bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mobilizing for Immigrant and Latino Rights under Trump
Authors: Zepeda-Millán Chris , Wallace Sophia J.
Published: August 2018

President Trump has targeted the immigrant community more openly, directly, and often than any other segment of the Resistance. Accordingly, this chapter examines some of the ways the 2016 election has impacted immigrant rights activism. Because nativist actions have a disparate effect on both US- and foreign-born Latinos, it pays particular attention to this racialized group’s current support for contentious politics on behalf of the foreign born. However, immigrants have not been the only group targeted by the Trump administration. Using survey data, this chapter also assesses the degree to which Latinos support the activism of other segments of the Resistance, specifically the Black Lives Matter and lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) rights movements. The chapter highlights some important examples of intersectional and cross-movement immigrant rights organizing that have taken place before and after Trump’s electoral victory.
Climate of Resistance
Authors: Fisher Dana R.
Published: August 2018

How has the climate movement connected with the Resistance? This chapter explores the ways the 2017 People’s Climate March built on the momentum of the Resistance to mobilize a crowd with intersectional interests. First, data collected through random surveys of participants at the People’s Climate March in September 2014 are compared with those collected at the People’s Climate March in 2017. The results show how the movement has changed over that 3-year period. Next, the results from the 2017 March are compared with data collected from the Women’s March in 2017. As at the Women’s March, the 2017 People’s Climate March mobilized a crowd with intersectional interests that cross racial identity, class, gender, and sexuality. There is evidence from this analysis that the climate movement has become part of the growing Resistance. This chapter concludes by discussing the implications of these findings on the climate movement and the Resistance more generally.
Constituency and Leadership in the Evolution of Resistance Organizations
Authors: Han Hahrie , Oyakawa Michelle
Published: August 2018

This chapter examines the way old and new movement organizations addressed strategic dilemmas regarding constituency and leadership in the Trump Era. This chapter examines two case organizations to illustrate how long-standing and new organizations grappled with two particular challenges: (1) How would they define their constituencies, and what is the extent to which they will put questions of race at the center (or not)? And (2) Will they invest resources in leadership development, and how will that investment be balanced with strategies to mobilize “at scale”? The cases are ISAIAH, a long-standing faith-based community organization in Minnesota, and Indivisible, a new national organization that emerged after the 2016 election. This chapter thus illuminates the way two organizations reacted to changing political conditions in the Trump Era and the key strategic dilemmas that emerged.
Neoliberal Futurity and Generic Human Capital
Authors: Rottenberg Catherine
Published: August 2018

Drawing on claims made in Chapter 2, this chapter demonstrates how neoliberal feminism is producing a new form of neoliberal governmentality for young middle-class and “aspirational” women. This form of governmentality encourages women to carefully sequence their lives as well as to make smart self-investments in the present to ensure enhanced returns in the future. Providing two representative examples from the mainstream media—the glorification of college hookup culture and the new technology of egg freezing being offered as part of corporations’ benefits package—this chapter demonstrates how upwardly mobile middle-class women are being encouraged to invest in their professions first and to postpone maternity until some later point. Indeed, by encouraging these women to build their own portfolio and to self-invest in the years once thought of as the most “fertile,” neoliberal feminism is increasingly interpellating young middle-class women as generic rather than gendered human capital.
We Need to Talk About Fascism
Authors: Gentry Caron E.
Published: August 2018

This chapter highlights how the racist and misogynist anxiety politics outlined previously allowed for a fascist movement to find a foothold inside the US presidency. Relying upon previous work on what fascism is, however tenuously defined, and the steps fascist movements often follow as they take power, the chapter compares this literature with the rise of “alt-right” politics and its relationship with Donald Trump. It clearly identifies how the events since November 8 could be construed as mirroring other historic fascist movements. This is made possible over the conflation of economic and political anxiety over Obama administration policies such as the Affordable Care Act, with Obama’s race bringing out the worst in American politics. It demonstrates Trump and his advisors’ own anxieties about terrorism and how that allowed the original “Muslim ban” to come into effect.
Interpreting the Bible
Authors: Rivers Isabel
Published: August 2018

The Bible was the most important book for the writers and readers discussed in this study. This chapter covers access to the Bible and advice on how to read it for children, families, and those of little education; Bible distribution; responses to Bible reading; biblical abridgements and extracts; works targeted at educated readers who disdained biblical in comparison with classical literature; annotated editions of the whole Bible or the New Testament, for families and those with no knowledge of the biblical Hebrew or Greek. The biblical recommenders and editors discussed include Isaac Watts, Henry Venn, John Reynolds, Sarah Trimmer, James Hervey, David Simpson, and Matthew Henry, and there are detailed accounts of the structure and aims of Philip Doddridge’s Family Expositor, John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, and Thomas Scott’s The Holy Bible … with Original Notes, and Practical Observations.
Poems and Hymns
Authors: Rivers Isabel
Published: August 2018

This chapter challenges the common modern differentiation between religious poems and hymns, emphasizing the category of poetry that promoted piety in a range of forms. Isaac Watts was a pervasive influence. Multi-authored Congregationalist, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Unitarian hymn collections are examined, together with the methods and choices of the main editors, including the Wesleys, Whitefield, Ash and Evans, George Burder, and Andrew Kippis. The publishing and editing of poetry by a range of writers, famous and obscure, is compared. Milton, Young, and Cowper were the favourite religious poets, but many little-known writers published volumes of religious poetry or contributed to the religious magazines, with some of their poems being published posthumously. Readers and writers made extensive use of hymns and poems in private and in company, reading them in silence and aloud, quoting them in their manuscript journals and letters, and interweaving them in their prose publications.
A Relational Theory of Non-Propositional Attitudes
Authors: Grzankowski Alex
Published: August 2018

According to the “standard theory”, propositional attitudes are two-place relations holding between subjects and propositions. The present chapter considers the prospects of offering an analog for non-propositional attitudes. Many of the same types of motivations and advantages that have made the standard theory of propositional attitudes attractive apply to non-propositional attitudes as well. Of course, in the case of non-propositional attitudes, objects other than propositions are called for and the suggestion to be offered is that non-propositional attitudes are two-place relations holding between subjects and properties. At the end of the chapter, the view is defended against a seemingly obvious objection—namely that subjects don’t typically fear, like, love, and so on, properties.
Is Attention a Non-Propositional Attitude?
Authors: Watzl Sebastian
Published: August 2018

The first part of this chapter argues that many forms of attention and attention-entailing mental episodes, such as looking at something, watching something, listening to something, or tactually feeling something, are paradigmatic examples of non-propositional intentional episodes. In addition, attention cannot be reduced to any other (propositional or non-propositional) mental episodes. But is attention a non-propositional attitude? The second part of the chapter argues that it is not. In order to account for attention and its apparently non-propositional character we should reject a certain atomistic model of our mental life and move towards a more holistic conception. I question the assumption that a subject’s mental life should be thought of as a causally connected collection of mental attitudes. This “building-block” model of the mind does not fit the case of attention. Instead, a subject’s mental life can be partitioned along many, equally appropriate dimensions. In a slogan: mentality has priority structure, in addition to attitudinal structure.
Rethinking Existentialism
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: August 2018

Rethinking Existentialism argues that the core of existentialism is the theory that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre described when they popularized the term in 1945: the ethical theory that we ought to treat human freedom as intrinsically valuable and the foundation of all other value. The book argues that Beauvoir and Sartre disagreed over the structure of this freedom in 1943 but that Sartre came to accept Beauvoir’s view by 1952, that Frantz Fanon’s first book should also be classified as a canonical work of existentialism, and that Beauvoir’s argument for a moral imperative of authenticity is a firmer ground for existentialism’s ethical claim than any of the eudaimonist arguments offered by Fanon and Sartre. It develops its arguments through critical contrasts with Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book concludes by sketching contributions that this analysis of existentialism can make to contemporary philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy.
Why Meursault is an Outsider
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: August 2018

This chapter presents an original analysis of The Outsider (also known as The Stranger), the novel Albert Camus published in 1942, as a meditation on absurdity and moral value that contains the seeds of the moral and political philosophy that Camus published in The Rebel in 1952, which Sartre famously responded to by accusing Camus of abandoning his philosophical principles. The chapter argues that The Outsider is profoundly opposed to existentialism, since it implies a natural human tendency to have genuinely other-regarding emotions. It is because Meursault lacks this aspect of human nature that he speaks and behaves in the disconnected, disinterested, depersonalized ways that define him as a narrator and as a character. Meursault comes to realize, by the end of the tale, that moral value is grounded in precisely this natural human fraternity that he himself lacks.
Freedom and the Origins of Reasons
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: August 2018

This chapter clarifies the core descriptive claim of existentialism that the reasons for action encountered in experience depend on the values at the heart of the agent’s projects. It argues that Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre’s initial form of existentialism fails because it mistakes this for a claim about the meanings encountered in experience. Sartre’s initial form of existentialism agrees with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology that experienced meanings are determined by the agent’s physical capabilities and social situation. Sartre adds that the world is experienced as a field of reasons that encourage and discourage specific courses of action and that these reasons reflect the agent’s projects. Sartre’s theory of radical freedom is that projects have no inertia of their own, so one can revise or replace a project without needing any reason to do so or meeting any resistance from that project.
The Imperative of Authenticity
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: August 2018

This chapter articulates Simone de Beauvoir’s argument for a categorical imperative of authenticity, presented across her short book Pyrrhus and Cineas and so far overlooked in existential and moral philosophy. The argument aims to derive this imperative from the very structure of human being itself. It begins from a premise that, according to existentialism, everyone must accept. This is the premise that some ends are valuable. It aims to derive from this, by a sequence of logical entailments, the conclusion that the structure of human agency is objectively valuable. If we must accept the opening premise and if the logical reasoning is sound, then it is imperative that we accept the conclusion. If successful, this argument establishes a categorical imperative that both grounds moral constraints on behaviour and establishes that our enterprises within those constraints are not absurd.
The Future of Existentialism
Authors: Webber Jonathan
Published: August 2018

This chapter argues that existentialism, as this book has articulated it, has the potential to make significant contributions to moral thought, philosophy of mind, social psychology, and psychotherapy, and that sophisticated engagements with these areas of inquiry should in turn refine existentialism. The existentialist theory of project sedimentation is an important perspective on the development of personal character, the socialization of the individual, the role of endorsement in mental life, the origins of unendorsed biases and stereotypes, and the social problems and psychic distress that these can cause. The eudaimonist and moral arguments for authenticity are significant contributions to contemporary philosophical inquiry into the grounding of moral and more generally normative value. The chapter closes with a brief sketch of some implications of this existentialism for reading and writing.
Explicit Indirection
Authors: Lepore Ernie , Stone Matthew
Published: August 2018

Our goal in this chapter is to contest the traditional view of indirection in utterances such as, ‘Can you pass the salt?’ by developing a very different way of characterizing the interpretations involved. We argue that the felt “indirection” of such utterances reflects the kind of meaning the utterances have, rather than the way that meaning is derived. So understood, there is no presumption that indirect meanings involve the pragmatic derivation of enriched contents froma literal interpretation; rather, we argue that indirect meanings are explicitly encoded in grammar. We build on recent work on formalizing declarative, interrogative, and imperative meanings as distinct but compatible kinds of content for utterances.
Force and Conversational States
Authors: Murray Sarah E. , Starr William B.
Published: August 2018

This essay sketches an approach to speech acts in which mood does not semantically determine illocutionary force. The conventional content of mood determines the semantic type of the clause in which it occurs, and, given the nature of discourse, that type most naturally lends itself to serving as a particular type of speech act, that is, to serving as one of the three basic types of language game moves-making an assertion (declarative); posing a question (interrogative); or proposing to one’s addressee(s) the adoption of a goal (imperative). This type of semantics for grammatical mood is illustrated with the imperative.
The Social Life of Slurs
Authors: Nunberg Geoff
Published: August 2018

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions. They don’t semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner to assert one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the word’s referent. Kraut is simply the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity. This account explains the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” as well as a number of unexplored features, such as the variation in tone among the different slurs for a particular group, with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms.
Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation, and Philosophy of Language
Authors: Saul Jennifer
Published: August 2018

This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics.
What is—or, for that Matter, isn’t—‘Experimental’ Semantics?
Authors: Jacobson Pauline
Published: August 2018

This chapter examines the currently fashionable notion of ‘experimental semantics’, and argues that most work in natural language semantics has always been experimental. The oft-cited dichotomy between ‘theoretical’ (or ‘armchair’) and ‘experimental’ is bogus and should be dropped form the discourse. The same holds for dichotomies like ‘intuition-based’ (or ‘thought experiments’) vs. ‘empirical’ work (and ‘real experiments’). The so-called new ‘empirical’ methods are often nothing more than collecting the large-scale ‘intuitions’ or, doing multiple thought experiments. Of course the use of multiple subjects could well allow for a better experiment than the more traditional single or few subject methodologies. But whether or not this is the case depends entirely on the question at hand. In fact, the chapter considers several multiple-subject studies and shows that the particular methodology in those cases does not necessarily provide important insights, and the chapter argues that some its claimed benefits are incorrect.
Axiomatization in the Meaning Sciences
Authors: Holliday Wesley H. , Icard Thomas F. III
Published: August 2018

While much of semantic theorizing is based on intuitions about logical phenomena associated with linguistic constructions—phenomena such as consistency and entailment—it is rare to see axiomatic treatments of linguistic fragments. Given a fragment interpreted in some class of formally specified models, it is often possible to ask for a characterization of the reasoning patterns validated by the class of models. Axiomatizations provide such a characterization, often in a perspicuous and efficient manner. This chapter highlights some of the benefits of providing axiomatizations for the purpose of semantic theorizing. Three examples from the study of modality provide an illustration of these benefits.
Interpretation and the Interpreter
Authors: Glüer Kathrin
Published: August 2018

According to Donald Davidson, “what a fully informed interpreter could learn about what a speaker means is all there is to learn; the same goes for what the speaker believes” (Davidson 1983). This is a foundational claim about the nature of semantic properties: these are evidence-constituted properties. They are determined by the principle of charity on the basis of data about the behaviour of the speaker(s). But what exactly is the role of the interpreter in the Davidsonian account of meaning determination? Is she merely a dramatic device or an essential element of the metaphysical picture? This chapter investigates whether David Lewis’s (1983) distinction between natural and unnatural properties can help in answering these questions.
Expressing Expectations
Authors: Crespo Inés , Karawani Hadil , Veltman Frank
Published: August 2018

This chapter addresses a variety of topics: (i) conditionals (there is a third kind of conditionals, somewhere between indicatives and counterfactuals); (ii) relative gradable adjectives (how do they get their evaluative force?); and (iii) generic sentences (why aren’t they all equally general?). What these topics have in common is that one cannot explain the meaning—not even the logical properties—of the expressions concerned without explaining how they affect people’s expectations. This can best be done in a framework in which the meaning of a sentence is not equated with its truth conditions but with its (potential) impact on the intentional state of an addressee.
Grasslands of the World
Authors: Wilsey Brian J.
Published: August 2018

Grasslands are herbaceous dominated areas with very low abundance of trees and shrubs. They are found in areas with intermediate precipitation amounts (250–1000 mm) characterized by occasional droughts and are usually the most extensive in the interior of continents. Grasslands began to form 11–24 million years ago (MYA) when grasses invaded woodlands. Grasses initially all had C3 photosynthesis and were found in shaded conditions. However, grasses with C4 photosynthesis require full sun, and they increased in abundance during this time to achieve between 20–40 percent of the local vegetation. By around 6–8 MYA before present, C4 grasses were widespread on most continents that now have extensive grasslands. Grasslands can be classified by soil type or based on gradients of humidity-aridity and human impact (wild grasslands to improved pastures). African savanna grasslands are important because it is where Homo sapiens (humans) speciated and eventually spread to other continents.
Factors Maintaining and Regulating Grassland Structure and Function
Authors: Wilsey Brian J.
Published: August 2018

Intrinsic disturbances are processes that have occurred on an evolutionary time scale, and include fire, wind-damage, digging or burrowing by fossorial mammals, defoliation, and trampling by native large mammals. Grassland species evolved with intrinsic disturbances, and they can be important in maintaining grassland community structure and functioning. Adaptations to fire include short herbaceous stature, high allocation belowground, ability to resprout, and smoke-induced seed germination. Fire interacts with grazing because grazing reduces litter (fuel) load, and fires affect forage quality. Plants can tolerate some level of herbivory in most grasslands. Adaptations that enable grassland plants to resist grazing are similar to plant adaptations to fire. Drought can affect grasslands at a variety of time scales. Vegetative reproduction can allow rapid recolonization after droughts have ended. Plowing is the most common disturbance affecting grasslands, and it has been used to transform native grasslands into crop fields and simplified pasture.
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in Grasslands
Authors: Wilsey Brian J.
Published: August 2018

Biodiversity is a measure of variety of life forms, and can be assessed at the genetic, species, and landscape levels. Species diversity can be partitioned into its basic components of richness (number of species) and evenness, and into spatial components (alpha, beta, gamma). Local extinction rates are often higher in situations where evenness is low due to low abundances in rare species. Many experimental and observational studies have been done on how ecosystem process rates will be impacted by reductions in biodiversity. The mechanism behind observed positive relationships between diversity and ecosystem process rates can be due to at least four processes: 1) the species sampling effect, 2) the selection effect, 3) complementary resource use, or 4) pest outbreaks in low-diversity plots. Biodiversity is sometimes positively related to biomass stability and resistance to extreme events. The stability of dominant species can also be important in grasslands.
Introduction
Authors: Sosa David
Published: August 2018

Slurs are bad words. But how can a word be bad? How is a slur a bad word?

The chapters in this collection all, in one way or another, address this. They are written by several of the leading contributors in the area and are all newly published here. They represent the state of the art in philosophical research on slurs....
A Dual Act Analysis of Slurs
Authors: Camp Elisabeth
Published: August 2018

Slurs are incendiary terms—many deny that sentences containing them can ever be true. And utterances where they occur embedded within normally “quarantining” contexts, like conditionals and indirect reports, can still seem offensive. At the same time, others find that sentences containing slurs can be true; and there are clear cases where embedding does inoculate a speaker from the slur’s offensiveness. This chapter argues that four standard accounts of the “other” element that differentiates slurs from their more neutral counterparts—semantic content, perlocutionary effect, presupposition, and conventional implicature—all fail to account for this puzzling mixture of intuitions. Instead, it proposes that slurs make two distinct, coordinated contributions to a sentence’s conventional communicative role.
Loaded Words
Authors: Bach Kent
Published: August 2018

What, as a matter of linguistic meaning, is added by referring to people with a slurring term rather than with its neutral counterpart? Hybrid expressivism says that slurs have the same descriptive contents as their neutral counterparts and that what distinguishes them is an expressive component. This chapter argues that hybrid expressivism gets the order of explanation backwards and it offers an alternative, loaded descriptivism. This says that the second component of the meaning of a slur is descriptive, not expressive. Using a slur expresses contempt all right (or some such attitude), but not as a matter of meaning. It does so because, thanks to its meaning, using it imputes contemptibility to members of the target group.
How do Slurs Mean?
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: August 2018

It seems “part of the meaning” of a slur that it is a device for displaying contempt. And this seems part of the explanation of differences between slurs and their “neutral counterparts.” But some people, making no linguistic mistake, use slurs in a jocular way, or without animus as interchangeable with their counterparts. And even if the illocutionary “fact” were in some sense “part of meaning,” one might doubt that it is relevant to what is said by an utterance. But information about illocution can be part of “what is said.” This chapter sketches an account of meaning in the sense of what needs to be grasped in order to be a competent speaker; and meaning in this sense is intimately connected with what determines what is “literally said” by an utterance. This provides a natural explanation of why the use of slurs gives rise to a distinctive sort of offense.
Prospects for Sustainable Power and Moderate Climate
Authors: Wolf E. L.
Published: August 2018

A summary of the ongoing conversion from fossil fuel energy economy to sustainable energy is offered. A large fraction of the energy-related work force in the US has shifted to renewables, typified by the high demand for wind turbine technicians. A plan for full conversion to sustainable energy has been offered by Jacobson and collaborators, depending upon increased energy storage using underground thermal storage (UTES), thermal salt application in solar thermal installations, and pumped hydro. Hothouse earth events, extinguishing nearly all life, in climatic history are mentioned. The chance for triggering a future global hyperthermal event appears to be small from the excess carbon emissions of the past two centuries, with the present rate of emission.
The genetics of sleep
Authors: Miller Michelle A.
Published: August 2018

The genetic regulation of normal sleep and sleep disorders is complex and often shows strong environmental interactions. This is a relatively new, and rapidly expanding, area of research, and the number of sleep conditions with established, underlying genetic components is growing. The genetic basis regulating the sleep–wake cycle has identified the Period genes. Their polymorphisms appear to determine the morning/night preferences of individuals. At present, the public health benefits are limited, but will increase as the identification and understanding of genetic causes for sleep conditions improve. This may lead to new diagnostic and treatment options including genetic counselling, improved therapeutic regimes, and new drug treatments.
Sleep and respiratory disorders
Authors: Edwards Bradley A. , Hamilton Garun S.
Published: August 2018

A number of sleep-related breathing and respiratory disorders impact our ability to achieve a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, these disorders are becoming increasingly common—a phenomenon that has been linked to the rising obesity rates in society. In this chapter we aim to provide an overview of how some of the most common disorders (particularly obstructive sleep apnoea) contribute to poor sleep, review how these disorders/diseases impact both the individual and society, and discuss some of the key challenges and hurdles that we, as a society, will need to overcome if we are to maximize sleep quality in the community.
Sleep and epilepsy—chicken or egg?
Authors: Lozsadi Dora A.
Published: August 2018

Epilepsy is the commonest serious chronic neurological condition, affecting 0.5% of the population in the UK. Subjective sleep disturbance and excessive daytime sleepiness are reported to be 50% more frequent in those with epilepsy than in controls. Causes are multiple. Both poor seizure control and nocturnal attacks are known to contribute to such sleep disorders. Epilepsy also increases the risk of associated sleep disorders, and additional neurological conditions, such as dementia, learning disability, and depression. These all affect sleep hygiene. Prescribed anti-epileptic drugs will further aggravate the problem. Side-effects will include drowsiness. Sedating benzodiazepines and barbiturates are considered worst offenders. Others affect sleep architecture to varying degrees and/or cause insomnia. While hyper-somnolence in patients with epilepsy will raise the possibility of any of the above issues, sleep deprivation is one of the commonest seizure triggers. This chapter will shed more light on the intricate relationship between sleep and epilepsy.
Circadian rhythms, sleep, and anti-cancer treatments
Authors: Innominato Pasquale F. , Spiegel David
Published: August 2018

The circadian timing system temporally regulates biological functions relevant for psycho-physical wellbeing, spanning all the systems related to health. Hence, disruption of circadian rhythms, along with sleep cycles, is associated with the development of several diseases, including cancer. Moreover, altered circadian and sleep functions negatively impact on cancer patients’ quality of life and survival, above and beyond known determinants of outcome. This alteration can occur as a consequence of cancer, but also of anti-cancer treatments. Indeed, circadian rhythms govern also the ability of detoxifying chemotherapy agents across the 24 hours. Hence, adapting chemotherapy delivery to the molecular oscillations in relevant drug pathways can decrease toxicity to healthy cells, while increasing the number of cancer cells killing. This chronomodulated chemotherapy approach, together with the maintenance of proper circadian function throughtout the whole disease challenge, would finally result in safer and more active anticancer treatments, and in patients experiencing better quality and quantity of life.
The sociology of sleep
Authors: Meadows Robert , Williams Simon J. , Gabe Jonathan , Coveney Catherine , Arber Sara
Published: August 2018

Sleep occurs in a social context and is socially, culturally, and historically variable. It is influenced by numerous social factors across the life course, as well as by transitions, such as marriage or cohabitation, parenthood, and widowhood. Gender impacts on sleep, and on the nature of power in negotiations about sleep. Sleep is a complex, if not contradictory, case of medicalization and is also a thoroughly moralized matter within contemporary societies. Understanding sleep requires the use of qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies, and a relational or dyadic focus on couples’ sleep is also called for. Sociology highlights arenas for public health intervention.
The Impact of War on Welfare State Development in Germany
Authors: Starke Peter
Published: August 2018

The world wars were important ‘pacemakers’ of welfare state development in Germany—first and foremost via special wartime or post-war benefit regimes. Veterans’ pensions and reinsertion after World War I and compensation of various war victims after World War II massively increased social spending for decades. Whenever war did have a significant impact on the core welfare state programmes (i.e. the big social insurance schemes), it was through indirect and long-term rather than direct, short-term dynamics. Labour mobilization via the involvement of trade unions and the significant expansion of wartime social assistance and social services during World War I, for example, paved the way for the expansion of the welfare state in the Weimar Republic (such as unemployment insurance in 1927). Social policy during World War II targeted benefits towards soldiers’ families and ethnic German victims, but it was far from the ‘dictatorship of favours’ Götz Aly describes.
Reinforcements for the Wage-Earners’ Welfare State?
Authors: Lloyd Christopher , Battin Tim
Published: August 2018

The characterization of Australia as a wage-earners’ welfare state (Frank Castles) has encouraged some scholars to argue that the Australian model remained necessarily labourist and incapable of developing in a social democratic direction. This chapter shows that World War I had a far-reaching effect on the scale of Australia’s welfare state, and that World War II profoundly changed both its scale and structure in a more social democratic direction. Australia’s federal system and its written constitution have constrained centralist and socialist initiatives, particularly desired by the Australian Labor Party. When Labor returned to power in October 1941, Australia was in its second world war, and Japan’s aggression was only months away. World War II presented Labor with the constitutional and political scope to change the foundations and reach of the welfare state to the extent no other event is likely to have afforded.
Ali Smith
Authors: Cox Fiona
Published: August 2018

Ali Smith is one of the most exuberant and Ovidian of contemporary writers, as was revealed particularly by her rewriting of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe in Girl Meets Boy. This chapter focuses on three of her later works—Artful, Public Library, and Autumn—where her reworking of Ovid becomes integral to her condemnation of recent government policies in the UK, including a healthcare postcode lottery, the closure of hundreds of public libraries, and the Brexit referendum. Ovidian wordplay and humour infuses Smith’s mordant wit as she attacks the inequalities she perceives within British society, even as Ovidian pathos deepens the melancholy of her sense of loss.
Mary Zimmerman
Authors: Cox Fiona
Published: August 2018

Mary Zimmerman’s dramatic adaptation of the Metamorphoses (1998) follows the staging of the Odyssey and represents a further instance of her ongoing engagement with the classical world. By filtering the Ovidian myths through a network of allusions (to Rilke, Jung, and Freud, among others) she reminds her audiences of the consolidation of classical myth within the Western tradition. At the same time she uses the play to meditate upon issues such as unbridled greed and capitalism, anorexia, and emotionally damaged ‘rich kids’. Her play is also underpinned by a profound sense of loss and grief. The innate sorrow of the play was heightened still further when audiences came to watch it after the 9/11 attacks, and their response to the play was informed by the horrors and deaths that they had experienced within their own communities.
Josephine Balmer and Averill Curdy
Authors: Cox Fiona
Published: August 2018

Ovid’s poems of exile have found new life not only through Darrieussecq’s translations, but also through the way in which they inform the poetry of Josephine Balmer whose volume The Word for Sorrow includes her ‘transgressions’ of Ovid that take us from the battlefields of the First World War (situated close to the site of Ovid’s exile) to the poet/translator’s present world, as she searches for Ovid in the recesses of the internet and links him to her own family history. On the other side of the Atlantic Averill Curdy, also, is thinking about the reception of Ovid in America, and what his experiences of loss and exile can teach us in the face of tragedies such as 9/11, the financial crisis, and the Iraq war.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
Authors: Sherwood Dennis , Dalby Paul
Published: August 2018

The Second Law. The definition of entropy, and its mathematical properties. The Clausius inequality, and the criterion of spontaneity of change in an isolated system. Worked examples of heat flow down a temperature gradient, and the adiabatic expansion of a gas into a vacuum. Combining the First and Second Laws, with worked examples, such as phase changes. Introduction to the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Introduction to T,S diagrams.
Order, information and time
Authors: Sherwood Dennis , Dalby Paul
Published: August 2018

This chapter broadens the reader’s appreciation, and understanding, of entropy. Starting with the reader’s intrinsic recognition of the difference between an ‘ordered’ and a ‘disordered’ state, this chapter introduces the concepts of microstates, macrostates and thermodynamic probability, leading firstly to the Boltzmann equation, and then to the relationships between entropy and the flow of time, entropy and information, and Maxwell’s demon. Finally, this chapter introduces the less familiar topics of ‘thermoeconomics’ - the application of the principles of thermodynamics to economic systems – and ‘organodynamics’ – the idea that high-performing teams are systems which maintain a high degree of order, and low entropy, over time, without breaking the Second Law.
Electrochemistry
Authors: Sherwood Dennis , Dalby Paul
Published: August 2018

This chapter explores electrochemistry, from the fundamental observations associated with the Daniel Cell to redox reactions and the Nernst equation. As throughout the book, all the discussions are based on rigorous first principles, with each step carefully explained, and deduced logically from previous material. Topics covered include electrodes and electrode potentials, half-cells and half-cell reactions, electrochemical cells, the electromotive force, standard reversible electrode potentials, oxidising and reducing agents, redox reactions, and the half-cell Nernst equation, and the full reaction Nernst equation.
Researching Religion
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: August 2018

Basic questions about religion in the modern world (such as whether it is becoming more or less popular and who believes what) can be answered only with the perspectives and methods of social science. While the arts and humanities can help us understand religious beliefs and behaviour, only social science can provide us with the evidence that will allow us to discern and explain the social patterns, causes, and consequences of religious belief. Only through the statistical examination of big data can we be confident of what any case study represents. In a text described by one reviewer as ‘brilliantly accessible’, an internationally renowned sociologist addresses the major problems of theory and methods in the study of religion. Important topics in religious studies such as conversion, the relative durability of different types of religion and spirituality, and the social circumstances that strengthen or undermine shared beliefs are used to demonstrate the importance of social science and to address methodological issues such as bias, partisanship, and research ethics. Bruce presents a robust defence of a conventionally scientific view of value-neutral social science against its partisan and postmodern critics.
Defining Religion
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: August 2018

We cannot explain if we cannot identify what needs explaining. This chapter challenges the idea that religion is particularly difficult to define. It demonstrates that what are often called functional definitions are actually assertions about possible consequences of religious belief and argues for a substantive definition that accords with what most people think of as religion: systems of beliefs, behaviour, and organizations built on the assumption of a divine being or beings with the power of moral judgement. It also considers what we mean by spirituality and by the secular. The links between the secular, secularism, secularity, and secularization are clarified.
Action Rational and Irrational
Authors: Bruce Steve
Published: August 2018

The model of human action as resting on rational choices between alternative opportunities for maximizing our utility has been borrowed from liberal economics by social scientists keen to refute the conventional explanation of secularization. This chapter considers whether we can treat religion as a commodity that people buy more or less of according to individual rational choice. It argues that religion differs from soap powder both extrinsically (because we cannot readily compare its costs or benefits) and in terms of its social roots: in most societies switching religion threatens social bonds far more than does changing car brands. Finally, it advances an important general principle: that we should be very reluctant to impute to other people motives that we would not impute to ourselves.
Deciding to use a drone
Authors: Wich Serge A. , Pin Koh Lian
Published: August 2018

In this chapter a brief introduction is given on three main aspects that drones are used for: detecting animals; land-cover mapping; and anti-poaching. Then the chapter focuses on which considerations are important to take into account when deciding to start applying drones for conservation. The chapter starts by providing an overview of alternative aerial data collection technologies. Deciding which technology to use for data gathering is not always straightforward and will likely depend on multiple factors. An overview is given of some aspects that are important to consider when starting the process of thinking about data collection. Then a discussion follows about which equipment and infrastructural needs are important to consider when using drones and the chapter ends by discussing some general considerations related to the usage of drones for conservation.
Typology and anatomy of drones
Authors: Wich Serge A. , Pin Koh Lian
Published: August 2018

In this chapter we discuss the typology of drones that are currently being used for different kinds of environmental and conservation applications. Drones are also commonly known variously as Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). We focus on the most popular aircraft types including multirotor (of various configurations), fixed wing, and hybrid ‘vertical-take-off-and-landing’ (VTOL) craft, and briefly discuss the relative pros and cons of each type. We also broadly discuss the essential components common to all remotely piloted aircraft systems, including the power source, flight controller (or autopilot), and ground control station.
Degradation of organic matter
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

The aerobic oxidation of organic material by microbes is the focus of this chapter. Microbes account for about 50% of primary production in the biosphere, but they probably account for more than 50% of organic material oxidization and respiration (oxygen use). The traditional role of microbes is to degrade organic material and to release plant nutrients such as phosphate and ammonium as well as carbon dioxide. Microbes are responsible for more than half of soil respiration, while size fractionation experiments show that bacteria are also responsible for about half of respiration in aquatic habitats. In soils, both fungi and bacteria are important, with relative abundances and activity varying with soil type. In contrast, fungi are not common in the oceans and lakes, where they are out-competed by bacteria with their small cell size. Dead organic material, detritus, used by microbes, comes from dead plants and waste products from herbivores. It and associated microbes can be eaten by many eukaryotic organisms, forming a detritus food web. These large organisms also break up detritus into small pieces, creating more surface area on which microbes can act. Microbes in turn need to use extracellular enzymes to hydrolyze large molecular weight compounds, which releases small compounds that can be transported into cells. Fungi and bacteria use a different mechanism, “oxidative decomposition,” to degrade lignin. Organic compounds that are otherwise easily degraded (“labile”) may resist decomposition if absorbed to surfaces or surrounded by refractory organic material. Addition of labile compounds can stimulate or “prime” the degradation of other organic material. Microbes also produce organic compounds, some eventually resisting degradation for thousands of years, and contributing substantially to soil organic material in terrestrial environments and dissolved organic material in aquatic ones. The relationship between community diversity and a biochemical process depends on the metabolic redundancy among members of the microbial community. This redundancy may provide “ecological insurance” and ensure the continuation of key biogeochemical processes when environmental conditions change.
The nitrogen cycle
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: August 2018

Nitrogen is required for the biosynthesis of many cellular components and can take on many oxidation states, ranging from −3 to +5. Consequently, nitrogen compounds can act as either electron donors (chemolithotrophy) or electron acceptors (anaerobic respiration). The nitrogen cycle starts with nitrogen fixation, the reduction of nitrogen gas to ammonium. Nitrogen fixation is carried out only by prokaryotes, mainly some cyanobacteria and heterotrophic bacteria. The ammonium resulting from nitrogen fixation is quickly used by many organisms for biosynthesis, being preferred over nitrate as a nitrogen source. It is also oxidized aerobically by chemolithoautotrophic bacteria and archaea during the first step of nitrification. The second step, nitrite oxidation, is carried out by other bacteria not involved in ammonia oxidation, resulting in the formation of nitrate. Some bacteria are capable of carrying out both steps (“comammox”). This nitrate can then be reduced to nitrogen gas or nitrous oxide during denitrification. It can be reduced to ammonium, a process called “dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium.” Nitrogen gas is also released by anaerobic oxidation of ammonium (“anammox”) which is carried out by bacteria in the Planctomycetes phylum. The theoretical contribution of anammox to total nitrogen gas release is 29%, but the actual contribution varies greatly. Another gas in the nitrogen cycle, nitrous oxide, is a greenhouse gas produced by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea. The available data indicate that the global nitrogen cycle is in balance, with losses from nitrogen gas production equaling gains via nitrogen fixation. But excess nitrogen from fertilizers is contributing to local imbalances and several environmental problems in drinking waters, reservoirs, lakes, and coastal oceans.