bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rights-Threats
Authors: Smith Stephen A.
Published: January 2020

Chapters 6-8 explore the three main ‘causes of action’ (the facts that claimants must prove to obtain remedies) in the common law: rights-threats, wrongs, and injustices. Chapter 6’s focus, rights-threats, arise when one of the claimant’s substantive rights is under threat from the defendant. It explains that courts respond to rights-threats by ordering the defendant to comply with the correlative substantive duty (in which case the remedy is ‘replicative’) or to comply with a close monetary substitute for that duty (in which case the remedy is ‘substitutionary’). For example, if the claimant proves that the defendant is threatening to trespass or to continue trespassing over its land, the court normally orders the defendant not to trespass. Chapter 6 argues that a rights-threat is the cause of action for orders for a sum due under a contract, recovery of land, recovery of chattels, injunctions, specific performance, and some (but not all) orders to pay damages that are issued in lieu of injunctions (‘substitutionary damages’).
Dialogue on Rhythm
Authors: Hamilton Andy , Macarthur David , Squires Roger , Tugby Matthew , Wiseman Rachael , Hamilton Andy
Published: January 2020

Collated and edited by Andy Hamilton, Chapter 1 is a dramatized dialogue in the long philosophical tradition of that form. The debate poses the dynamic conception—that rhythm involves movement—against the view that nothing relevant in the music moves literally, that is, spatially. Hamilton’s dynamic conception characterizes rhythm as “[a primitive] order within human bodily movement or movement-in-sound,” and opposes Malcolm Budd’s and Peter Simons’ static accounts in terms of order-in-time and Roger Scruton’s metaphorical conception of sonic or acousmatic rhythm as movement in space. Most dialogue participants support a dynamic conception of some kind, but David Macarthur denies that rhythm “moves in a literal but non-spatial sense.” Roger Squires and Rachel Wiseman develop Hamilton’s account, arguing that the movement criterion should be expressed as a capacity and not a disposition.
Rhythm, Preceding Its Abstraction
Authors: Peters Deniz
Published: January 2020

Chapter 7 takes a non-reductive approach to the understanding of musical rhythm based on reflections on the author’s musical practice. In particular, the author argues that, preceding its abstraction, rhythm centrally resides in “doings” and “happenings” in our bodies and interactions between each other. Further, the author claims that active (pre-abstracted) rhythm resides in our somatic and cognitive awareness of these “doings” and “happenings” by way of experience and attention. The line of thought developed in the chapter stems from a number of related observations from musical practice concerning how “lived rhythm,” unlike “represented rhythm,” comes into being via interpersonal- and self-attention.
Entrainment and the Social Origin of Musical Rhythm
Authors: Clayton Martin
Published: January 2020

Chapter 12 develops Maurice Halbwachs’ concern with social interaction in theorizing rhythm. Taking inspiration from Halbwachs’ view of rhythm as social not natural, the chapter outlines a new approach to the question that Halbwachs leaves unanswered: If musical rhythm is social in origin, how does it come into being—how is his “prior collective agreement” reached? Alfred Schütz, although casting Halbwachs as the straw man in his famous essay “Making Music Together,” did not contest the latter’s point about the social origin of rhythm. Schütz’s argument—that all communication is made possible by what he called the “mutual tuning-in relationship” in which individuals come to share their experience of inner time—does contradict Halbwachs: for Schütz, rhythmic coordination is prior to any collective agreement. The author argues that rhythm in fact emerges spontaneously both in individuals and, crucially, in interactions between them, and that it is therefore both natural (physiological) and social in origin.
Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm
Authors: Gaiger Jason
Published: January 2020

Painting, drawings, and engravings are frequently described as rhythmic, or as possessing rhythmic features, but it is far from clear how such observations are to be understood. The central problem here is that rhythm is standardly recognized to be an inherently temporal phenomenon: rhythmic structure or organization unfolds in time. If rhythm is essentially durational, how can a static configuration of marks and lines be rhythmic? Chapter 19 defends the view that although the experience of viewing a picture takes place in time, and thus is successive, it cannot be temporally structured in a sufficiently determinate manner to sustain the attentional focus required for the communication of even simple rhythmic patterns. With reference to examples of both representational and abstract art, and to recent empirical research, the author argues that graphic art is non-sequential and that this has important consequences for picture perception.
Soundless Rhythm
Authors: Durà-Vilà Víctor
Published: January 2020

Chapter 20 develops a notion of rhythm that is independent of sound and, in addition to hearing, includes sight, smell, taste, and touch. By engaging with the work of Andy Hamilton, it rejects that music is required to conceptualize rhythm. It maintains that rhythm in dance can be theorized independently from music and, more ambitiously and generally, that rhythm could exist in a soundless universe. Moreover, it contends that we can experience rhythm in painting in a non-metaphorical way, which goes against the proposal defended by Jason Gaiger. Finally, it examines some potential implications of this thesis for incipient art practices involving senses other than sight and hearing.
Hearing It Right
Authors: Holliday John
Published: January 2020

Chapter 24 presents a genealogy of the impulse toward metrical abstraction in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offering a brief survey of approaches to metrical abstraction that have shaped the modern metrical imagination. These approaches take abstract meter as their starting point. It examines the return, in the first half of the twentieth century, to theories that tried to avoid the complications introduced by emphasizing voiced particularities of rhythm; these theories resisted earlier syntheses of meter with music. For the New Critics, at least, the reader is in “a better position” to offer a rhythmically “meaningful” reading if he or she “recognizes the meter.”
Boats on the River
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

This chapter recounts how long wooden boats were central to the Brahmaputra for hundreds of years. Human coexistence with the Brahmaputra was made possible with the use of boats. Over the centuries, people developed special skills to build boats from locally available trees. Boat-making became a specialized craft. Long, hollowed trees were used to construct small boats for everyday use and short trips; long-distance river travel was rarely undertaken. Small tributaries connected the floodplains and the hills, and small canoes easily moved along them, allowing trade to flourish between these two regions. Boats have thus been central to the human relationship with the Brahmaputra. They brought people close to the river, helped them make peace with it, allowed peasants to carry their produce to faraway places, and rescued the valley from a life of isolation.
Redesigning an Enigmatic River
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

This chapter recounts how the East India Company (EIC) officials embarked on their journey to Assam in the late eighteenth century and how they realized that the river could become a trusted ally of the British Empire. Knowing the river became an utmost necessity. The task of assembling practical knowledge about the river was put in place. As the imperial juggernaut gathered steam over the latter half of the eighteenth century, the needed to optimize economic and political benefits from the Brahmaputra. This led to an intensification of interest in the upper reaches of the river. The British colonialists saw the river’s eastern course as a big window to a wider world of trade and commerce. This chapter further tells one how several eventful journeys and surveys were undertaken in a bid to find the source as well as the course of the river to further British economic and political interests.
Unruly Landscape, Fluid Geographies
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

This chapter explains how the British officials learned about the intricacies of coexisting with water. Along with ecological impacts, human interventions too wrought changes that called for regulation and corrective measures. This state intervention began through a complex as well as difficult redesigning of the floodplain landscape. The utilitarian and cultural imagination of the Assamese peasants hardly distinguished the islands of the river from that of the vast stretches of sandy riverbanks. Both were inseparable. Nineteenth-century Assamese lexicons described both as chapori. A cartographic division of this riverine geography began to take shape in the legal and revenue parlance of the British officials in Assam. Familiar with the vocabulary of Bengal, the British officials began to make a distinction between the two; the islands came to be mentioned as chars while the river banks were described as chaporis. The chars were looked down upon as the unfortunate geographical extension of the chaporis.
Tea Plants Move to the Uplands
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

So far, the history of tea in Assam has largely consisted of the history of labour and capital. These two powerful categories of historical investigation illuminate the complexities surrounding imperial polity and economy of tea. What has remained unexplored is the role played by the Brahmaputra in the making of tea plantations and the environmental outcomes of the industry. The environmental questions include the consequences of the massive forest clearances and of the ascendancy of this domesticated plant over the existing wild plants. Could this newly introduced domesticated plant withstand the attacks of insects or pests? And, finally, can we say the river was instrumental in bringing about these big transformations? This chapter seeks some answers to these questions by describing the role played by the Brahmaputra and its tributaries in this history of tea and the ecological transformation of the plant.
Jute in the Floodplains
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

This chapter explains how jute came to symbolize the British imperial conquest of the Brahmaputra’s floodplains. The imperial government succeeded in bringing hundreds of thousands of people from the Brahmaputra’s downstream to be resettled on the upstream of the Brahmaputra. The swampy floodplains, hated by the imperial rulers in 1850s, were now under their control. This was land that was newly occupied. The Brahmaputra’s floodplains, by the mid-twentieth century, were bustling with human action. Human labour and modern capital had collectively shaped the river’s floodplains into a permanent habitat for a new crop and millions of people as reeds were replaced by jute. What drove the continuous production of jute was the power of the floods which regularly replenished the floodplains. But it also became vitally important to protect the plant from long spells of submergence. This was the trigger for the massive building of embankments along the Brahmaputra in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Nation’s River
Authors: Saikia Arupjyoti
Published: January 2020

This chapter explains how the nineteenth century saw the emergence of many ideas related to meaningfully transforming the Brahmaputra to serve the government and the country. Experts toyed with ideas on how to tame the river. If other rivers of the world could serve the cause of the governments of the countries through which they flowed, why should the Brahmaputra not be trained in similar ways? It was only a matter of the appropriate calculations and necessary engineering works. What was called for was a plan for the river’s regulation to achieve the desired goals. The river, despite its erratic temperament, was bound to behave according to the rules thus framed. After two centuries of political, economic, intellectual, and bureaucratic negotiation, the river has become part of India’s national imagination. India’s stake in the Brahmaputra is now firmly established.
Objectivity, Value Neutrality, Originality, and Ethics in Legal Research
Authors: Bhat P. Ishwara
Published: January 2020

Discipline in thinking, attitude, approach, and action in the course of research activity is the topic of the third chapter. Objectivity as a major concern of legal research demands that the researcher develops views on the basis of relevant reasons and shuns irrelevant ones. Examining every question with care, thoroughness, and reason by relating to truth and welfare brings objectivity. Value neutrality is another mindset a researcher should enshrine. Impartiality and sincerity in commitment to truth are its features. But constitutional values influence the decision-making process. Originality is another virtue that should be deliberately cultivated by reflecting over the questions and introspecting about the outcomes. The chapter takes up the issues of ethics in legal research, its evolution, need, and reach, and the researcher’s ethical obligation towards informers, society, funders, and fellow researchers. Why and how to avoid plagiarism and how to develop independent thought is also discussed in the chapter.
Canons, Contours, and Contributions of Policy Research in Law
Authors: Bhat P. Ishwara
Published: January 2020

Policy connects law to the social and political world. Research in policy matter—making, implementing, and evaluating—can be better done not by the mono-linear approach of allowing the discourse to revolve only around a rough idea; but by surveying all the policy alternatives, examining them from different angles with reference to certain paramount goals such as welfare, social justice, and human rights, and arriving at some sustainable inference. As policy research being conducted by new players such as NGOs, institutions, and stakeholders, in addition to state and inter-disciplinary characters of policy research has come to stay, proper designing of policy research becomes imperative. Tools of policy research include participatory assessment, which involves conducting of collective assessment; imagination of future scenarios; appropriate indicators; models of change; and cost benefit analysis. Empirical research for policy making or evaluation is also valuable. Policy research has made substantive contributions and has great potentiality.
Belonging and Becoming
Authors: Guru Gopal , Sarukkai Sundar
Published: January 2020

How do different people come together in a society? We focus on two types of experiences in this chapter: becoming (such as in becoming a citizen) and belonging (as in belonging to a religion). We look at many ordinary examples of belongingness and the relation of this to the idea of the social. The term ‘Indian society’, for instance, is commonly understood as something more than the collection of some individuals in it. This might be based on a belief that there is something in common with all these members and there are some properties that they share which defines membership to Indian society. The membership of a society can be defined in various ways: ascriptive identities such as caste, religion, race and ethnic or acquired membership of different clubs such as in sports. Social performances are one way in which belongingness plays an important part. We conclude with a discussion of the family and the nature of belongingness to family, since our argument is that the social in the Indian context depends crucially on this relation within the family.
Maitri: Ethical Rationality between Different Socials
Authors: Guru Gopal , Sarukkai Sundar
Published: January 2020

In this chapter, we argue that two socials have a relation of belongingness to each other analogous to the individual having a relation of belongingness to a social. Just as individuals come together through the experience of being-with, two socials comprising of individuals who are independently part of them, can also be in a similar relation of being-with each other. Any meaningful model of society which has many socials has to accommodate this possibility of different socials being in a relation of belongingness and being-with each other. We borrow a term from Babasaheb Ambedkar—maitri—and will propose that maitri is the term which stands for the ethical relation between the different socials that constitute the everyday social.
Fiscal and Monetary Policy
Authors: Correa Romar
Published: January 2020

Romar Correa continues to use the Godley-Cripps (1983) stock-flow-consistent (SFC) framework in this update to refine the thesis that the monetary authority is the ‘handmaiden’ of the fiscal authority. The bank, commercial and central being indistinguishable, is central to the account. A revitalized ‘real bills doctrine’ is proposed. The deleterious consequences of promoting the alternative, ‘financialization’ are traced.
Caste, Class, Gender
Authors: Deshpande Ashwini
Published: January 2020

Ashwini Deshpande argues the translation and impact of momentous post reform changes on inter-group disparities has been uneven. Caste inequality shows very strong inter-state variation and some convergence, but no clear relationship between growth and convergence. Gender wage gaps are substantial, despite the reduction in the average gender wage gap for regular wage and salaried employees over the last decade, and these are greater for the lower part of the wage distribution. A decomposition of these gaps between ‘explained’ and ‘residual’ indicates the discriminatory component is greater among the bottom four wage deciles, indicating the presence of a ‘sticky floor’, rather than a ‘glass ceiling’ for women. While poverty incidence has reduced, class inequality has increased sharply, which has fuelled a protracted armed insurgency in large parts of the country.
A Governance Analysis of Transportation in India
Authors: Sriraman S.
Published: January 2020

Sriraman attempts to understand the impact of the governance structure in the Indian context on the provision of transport infrastructure and services. Government owned railways have taken some initiatives to promote freight movement in a big way by the establishment of dedicated corridors with a different model of investment and operation. Equally significant are the initiatives taken up by the different transport related Ministries to promote multi-modalism which involves a change in governance structure. The issue is whether there can be effective implementation of these policy initiatives given continuing poor practices and deviation from an ideal institutional governance framework. One other issue discussed critically relates to the effective implementation of planning and operating of information technology practices in the context of smart cities that are being encouraged in a background of poor urban physical infrastructure.
Introduction
Authors: Nachiappan Karthik
Published: January 2020

This chapter begins by revisiting a recent episode—India’s behaviour at the 2009 Copenhagen climate negotiations—that aptly exemplifies how scholars cover India’s multilateral record: high expectations accompanied by suboptimal commitments. This approach and various explanations, the chapter argues, blinds us from generating a coherent grounded perspective when it comes to India’s multilateral approach since they focus on outcomes, not the negotiations themselves.
India and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Authors: Nachiappan Karthik
Published: January 2020

In this chapter, I unpack how India negotiates the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, recounting the transnational pressures pushing toward test ban negotiations and why those developments served India’s interests having pulled for such an agreement for decades. This legacy of disarmament diplomacy strongly influenced the approach adopted by the overseeing institution Ministry of External Affairs at CTBT negotiations where Indian diplomats strove to negotiate an agreement that placed uniform constraints vis-à-vis nuclear tests on both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states. And finally, I distil how domestic interest groups, namely security and nuclear experts, shaped public debates concerning the CTBT which, in turn, gave MEA officials more space to determine whether to ratify or reject the treaty once it became clear that India’s strategy would not have produced the agreement they desired.
Conclusion
Authors: Nachiappan Karthik
Published: January 2020

This chapter recounts three key findings of the book with respect to India’s multilateral behaviour and distils some implications on what India’s experiences negotiating international rules suggest for global governance writ large.
Personality Studies in India
Authors: Singh J.K. , Tung N.S.
Published: January 2020

Personality, being one of the core areas of psychological enquiry, has been approached from diverse perspectives. It is deployed in psychological literature at different levels: as a school of thought; as a perspective; and as a configuration of psychological dispositions of an individual. Against this backdrop, the present chapter examines the progress of the field in the country during the last one decade. In addition to updating conceptual and methodological developments in contemporary personality research, this chapter brings out the relevance of culture in conceptualizing the construct of personality and its assessment. In particular, the chapter critically evaluates the progress made in a variety of studies carried out in academia and brings out the conceptual richness of various indigenous personality concepts and theories. Finally, some issues for further research are highlighted to make personality research a culturally relevant and applied area of enquiry.
Family, Identity, and the Individual in India
Authors: Chaudhary Nandita , Shukla Shashi
Published: January 2020

As a universal social institution, the family has always attracted much academic interest in multiple areas of study. This chapter examines the theory of family and explores family life in India. In order to provide an account of the Indian family in its multiple manifestations with its due place in academia, a critical examination of various theoretical perspectives on family is offered. It is argued that the empirical research on Indian families as settings for the care of children—its most important function—can be used to develop a theoretical framework to study families worldwide. By applying the varieties of family structures observed, it is argued that the predominantly one-adult, one-child paradigm, which is the foundation for mainstream developmental psychology, is found in only a few families. Thus, findings of research on Indian families can inform mainstream theory and discourse about family structure and function, and make an important contribution.
Organizational Performance Research in India
Authors: Singh Shailendra , Gupta Vishal
Published: January 2020

This chapter presents a review of research in the area of organizational performance in India during the last decade, which has become a challenge for organizations and management researchers. The chapter begins with a critical analysis of the nature of performance measurement and associated challenges. Next, it summarizes the research that has linked individual-level, group-level, and organization-level variables to organizational performance. The theoretical and conceptual contributions, limitations, gaps, and the scope of future research in the field are presented by the contributors. Finally, a multi-level model has been presented that provides a process framework, which links antecedent variables to organizational performance. The framework provides a set of working hypotheses for future organizational performance research in the Indian context.
Ethical Leadership in India
Authors: Bhal Kanika T.
Published: January 2020

The chapter offers a review of research and theory on ethical leadership in India, attempting a confluence between leadership theories developed in the West and the traditional Indian wisdom. Gunas, as described in the Bhagavad Gita, present an account of ethical/moral traits of a leader. Given the debate over the assumed ethicality of transformational leadership, wherein a leader could exercise influence for personal benefits as well, this approach provides a very limited view of ethical leadership. The idea of Karma and its distinct focus on duty and detachment from rewards provides a basis for ethical leadership. Gunas and the key tenets of Karma are used to identify a two-dimensional conceptualization of ethical leadership, where the former focusses on ethical person (aspect of leadership) and the latter on the ethical manager (given its interpersonal orientation). This approach to leadership brings ethical concerns to the centre stage in managing work behaviour.
Severe Mental Disorders
Authors: Thara R. , John Sujit , Gopal Subhashini
Published: January 2020

This chapter deals with severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorders, and dementia. These disorders not only pose a huge challenge in terms of their management, but are also very disabling for the persons suffering from them. The care givers of patients, mainly their families, are often burdened by the fluctuating nature and chronicity of these complex disorders. Using the Indian database for each of these disorders, the chapter discusses the epidemiology, course, and outcome for each of them. The phenomenology, including cognition and measurement tools related to these disorders, is also discussed. Finally, the diverse forms of interventions including medical, psychosocial, and community level interventions are delineated.
Psychotherapy Practice and Research
Authors: Raguram Ahalya , Bhola Poornima
Published: January 2020

This chapter reviews researches on the processes and outcomes of psychotherapy. The research indicates use of varied modalities including cognitive behavioural therapies, psychodynamic approaches, and couple and family therapy interventions. These techniques are used in varied contexts such as medical and surgical consultation-liaison settings. Models of care and service delivery have been translated to facilitate the shift from the clinic to the community, accompanied by an expanded role for counsellors and therapists. Cultural sensitivity in the practice of therapy and in the shift to culturally relevant models of therapy and practices like yoga and meditation is evident. Experiential, qualitative studies tapping psychotherapy processes and the inward gaze towards psychotherapist training, development, and professional issues collectively chart a path less trodden. The practical impediments to progress in psychotherapy practice, training, and research in the country are discussed and pathways for future are outlined.
The Quest for Promoting Health and Healing
Authors: Priya Kumar Ravi
Published: January 2020

This chapter traces the origins and historical development of health psychology and community psychology. In particular, the goals and methods of these fields are critically examined in the background of an interpretive turn in social sciences. It is observed that promoting health and healing from the standpoint of the end-users utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches and innovative qualitative and quantitative methodologies constitute the state-of-the-art focus in these fields. In light of this shift in the goals and methodologies, this chapter offers a critical appraisal of the emerging research trends in the Indian setting. The chapter ends with an emphasis on incorporating culture through the use of qualitative or ethnographic studies and conceptualization of suffering and healing within a framework informed by indigenous scholarship present in Indian thought systems.
A Renaissance Marriage
Authors: James Carolyn
Published: January 2020

Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, this book analyses the marriage of Isabella d’Este, one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance, and her less well-known husband, Francesco Gonzaga, ruler of the small northern Italian principality of Mantua (r. 1484–1519). It offers fresh insights into the nature of political marriages during the early modern period by investigating the forces which shaped the lives of an aristocratic couple who, within several years of their wedding, had to deal with the political challenges posed by the first conflicts of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and, later, the scourge of the Great Pox. The study humanizes a relationship that was organized for entirely strategic reasons, but had to be inhabited emotionally if it was to produce the political and dynastic advantages that had inspired the match. The letter exchanges of Isabella and Francesco over twenty-nine years, as well as their correspondence with relatives and courtiers, show how their personal rapport evolved and how they cooperated in the governance of a princely state. Hitherto examined mainly from literary and religious perspectives and on the basis of legal evidence and prescriptive literature, early modern marriage emerges here in vivid detail, offering the reader access to aspects of the lived experience of an elite Renaissance spousal relationship. The book also contributes to our understanding of the history of emotions, of politics and military conflict, of childbirth, childhood, and family life, and of the history of disease and medicine.
Our Gigantic Zoo
Authors: Lekan Thomas M.
Published: January 2020

This book examines the troubled relationship between Europe’s greatest wildlife conservationist, the former Frankfurt Zoo director and Oscar-winning documentarian Bernhard Grzimek, and the landscape he saw as a “gigantic zoo” for the earth’s last great mammals: the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It analyzes the fissures that emerged between Grzimek and his son Michael’s self-appointed quest to save the Serengeti from modernization and “overpopulation” and the rights of rural Africans and their livestock to inhabit the landscape on their own terms during the era of decolonization around 1960. Grzimek is beloved in Germany as an animal whisperer. He rebuilt the Frankfurt Zoo from a bombed-out shell and sensitized a generation of young people to environmental issues on his long-running television program, A Place for Animals. Yet his advocacy abroad exposed the danger of thinking locally and acting globally. The Grzimeks projected European anxieties about war, Americanization, race, and environmental destruction onto Africa, sidestepping the uncomfortable imperialist legacies of exploitation that had endangered animals in the first place. After independence, Bernhard tried to make wildlife pay for Tanzania by promoting package tours from Europe and soliciting West German development aid for national parks. These efforts created an important alliance between Grzimek, West German diplomats, and Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere. Grzimek’s conservation priorities soon clashed against Nyerere’s nationalist ones, as a more self-assertive Tanzania resented failed promises and incessant meddling. The Africanization of the national park system in the early 1970s ended the Grzimek quest: the fate of the Serengeti lay in Nyerere’s hands, not Grzimek’s.
Crystal Eastman
Authors: Aronson Amy
Published: January 2020

Crystal Eastman was a central figure in many of the defining social movements of the twentieth century—labor, feminism, internationalism, free speech, peace. She drafted America’s first serious workers’ compensation law. She helped found the National Woman’s Party and is credited as coauthor of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). She helped found the Woman’s Peace Party—today, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)—and the American Union against Militarism. She copublished the Liberator magazine. And she engineered the founding the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Eastman worked side by side with national and international suffrage leaders, renowned Progressive reformers and legislators, birth control advocates, civil rights champions, and revolutionary writers and artists. She traveled with a transatlantic crowd of boundary breakers and innovators. And in virtually every arena she entered, she was one of the most memorable women known to her allies and adversaries alike. Yet today, her legacy is oddly ambiguous. She is commemorated, paradoxically, as one of the most neglected feminist leaders in American history. This first full-length biography recovers the revealing story of a woman who attained rare political influence and left a thought-provoking legacy in ongoing struggles. The social justice issues she cared about—gender equality and human rights, nationalism and globalization, political censorship and media control, worker benefits and family balance, and the monumental questions of war, sovereignty, force, and freedom—remain some of the most consequential questions of our own time.
Working Memory Training From an Individual Differences Perspective
Authors: Borella Erika , Carretti Barbara , Cornoldi Cesare , Beni Rossana De
Published: January 2020

This chapter presents and discusses a verbal WM training developed for older adults. The model of working memory (WM) proposed by Cornoldi and Vecchi, which is based on an analysis of individual and age-related differences, is used as a framework for discussing the efficacy of the WM training procedure proposed and developed for older adults. The model (a) assumes that different WM tasks (and underlying processes) may be located along two continua that describe the type of content to be processed and the degree of active control required by the task and (b) considers metacognitive/motivational aspects, which also have a role in determining WM performance. The WM training procedure presented here takes into account not only the capacity to use WM resources and attentional control by adopting an adaptive procedure, but also the importance of including variations in the training task demands to produce a challenging and engaging task that sustains motivation and favor the training’s short- and long-term efficacy, at least in older adults. These aspects seem crucial in explaining the results obtained with this verbal WM training program in aging.
The Effectiveness of Training in Task Switching
Authors: Kray Jutta , Dörrenbächer Sandra
Published: January 2020

The authors of this chapter describe changes in task-switching abilities over the life span. In particular, task maintenance and selection processes decline in older age. The authors summarize conditions under which the flexibility and plasticity of these processes can be improved such as external and internal prompts to behavior and intensive practice. The effectiveness of task-switching training interventions is evaluated by highlighting conditions under which transfer effects to other cognitive abilities are more likely to occur such as training variability. The author also discuss the usefulness of strategy-based interventions, the impact of inter-individual differences in baseline performance, and the specific role of motivation on the success of training in task switching.
Sulfur Deficiency-Induced Glucosinolate Catabolism Attributed to Two β-Glucosidases, BGLU28 and BGLU30, is Required for Plant Growth Maintenance under Sulfur Deficiency
Authors: Zhang Liu , Kawaguchi Ryota , Morikawa-Ichinose Tomomi , Allahham Alaa , Kim Sun-Ju , Maruyama-Nakashita Akiko
Published: January 2020

Sulfur (S) is an essential element for plants, and S deficiency causes severe growth retardation. Although the catabolic process of glucosinolates (GSLs), the major S-containing metabolites specific to Brassicales including Arabidopsis, has been recognized as one of the S deficiency (−S) responses in plants, the physiological function of this metabolic process is not clear. Two β-glucosidases (BGLUs), BGLU28 and BGLU30, are assumed to be responsible for this catabolic process as their transcript levels were highly upregulated by −S. To clarify the physiological function of BGLU28 and BGLU30 and their roles in GSL catabolism, we analyzed the accumulation of GSLs and other S-containing compounds in the single and double mutant lines of BGLU28 and BGLU30 and in wild-type plants under different S conditions. GSL levels were highly increased, while the levels of sulfate, cysteine, glutathione and protein were decreased in the double mutant line of BGLU28 and BGLU30 (bglu28/30) under −S. Furthermore, transcript level of Sulfate Transporter1;2, the main contributor of sulfate uptake from the environment, was increased in bglu28/30 mutants under −S. With these metabolic and transcriptional changes, bglu28/30 mutants displayed obvious growth retardation under −S. Overall, our results indicate that BGLU28 and BGLU30 are required for −S-induced GSL catabolism and contribute to sustained plant growth under −S by recycling sulfate to primary S metabolism.
Cognitive Functional Therapy for People with Nonspecific Persistent Low Back Pain in a Secondary Care Setting—A Propensity Matched, Case–Control Feasibility Study
Authors: Ussing Kasper , Kjaer Per , Smith Anne , Kent Peter , Jensen Rikke K , Schiøttz-Christensen Berit , O’Sullivan Peter Bruce
Published: January 2020

Background

Effective, inexpensive, and low-risk interventions are needed for patients with nonspecific persistent low back pain (NS-PLBP) who are unresponsive to primary care interventions. Cognitive functional therapy (CFT) is a multidimensional behavioral self-management approach that has demonstrated promising results in primary care and has not been tested in secondary care.

Objective

To investigate the effect of CFT and compare it with usual care for patients with NS-PLBP.

Design

Case–control study.

Setting

A secondary care spine center.

Subjects

Thirty-nine patients received a CFT intervention and were matched using propensity scoring to 185 control patients receiving usual care.

Methods

The primary outcome was Roland Morris Disability Questionnaire (0–100 scale) score. Group-level differences at six- and 12-month follow-up were estimated using mixed-effects linear regression.

Results

At six-month follow-up, a statistically significant and clinically relevant difference in disability favored the CFT group (–20.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] = –27.2 to –14.2, P < 0.001). Significant differences also occurred for LBP and leg pain, fear, anxiety, and catastrophizing in favor of CFT. At 12-month follow-up, the difference in disability was smaller and no longer statistically significant (–8.1, 95% CI = –17.4 to 1.2, P = 0.086). Differences in leg pain intensity and fear remained significantly in favor of CFT. Treatment satisfaction was significantly higher in the CFT group at six- (93% vs 66%) and 12-month (84% vs 52%) follow-up.

Conclusions

These findings support that CFT is beneficial for patients with NS-PLBP who are unresponsive to primary care interventions. Subsequent randomized controlled trials could incorporate booster sessions, which may result in larger effects at 12-month follow-up.
A Targeted Metabolomics-Based Assay Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes Identifies Structural and Functional Cardiotoxicity Potential
Authors: Palmer Jessica A , Smith Alan M , Gryshkova Vitalina , Donley Elizabeth L R , Valentin Jean-Pierre , Burrier Robert E
Published: January 2020

Implementing screening assays that identify functional and structural cardiotoxicity earlier in the drug development pipeline has the potential to improve safety and decrease the cost and time required to bring new drugs to market. In this study, a metabolic biomarker-based assay was developed that predicts the cardiotoxicity potential of a drug based on changes in the metabolism and viability of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CM). Assay development and testing was conducted in 2 phases: (1) biomarker identification and (2) targeted assay development. In the first phase, metabolomic data from hiPSC-CM spent media following exposure to 66 drugs were used to identify biomarkers that identified both functional and structural cardiotoxicants. Four metabolites that represent different metabolic pathways (arachidonic acid, lactic acid, 2′-deoxycytidine, and thymidine) were identified as indicators of cardiotoxicity. In phase 2, a targeted, exposure-based biomarker assay was developed that measured these metabolites and hiPSC-CM viability across an 8-point concentration curve. Metabolite-specific predictive thresholds for identifying the cardiotoxicity potential of a drug were established and optimized for balanced accuracy or sensitivity. When predictive thresholds were optimized for balanced accuracy, the assay predicted the cardiotoxicity potential of 81 drugs with 86% balanced accuracy, 83% sensitivity, and 90% specificity. Alternatively, optimizing the thresholds for sensitivity yields a balanced accuracy of 85%, 90% sensitivity, and 79% specificity. This new hiPSC-CM-based assay provides a paradigm that can identify structural and functional cardiotoxic drugs that could be used in conjunction with other endpoints to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of a drug’s cardiotoxicity potential.
Inference of Bacterial Pathogen Instantaneous Population Growth Dynamics
Authors: Sicard Anne , Castillo Andreina I. , Voeltz Michael , Chen Hongyu , Zeilinger Adam R. , De La Fuente Leonardo , Almeida Rodrigo P. P.
Published: January 2020

Although bacterial host colonization is a dynamic process that requires population growth, studies often focus on comparing bacterial populations at a given time point. However, this may not reflect the dynamics of the colonization process. Time-course assays provide important insights into the dynamics of host colonization but are laborious and may still lack resolution for immediate processes affecting populations. An alternative way to address this issue, using widely accessible tools (such as quantitative PCR [qPCR]), is to take advantage of the relationship between bacterial chromosomal replication and cell division to determine population growth status at the sampling time. Conceptually, the ratio between the number of copies at the origin of replication and that at the terminus of replication should be correlated with the measured bacterial growth rate. This peak-to-trough ratio (PTR) to estimate instantaneous population growth status was tested with the slow-growing plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. We found no correlation between PTR and the measured growth rate when using genome-level data but overall sequencing depth of coverage trends matched theoretical expectations. On the other hand, the population growth status of X. fastidiosa was predicted by PTR when using qPCR data, which was improved by the pretreatment of cells with a photoreactive DNA-binding dye. Our results suggest that PTR could be used to determine X. fastidiosa growth status both in planta and in insect vectors. We expect PTR will perform better with fast-growing bacterial pathogens, potentially becoming a powerful tool for easily and quickly assessing population growth status.
Necessity and rationale for the proposed name changes in the classification of Mollicutes species. Reply to: ‘Recommended rejection of the names Malacoplasma gen. nov., Mesomycoplasma gen. nov., Metamycoplasma gen. nov., Metamycoplasmataceae fam. nov., Mycoplasmoidaceae fam. nov., Mycoplasmoidales ord. nov., Mycoplasmoides gen. nov., Mycoplasmopsis gen. nov. [Gupta, Sawnani, Adeolu, Alnajar and Oren 2018] and all proposed species comb. nov. placed therein’, by M. Balish et al. (Int J Syst Evol Microbiol, 2019;69:3650–3653)
Authors: Gupta Radhey S. , Oren Aharon
Published: January 2020

This response summarizes the highly disordered state of theMollicutestaxonomy that existed until recently, where mostMollicutestaxa lacked proper circumscriptions and their names were not in accordance with the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes and illegitimate. We also summarize the comprehensive phylogenomic and comparative genomic studies forming the basis for the proposed changes in the classification ofMollicultesspecies. Our responses to the concerns raised by Balishet al., show that the proposed taxonomic changes do not violate any essential point of the Code. Instead the proposed name changes rectify numerous taxonomic anomalies that have long plagued the classification ofMollicutes species, leading to a better understanding of their evolutionary relationships and bringing their nomenclature in conformity with the Code.
Privacy-preserving biomedical database queries with optimal privacy-utility trade-offs
Authors: Cho Hyunghoon , Simmons Sean , Kim Ryan , Berger Bonnie
Published: January 2020

Sharing data across research groups is an essential driver of biomedical research. In particular, biomedical databases with interactive query-answering systems allow users to retrieve information from the database using restricted types of queries (e.g. number of subjects satisfying certain criteria). While these systems aim to facilitate the sharing of aggregate biomedical insights without divulging sensitive individual-level data, they can still leak private information about the individuals in the database through the query answers. Existing strategies to mitigate such risks either provide insufficient levels of privacy or greatly diminish the usefulness of the database. Here, we draw upon recent advances in differential privacy to introduce privacy-preserving query-answering mechanisms for biomedical databases that provably maximize the expected utility of the system while achieving formal privacy guarantees. We demonstrate the accuracy improvement of our methods over existing approaches for a range of use cases, including count, membership, and association queries. Notably, our new theoretical results extend the proof of optimality of the underlying mechanism, previously known only for count queries with symmetric utility functions, to asymmetric utility functions needed for count queries in cohort discovery workflows as well as membership queries—a core functionality of the Beacon Project recently launched by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH). Our work presents a path towards biomedical query-answering systems that achieve the best privacy-utility trade-offs permitted by the theory of differential privacy.
Construction of Nanobody Library in Mammalian Cells by Linear-double-stranded DNA Based AND Gate Genetic Circuit
Authors: Zhao Yanjie , Tong Xin , Zhang Chunze , Li Shuai
Published: January 2020

Nanobody is one special type of single-domain antibody fragment with multiple advantages over traditional antibody. Our previous work established linear-double-stranded DNA (ldsDNA, or PCR amplicon) as novel biological parts for building AND gate genetic circuits in mammalian cells. During this AND-gate circuit formation process, the co-transfected up- and down-stream ldsDNAs could be linked together to form intact gene expression cassette. Here, we employed thisldsDNA-basedAND-gate (LBAG) strategy to construct nanobody library in mammalian cells. The sequence complexity of complementary determining regions (CDRs) was introduced into ldsDNA by PCR amplification. After being co-transfected into mammalian cells, the up- and down-stream ldsDNAs undergo AND gate linkage and form full nanobody coding regions, containing CDR1-3. High throughput sequencing identified 22,173 unique oligonucleotide sequences in total generated by this strategy. Thus, we developed a novel method to construct nanobody library, which is a start point for building high content nanobody library in mammalian cells.