bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
\wideparen{𝒟}-modules on rigid analytic spaces II: Kashiwara’s equivalence
Authors: Ardakov Konstantin , Wadsley Simon
Published: July 2018

LetXXbe a smooth rigid analytic space. We prove that the category of co-admissible\wideparen {\mathcal {D}_X}-modules supported on a closed smooth subvarietyYYofXXis naturally equivalent to the category of co-admissible\wideparen {\mathcal {D}_Y}-modules and use this result to construct a large family of pairwise non-isomorphic simple co-admissible\wideparen {\mathcal {D}_X}-modules.
Early Vascular Aging Risk Assessment From Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring: The Early Vascular Aging Ambulatory Score
Authors: Antza Christina , Doundoulakis Ioannis , Akrivos Evagelos , Stabouli Stella , Trakatelli Christina , Doumas Michael , Kotsis Vasilios
Published: July 2018

BACKGROUND

This study compared the diagnostic accuracy of blood pressure (BP) measurement methods, office BP, ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM), and home BP, in the identification of early vascular aging (EVA) and developed a score to predict the risk of EVA in hypertensive patients.

METHODS

Two-hundred eighty-two consecutive subjects (39.7% male) aged 56.8  ±  15.8 years were included. Office and out-of-office BP measurements including ABPM on a usual working day and 7 days home BP monitoring were performed. Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (c-f PWV) was measured in all patients. EVA was defined as c-f PWV values higher than the expected for age average values according to European population data.

RESULTS

In univariate analysis, EVA was significantly correlated with office systolic BP, average 24-hour systolic and diastolic BP, and average 24-hour and office heart rates. The area under the curve for predicting EVA was 0.624 (95% CI 0.551 to 0.697), 0.559 (95% CI 0.484 to 0.635) and 0.565 (95% CI 0.49 to 0.641), for daytime, home, and office systolic BP, respectively. Ambulatory BP variables, age, sex, body mass index, diabetes mellitus (yes/no), and estimated glomerular filtration rate were used to develop a new score for EVA providing a total accuracy of 0.82, 0.84 sensitivity, and 0.78 specificity.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, the new risk score, Early Vascular Aging Ambulatory score, may accurately identify hypertensive patients with EVA using ABPM values and classic cardiovascular risk factors.
CIRCOAST: a statistical hypothesis test for cellular colocalization with network structures
Authors: Corliss Bruce A , Ray H Clifton , Patrie James T , Mansour Jennifer , Kesting Sam , Park Janice H , Rohde Gustavo , Yates Paul A , Janes Kevin A , Peirce Shayn M
Published: July 2018

Motivation

Colocalization of structures in biomedical images can lead to insights into biological behaviors. One class of colocalization problems is examining an annular structure (disk-shaped such as a cell, vesicle or molecule) interacting with a network structure (vascular, neuronal, cytoskeletal, organellar). Examining colocalization events across conditions is often complicated by changes in density of both structure types, confounding traditional statistical approaches since colocalization cannot be normalized to the density of both structure types simultaneously. We have developed a technique to measure colocalization independent of structure density and applied it to characterizing intercellular colocation with blood vessel networks. This technique could be used to analyze colocalization of any annular structure with an arbitrarily shaped network structure.

Results

We present the circular colocalization affinity with network structures test (CIRCOAST), a novel statistical hypothesis test to probe for enriched network colocalization in 2D z-projected multichannel images by using agent-based Monte Carlo modeling and image processing to generate the pseudo-null distribution of random cell placement unique to each image. This hypothesis test was validated by confirming that adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) exhibit enriched colocalization with endothelial cells forming arborized networks in culture and then applied to show that locally delivered ASCs have enriched colocalization with murine retinal microvasculature in a model of diabetic retinopathy. We demonstrate that the CIRCOAST test provides superior power and type I error rates in characterizing intercellular colocalization compared to generic approaches that are confounded by changes in cell or vessel density.

Availability and implementation

CIRCOAST source code available at: https://github.com/uva-peirce-cottler-lab/ARCAS.

Supplementary information

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Updating the determinants of health model in the Information Age
Authors: Rice Louis , Sara Rachel
Published: July 2018

In 1991, Dahlgren and Whitehead produced a highly influential model of the determinants of health that has since been used by numerous national and international public health organizations globally. The purpose of the model is to enable interventions that improve health to be addressed at four key policy levels. It is not a model of health or disease; instead the model is structured around health policy decision-making. However the model needs an update, since it was devised there has been a digital revolution that has transformed every aspect of: human life, our cities, society and the fundamental principles upon which the global economy operates. The article examines the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on the determinants of health. ICT has given rise to a new Information Age that is implicated in many of the major global health issues today. Addressing contemporary health issues requires intervention at the level of ICT, particularly as health communication online is central to the delivery and dissemination of public health policies.
Perception and Current Use of E-cigarettes Among Youth in China
Authors: Xiao Lin , Parascandola Mark , Wang Congxiao , Jiang Yuan
Published: July 2018

Introduction

This study provides nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use among youth in China and explores the factors associated with awareness and use of e-cigarettes and the relationship between e-cigarette and conventional tobacco use.

Methods

This study examined data from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, which was completed by 155 117 middle school students (51.8% boys and 48.2% girls) in China, and employed a multistage stratified cluster sampling design. For data analysis, SAS 9.3 complex survey procedures were used, and logistic regression was used to explore factors associated with e-cigarette use and the relationship between e-cigarette and conventional tobacco use.

Results

About 45.0% of middle school students had heard of e-cigarettes, but only 1.2% reported using e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. Among never-smokers, e-cigarette users were more likely to intend to use a tobacco product in the next 12 months than nonusers (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 6.970, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.474% to 10.857%), and more likely to say that they would enjoy smoking a cigarette (adjusted OR = 14.633, 95% CI = 11.328% to 18.902%). E-cigarette use was associated with previous experimentation with cigarette smoking (OR = 3.2), having noticed tobacco advertising in the past 30 days (OR = 2.7), having close friends who smoke (OR = 1.4), and thinking tobacco helps people feel more comfortable in social situations (OR = 3.3) and makes young people look more attractive (OR = 1.3).

Conclusions

E-cigarette use among youth in China remains low but awareness is high. E-cigarette use was associated with increased intentions to use tobacco. Enhanced prevention efforts are needed targeting e-cigarette use among youth.

Implications

This study is the first nationally representative survey of e-cigarette use among youth in China. It found that among middle school students, prevalence of e-cigarette use is 1.2% and prevalence of e-cigarette awareness is 45.0%. Chinese youths use e-cigarettes as a tobacco product rather than an aid to quitting. Among never-smokers, e-cigarette users were more likely to have intentions to use a tobacco product in the next 12 months, more likely to use a tobacco product offered by their best friends and enjoy smoking a cigarette than nonusers.
Microsurgical Resection of a Ventral Pontine Cavernoma via Supratrigeminal Zone by Anterior Transpetrosal Approach: 2-Dimensional Operative Video
Authors: Yokoyama Kunio , Kawanishi Masahiro , Sugie Akira , Yamada Makoto , Tanaka Hidekazu , Ito Yutaka , Yamshita Masashi
Published: July 2018

Brainstem cavernomas with recurrent bleeding and gradual neurological deterioration should be considered an indication for surgical treatment. However, surgery is challenging for cavernous hemangiomas located in the ventral part of the pons. In such cases, safe surgical access to the brainstem is limited and obtaining a good surgical field, regardless of the approach selected, is often difficult. Here, we show a 73-year-old man with a history of 3 episodes of intracranial bleeding associated with a cavernous hemangioma located in the right ventral pons. The hemangioma was removed via the supratrigeminal zone of the brainstem using an anterior transpetrosal approach (ATPA). ATPA was first described in 1985 for upper petroclival lesions by Kawase T.
1
This approach requires epidural subtemporal procedures to expose the petrous apex adequately. The petrous apex must be totally resected and the dura of the temporal lobe and posterior fossa is then cut to ligate the superior petrosal sinus and tentorium.

In this procedure, the most important things are to preserve the internal carotid artery (C2 segment) and greater superficial petrosal nerve (GSPN). To identify the GSPN, facial nerve integrity monitor (Medtronic Inc, Dublin, Ireland) is very useful. In the extradural bone removal, Sonopet Ultrasonic Aspirator (Stryker Ltd, Portage, Michigan) is a very excellent surgical tool for avoiding the injury of the internal carotid artery. As demonstrated by Cavalcanti DD
2
, ATPA is particularly useful for accessing lesions located in the upper ventral pons via the supratrigeminal zone because it provides a wide and shallow surgical field above the trigeminal nerve without requiring retraction of the cerebellum. We received written informed consent from the patient for this publication.
Microsurgical Resection of Thoracic Meningioma: 2-Dimensional Operative Video
Authors: Ito Yutaka , Yokoyama Kunio , Tanaka Hidekazu , Yamada Makoto , Yamashita Masashi , Sugie Akira , Kawanishi Masahiro
Published: July 2018

The primary goal of surgery with spinal meningioma is complete safe tumor removal and decompression of the spinal cord. For the surgical removal of spinal meningioma, internal debulking before dissection of the tumor capsule is essential. Intraoperative ultrasonography to localize the tumor is recommended by some authors, but we use indocyanine green (ICG) videography to visualize the localization of tumor before dural incision. ICG videography allows safe and complete delineation of intradural tumors before dural opening. This technique is quick, cost-effective, and simple to use, especially with its integration into the surgical microscope.

 Herein, we present a case of a 54-yr-old female patient presenting with a 1-yr history of numbness of the right lower limb. Neurological examinations demonstrated temperature pain disorder of right lower limb and slight dysuria. Magnetic resonance images demonstrated intradural extramedullary tumor at the level of Th6. Preoperative diagnosis was spinal meningioma.

 In this surgical video, we show ICG angiography before dural opening, in addition to the basic surgical procedure of the thoracic meningioma. We believe this operative video will be useful for those in training as well as practicing surgeons. We received written informed consent from the patient for this publication.
Local Fusions
Authors: Lange Barbara Rose
Published: July 2018

Local Fusions: Folk Music Experiments in Central Europe at the Millennium explores musical life in Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria between the end of the Cold War and the world financial crisis of 2008. It describes how artists made new social commentary and tried new ways of working together as the political and economic atmosphere changed. The book presents case studies from Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna, drawing from ethnographic research and from conversations about the arts in Central European publications. The case studies illustrate how young musicians redefined a Central European history of elevating the arts by fusing poetry, local folk music, and other vernacular music with jazz, Asian music, art music, and electronic dance music. Their projects contradicted ethnic exclusions and gender asymmetries in Central Europe’s past expressive culture and in its present far-right political movements. The case studies demonstrate how musicians had to become skilled neoliberal actors, even as they asserted female power, broadened masculinities, and declared affinity with regional minorities such as the Romani (Gypsy) people. The author contrasts the live performances and physical recordings of world music 1.0 with the peer-to-peer networks of world music 2.0, arguing that Central European musicians occupy a liminal space between the two spheres. An epilogue describes how economic shocks of the late 2000s transformed sociality, creative processes, and the market for musical experiments in Central Europe.
Introduction
Authors: Lange Barbara Rose
Published: July 2018

The Introduction outlines a historical and cultural framework for musical fusion projects in Central Europe, specifically Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria, between 1989 and 2008. It argues that such projects participate in a regional artistic heritage of stylistic virtuosity and social critique. It describes how Central Europeans treat some of their own world music, folk music, and ethnojazz as high or “serious” art, while in Western Europe, world music is part of the popular music industry. The Introduction argues that the Central European projects are experiments in economic independence and in ethnic inclusion stemming from the region’s history of war, exclusion of Romani (Gypsy) and Jewish minorities, and transition to neoliberal capitalism. The Introduction discusses artistic precedents of the 1970s and 1980s, and delineates aspects of the sociopolitical atmosphere for the arts in Central Europe between 1989 and 2008.
Local Identity, World Music 2.0, and Electronic Dance Music
Authors: Lange Barbara Rose
Published: July 2018

Chapter 8 discusses the orientation of Central European musicians to aesthetics, production technologies, and distribution networks of the turn of the millennium that are collectively termed world music 2.0, arguing that study of local information flow enriches the overall notion of world music 2.0. The chapter reviews how electronic dance music (EDM) became a key component of the millennial sound world and of world music 2.0 in Central Europe. The chapter then describes musicians who continue to think locally as they merge sensibilities: the Slovak duo Longital developed a futurist aesthetic; the Austrian composer and musician Christof Dienz blended alpine ideas, avant-garde art music, and EDM; and Hungarian composer-producer Károly Cserepes infused musical dreamscapes with local sounds. The chapter concludes that the Central European musicians occupy a liminal space between analog world music 1.0 and networked world music 2.0.
Of Mullas, Manuscripts, and Migration
Authors: Newman Andrew
Published: July 2018

This chapter considers the general historiographical position, and questions the traditional take on it by assessing whether the picture of decline and collapse can be consistent with the significance of different trends of thought among the clerical community in Iran in the 18th century, as indicated by the relative popularity of significant texts, demonstrated by the numbers of those texts in manuscript collections.
Iranian-Russian Relations in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Rashtiani Goodarz
Published: July 2018

The main objective of the present chapter is to analyze the structure and features governing the relations between Iran and Russia in different political, economic, and social spheres in the period from the fall of Isfahan (1722) to the rise of the Qajar dynasty (1796) and to study the reasons for the difference in these relations compared to previous periods and Russia’s actions in Iran’s territory (the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus) with an emphasis on the developments in both countries, the role of ethnic minorities and local khanates, and the effect of regional and international conditions on the relations between the two countries.
Flora Unveiled
Authors: Taiz Lincoln , Taiz Lee
Published: July 2018

Sex in animals has been known for at least ten thousand years, and this knowledge was exploited during animal domestication in the Neolithic period. In contrast, sex in plants wasn’t discovered until the late seventeenth century. Even after its discovery, the sexual “theory” continued to be hotly debated for another 150 years, pitting the “sexualists” against the “asexualists.” Why was the idea of sex in plants so contentious for so long? In answer, Flora Unveiled offers a deep history of perceptions concerning plant gender and sexuality, from the Paleolithic to the nineteenth century. Evidence suggests that an obstacle far beyond the mere facts of pollination mechanisms stymied the discovery of two sexes in plants, and then delayed its acceptance. This was a “plants-as-female” paradigm. Flora Unveiled explores the sources of this gender bias, beginning with women’s roles as gatherers, plant-textile makers, crop domesticators, and early horticulturists. In myths and religions of the Bronze and Iron Ages, goddesses were strongly identified with flowers, trees and agricultural abundance. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this tradition was assimilated to Christianity in the person of Mary. The one-sex model of plants continued into the Early Modern Period, and staged resurgences during the eighteenth century Enlightenment and in the Romantic movement. Not until the nineteenth century, when Wilhelm Hofmeister demonstrated the universality of sex in the plant kingdom, was the controversy over plant sex finally resolved. Flora Unveiled chronicles how persistently cultural biases can impede discovery and delay the acceptance of scientific advances.
The Quandary Over Plant Sex
Authors: Taiz Lincoln , Taiz Lee
Published: July 2018

Chapter one describes “The Quandary Over Plant Sex” in its historical context. The sexual role of pollen wasn’t discovered until the late 17th century, suggesting a deep cultural bias. Beliefs concerning sex in humans, from Galen and Aristotle onward, were influenced by gender ideology. The lower social status of women suggested a one-sex model, whereby female character and physiology were construed as deficient versions of the male. Plants, because of their association with women, came to be regarded as female. Flowers are often emblematic of women in literature, but flowers seem to produce fruits without carnality, by parthenogenesis. In paintings of the Annunciation, the lily appears almost as regularly as the angel Gabriel as a symbol of Mary’s purity. The association of flowers with female purity hindered the discovery of sex in plants. Although most people are aware of pollen, widespread confusion about its role in sexual reproduction still lingers.
Plant-Female Iconography in Neolithic Europe
Authors: Taiz Lincoln , Taiz Lee
Published: July 2018

“Plant-Female Iconography in Neolithic Europe” covers the Neolithic transition to agriculture in the Aegean and Europe, which was accompanied by the production of a large corpus of anthropomorphic figurines, a genre dominated by images of women. Figurines with cereal grain eyes reminiscent of those at Sha’ar Hagolan, have been found in Greece, and this symbolic association between plants and women tracked the spread of agriculture into Europe. There female figurines appear bearing grain impressions, or incised with plant imagery. The dot and lozenge motif found on some figurines has been interpreted as symbolizing the planted field. Female images from the megalithic era of Malta, including engravings on the base of the monumental statue of a woman at the Tarxian temple, reveal symbols evidencing strong plant-female associations. This association shows continuity throughout the secondary products revolution and the Chalcolithic period and continues into the stratified patriarchal societies of the Bronze Age.
Sacred Trees and Enclosed Gardens
Authors: Taiz Lincoln , Taiz Lee
Published: July 2018

“Sacred Trees and Enclosed gardens” discusses myths, poetry and art in ancient Babylonia, Egypt and the Levant as they relate to sex in plants. By the second millennium BCE, Babylonians had recognized dioecism in date palms and had established laws governing the practice of artificial pollination, but this recognition was never extended to plants in general. Instead, agricultural abundance came to be identified with the sexuality of powerful goddesses. Date symbolism suggesting the method of artificial pollination is evident in the jewelry of Queen Puabi of Ur. The Warka Vase, illustrating the agricultural food chain, culminates with representations of Inanna and the king whose sacred marriage ritual insures the prosperity of the kingdom. Egyptian tree goddesses were widely represented. The erotic poetry of Mesopotamian agricultural rituals persists in Egyptian love poetry, and continues in the Biblical “Song of Songs”. In the Bible, the vegetation goddess Asherah is mentioned forty times.
Plant Sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus
Authors: Taiz Lincoln , Taiz Lee
Published: July 2018

“Plant Sex from Empedocles to Theophrastus” investigates Greek philosophies concerning plants. The Pythagoreans and pre-Socratic philosophers taught that the universe was governed by a divine order that could be understood through mathematical or physical laws, and that “natural laws” were discoverable by observation and logic. This tradition eventually gave rise to modern science. Unlike Plato, who viewed the physical world as “shadows,” knowable only through mathematics and abstract philosophy, Aristotle and Theophrastus regarded everything in the natural world that could be perceived by the senses as both real and knowable, and believed direct observation combined with reason and logic were the most reliable guides to truth. They systematized a prodigious amount of biological information, but were unable to elucidate the problem of plant sex. Theophrastus’ failed to understand the so-called “degeneration” of trees grown from seed because it couldn’t be understood without a two-sex model. Biblical theorists fared no better.
The Multiplicity of Algorithms
Authors: Bucher Taina
Published: July 2018

Algorithms exist and operate on multiple levels. They are technical as much as they are social, cultural as much as they are functional. The chapter examines the multiplicity of algorithms, arguing for an expanded view on algorithms that takes it variable ontology into account. Providing the conceptual groundwork by merging perspectives from computer science, social sciences, and the humanities, the chapter explains the different meanings of algorithms as technical entities, and phenomena of social concern, respectively. Algorithms do not merely have power and politics; they are fundamentally productive of new ways of ordering the world as part of a much wider network of relations and practices. Offering a rich overview of critical algorithms studies, the author suggests that the multiplicity of algorithms is not about providing different perspectives on one static object called an algorithm but about realizing how the algorithm is already many things at once.
Affective Landscapes
Authors: Bucher Taina
Published: July 2018

Given the centrality of algorithms in the media landscape, how do they affect people’s everyday lives? Drawing on 35 interviews with social media users about their encounters with algorithms online, the chapter considers the barely perceived transitions in power that occur when algorithms and people meet. When do people encounter algorithms, and what responses and imaginations do these encounters generate? Analyzing specific situations in which users notice algorithmic mechanisms at work and start reflecting and talking about them, the chapter shows how the algorithmic output of social media becomes culturally meaningful, as seen in the ways that people form opinions about specific systems and act strategically around them. The notion of the algorithmic imaginary is put forward to suggest that it might not always matter what the algorithm is but rather how and when people imagine and perceive algorithms as this is what shapes their orientations toward platforms.
Programming the News
Authors: Bucher Taina
Published: July 2018

Algorithmic power and politics stems in part from how algorithms acquire the capacity to disturb and to compose new sensibilities as part of situated practices, particularly in terms of how they become invested with certain political and moral capacities. Looking at how algorithms materialize in the institutional setting of the news media, the chapter considers how algorithms are made to matter. Based on field observations and 20 interviews with digital editors and managers at leading Scandinavian news organizations the chapter explores how institutional actors are responding to the proliferation of data and algorithms. The analysis shows how, on the one hand, news organizations feel the pressure to reorient their practices toward the new algorithmic logic governing the media landscape at large. On the other hand, algorithms work to disturb and question established boundaries and norms of what journalism is and ought to be.
The Role of Iconographical Programs at the Baths of Caracalla
Authors: Gensheimer Maryl B.
Published: July 2018

To query the sociopolitical rationale that may have prompted the emperor Caracalla to endow such a monumental bathing facility, Chapter 3 addresses the iconographical trends that mark distinctive emphases within the larger body of the Baths’ decorative program. Particular attention is paid to representations of Hercules, Bacchus, and other divinities and personifications associated with the emperor, as well as Homeric and other mythological exempla that are likewise an allusion to imperial largess. Similarly, the historical reliefs from the palaestrae and the honorific portrait statues of the imperial family displayed within the Baths are also scrutinized for their insights into the self-aggrandizing strategies of their eponymous benefactor. Together, the chapter’s discussion reveals both the obvious and subtler meanings underlying certain iconographical choices and uses those observations to recover the original motivations of the imperial patron.
Women
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: July 2018

This chapter poses a question on the now-popular image of women’s participation and their prominent role in the Hasidic movement. First, it argues that the exceptional cases of female Hasidic leaders, so popular in the academic writing on the subject, are not representative of the broader Hasidic world. Instead, the chapter offers an analysis of the possible forms of association with Hasidism among the wives, daughters, and mothers of rank-and-file Hasidim in the constitutive, identity-forming spaces and activities of the Hasidic community, especially prayer houses and pilgrimages. It strongly demonstrates the women were institutionally excluded from Hasidism and very often distanced themselves. This reopens the question of the possible forms of women’s association with Hasidism other than institutional participation.
Houses of the Spirit
Authors: Gatta John
Published: July 2018

Domiciles ordinarily represent the first space that humans occupy, structures through which they begin to realize their own being and relation to the larger world. It is also in and through houses that humans may first experience themselves as souls, gaining sacramental intimations of a spirituality mediated through yet also beyond the materiality of their primal shelter. This chapter reflects on the diverse ways in which house structures, even as they are stationed in space, play a critical role in the spiritual journeying of writers such as Henry Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. With reference to fictional works by Willa Cather, Marilynne Robinson, and Ernest Gaines, this chapter also reflects on the problematic complications of humankind’s relation to home places—that is, on what it means to be displaced and the existential consequence of encountering former houses that are no longer homes.
Spirits of Pilgrimage, Peregrination, and Re-Placement
Authors: Gatta John
Published: July 2018

Movement, immigration, and pilgrimage have long been keynotes of American experience. Following the opening chapter’s attention on the spiritual inscape of home dwellings, this chapter concerns itself with the spirituality of motion, re-placement, and pilgrimage as reflected in American works of literary imagination. Lead characters in this story include travelers, explorers, and would-be pilgrims as well as resettlers—that is, those who leave their place of birth to adopt another as their own. The religious implications of these peregrinations and adoptions are considered in relation to prose texts by Carolyn Servid, Barry Lopez, John Muir, N. Scott Momaday, Gary Snyder, and others. These texts often associate their spirituality of place with reverence for what’s found in the going there rather than in the getting there. Developing the theme of localism versus globalism, this chapter concludes by assessing two versions of globally engaged localism as represented in works by Wendell Berry and David Haskell.
The Place of Imagination
Authors: Gatta John
Published: July 2018

“Imagination,” a word evidently central to the vocation and sensibility of English Romantic poets, is likewise invoked often as a defining term in American literary history. But what are the theological implications of this crucial category, beginning with Coleridge’s seminal statements about it? How might the human faculty of imagination—often but doubtfully associated with an abstractly ethereal quality of mind—bear upon concrete facts of the world humans experience? And how, in the light of philosophic perspectives, together with Wendell Berry’s provocative reflections on “imagination in place,” might Imagination be understood as integral with the phenomenology of place? Such questions are addressed here by means of themes bearing on the Earthiness of Imagination, the Contemplative Reach of Imagination, and Numinous Layers of Place as Palimpsest. Literary texts analyzed to develop these themes include Whitman’s verse and works by two contemporary writers—poet Marilyn Nelson and novelist Alfred Véa.
Afterword
Authors: Gatta John
Published: July 2018

In literature as well as life, the idea of home or homecoming is pivotal—a token, ultimately, of humanity’s insatiable longing for things enduring and ultimate. Home’s primal sense is embedded in one’s birthplace: A primary locus for ancient veneration of the genius loci was, after all, the personal domicile. But in broadly religious terms, “home” defines as well one’s final destination and destiny. That sense becomes pervasive and gripping throughout Marilynne Robinson’s novels—as well as in Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, and Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man.” For Christians, “home” carries unmistakable overtones of giftedness, of sacramental grace—even, at times, when homecoming proves anguishing. Overall, American literary tradition manifests an enduring yet variegated fascination with spirits of place, often identified with those unfathomable, unmappable tokens of mysterious presence that we either discover within or attribute to certain sties more than others.
Theories and Models
Authors: Vorms Marion
Published: July 2018

Theories are among the main achievements of scientific inquiry and appear as the repositories of scientific knowledge. This chapter is devoted to an examination of the notion of theory as a unit of analysis for the study of scientific knowledge. Most of the analysis consists in presenting and criticizing two major proposals made by philosophers of science, the “received view,” commonly attributed to logical empiricism, and the “semantic view of theories,” which became the new orthodoxy in the 1960s. Both proposals aim at formal reconstructions of theories. The shared assumptions underlying this common project will be questioned. Alternative ways of construing scientific theorizing will be sketched, notably those which are more “agent-centered” and put forward the way scientists use and understand their theories in practice.
Philosophy of Medicine
Authors: Giroux Élodie
Published: July 2018

This chapter views philosophy of medicine as a domain within philosophy of science as opposed to a province of bioethics. Thus, it first deals with the philosophical analysis of health, disease, and illness concepts and with the scientific nature of medicine. Relative to the second theme, it addresses questions relative to the causes and explanations of disease and the status of theories in biomedical science. A central concern here is the status and nature of proof in medicine and the relationship between theory and practice at the heart of evidence-based medicine. Finally, the chapter focuses on the specific problems raised by causal analysis and experimentation in medicine and on the nature of clinical reasoning.
Introduction
Authors: Freeman Samuel
Published: July 2018

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of liberalism, which is best understood as an expansive, philosophical notion. Liberalism is a collection of political, social, and economic doctrines and institutions that encompasses classical liberalism, left liberalism, liberal market socialism, and certain central values. This chapter then introduces subsequent chapters, which are divided into three parts. Part I, “Liberalism, Libertarianism, and Economic Justice,” clarifies the distinction between classical liberalism and the high liberal tradition and their relation to capitalism, and then argues that libertarianism is not a liberal view. Part II, “Distributive Justice and the Difference Principle,” analyzes and applies John Rawls’s principles of justice to economic systems and private law. Part III, “Liberal Institutions and Distributive Justice,” focuses on the crucial role of liberal institutions and procedures in determinations of distributive justice and addresses why the first principles of a moral conception of justice should presuppose general facts in their justification.
Reading Gospels “Before the Book”
Authors: Larsen Matthew D. C.
Published: July 2018

Concepts like author, book, and publication operate at a foundational level in scholarship on the gospels. Yet such ideas are culturally negotiated in each particular place and time, and there is no evidence of anyone’s thinking of the gospel as a book published by an author until the end of the second century. This chapter raises questions about what it would look like to read gospels “before the book.” It explores the history of concepts like publication and authorship.
Multiple Authorized Versions of the Same Work
Authors: Larsen Matthew D. C.
Published: July 2018

Connected with ideas of textual unfinishedness and accidental publication is the reality that some works exist in multiple authorized versions. Chapter 4 looks at two examples from widely differing contexts in antiquity: Qumran and Herculaneum. The author explores the similarities and differences in the textual multiplicity of the Serekh texts (community rules) found at Qumran and the multiple versions of Philodemus’s works from the Herculaneum library, especially his On Rhetoric. The fact that multiple authorized versions of the same work were common in places as disparate (geographically, culturally, and so forth) as Qumran and Herculaneum gestures to the ubiquity of the phenomena. Yet the differences of multiplicity at each place offers insights in ancient textual culture.
What It Is Like To Perceive
Authors: Maloney J. Christopher
Published: July 2018

Conscious perception is a distinctive mode of cognition marked by its manifestly sensuous phenomenal character. Why? An intentionalist may reply that perception is a kind of psychological state realized by an oddly contentful mental representation. A higher order theorist might alternatively answer that a perceptual state is sensuous since it is the content of a higher order cognitive state. Neither of these representationalists is right. It is not the content of any mental state that ensures perception's phenomenal character. Rather, the unique structure of a perceptual representation determines perception's sensuous side. For a perceptual representation is an extended mental representation of a peculiar sort. It is a representation in which the vehicle of reference is itself the very object to which that vehicle refers. Perceptual representation thus differs from all other forms of cognitive representation in a way that directly acquaints a perceiver with whatever real object she perceives. Perception is sensuous because it is unbrokered cognitive contact with something present. This confrontational mode of cognition owes its phenomenal character not to what it represents but rather to how it represents. What it is like to perceive is bluntly - but exactly - to represent something real that is really at hand. Conscious perception is just direct acquaintance with what's there.
Intentionalism and Recurrent Cognitive Content
Authors: Maloney J. Christopher
Published: July 2018

Conscious perception carries distinctive phenomenal character. Intentionalism would account for this character by appeal to the wealth of information embedded in perceptual content while also cautioning that such opulent content exceeds the poor grasp of other types of conscious cognitive consideration. Intentionalism adds that introspective comparison of the differing phenomenal characters of contrastive perceptual episodes reveals only the episodes’ difference in content. Accordingly, intentionalism concludes that perceptual content alone determines phenomenal character. However, this conclusion fatally fails to accommodate the recalcitrant fact that the content of perceptual experience inferentially permeates reasoning, both theoretical and practical. So, the content of perception cannot be peculiar to that sensuous mode of cognition. Hence, it would seem that intentionalism is false.
Higher Order Theory
Authors: Maloney J. Christopher
Published: July 2018

Rosenthal's rendition of representationalism denies intentionalism. His higher order theory instead asserts that a perceptual state's phenomenal character is set by that state's being related to, because represented by, another, but higher order, cognitive state. The theory arises from the doubtful supposition of unconscious perception and mistakenly construes intrinsic phenomenal character extrinsically, as one state's serving as the content of another. Yet it remains mysterious how and why a higher order state might be so potent as to determine phenomenal character at all. Better to resist higher order theory’s embrace of dubious unconscious perceptual states and account for states so-called simply in terms of humdrum mnemonic malfeasance. Moreover, since the suspect theory allows higher order misrepresentation, it implies sufferance of impossible phenomenal character. Equally problematic, representationalism pitched at the higher order entails the existence of bogus phenomenal character when upstairs states represent downstairs nonperceptual states.
Dual Aspect Theory
Authors: Maloney J. Christopher
Published: July 2018

Carruthers proposes a subtle dispositionalist rendition of higher order theory regarding phenomenal character. The theory would distinguish unconscious movement management from conscious attitude management as perceptual processes. Each process takes perceptual representations as inputs. A representation subject to attitude management is apt to induce a higher order representation of itself that secures a self-referential aspect of its content supposedly determinative of phenomenal character. Unfortunately, the account requires a problematic cognitive ambiguity while failing to explain why attitude, but not movement, management, determines character. Moreover, normal variation in attitudinal management conflicts with the constancy typical of phenomenal character. And although an agent denied perceptual access to a scene about which she is otherwise well informed would suffer no phenomenal character, dispositionalist theory entails otherwise. Such problems, together with the results of the previous chapters, suggest that, whether cloaked under intentionalism or higher order theory, representationalism mistakes content for character.
Graeme Gibson
Authors: Bakan Michael B.
Published: July 2018

Graeme Gibson is a man of many talents. He curates an online museum of more than four hundred world music instruments, plays many of those instruments himself, designs and builds others, and conducts copious research on music traditions worldwide. Because “world music involves numerous traditions [up] to contemporary musics,” Graeme says, “I prefer to think of it as a spectrum that includes numerous genres.” He sees parallels between the spectrum of world music and the autism spectrum, where he states that he “also found that everyone is different from their case, to my case and so on. I do agree with the term ‘spectrum,’ ” he adds, “but we still have lots to learn.” Living with “classic autism” all his life, Graeme has faced formidable challenges. Yet he would not rid himself of his condition even given the chance: “Some symptoms I would like to have gone, like stress triggers and so on, but I fear in the end my music may be lost too.”
Introduction
Authors: Geslani Marko
Published: July 2018

The introduction reviews the historiographic problem of the relation between fire sacrifice (yajña) and image worship (pūjā), which have traditionally been seen as opposing ritual structures serving to undergird the distinction of “Vedic” and “Hindu.” Against such an icono- and theocentric approach, it proposes a history of the priesthood in relation to royal power, centering on the relationship between the royal chaplain (purohita) and astrologer (sāṃvatsara) as a crucial, unexplored development in early Indian religion. In order to capture these historical developments, it outlines a method for the comparative study of ritual forms over time.
The Inception of a Ritual Category
Authors: Geslani Marko
Published: July 2018

A prime instance of innovation within orthopraxy, this chapter tracks the inception of the śānti (appeasement) ritual through the combination of diverse instruments first described in the earliest ritual manual of the Atharvaveda (the Kauśikasūtra), especially the mantra-infused “appeasement water.” It describes a shift in emphasis within the Atharvan priesthood, from the brahmán, the fourth priest of the solemn sacrifice, to the purohita, the royal chaplain of the early Indian kingdom. Examining some of the earliest evidence of divination in post-Vedic ritual, it argues that the śānti ritual formed a major vehicle for new astrological concerns among the Vedic priesthood.
The Ritual Culture of Appeasement
Authors: Geslani Marko
Published: July 2018

This chapter details how the śānti ritual was politicized in the arena of kingship (rājadharma). It examines a collection of ritual manuals (the Appendices of the Atharvaveda) for the royal chaplain (purohita) that evince the growth of Atharvan engagement with divination, and a consequent multiplication of occasions for śānti. Forming an early precursor to the Hindu calendar, these texts delineate the king’s ritual regime, which comes to be dominated by forms of repetitive bathing that incorporate other modes of ritual, such as gifting and sorcery. The Appendices thus represent the apex of a broader culture of ritual appeasement in the Atharvan tradition. This culture not only involves the technical expansion of śānti, but also its discursive potential as part of an encompassing theory of the state.
Varāhamihira’s Astrological Ritualism
Authors: Geslani Marko
Published: July 2018

This chapter examines the nexus of Vedism and astrology (Jyotiḥśāstra) in the work of the famous polymath Varāhamihira (fl. 550). In its use of ritual conventions, Varāhamihira’s texts demonstrate the influence of Atharvan ritual in astrological circles. It also clarifies importance of the yātrā, or war march, in figurations of kingship. The chapter shows how the ritual narrative of the war-bound king came to be incorporated in the royal ritual of consecration (abhiṣeka) and how, through this ritual appropriation, new, non-Vedic ritual actors would come to participate in Vedic ritual forms. In particular, Varāhamihira applies the technique of bali (food exchange) to undermine the aspersive, abhiṣeka based format of Atharvan śānti, which relied exclusively on śānti water and Atharvan mantras. The ritual-astrological nexus offers a counterpoint to early Dharmaśāstric conceptions of warfare, which tend to mute details of astrological timing for military action, and hence supress possible debates over fatalism.
Concepts of Emotions in Modern Philosophy and Psychology
Authors: Deigh John
Published: July 2018

Until the late nineteenth century the classical empiricist concept of emotions dominated modern philosophy and psychology. The work of William James and Sigmund Freud rendered this concept obsolete and gave rise to the concepts that now prevail in philosophy and psychology. This essay explains the conceptual changes in the theory of emotion that James and Freud brought about and then critically examines the concepts of emotion to which their work gave rise and that now prevail in philosophy and psychology. The examination focuses on the concepts central to cognitivist theories of emotion that take emotions to be or to contain essentially judgments, cognitivist theories that take emotions to be or to contain essentially perceptions, affective theories that take emotions to be information bearing feelings, and theories that take the intentionality of emotions to have an essentially affective character.
Is Empathy Required for Making Moral Judgments?
Authors: Deigh John
Published: July 2018

This essay is a study of the nature of moral judgment. Its main thesis is that moral judgment is a type of judgment defined by its content and not its psychological profile. The essay arrives at this thesis through a critical examination of Hume’s sentimentalism and the role of empathy in its account of moral judgment. The main objection to Hume’s account is its exclusion of people whom one can describe as making moral judgments though they have no motivation to act on them. Consideration of such people, particularly those with a psychopathic personality, argues for a distinction between different types of moral judgment in keeping with the essay’s main thesis. Additional support for the main thesis is then drawn from Piaget’s theory of moral judgment in children.
Williams on Practical Reason
Authors: Deigh John
Published: July 2018

Bernard Williams’s controversial view about reasons for action is the topic of this essay. The essay explains Williams’s internalist account of reasons for action as an improvement on Donald Davidson’s account. It then corrects Williams’s criticism of externalist accounts of reasons for action by conceding that such accounts are viable as long as they do not imply that the reasons a person has for doing an action can explain his or her doing it. The concession follows from acknowledging the very different program of studying reasons in ethics exemplified in the work of Kurt Baier. Once the correction is made to Williams’s criticism, the essay offers a defense of his view against the criticisms of T. M. Scanlon and Christine Korsgaard.