bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Eight Arms to Hold You
Authors: Rogovoy Seth
Published: July 2024

Chapter 7 of Within You Without You, “Eight Arms to Hold You,” is a deep dive into the Beatles movie and accompanying album Help!, which included an unprecedented two George Harrison contributions: “I Need You” and “You Like Me Too Much.” Both movie and album represented a huge leap forward for the Beatles and George Harrison in particular. Harrison reintroduced the sound of the jangly, twelve-string Rickenbacker electric guitar that soon came to be one of the identifying characteristics of the Beatles sound, influencing a number of other groups. Most prominent among them were the Byrds, whose lead guitarist Jim (later Roger) McGuinn adopted the Rickenbacker as his main instrument after seeing the movie. It was on the film set that Harrison first saw Indian musicians playing Hindustani classical music, and he became especially intrigued by the sound of “the Indian guitar,” the sitar.
The Black Album
Authors: Rogovoy Seth
Published: July 2024

Chapter 9 of Within You Without You, “The Black Album,” closely examines George Harrison’s extensive contributions to Revolver, the darkest and most complex Beatles album up to that point in their career. For the first (and only) time, a single Beatles album included three original songs by Harrison. The first was the lead-off cut, “Taxman,” which was Harrison’s protest about surrendering almost all his income to the Inland Revenue. The second, “Love You To,” was full-fledged raga-rock fusion. Finally, “I Want to Tell You” is another Harrison number addressing the difficulties of effective communication, featuring a jagged, dissonant piano chord that echoed in music the song’s ostensible theme.
Gone for Baroque
Authors: Rogovoy Seth
Published: July 2024

Chapter 12 of Within You Without You, “Gone for Baroque,” closely examines George Harrison’s song “Piggies,” which appeared on The Beatles, commonly known as “The White Album.” A kind of musical version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “Piggies” was one of the Beatles’ most political songs, a satire of the upper classes. Appropriately, it was contextualized in a faux-Baroque musical setting, replete with harpsichord and classical-style guitar playing. Harrison did not intend the word “piggies” as it was popularly used at the time: a derogatory reference to police officers. Instead, it has grown over time in status as a timeless indictment of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots.
Standard Time
Authors: Rogovoy Seth
Published: July 2024

Chapter 17 of Within You Without You, “Standard Time,” closely examines the George Harrison song “Something,” which appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road album. John Lennon and Paul McCartney finally recognized that Harrison had come up with a track worthy of being released as a single, and the song was the first Harrison-penned Beatles number to hit number one. The song soon was the subject of multiple cover versions, including renditions by Shirley Bassey, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Joe Cocker, and Frank Sinatra, and remains one of the most popular Beatles tracks of the streaming era. A close examination of the song itself reveals that while musically it was beautiful and featured some of Harrison’s most compelling guitar playing, lyrically it is an enigma and a mystery. In its ambivalence and searching quality, embodied in the song’s very title, it is a sophisticated, mature treatment of love.
Reality++
Authors: Ganeri Jonardon
Published: July 2024

Previous chapters explored the meaning of entrance into a simulation. But there is also an exit. Does my emergence simply return me to my former state, or does the experience leave me changed in some fundamental respect? Is it correct even to speak of a return? In Pessoa’s case, it seems apt to couch the process in terms of exchange, the replacement of one heteronym by another. How should one think about the relationship between different reality environments? One is tempted to think about them in terms of levels, with the movement between them as descent and ascent. But perhaps it is better to picture reality as a single space divided into a plurality of regions, with entrance and return more akin to crossing a threshold or going through a door. This chapter discusses these topics in connection with Pessoa’s The Mariner and relates them to themes in the Mokṣopāya.
What Cities Say
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This is a book about how to “read” cities. Cities are a reflection of social values and priorities, and we can learn how to interpret them. Cities are the result of a wide range of intentional acts, from the minute to the grandiose, from the desires of the individual homebuilder to those of the reigning despot. They might reflect the highest aspirations, or a simple financial calculus, or mundane, utilitarian needs. Form and pattern might be the product of blueprints and plans, or it might be the product of gradual, incremental accretion spanning centuries. In any of these cases, it is possible to develop a language of interpretation. Using samples of cities from all time periods and places, this book presents thirty-five city patterns and forms, summarizing how they might be interpreted. The topics progress from larger to smaller scale, from complete cities and towns to plazas and squares. The aim of the book is to help craft better arguments in the public discourse about why one type of pattern or form might be better than another in a given place. Knowing what kinds of city patterns and forms we want requires first knowing what city patterns and forms mean to us. By exposing these meanings, we will be in a stronger position to articulate, and argue for, the kinds of cities we want.
Introduction
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how cities reflect social priorities and cultural values. The sources of these embedded meanings are varied: historical experience, behavioral and aesthetic effects, written critique, and the economic and social processes that generate pattern and form. City shapes, forms, and street and building patterns are sometimes a product of blueprints, sometimes a product of gradual accretion, and sometimes the product of violent change. Forms and patterns might reflect the highest aspirations, or they might simply be responses to mundane, utilitarian needs. Whatever the case, it is possible to develop a language of interpretation and an understanding of meaning. Indeed, behind every city pattern and form, whether for a complete city, a thoroughfare, or a small public space, there is a motive capable of being interpreted. The chapter then considers how city interpretation, the attachment of meaning to pattern and form, is complicated by the difference between planned and unplanned development. It identifies the significance of interpreting city patterns and forms before presenting the book’s methodology.
Medieval Towns
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter examines the medieval European town. It typically evolved like this: castle first; small settlement of feudal servants in an adjoining cluster; gradual prosperity and growth of the settlement into a village; construction of a surrounding wall; and then the commencement of the transformation from village to town, where all available sites, apart from those reserved for public spaces, cathedrals, and the castle area, were gradually filled in. An excellent example of the quintessential medieval town is Brugge, Belgium, now a mecca for tourism thanks to the centuries of economic stagnation that kept Brugge from growing. The medieval city is dense and tightly packed, and originally this was the result of needing to be within city walls. Houses were the primary generators of form, not the streets. As the city opened up and streets widened in the Baroque period and later, landscape entered in, initially in the form of aligned street trees or parks or landscaped medians. It was then that streets became the primary elements that defined the form of the city.
Urban Suburbs
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter studies urban suburbs. The earliest suburbs were either relatively close in to the existing city or linked by public transit. Railroad suburbs were physically distinct, initially separated from the city by plenty of open land, but in many cases, these early suburbs now have a very urban feel. Often, suburbs that were first developed adjacent to large cities have by now been swallowed up by the surrounding city. Their origin as separate suburbs is barely recognizable—they started out as suburbs but they are now just urban neighborhoods. Examples include Boston’s Back Bay and Brooklyn’s Brooklyn Heights. The chapter then looks at streetcar suburbs, which are usually so much closer to the central city that it is sometimes hard to think of it now as a suburb. Streetcar suburbs occupied what Chicago School sociologists termed “the zone of emergence”—meaning, emergence out of the much less desirable tenement house neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter focuses on neighborhoods, which can have religious, political, or sociological motive and meaning. Mormon towns are a classic religious example. Sometimes neighborhoods are delineated to accommodate a system of political organization. Savannah’s planned system of wards is an example of how the grid facilitated cell-like expansion consisting of plots of housing and public buildings clustered around public squares. The wards constituted a system of taxation and political representation. In an urban context, the village-like urban neighborhood was imbued with a pastoral, communal spirit in places that would otherwise simply be row upon row of housing blocks. Neighborhoods sometimes emerged around important buildings and their attached civic space. Discerning the neighborhoods of a city is often a matter of finding the physical features that act as boundaries. The chapter then looks at neighborhood delineation using natural features and streets.
Monumentalism
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter describes monumentalism. In most cases, as with the baroque, the use of monumental spaces and forms is an indication of centralized power. A gigantic regional shopping mall and a grand boulevard lined with monumental buildings have in common a single source of capital to pull it off, whether private, public, or a combination. The baroque relied on horizontal monumentalism, but vertical monumentalism is also effective. Power in the medieval city was by way of the tallest church spire or tower of a powerful family, for example. The Athenian acropolis is a case of vertical monumentalism. Historically, monumental plans tended to originate with a small minority of powerful people intent on exerting a way of life on their subjects via oversize buildings and expansive, straight streets. In cases where the monumental plan was overtly employed for submission, it was an act of violence. However, it might be argued that monumental places can unite the citizenry, such as in the case of the Hellenistic city. Lately, monumentalism has been pitched as a solution to global problems, from ecological disaster to economic stagnation.
Variation
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter looks into the implications of variation. It explains that a great variety of forms and patterns means there is a lot of churning going on. Assorted architecture and frontage type, culs-de-sac, and close are some elements combined to leave the impression that the community had as much diversity as nature. Early 20th-century social reformers tried to counteract uniformity, which was considered to be a form of oppression. The chapter then elaborates on the notion of scale as an essential consideration when evaluating diversity, referencing how the larger scale of places built is more conducive to separation since the mid-20th century.
Street Hierarchy
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter explores the notion of street hierarchy, which is a common pattern within grids and non-grids. It explains how width is the most common way to establish hierarchy. Under modernism, specialized streets would curve and meander to service an isolated use, and other infrastructure would be obliged to follow the same indirect, wasteful pattern. Street hierarchy was a regular feature of ancient cities, such as in imperial China and Japan wherein wide streets connected to a temple or palace whole narrowest streets were reserved for alleys that were lowest in the hierarchy. The chapter notes that grids use hierarchy to instill a sense of order and to establish priority in a system that is otherwise uniform.
Radials, Rings, and Diagonals
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter covers the radial-concentric street pattern of streets. It explains that the form became especially prominent when highway belts started to encircle cities in the mid-20th century. The radial-concentric pattern has prehistoric roots in line with the natural evolution of villages in Africa. In the United States, radial-concentric patterns usually put commercial and political power at the center. The chapter also considers how the radial-concentric pattern could not hold the forces of free market capitalism, and the green wedges transitioned into low-density sprawl. It then looks into diagonal roads that link focal points, which is an apt description of American railroads.
Buildings and Settings
Authors: Talen Emily
Published: July 2024

This chapter looks into understanding the context and linkages between culturally significant buildings. It explains that free-standing buildings and monuments would be reserved for places that deserved the highest respect. However, as buildings increased in scale because of technological advances, they could dominate without being on higher ground. The chapter explains how linking important sites could create a certain unity, which then refers to how the monument assumed a dominant role in the city’s context such as the historical-artistic basis of the Renaissance city. It cites that building placement can have meaning in the commonest of settings, such as civic pride.
Poured in from All Quarters
Authors: Chervinsky Lindsay M.
Published: July 2024

Executive clerks toiled night and day to decode the dispatches, uncovering details of the insulting treatment of the envoys in Paris. Initially, Adams withheld the dispatches while he sent a swift vessel to France to ferry the envoys to safety. Republicans were suspicious of the silence, convinced the president was hiding information that would prove he had negotiated with France in bad faith. They introduced a resolution demanding that the president turn over the dispatches. Federalists supported the resolution, knowing the result would be embarrassing to the Republican Party. Adams and his allies had worked behind the scenes to covertly share the contents with their party members. The resulting publications of the dispatches produced an overwhelming rush of support for the Adams administration and militancy against France.
The Unqualified Conviction of His Unfitness for the Station
Authors: Chervinsky Lindsay M.
Published: July 2024

Federalists focused their campaign on Thomas Jefferson’s radicalism and alleged atheism. But internal divisions in the party quickly fractured their efforts. Alexander Hamilton campaigned through New England under the guise of supporting Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and John Adams equally, but few were fooled. At the same time, Adams gave speeches warning against a “British faction,” meaning the Essex Junto. When Hamilton heard these claims, he demanded an explanation from the president. Adams ignored him, which Hamilton could not abide. In October 1800, he published a private letter, which quickly made its way into the newspapers. The letter listed all of Hamilton’s personal grievances against Adams as evidence of why he was unqualified to be president. Even Hamilton’s closest allies were horrified and recognized that the letter would only help Jefferson win the election.
Epilogue
Authors: Chervinsky Lindsay M.
Published: July 2024

After George Washington retired, many Americans genuinely wondered whether the presidency would work, and the nation would survive. John Adams stepped into the role, knowing the difficulties. He secured valuable peace in the face of opposition from his closest advisors and allies in the Federalist Party. He defended executive power against threats both foreign and domestic, and established critical precedents. He forged the first two peaceful transfers of power at a time when they were not the norm and far from guaranteed. Yet, he is rarely credited with these monumental achievements. His position between Washington and Thomas Jefferson is partly to blame for this historical amnesia. More important, most historians were convinced by the coordinated campaign by Jefferson and Hamilton to tarnish Adams’s reputation. Finally, most biographies of Adams were written before January 6, 2021. Many Americans and scholars took the peaceful transfer of power for granted. John Adams did not.
Identity and Community in the Work of Jack Spicer
Authors: Grundy David
Published: July 2024

In 1950, Jack Spicer effectively scuppered his chances of a stable academic career by refusing to sign the University of California’s newly imposed Loyalty Oath. In the years that followed, he became involved in the semi-clandestine political organizing of the Mattachine Society, the ‘Occult School’ of Boston, and, in San Francisco, the Spicer circle, which gathered in the queer bars of North Beach and the cruising grounds of Aquatic Park. Writing from these communities, Spicer also contested them, building a poetics on homosexuality while also questioning sexuality as a basis for identity. This chapter traces Spicer’s contradictory figuration of community, contending that Spicer’s work, while often problematic, paradoxical, and vexing, has much to tell us—even, or especially in its faults, negativity, and paradoxes—about broader questions of queer identity, both during the period of its writing and in the present day.
The Occult School of Boston (i)
Authors: Grundy David
Published: July 2024

A decade after the advent of the ‘Berkeley Renaissance’, a new scene of gay male writers emerged in Boston. Dubbed by poet Gerrit Lansing ‘an Occult School, unknown’, these poets were experimental yet anti-elitist, coterie but defiantly lower class. The first of two chapters on the Occult School addresses the work of Ed Marshall and Stephen Jones, whose 1953 meeting represented the School’s first flowering. It examines the complex interrelations between gay sexuality, sectarian Christianity, and poetry in Marshall’s work, before turning to Stephen Jonas, the contradictory and enormously creative crux of the Occult School, examining Jonas’ dialogue with Jack Spicer; his figurations of a gay Boston; his conception of the poem as mediating space between desire, loss, and social marginality; and his later turn to paranoiac, conspiratorial thinking, suggestive of both the strengths and pitfalls of this semi-clandestine, marginal group.
Introduction
Authors: Brinkmann Tobias
Published: July 2024

Jewish migration is still widely associated with violent persecution and stereotypes, such as the image of the Wandering Jew. Yet surprisingly little has been written about the journeys of Jewish migrants and refugees. Much of the scholarship focuses on immigration to specific countries, especially to the United States and Palestine/Israel as a redemptive success story. This study takes a closer look at the transit journeys of Jews from Eastern Europe between the 1860s and the aftermath of the Holocaust. Following Jews and others across borders around the globe links histories that are often told in separate national contexts. Little is known about Jews who were displaced by military conflicts, who failed to reach their intended destination, and who were forcibly moved, especially during the two world wars. The history of Jewish migrations and flight is closely linked with the emergence of academic migration and refugee studies.
Migrants Become Immigrants
Authors: Brinkmann Tobias
Published: July 2024

In the aftermath of World War II the United States continued to pursue a restrictive immigration policy toward Jews from Eastern Europe. The 1948 DP bill passed by Congress specifically permitted the admission of refugees but it was tweaked to exclude Jews from Eastern Europe. Obstacles faced by Jewish migrants and refugees gradually fell away in the early 1950s. Soon after the founding of the state of Israel thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors and DPs from Eastern Europe left the new state for Canada and the United States. Many sought assistance from American Jewish aid associations during the transit journey through Europe. Their experiences illustrates the challenges of distinguishing between migrants seeking better opportunities and refugees fleeing persecution.
Slavery, Natural Equality, and Natural Law in Seventeenth-Century Europe
Authors: Jorati Julia
Published: July 2024

This chapter explores the ways in which the natural law tradition understands slavery. It focuses on four seventeenth-century natural law theorists from continental Europe who stress natural equality and the natural right to liberty in their discussions of slavery: Francisco Suárez, Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, and Gabrielle Suchon. The chapter concentrates mainly on these authors’ attitudes toward natural slavery, which is the theory that some human beings are naturally destined for slavery on the basis of their natural mental or physical characteristics. All four authors criticize this theory, though some are hesitant to reject it wholesale. While they see the tension between natural slavery and the natural right to liberty and equality, they are evidently attracted to certain aspects of natural slavery.
Geographic Information Systems in Children’s Environmental Health
Authors: Georgopoulos Panos G.
Published: July 2024

Geographic information systems (GIS) are computer-based “toolboxes” that facilitate the input, storage, retrieval, exploration, visualization, systematic analysis, and mapping of a wide range of spatial and spatiotemporal data. GIS applications are highly useful in children’s environmental health. They enable computerized mapping of a variety of measurements and estimates, including demographic, socioeconomic, housing, consumer behavior, land use, climatological, hydrogeological, ecological, and environmental quality data. This chapter summarizes the historical development of GIS. It provides a brief introduction to basic GIS concepts, terminology, visualization, and analysis options. This chapter also presents examples that use GIS “outputs” to consider health outcomes and environmental exposures relevant to children’s health. The chapter concludes by considering prospects for future integration of GIS with mobile information technologies.
Epigenetics and Children’s Environmental Health
Authors: Fry Rebecca C. , Pinder Margaret
Published: July 2024

Gene–environment interactions—interactions between harmful chemical, physical, and social exposures in the environment and children’s individual, genetically determined susceptibilities—are central to the causation of most diseases. Toxicogenetics and toxicogenomics are new fields of science that study gene–environment interactions and genetic susceptibility. Many gene–environment interactions that are critically important to children’s environmental health occur only in early development. Early development is a time of exquisite sensitivity to environmental exposures, and windows of vulnerability to toxic chemicals have been identified in early life that have no counterpart in adult life. Environmental exposures in these critical periods have the potential to shape development and program health effects across the life span. These windows likely correspond to stages in early development when specific genes and gene pathways that interact with toxic chemicals are being expressed. Epigenetics, the process by which chemicals interact with the genome to modify gene expression without changing the DNA sequence, likely underlies many gene–environment interactions. Multiple chemicals, such as endocrine disruptors and metals, appear to mediate their effects at least in part via epigenetic mechanisms.
Racism, Environmental Injustice, and Child Health
Authors: Laraque-Arena Danielle
Published: July 2024

In the immediate past decade, sociopolitical context, alongside nationally publicized events of police brutality against Black men and women in the United States, have sharpened the focus of the impact of structural racism on health outcomes. In this context, the idea of achieving health equity and environmental justice leads to the broadening of the matrix of sociopolitical determinants of health that frame the influence of the environment on children’s health. Presented in this chapter, beyond the social determinants of poverty and extreme poverty on health, is the layered, indolent influence of biases related to the social constructs of race and gender as well as the intersecting categorization of peoples by class, ethnicity, religion, culture, sexual orientation.
The Intrauterine Environment and Early Infancy
Authors: Fan Winnie , Zlatnik Marya G. , Charlesworth Annemarie , Woodruff Tracey
Published: July 2024

Human biomonitoring data indicate that today every pregnant and lactating woman is exposed to a large and complex array of synthetic chemicals. Because many of the chemicals that comprise this body burden can cross the placenta from mother to child or pass from mother to child via breast milk, chemicals in the mother can cause exposure to the fetus and the young infant during sensitive periods of early development. This chapter reviews recent data on maternal body burden of environmental chemicals, discusses the varying ability of different chemicals to cross the placental barrier and accumulate in maternal breast milk, and addresses the importance of timing of exposure during early development. The need exists for continuing research that increases current understanding of environmental exposures during pregnancy and early infancy and closes the great gaps in knowledge that still exist. At the same time, there is urgent need for prudent policies that will reduce or prevent harmful exposures in early development.
Chemicals in Food
Authors: Landrigan Philip J.
Published: July 2024

Food can be a source of exposure to multiple hazardous chemicals, including pesticides; toxic chemicals that enter the food supply; colorings, flavorings and preservatives; and chemicals that migrate into foods through contact with packaging materials. Food is the main source of children’s exposure to pesticides. These include insecticides such as organophosphates, carbamates, and neonicotinoids applied to many fruits and vegetables as well as herbicides applied in large quantities to genetically engineered (GMO) food crops, notably corn and soybeans. Residual quantities (“residues”) of pesticides are detected in most “conventionally grown” foods. Herbicide residues are commonly detected in processed foods made from corn and soybeans. Several widely used herbicides are possible and probable human carcinogens, and exposure to these toxic chemicals is the principal threat to children’s health associated with GMO food. The Food Quality Protection Act, the US federal law on pesticides, sets standards—“tolerances”—that limit the levels of residual pesticides allowed on food crops. All foods certified organic by the US Department of Agriculture must be grown and processed using no pesticides, and they also must be GMO-free. The main benefit of organic food is that it reduces children’s pesticide exposure by as much as 90%. Many toxic chemicals can enter the food supply as well as mycotoxins such as aflatoxin, fish, and shellfish toxins such as ciguatera, and perchlorate.
The Shape of the Built Environment Shapes Children’s Health
Authors: Jackson Richard J.
Published: July 2024

Children must grow in environments that are safe, healthful, and diverse. The built environment includes buildings, roads, parks, vehicles, and recreational spaces that are created or modified by people. All of these spaces affect health. A community’s built environment shapes opportunities for physical activity. The built environment can support or impede recreational and social interaction. It can enable physical fitness, or it can impel the rising rates of childhood and adult obesity and diabetes. Innovative changes in the built environment, such as LEED-certified buildings, should offer sustainable and healthful solutions. Traditional urban and suburban plans are often targeted more at meeting the needs of vehicles and rarely focus on children’s needs, including for incidental and purposeful physical activity, healthful play, and access to schools.
Tobacco Smoke
Authors: Buran Meghan , Phinney Kelsey , Samet Jonathan M.
Published: July 2024

Tobacco smoking has long been the world’s leading cause of avoidable morbidity and mortality. Globally there are over 1 billion smokers. While tobacco use is declining in many high-income countries, it is rising in low- and middle-income countries as the multinational tobacco companies seek new markets and new smokers. Childhood is a critical period for experimenting with tobacco use and becoming addicted to nicotine. The tobacco industry has long targeted youths with aggressive marketing strategies to assure that its customer base is maintained. While smoking has declined among adolescents in many countries, the rate of decline has slowed. Tobacco smoking has adverse effects that extend across the entire life span, beginning before conception and ending with old age and death. Exposures in early life to tobacco smoke may have long-term implications for health across the life span.
Water Pollution and Children’s Health
Authors: Arnold Katherine
Published: July 2024

Water pollution is a major threat to children worldwide. Diarrhea is the principal health consequence of water contamination, and the global burden of morbidity and mortality from waterborne diarrhea is vast. Children are disproportionately affected. Many other diseases are also related to water. These include certain vector-borne diseases such as malaria, whose mosquito vectors breed in standing water, and malnutrition. Water-related malnutrition is the consequence of repeated episodes of diarrhea and lack of water for food production. Toxic chemical contamination of water is an additional threat to children’s health. Prenatal exposure to chemical contaminants in drinking water can result in acute health outcomes such as birth defects or death. Most of the global burden of waterborne and water-related disease could be prevented through basic sanitation, hygiene, and the provision of clean water. Water scarcity is a problem in many areas of the world today and is anticipated to increase in the years ahead with increasing global population and changes in climate that will likely decrease the availability of water. Water scarcity will exacerbate the burden of waterborne disease. It will also threaten food security and result in increased conflict in the world’s major river basins.
Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances
Authors: Grandjean Philippe
Published: July 2024

The per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been dubbed “forever-chemicals” because they tend to be highly stable due to the strong chemical bond between carbon and fluorine. Thus, the major PFAS do not break down, potentially causing continued dissemination to surface water bodies or groundwater (e.g., from former production sites, fire-training areas, or waste dumps). Once released to the environment, PFAS accumulate in marine and aquatic food chains, and in wildlife. Industry claims inspired the belief that the PFAS were almost innocuous. However, as early toxicology studies were finally released in 2000, information emerged on transmission from mother to progeny and a variety of adverse health effects, thereby inspiring independent academic research. New evidence showed that PFAS exposure at lower and lower levels could represent a health hazard. At the same time, PFAS pollution was found to occur globally. The persistence of these compounds, both in the environment and in the human body, added to the concern that these compounds might represent a new environmental hazard.
Volatile Organic Chemicals
Authors: Boyd Barr Dana , Panuwet Parinya , Ryan P. Barry
Published: July 2024

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) include benzene, dichlorobenzene, ethylbenzene, formaldehyde, perchloroethylene, toluene, and xylene. Because of their volatility and widespread use in both domestic and industrial applications, VOCs are pervasive contaminants in both indoor and outdoor air. Exposure is widespread. The most common indoor sources of VOCs include tobacco smoke, use of solvents and paints, non-sealed gasoline and paint containers, off-gassing from carpets and upholstery, and use of aerosolized products. Outdoor VOC exposures can result from industrial emissions, automobile exhaust, and other combustion processes. Health effects include both acute and chronic effects: inflammation of respiratory pathways, hepatoxicity, wheeze, exacerbation of asthma, neurotoxicity, and hematolymphopoietic cancers such as leukemia. Prevention of VOC toxicity is best achieved by reducing exposures. Indoor exposures can be reduced by eliminating smoking, limiting use of VOC-containing products, and proper ventilation. Outdoor exposures can be reduced by strict regulation of emission sources
Asthma, Allergy, and the Environment
Authors: Vilcins Dwan , Sly Peter D.
Published: July 2024

Asthma is disease in which the normal development of the respiratory and immune systems is altered by interactions between harmful environmental exposures and underlying genetic predispositions. The major risk factors for asthma in early life are a family history of asthma and allergies, reflecting a genetic predisposition; sensitization to perennial aeroallergens; and recurrent severe lower respiratory infections, especially those associated with fever and/or wheeze. Reduced lung function appears to be an independent risk factor for asthma. Environmental exposures—either prenatal exposures or exposures in early postnatal life—that limit lung growth or delay maturation of the immune system further increase the risk of asthma. Although environmental controls may not truly prevent asthma, strategies such as eliminating exposure of pregnant women, infants, and young children to tobacco smoke, air pollution, and ambient pollutants are likely to decrease asthma.
The Environment and Cardiovascular Disease in Children
Authors: Landrigan Philip J.
Published: July 2024

Toxic environmental exposures can cause cardiovascular disease (CVD) in infants and children, and environmental exposures in early life can initiate pathophysiologic processes that increase CVD risk across the life span and result in disease and premature death. Early intervention strategies are therefore of great importance. Air pollution is a major CVD risk factor. PM2.5 air pollution increases risk for atrial fibrillation, ventricular arrhythmias, myocardial infarction, stroke, and CVD death, and it also increases risk for hypertension, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. Lead causes hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral arterial disease. Methyl mercury is associated with hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, and CVD mortality. Chronic cadmium exposure results in increased blood pressure, increased risk of coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, stroke, and CVD death. Chronic arsenic exposure increases risk for atherosclerosis, hypertension, peripheral arterial disease, and ischemic heart disease. Chronic exposure to cobalt increases risk for cardiomyopathy. Acute thallium exposure causes hypotension, bradycardia, and death. Dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls increase CVD risk by acting as endocrine disruptors, and per- and polyfluorinated substances have similar effects. Prenatal exposures to halogenated solvents appear to increase risk of congenital heart disease. Finally, chronic exposure to noise can increase risk for ischemic heart disease by increasing risk for hypertension.
Tradition, experts, and certifying agencies: Advances and setbacks in kashrut practice today
Authors: Topel Marta F.
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses kashrut practices today, as well as the innovations resulting from the incorporation of food processing technologies, on the one hand, and the mechanisms that kashrut supervisors have developed to increase the precision of their work, on the other. Part of this chapter is devoted to the training of kashrut experts and the creation of kashrut food–certifying agencies. This is followed immediately by interesting findings from the author’s fieldwork, such as the precautions taken by the Kashrut Commission of the Eda Charedit (an ultra-Orthodox group from Jerusalem) to assure that the commandments and rules referring to the Sabbatical Year of the Land are fulfilled with utmost stringency. Finally, the chapter brings out data that show the alternatives that have emerged in Israel, meant to break down the Central Rabbinate’s monopoly over kashrut and struggle against what in Israel is known as religious coercion.
Ritual density or obsession? Pointillism in kashrut
Authors: Topel Marta F.
Published: July 2024

Chapter 4 provides detailed descriptions of the difficulties that Orthodox housewives have in carrying out all the preparations for the Jewish Passover. This empirical universe reveals a certain obsession or pointillism in the consummation of commandments, Halakhot, and rules and customs demanded in preparing for the festivities. Contrasting medieval sources with current ones, the author concludes that the number of rules for celebrating Easter has increased exponentially in recent decades, becoming an important indication of the chumratization process that significant segments of Jewish orthodoxy have gone through and are still experiencing. To ponder the existence of an obsessive component in contemporary Jewish orthodoxy, the chapter draws on research from ethnopsychiatry and psychology that have attempted to measure the incidence of OCD among Orthodox Jews and individuals of other orthopractic religions. At the end of the chapter, the author uses Talal Asad’s approach to ritual to develop an understanding of the ritual density of everyday life that characterizes Orthodox Judaism, a reality that classical anthropological theories of rituals are not able to explain.
Representation and Empowerment Through School Culture and Curriculum Shifts
Authors: Spellman Qiana
Published: July 2024

This chapter concludes the developmental section of the book by examining the effectiveness of youth participatory action research (YPAR) at the high school level. Specifically, the author describes how school counselors can use YPAR in classroom instruction. A case study illuminates the construction and evaluation of an arts-based classroom curriculum (i.e. a Race in America course) that followed a YPAR process where youth created artwork to respond to systemic inequities in their lives. Stories, pictures, and youth’s lyrics are explained as evaluative measures, highlighting the impact of this course on participants. The chapter concludes with recommendations for school counselors, a reflective activity, and resources in support of implementing YPAR at the high school level.
Adult Educators Collaborating With Youth Through PAR
Authors: Murphy Kristin M.
Published: July 2024

This chapter focuses specifically on school counselor collaboration with special educators. It is more important than ever that school personnel build avenues to collaborate with each other and to listen to students in order to inform and enact policy and practice changes in school communities and beyond. One way to accomplish this is through youth participatory action research (YPAR) guided by collaborative partnerships between school counselors, teachers, and other colleagues working together at school. This chapter will describe how school counselors can partner with teachers and other school personnel in collaboration with students as members of a research collaborative with the goal of improving school-level policies or practices. To illustrate this collaboration among adults and youth, this chapter will include a case example of a YPAR project focused on adjusting student mental health support mechanisms at a high school. Recommendations for navigating tensions and for practice are provided.
Conclusion
Authors: Levy Ian P. , Cook Amy L.
Published: July 2024

This text serves to guide school counselors through the developmental application of youth action participatory research (YPAR) within comprehensive school counseling programs. Attention to amplifying youth voice is the goal of all YPAR work across the developmental span, grades K–12. To begin to apply YPAR within their comprehensive programs, school counselors should start small, whether in a classroom via collaboration with a teacher, in a small group, or within an afterschool program. This steady process of implementation and evaluation will help school counselors lay the groundwork for integrating YPAR across school ecosystems. This concluding chapter summarizes the contributions of YPAR in school counseling practice and school counselor education.
Symptoms of Mistrust and What to Do About Them
Authors: Gorman Sara E.
Published: July 2024

This chapter turns to potential solutions to the very daunting problems that have been outlined throughout the book. Great emphasis is placed on medical misinformation and the current state of the evidence about effective responses to it. As argued in the book, misinformation is both a precursor and a symptom of a system heavily plagued by distrust, so understanding it and responding accordingly must be part of the solution. In addition to an in-depth discussion of misinformation and potential responses, the chapter also examines potential ways to improve the U.S. healthcare system, with a heavy focus on improving health equity and access to care. Targeted trust-improving interventions are also discussed with the recognition that there is less evidence on what exactly works in this arena. Comparisons are made to other countries in which levels of trust in the healthcare system are high.
Good Practicing and How It Changes the Brain
Authors: Gebrian Molly
Published: July 2024

Good practicing is problem solving. Many popular practice methods, such as playing through a large section slowly, or only stopping once a mistake has already been made, are not effective because they do not involve proactive problem-solving techniques. They also serve to reinforce bad habits and mistakes. This chapter explores how the brain changes when we learn, how neural pathways are reinforced, and how new connections are formed in the brain as a backdrop for understanding why carefully targeted approaches to practicing are more beneficial. It also discusses the research on overlearning to illustrate why correct repetitions are necessary and how best to implement this strategy.
Be More Consistent in Performance
Authors: Gebrian Molly
Published: July 2024

Consistency in performance requires a special type of spaced practice known as interleaved practice. This involves alternating frequently between different passages and skills, making the brain change gears more frequently, and allowing the brain to practice the flexibility it will need in a performance situation. The opposite, blocked practice, leads to the illusion of mastery, a mistaken belief that fluency and comfort with a given passage during the practice session itself is an accurate measure of learning. The illusion of mastery shows up most obviously when there is a clear discrepancy between how something sounds in the practice room and how it sounds in a lesson or performance. This chapter presents research demonstrating the effectiveness of interleaved practice and offers specific implementation strategies for musicians.
Mental Practice and the Brain
Authors: Gebrian Molly
Published: July 2024

Mental practice is effective because it uses the same areas of the brain in approximately the same ways as physical practice. This chapter provides an overview of these areas and their role in mental practicing. It also presents evidence that greater ability with vividly imagining movements and sounds translates into more efficient body use during actual performance, providing incentive to develop mental practice skills. In addition, this chapter presents evidence that these skills can be learned and improved and are not the result of innate ability. Finally, common questions about mental practice are answered, with advice on how to improve at these skills and incorporate them into one’s practice routine.
An Economic Framework of Accounting
Authors: Frankel Richard M. , Kothari S. P. , Zuo Luo
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses accounting’s economic functions, the logic of accounting, and the limitations of accounting information. Accounting helps firms function more efficiently. Within the firm, accounting information makes contracts work better and aids managerial decisions in the absence of available prices. In capital market exchanges, accounting information ameliorates information asymmetry, thereby enabling price discovery and reducing trading costs. Double-entry bookkeeping converts economic events into accounting information, and accrual-basis accounting mitigates the timing and matching problems that arise from dividing the firm’s life into subperiods for measurement. The chapter argues that accounting information is useful in stewardship and valuation despite its limitations.
China’s Political Economy
Authors: Zweig David
Published: July 2024

China has a highly “political” economy. Despite periodic efforts to promote the market, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state bureaucracy exercise dominance over China’s overall developmental strategy, property rights, the large state-owned sector, foreign economic relations, and the sale of land—all of which is state-owned—to developers. The chapter analyzes the decollectivization of agriculture (1979–1983), the growth of collectively owned rural factories (1984–1996), the emergence and expansion of the private sector, and the internationalization of the Chinese economy through the adoption of export-led growth, the encouragement of foreign direct investment in the PRC, and China’s own overseas investment. Throughout, it highlights the role of China’s leadership in the economy from the tumultuous Mao era through Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up,” and Xi Jinping’s reassertion of party-state control.
Policy Case Study: The Environment and Climate Change
Authors: Morton Katherine , Wu Fengshi
Published: July 2024

This chapter discusses China’s contemporary environmental challenges from both state and societal perspectives, considering transnational drivers and contexts. It begins with an overview of the PRC’s current environmental crisis, its spillover effects beyond its borders, and the consequences of climate change. This is followed by a discussion of government responses and civil society initiatives. Attention then turns to identifying the core challenges that remain, especially in the context of accelerating climate impacts and a shrinking space for environmental activism in domestic politics. The final part of the case study discusses the potential for a more sustainable future that considers the importance of leadership at both the domestic and global levels.