bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Improved description of atomic environments using low-cost polynomial functions with compact support
Authors: Bircher Martin P , Singraber Andreas , Dellago Christoph
Published: April 2021

The prediction of chemical properties using machine learning techniques calls for a set of appropriate descriptors that accurately describe atomic and, on a larger scale, molecular environments. A mapping of conformational information on a space spanned by atom-centred symmetry functions (SF) has become a standard technique for energy and force predictions using high-dimensional neural network potentials (HDNNP). An appropriate choice of SFs is particularly crucial for accurate force predictions. Established atom-centred SFs, however, are limited in their flexibility, since their functional form restricts the angular domain that can be sampled without introducing problematic derivative discontinuities. Here, we introduce a class of atom-centred SFs based on polynomials with compact support called polynomial symmetry functions (PSF), which enable a free choice of both, the angular and the radial domain covered. We demonstrate that the accuracy of PSFs is either on par or considerably better than that of conventional, atom-centred SFs. In particular, a generic set of PSFs with an intuitive choice of the angular domain inspired by organic chemistry considerably improves prediction accuracy for organic molecules in the gaseous and liquid phase, with reductions in force prediction errors over a test set approaching 50% for certain systems. Contrary to established atom-centred SFs, computation of PSF does not involve any exponentials, and their intrinsic compact support supersedes use of separate cutoff functions, facilitating the choice of their free parameters. Most importantly, the number of floating point operations required to compute polynomial SFs introduced here is considerably lower than that of other state-of-the-art SFs, enabling their efficient implementation without the need of highly optimised code structures or caching, with speedups with respect to other state-of-the-art SFs reaching a factor of 4.5 to 5. This low-effort performance benefit substantially simplifies their use in new programs and emerging platforms such as graphical processing units. Overall, polynomial SFs with compact support improve accuracy of both, energy and force predictions with HDNNPs while enabling significant speedups compared to their well-established counterparts.
Defence against adversarial attacks using classical and quantum-enhanced Boltzmann machines
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Authors: Kehoe Aidan , Wittek Peter , Xue Yanbo , Pozas-Kerstjens Alejandro
Published: April 2021

We provide a robust defence to adversarial attacks on discriminative algorithms. Neural networks are naturally vulnerable to small, tailored perturbations in the input data that lead to wrong predictions. On the contrary, generative models attempt to learn the distribution underlying a dataset, making them inherently more robust to small perturbations. We use Boltzmann machines for discrimination purposes as attack-resistant classifiers, and compare them against standard state-of-the-art adversarial defences. We find improvements ranging from 5% to 72% against attacks with Boltzmann machines on the MNIST dataset. We furthermore complement the training with quantum-enhanced sampling from the D-Wave 2000Q annealer, finding results comparable with classical techniques and with marginal improvements in some cases. These results underline the relevance of probabilistic methods in constructing neural networks and highlight a novel scenario of practical relevance where quantum computers, even with limited hardware capabilities, could provide advantages over classical computers.
Anti-bias training for (sc)RNA-seq: experimental and computational approaches to improve precision
Authors: Davies Philip , Jones Matt , Liu Juntai , Hebenstreit Daniel
Published: April 2021

RNA-seq, including single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq), is plagued by insufficient sensitivity and lack of precision. As a result, the full potential of (sc)RNA-seq is limited. Major factors in this respect are the presence of global bias in most datasets, which affects detection and quantitation of RNA in a length-dependent fashion. In particular, scRNA-seq is affected by technical noise and a high rate of dropouts, where the vast majority of original transcripts is not converted into sequencing reads. We discuss these biases origins and implications, bioinformatics approaches to correct for them, and how biases can be exploited to infer characteristics of the sample preparation process, which in turn can be used to improve library preparation.
Vascular health and diffusion properties of normal appearing white matter in midlife
Authors: Ingo Carson , Kurian Shawn , Higgins James , Mahinrad Simin , Jenkins Lisanne , Gorelick Philip , Lloyd-Jones Donald , Sorond Farzaneh
Published: April 2021

In this study, we perform a region of interest diffusion tensor imaging and advanced diffusion complexity analysis of normal appearing white matter to determine the impact of vascular health on these diffusivity metrics in midlife adults. 77 participants (26 black, 35 female) at year 30 visit in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults longitudinal study were scanned with an advanced diffusion-weighted imaging and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery protocol. Fractional anisotropy and non-linear diffusion complexity measures were estimated. Cumulative measures across 30 years (9 study visits) of systolic blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, smoking and cholesterol were calculated as the area under the curve from baseline up to year 30 examination. Partial correlation analyses assessed the association between cumulative vascular health measures and normal appearing white matter diffusion metrics in these participants. Midlife normal appearing white matter diffusion properties were significantly associated (P < 0.05) with cumulative exposure to vascular risk factors from young adulthood over the 30-year time period. Higher cumulative systolic blood pressure exposure was associated with increased complexity and decreased fractional anisotropy. Higher cumulative body mass index exposure was associated with decreased fractional anisotropy. Additionally, in the normal appearing white matter of black participants (P < 0.05), who exhibited a higher cumulative vascular risk exposure, fractional anisotropy was lower and complexity was higher in comparison to normal appearing white matter in white participants. Higher burden of vascular risk factor exposure from young adulthood to midlife is associated with changes in the diffusion properties of normal appearing white matter in midlife. These changes which may reflect axonal disruption, increased inflammation and/or increased glial proliferation, were primarily observed in both anterior and posterior normal appearing white matter regions of the corpus callosum. These results suggest that microstructural changes in normal appearing white matter are sensitive to vascular health during young adulthood and are possibly therapeutic targets in interventions focused on preserving white matter health across life.
Epigenetic predictors of lifestyle traits applied to the blood and brain
Authors: Gadd Danni A , Stevenson Anna J , Hillary Robert F , McCartney Daniel L , Wrobel Nicola , McCafferty Sarah , Murphy Lee , Russ Tom C , Harris Sarah E , Redmond Paul , Taylor Adele M , Smith Colin , Rose Jamie , Millar Tracey , Spires-Jones Tara L , Cox Simon R , Marioni Riccardo E
Published: April 2021

Modifiable lifestyle factors influence the risk of developing many neurological diseases. These factors have been extensively linked with blood-based genome-wide DNA methylation, but it is unclear if the signatures from blood translate to the target tissue of interest—the brain. To investigate this, we apply blood-derived epigenetic predictors of four lifestyle traits to genome-wide DNA methylation from five post-mortem brain regions and the last blood sample prior to death in 14 individuals in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. Using these matched samples, we found that correlations between blood and brain DNA methylation scores for smoking, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, alcohol and body mass index were highly variable across brain regions. Smoking scores in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had the strongest correlations with smoking scores in blood (r = 0.5, n = 14, P = 0.07) and smoking behaviour (r = 0.56, n = 9, P = 0.12). This was also the brain region which exhibited the largest correlations for DNA methylation at site cg05575921 – the single strongest correlate of smoking in blood—in relation to blood (r = 0.61, n = 14, P = 0.02) and smoking behaviour (r = −0.65, n = 9, P = 0.06). This suggested a particular vulnerability to smoking-related differential methylation in this region. Our work contributes to understanding how lifestyle factors affect the brain and suggest that lifestyle-related DNA methylation is likely to be both brain region dependent and in many cases poorly proxied for by blood. Though these pilot data provide a rarely-available opportunity for the comparison of methylation patterns across multiple brain regions and the blood, due to the limited sample size available our results must be considered as preliminary and should therefore be used as a basis for further investigation.
Beyond diplomacy: making sense of foreign participation in the French wars of religion
Authors: van Tol Jonas
Published: April 2021

The French Wars of Religion, generally conceived as a series of civil wars, saw the participation of a wide range of different actors from outside the kingdom of France. Using the language of international relations, historians who have touched on this subject have tended to draw clear lines between the motives and experiences of French and foreign participants in the conflict. By studying Protestant German princes who became embroiled in the wars in France this article will demonstrate that actors from beyond the borders of the kingdom did not see themselves as outsiders interfering in its domestic affairs. Though ideas about sovereignty and nationhood were beginning to take shape, the princes viewed their role in France through the lens of the older system of patronage. These networks were essentially transnational and caused the German princes to become entangled in the same structures that shaped the political process inside France.
Essential Cases: Tort Law
Authors: Purshouse Craig
Published: April 2021

Essential Cases: Tort Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in tort law. Each summary begins with a review of the main case facts and decision. The summary is then concluded with expert commentary on the case from the author, Craig Purshouse, including his assessment of the wider questions raised by the decision.
Essential Cases: EU Law
Authors: O'Meara Noreen
Published: April 2021

Essential Cases: EU Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in EU law. Each report begins with a review of the main case facts and decision, followed by expert commentary on the case from the author, Noreen O’Meara, including her assessment of the wider questions raised by the decision.
Essential Cases: Contract Law
Authors: Jackson Nicola
Published: April 2021

Essential Cases: Contract Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. Essential Cases provides you with succinct summaries of some of the landmark and most influential cases in contract law. Each summary begins with a review of the main case facts and decision. The summary is then concluded with expert commentary on the case from the author, Nicola Jackson, including an assessment of the wider questions raised by the decision.

It can act as a succinct reference source alongside your core textbooks as you proceed through your course. It can also be used as a stand-alone revision aid as you approach examinations. But central to the Essential Cases series is the aim to encourage your own critical exploration of the legal matters under discussion.

Where possible, a link to a free-to-access full version of the judgment is included in each summary, providing you with an opportunity to deepen your understanding by reading the judgment of the court for yourself.
A transit timing variation observed for the long-period extremely low-density exoplanet HIP 41378 f
Authors: Bryant Edward M , Bayliss Daniel , Santerne Alexandre , Wheatley Peter J , Nascimbeni Valerio , Ducrot Elsa , Burdanov Artem , Acton Jack S , Alves Douglas R , Anderson David R , Armstrong David J , Awiphan Supachai , Cooke Benjamin F , Burleigh Matthew R , Casewell Sarah L , Delrez Laetitia , Demory Brice-Olivier , Eigmüller Philipp , Fukui Akihiko , Gan Tianjun , Gill Samuel , Gillon Michael , Goad Michael R , Tan Thiam-Guan , Günther Maximilian N , Hardee Bronwen , Henderson Beth A , Jehin Emmanuel , Jenkins James S , Kosiarek Molly , Lendl Monika , Moyano Maximiliano , Murray Catriona A , Narita Norio , Niraula Prajwal , Odden Caroline E , Palle Enric , Parviainen Hannu , Pedersen Peter P , Pozuelos Francisco J , V Rackham Benjamin , Sebastian Daniel , Stockdale Chris , Tilbrook Rosanna H , Thompson Samantha J , Triaud Amaury H M J , Udry Stéphane , Vines Jose I , West Richard G , de Wit Julien
Published: April 2021

HIP 41378 f is a temperate 9.2 ± 0.1 R⊕ planet with period of 542.08 d and an extremely low density of 0.09 ± 0.02 g cm−3. It transits the bright star HIP 41378 (V = 8.93), making it an exciting target for atmospheric characterization including transmission spectroscopy. HIP 41378 was monitored photometrically between the dates of 2019 November 19 and 28. We detected a transit of HIP 41378 f with NGTS, just the third transit ever detected for this planet, which confirms the orbital period. This is also the first ground-based detection of a transit of HIP 41378 f. Additional ground-based photometry was also obtained and used to constrain the time of the transit. The transit was measured to occur 1.50 h earlier than predicted. We use an analytic transit timing variation (TTV) model to show the observed TTV can be explained by interactions between HIP 41378 e and HIP 41378 f. Using our TTV model, we predict the epochs of future transits of HIP 41378 f, with derived transit centres of TC, 4 = $2459\,355.087^{+0.031}_{-0.022}$ (2021 May) and TC, 5 = $2459\,897.078^{+0.114}_{-0.060}$ (2022 November).
The Function of Timbre in Music (1966)
Authors: Adorno Theodor W.
Published: April 2021

Adorno’s purpose in these lectures, presented at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music in the fall of 1966, was to address the relationship between what he called “sound” and “structure.” At the heart of his thinking is the notion of “structural instrumentation”—the ideal of organizing timbre in a manner commensurate to the compositional logic (Satz) of a given work. Following a historical survey of orchestration and instrumentation in the music of Bach, Viennese Classicism, and the New German School, Adorno turns at length to the “new music,” and above all the work of the Second Viennese School. Ending with a brief consideration of the experiments in Klangkomposition undertaken by composers such as Stockhausen and Ligeti, Adorno challenges the younger generation of composers who held court at Darmstadt by calling into question the equality of timbre with other musical parameters.
Human Resource Management in the Postsocialist Region of Central and Eastern Europe
Authors: Morley Michael J. , Kohont Andrej , Poór József , Kazlauskaitė Rūta , Kabalina Veronika , Blštáková Jana
Published: April 2021

In this chapter, the authors landscape key aspects of the historical and contemporary nature of human resource management in the postsocialist region of central and eastern Europe. The chapter commences with a background discussion of the evolution of human resource management in the region under three key periods, namely, the socialist period, the transition period, and the contemporary period. The chapter then turns to providing an account of a selected number of particular historical and contextual factors that account for some of the commonalities and differences exhibited in contemporary human resource management in the region. Chief among the factors identified are cultural determinants, variations in the control provisions that operated under socialism, the path to gradual Europeanization, the ownership structure in the economy, the shifting fortunes of trade unions, and the levels of managerial competence. Finally, drawing on three waves of Cranet data gathered between 2004/5 and 2014/15, the authors provide a summative account of selected aspects of organizational-level human resource management policy and practice in the region.
The Cultural Lens
Authors: Peretz Hilla , Knappert Lena
Published: April 2021

This chapter reviews the literature on the intersection of culture and human resource management. More specifically, the chapter discusses why and how culture accounts for variance in human resource management practices and their outcomes between organizations operating in diverse cultural contexts. To that end, the chapter first provides a summary of how culture is defined and measured and reviews seven established frameworks of culture. Next, the chapter reviews related studies conducted by members of the Cranfield Network on International Human Resource Management and other established scholars in the literature of cultural variance in human resource management practices (i.e., recruitment and selection, performance management and performance appraisal, training and development, compensation and benefits, flexible work arrangement, diversity management, and high-performance work systems) and their outcomes. The chapter concludes with practical implications for multinational corporations and domestic organizations and provides an overview of future research avenues in the field.
The Diversity Context of Human Resource Management
Authors: Kramar Robin , Jepsen Denise Mary
Published: April 2021

This chapter reviews the literature and theory on diversity, the diversity context, and diversity in human resource management. First, a four-stage model of the evolution of diversity management is presented, detailing the problem-specific, integrated, culture change and inclusive workplace stages of diversity management. Diversity management is shown to have demographic, economic, and political considerations because it focuses on managing individual differences. Second, models of diversity management processes are presented. Third, diversity theories and frameworks from strategic management through stakeholder approach, social categorization, social identity theory, and social capital theory are discussed. National- and international-level influences on diversity management, including the impact of religion, are discussed. Finally, data on recruitment action programs are presented to demonstrate the varied uptake of particular diversity practices in selected countries. Opportunities for further research are identified, implications for practice are highlighted, and conclusions are drawn.
The Profile of the Human Resource Management Director
Authors: Sender Anna , Staffelbach Bruno , Mayrhofer Wolfgang
Published: April 2021

The role of the human resource management (HRM) function has significantly evolved since the 1980s. Specifically, the HRM function has become more strategic, with the most senior human resource professional (the HRM director) often being an integral member of the top management team. The profile and competencies of the HRM director, however, are crucial in shaping the strategic role of HRM in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the role of contextual factors related to both external environment (e.g., national culture, industry) and internal environment (e.g., ownership, the role of the HR function, performance, employee turnover) for the profile of the HRM director. Using data from the Cranfield Network on International Human Resource Management study, the chapter demonstrates that significant differences in the profile of an HRM director in terms of education, experience, and gender exist across contexts. This study contributes to the HRM literature by empirically exploring the differences in the profile of the human resource director across contexts and elucidating reasons for these differences.
Critical Contextualized Studies of Human Resource Management
Authors: Bévort Frans , Holck Lotte , Mogensen Mette
Published: April 2021

How can we study human resource management (HRM) from a critical point of view, without losing the ability to inform practice with relevant insights and engage in the process of developing better organizations for a broad range of stakeholders? Mainstream HRM studies accept, without much reflection, that “best practice” HRM is what is best for management and owners. Critical management studies turns this point of view upside down and holds the view that HRM is always about the exploitation of the weaker stakeholders in organizations. Showing how a contextual view can be critical, this chapter discusses how it is possible to be critical and practically relevant at the same time, drawing on current debates on relevance within critical management studies, under the labels such as “critical performativity” and “Reconstructive reflexivity.” The chapter presents three critical, but equally constructive, analyses of HRM practices. The first addresses how institutional logics affects the practice of HRM professionals; the second presents alternatives to best practice diversity management; and the third examines a case of meditation practices as expressions of managerial control. The merits of the three ways to perform contextualized critical HRM studies are summed up and discussed, thus setting the scene for how to move forward in critical contextualized HRM scholarship.
On “Contemporaneity” in Ballet and Contemporary Dance
Authors: Järvinen Hanna
Published: April 2021

Danced histories are not linear but circular, as dancing bodies return and reinterpret past dances. Theorizing the import of contemporaneity as an evaluative notion, this chapter examines a practice-based research collaboration—the reimagining of Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet Jeux (1913) in a contemporary dance production that premiered in 2016. Such performed returns to the past of dance are never unmarked or neutral but involve evaluation of what in the past is worthy or significant enough – that is, canonical – to be referenced and restaged, how, and by whom. Examining the different relationship of past and present in the practices of reconstruction, re-enactment, or reimagining past dances, the chapter examines how performances reinforce, repeat, or potentially question canons and power relations inherent in the institution of art. Might attention to how presentness itself shifts in time draw attention to not-knowing, to the heterogeneity of and limits to our kinesthetic imaginations?
Feminist Practices in Ballet
Authors: Alterowitz Gretchen
Published: April 2021

Despite efforts toward diversity and inclusivity, twenty-first-century ballet continues to invest in narrowly defined aesthetics and traditional systems of knowing. Many critical examinations of ballet have come through the lens of feminist theories, which are useful for revealing the power structures undergirding an art form that highlights gender distinctions in both training and performance. Because feminist theories have been so crucial in revealing ways in which the ballet system works, it is worth exploring how feminist practices might be used to enact systemic change. This chapter shifts the focus from how ballet acts as a representational system to what a feminist ballet practice might do, concentrating on Katy Pyle, artistic director of the queer ballet company Ballez, who reimagines ballet through collaborative, community-minded, and antihierarchical approaches.
Cathy Marston
Authors: Norris Deborah Kate
Published: April 2021

British choreographer Cathy Marston has sustained a choreographic career for more than three decades. Her work crosses European ballet cultures and extends from her classical training into a current contemporary ballet context. Focusing on Marston’s narrative works, this chapter demonstrates her position as a translator of literary texts, specifically Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre. Through a dual-layered exploration of her choreographic process, the chapter offers an examination of her use of European theater practices and design strategies, including regietheater, suggesting her liminal positioning between Continental and British stylistic traits. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the collaborative construction methods used by Marston through a descriptive analysis of the development of Jane Eyre, a ballet created for Northern Ballet (Leeds) in 2016.
Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Authors: Nunes Jensen Jill
Published: April 2021

San Francisco–based choreographer Alonzo King has long been a visionary in the formation of contemporary ballet in the United States. Supported by his classically trained company, colloquially known as LINES, King makes ballets that are anything but. This chapter uses his 2015 ballet, The Propelled Heart, which featured dancers in communication with singer Lisa Fischer, as a case study to suggest new positions for agency among performers. In so doing, “lines” of interaction, boundary, hegemony, relationship, race, and technique are challenged, and ballet and its dancers are given a “voice.” King implores his dancers to express vulnerability, disrupt ballet’s histories, and ultimately reimagine the form. Organizationally similar to modern dance companies, in that there are no ranks of ascension and an emphasis on creation, Alonzo King LINES Ballet frequently works collaboratively to present ballets that centralize the process of connecting to subject, self, and community. This chapter takes the interactions offered in The Propelled Heart as indicative of King’s choreographic philosophy that ballets are thought structures and therefore ultimately engendered to communicate.
Living in Counterpoint
Authors: Zuniga Shaw Norah
Published: April 2021

This chapter provides a deep description of William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing, reproduced and the choreographic structures and dramaturgy used to create it. The dance is presented as an example of physical thinking that can be taken up by readers as (1) a portal into understanding William Forsythe’s creative process and body of work; (2) a generative collection of compositional structures useful in composing new work in contemporary ballet and other fields; and (3) a resource for recognizing pattern amid complexity and thriving in the uncertainty and entanglement of contemporary life. The chapter builds on collaborative research with Forsythe and weaves together selections from interviews and texts originally published in interactive media interfaces and other resources not previously available to a general readership.
John Cranko’s Stuttgart Ballet
Authors: Mathis-Masury E. Hollister
Published: April 2021

The legacy of John Cranko’s Stuttgart Ballet includes his ballets and his underlying philosophy of “experiential intersubjectivity”—a collaborative creative process based on observation of individual experience. Working closely with his colleagues (dancers, composers, designers, etc.), Cranko sought their spontaneous expression to his cue or their solution to the challenges of creating. His choreographic philosophy led away from the traditionally exclusive, hierarchical work style of the ballet world and toward a work style producing individuality and originality. Successfully integrating the divergent ideas and instinctive expressivity of many separate individuals into his ballets, Cranko did more than enable an individualized viewer experience, accessible to a diversified audience. Importantly, Cranko also empowered his colleagues with his democratic and collaborative way of creating ballets in Stuttgart, ultimately forming such choreographers as Jiří Kylián, John Neumeier, and William Forsythe. This chapter looks at what shaped Cranko’s Stuttgart Ballet, the choreographic oeuvre, and the legacy today.
Ballet Austin
Authors: Clark Caroline Sutton
Published: April 2021

From 2006 to 2014, the professional US company Ballet Austin hosted an ambitious biennial competition, New American Talent/Dance, as an experimental platform to support “emerging” choreographers. However, after five seasons of this competition and despite self-reported success in meeting project goals to provide new learning experiences for participating choreographers, dancers, and audiences, Ballet Austin suspended the event. The reasons behind this decision, along with the insights gained through the process of producing these shows, reveal dimensions of US contemporary ballet in practice. This chapter illuminates how ballet pedagogy often fails the needs of contemporary ballet artists in the education of both future choreographers and the dancers who work with them, impacting not only the lives and careers of these artists but also, more generally, field aesthetics and development. The research further describes how audiences judged emerging choreographers, an analysis that may inform future lines of inquiry with regard to contemporary ballet and the sustainability of the field in the United States.
Intergenerational Justice
Authors: Mbonda Ernest-Marie , Ngosso Thierry
Published: April 2021

The issue of intergenerational justice raises questions that are undoubtedly common to all human cultures and that are taking on increasing importance in contemporary ethics. This chapter presents an African perspective on current questions of intergenerational justice. It analyzes the answers, taken from the African ethnological and philosophical literature as well as from data obtained from a relatively recent survey carried out in Cameroon, on the questions concerning the concept of generation, the generations involved (near or distant generations, previous or future generations), the nature and size of the things to be guaranteed for other generations, and the justifications of the intergenerational duties.
Buen Vivir
Authors: Vidiella Graciela , García Valverde Facundo
Published: April 2021

The concept of buen vivir (“good living”) has become an emergent discourse of resistance for social, ecological, and indigenous movements in Latin America, especially in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Due to the rebirth of theories of decolonization and its political impact against extractive practices, buen vivir has attracted attention both from academic and from political domains. Although there are different and conflicting conceptions of buen vivir, three common theses can be identified: the rejection of an anthropocentric moral ontology, the abandonment of an idea of a linear progress toward welfare through economic growth, and the defense of complementary and reciprocal relations between humans and the rest of nature. This chapter critically analyzes the contributions and challenges that this radical platform can make to three paradigmatic problems in the intergenerational literature: the non-identity problem, the epistemological problem of the uncertainty of future needs, and the tyranny of the contemporaries. The authors argue that a moderate and environmentalist version is the fittest conception of buen vivir to provide public and legitimate reasons for those intergenerational justice issues and, at the same time, a richer non-resourcist metric to assess them.
The Intergenerational Value of Natural Heritage
Authors: Kallhoff Angela
Published: April 2021

Even though the concept of natural heritage is well received, its meaning is usually restricted to extraordinary natural sites. This contribution argues that a broader understanding is necessary in order to fully acknowledge the intergenerational value of natural heritage. By drawing on recent insights in plant ethics, three facets of the normative meaning of the concept of natural heritage can be highlighted: It expresses the value of natural sites as part of human civilization, it lays emphasis on the uniqueness of distinct parts of nature, and it expresses the willingness of present generations to present nature as a gift to future generations in order not to restrict their ways to shape nature. In particular, the value of natural heritage is constituted by a communal experience of nature and the willingness to share that experience with upcoming generations.
Nuclear Deterrence—Another Perfect Storm
Authors: Rendall Matthew
Published: April 2021

This chapter applies Stephen M. Gardiner’s model of the perfect moral storm to nuclear deterrence. Most damage from a major nuclear war would fall on third parties rather than the belligerents. Some would be present-day people in neutral countries and nonhuman animals, but future generations would be the largest group of victims. This makes ongoing reliance on large nuclear arsenals ethically indefensible. It presents many of the same problems, however, as global heating. One is that future damages are not salient to present-day publics and politicians. Another is that nuclear weapons reduce the probability of major war while greatly increasing the damage if it occurs. This affects the intergenerational distribution of costs and benefits. Nuclear deterrence is a ‘front-loaded’ good: its benefits arrive right away, whereas its costs will most likely arrive only in the future. Nuclear war is inevitable if states rely on it in perpetuity, but for a given generation, the likelihood may be small. “Business-as-usual” may thus be a good self-interested gamble for each generation until nuclear war actually occurs. Not surprisingly, it finds many defenders. The last part of the chapter considers possible solutions.
The Interactions of Administrative Justice and Constitutionalism
Authors: Huq Aziz Z.
Published: April 2021

This chapter analyses the interactions of administrative justice and constitutionalism. The domain that lies at the crossings of these terms, however, is a vast and varied one. The chapter first identifies four dynamics that can arise. Constitutionalism, it shows, can be brought to bear on administrative justice as a critique in a number of ways. Alternatively, the two can also be seen as complementary values. As a way of exploring these possibilities, the chapter then develops a series of case studies from the American context. Consideration of the latter suggest that in addition to the normative questions raised by the conjuncture of administrative justice and constitutionalism, positive, political economy questions also merit close attention.
Hiring and Learning Strategies in Prosecution Services
Authors: Wandall Rasmus H.
Published: April 2021

The chapter provides a comparative overview of current hiring and learning strategies in prosecution services. It draws on empirical examples from all parts of the world. Specifically, the chapter compares the hiring of chief prosecutors and frontline prosecutors, it compares how learning is organized and carried out, and it describes and discusses the most significant individual methods of learning currently applied by prosecution services. The comparison shows some level of convergence of techniques and strategies. However, prosecution services continue to vary significantly in how they organize and carry out hiring and in how prosecutors learn. To some degree these variations reflect different levels of professionalization and legal accountability, but they also reflect the markedly different ideals, roles, and functions that drive prosecution services in different societies and legal cultures. These differences make for very different conditions under which new and better ways of hiring and learning can be implemented with a view to ensure qualified and legitimate prosecution services.
Specialized Units and Vertical Prosecution Approaches
Authors: Spohn Cassia
Published: April 2021

Legal scholars and social scientists maintain that there are several advantages to processing certain types of cases—for example, sexual assault, domestic violence, and crimes involving career criminals or gang members—using vertical prosecution and a specialized prosecution unit. This chapter discusses the logic of vertical prosecution and assignment of cases to specialized units. The chapter also summarizes the findings of research on the effectiveness of specialized units for handling sexual assault cases, domestic violence cases, and gang-related homicide, noting that the research conducted to date reveals that there are very few differences in the outcomes of cases prosecuted by attorneys assigned to specialized units and those prosecuted by attorneys not assigned to specialized units. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential explanations for this lack of impact and with a call for additional research on these interrelated approaches to prosecution.
Disclosure, Security, Technology
Authors: Brown Darryl K.
Published: April 2021

Criminal disclosure rules in all common law jurisdictions are organized around the same sets of conflicting aims. Pre-trial evidence disclosure is essential to fair and accurate adjudication. Yet certain types of information, such as identities of undercover operatives and ongoing law enforcement surveillance, must be kept confidential. Beyond these tensions, disclosure practices face new challenges arising primarily from evolving technology and investigative tactics. This chapter describes divergent approaches across common law jurisdictions—especially among U.S. states—to these challenges and offers explanations for their differences. It also sketches the technology-based challenges that discovery schemes face and offers options, or tentative predictions about their resolution. Differences often turn on who decides whether to withhold information from the defense—judges or prosecutors—and when certain information must be disclosed. Broader disclosure regimes tend to put greater trust in judicial capacity to dictate or at least review hard questions about the costs, benefits, and timing of disclosure; narrower systems leave more power in prosecutors’ hands. Technology has multiplied challenges for disclosure policy by vastly increasing evidence-gathering tactics and thus the nature and volume of information. Disclosure rules adapted fairly easily to the rise much forensic lab analysis. But fast-growing forms of digital evidence is more problematic. Defendants may lack the time to examine volumes of video and technical resources to analyze other data; sometimes prosecutors do as well. The chapter identifies some possible solutions emerging through technology and law reform, as well as trend toward greater judicial management of pre-trial disclosure.
Transnational Law: Theories and Applications
Authors: Zumbansen Peer
Published: April 2021

This chapter introduces the Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law. Transnational law is at the center of lively discussions ranging from pronouncing the death of law to announcing the renewal of law. With stakes that high, the expectations for this field are potentially overwhelming. It is still unsettled what transnational law is. It was introduced to a wide audience of international lawyers in the 1950s, but is it a “new” legal field, or a particular kind of jurisprudence of “law and globalization,” or a sociolegal approach to law’s transformation in and beyond the state in the twenty-first century, or merely a synonym for legal pluralism, that is, an acknowledgment of the co-existence of law and (social, cultural, economic, religious, and other) norms? Finally, what is transnational law’s relation to the nation-state? While some suggest it marks the “end” of the nation-state, the better arguments suggest it remains closely intertwined with the state’s trials and tribulations. The chapter reviews contributions to these discussions but cannot account for the entire wealth and depth which is transnational law today. Instead, the chapter highlights some of the debates around the facets of transnational law and sketches a number of methodological reflections about the field. The contributing authors to this Handbook offer formidable insights into the complex details of law’s transnationalization in a wide range of key areas of the law and contextualize these developments against the background of the important normative discussions around the future of law in a globalized world.
Transnational Refugee Law
Authors: Juss Satvinder S.
Published: April 2021

The Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees 1951 was born on the ashes of the Holocaust. Asylum law’s function has been to protect unfortunates from specifically political harms. The grant of asylum has in turn reflected a judgment that the state of origin had abused its authority. Asylum was in this way connected to tactics for reforming or challenging abusive regimes. Yet, after the Cold War, asylum law was increasingly questioned as “Eurocentric.” It made refugee law incomplete and politically partisan. The requirement of persecution rendered it obsolete. There was a futility in trying to define a refugee by a particular motivation for departure, which had no historical precedent and proved unworkable in many situations. Alternative conceptions of the refugee had to be sought by the states themselves as other “norm entrepreneurs” in “norm setting” with a consequent dispersal of authority away from the United Nations. This chapter examines the fragmentary nature of international refugee law today. It argues for a formal recognition of a body of “Transnational Refugee Law” (TRL) in the absence of a world legislative authority for norm-setting, as well as a world court for the interpretation of refugee law. Who makes the “norms” and who are the “actors” making them, is a question rarely addressed in mainstream works of refugee law.
Law and Development
Authors: Perry-Kessaris Amanda
Published: April 2021

This chapter argues that a transnational (as opposed to state-centric) perspective on legal development is essential (conceptually, empirically, and normatively) both for practitioners and for those who seek to understand and critique them; that it is best conceptualized with sociological imagination; and that it opens the door to the rehabilitation of the field of legal development into a more nimble and productive space for empirically informed experimentation.
Transnational Contract Law
Authors: Eller Klaas Hendrik
Published: April 2021

Contract is a central trope of transnational ordering. In the shadow of the various attempts to harmonize contract law at the transnational level (such as through UNIDROIT), the very institution of contract already forms the backbone of transnational interaction. Yet, as this chapter outlines, contract theory is for the most part ill-prepared to capture the constitutive role of contracts in the regulation and critique of transnational social institutions, such as global value chains or digital platforms. In such scenarios, beyond being geared toward efficiency between parties, contracts embody a plurality of rationalities and interests and form a discursive space. Albeit often in a fragile way, contracts emerge as equivalents of political institutions inasmuch as the state legal order no longer provides substantial background justice. The chapter surveys how realist and critical traditions in contract theory, in both their US and European variants, are presently being recalibrated to properly reconstruct transnational social conflicts.
Architects, Landscapers, and Gardeners in the Transnational Futures of International Labor Law
Authors: Blackett Adelle
Published: April 2021

International labor law was a paradigmatic field for public international law. This chapter chronicles the ambivalent move to embrace a less hierarchical and traditional understanding of legal ordering in transnational labor law. Evoking research on normative thickening through metaphorical recourse to the architect, landscaper, and gardener, this chapter challenges the starting assumption of order, calls for a long historical view that unbundles labor law from a narrow industrialization-centered narrative, and turns attention to the ways in which the labor law landscape can be held in motion. Underscoring the ways that labor sharpens understandings of transnational law, this chapter reads transnational solidarity and emancipation into a methodological account of transnational law.
Transnational Art Law—Maps and Itineraries
Authors: Kanwar Vik , Neupaney Jaya
Published: April 2021

This chapter asks how best to frame a field of study called “transnational art law” (TAL). If art law encompasses all legal aspects of the production, distribution, and transaction of art, as well as any other rights and obligations governing art world actors and works of art, then transnational art law is the framework of legal knowledge necessary to understand these relationships and transactions across borders. Following the Transnational Law framework proposed by Philip Jessup in 1956, TAL would not be restricted to public or private, national or international, substantive or procedural law, but intervene in problem spaces involving all of these. It would capture the transnational actors, norms, and processes, the formal and informal interactions that constitute the art world. This chapter sketches TAL in its possible doctrinal, policy, regulatory, and advocacy dimensions, and suggests some openings for interdisciplinary study in particular.
Global Social Indicators and their Legitimacy in Transnational Law
Authors: Siems Mathias , Nelken David
Published: April 2021

Skeptical views tend to dominate the debate about the role of global social indicators in transnational law. However, the reason global social indicators have emerged is often that local and national legislation would not be sufficient and that agreement on international legal norms is not feasible. Indeed, it can be observed that global social indicators have proliferated in recent years as they reach across many societal fields. Moreover, this chapter shows that at all levels of legitimacy (“input,” “output,” and “throughput”), it is at least possible to make indicators more legitimate. This also acknowledges that some indicators fall short of these standards of legitimacy. Problems of the legitimacy of global social indicators will therefore remain relevant in the foreseeable future.
Primate Cognition in Captivity
Authors: Leavens David A. , Bard Kim A.
Published: April 2021

The study of primates in captivity has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, researchers gain experimental control over such variables as the locations and timing of stimulus presentations. In principle, this permits high confidence in claims of relations between manipulated variables and responses. On the other hand, large differences in the specific ecologies of captive environments impose constraints on generalizations beyond the specific laboratories in which animals are tested. Here, the authors highlight some recent contributions to understanding primate cognition from work in captivity. The authors give special attention to the value of captive populations for understanding environmental influences on cognitive development, which is especially apparent and easily measured among captive primate populations. Primates adapt to the specific ecological circumstances of their direct experience, and this flexibility in developmental mechanisms across a range of rearing environments is not manifest in any single ontogenetic context, but requires consideration across diverse contexts.