40 % CD19+ cells on day 35) (Figure 1c.) with a 60-fold expansion of hematopoietic cells within the first two weeks (~3*106 CD45+ cells/well on day 14). We identified the various HSPC and naive B-progenitor populations within our system and timepoints of peak emergence of these populations for cell sorting and subsequent experimentation (Figure 1d.). TdT (DNTT) expression was absent during CB-HSPC differentiation, indicative of a fetal differentiation status.

Discussion

A model system to differentiate CB-HSPCs towards the B-lineage to enable analysis of the earliest progenitors that arise during B-lymphopoiesis was established. We confirmed that our system recapitulates B-cell differentiation during fetal development and identified timepoints for cell sorting of these populations. ScRNA-Seq data will be analyzed to confirm the presence of these populations and understand the nature and impact of the E::R pre-leukemic compartment.
Comments and illustrations of the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine contrast-enhanced ultrasound guidelines: Multiparametric imaging and EUS-guided sampling in rare pancreatic tumors. Benign mesenchymal pancreatic tumors
Authors: Möller Kathleen , Batali Alina , Jenssen Christian , Braden Barbara , Hocke Michael , On Wei , Everett Simon M. , Dong Yi , Ge Nan , Sun Siyu , Gerber Michael , Faiss Siegbert , Srivastava David , de Robertis Riccardo , D´Onofrio Mirko , Misselwitz Benjamin , Dietrich Christoph F.
Published: August 2024

The focus of the review is on primary benign mesenchymal pancreatic tumors and their imaging appearance. These tumors are extremely rare. Usually, they are not diagnosed until postoperative histology is available, and so even benign tumors have undergone extensive pancreatic resection. The very limited data on abdominal and EUS findings including contrast-enhanced techniques of these pancreatic lesions are summarized here. Case reports will be presented for some of these rare tumors with application of modern ultrasound and endosonographic techniques.
Effect of Two Hydration Strategies on CapillarySodium Concentrations in Runners Participating in 170-km Trail Race: The 2015 UltraTrail du Mont-Blanc Experience
Authors: Coulomb Rémy , Basset Patrick , Mezzarobba Myriam , Masseguin Christophe , Lefrant Jean-Yves , Mura Thibault , Roberts Jason A. , Mares Olivier
Published: August 2024

Objective:

This study assessed the impact of 2 hydration strategies on capillary sodium concentrations during Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) 2015.

Design:

Prospective exposed/nonexposed cohort study.

Setting:

Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc 2015 (170 km).

Participants:

Thousand five hundred sixty-three registered runners of UTMB 2015 asked to predefine their hydration strategy as either “drinking to thirst” or any other mode (“not drinking to thirst”).

Intervention:

One hundred “drinking to thirst” participants were randomly selected and paired (sex and age) with 96 “not drinking to thirst” participants. Participant weight and capillary sodium concentrations were measured before and after the race.

Main Outcome Measures:

Variations of capillary sodium concentrations and weight during the trail according to predefine hydration strategy as either “drinking to thirst” or “not drinking to thirst.” Adverse events were recorded. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results:

Among 196 participants, 88 (62 finishers) “drinking to thirst” and 87 (64 finishers) “nondrinking to thirst” participants were analyzed, respectively. There was no difference in the change in capillary sodium concentrations prerace to postrace between the groups (1.5 ± 4.4 vs 1.5 ± 4.7 mEq/L, P = 0.98). The change in participant weight was also not different (P = 0.3877). Hypernatremia or hyponatremia were reported in 19 of 88 (21.6%) and 24 of 87 (27.6%) in “drinking to thirst” and “non-drinking to thirst” participants, respectively (P = 0.20). The incidence of adverse events was not different between the groups.

Conclusion:

This study observed no impact of hydration strategy on the change in capillary sodium concentrations before and after UTMB 2015.