bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Trends and Epidemiologic Factors Contributing to Soccer-Related Fractures That Presented to Emergency Departments in the United States
Authors: Kuczinski Ashley , Newman Jared M. , Piuzzi Nicolas S. , Sodhi Nipun , Doran James P. , Khlopas Anton , Beyer George A. , Paulino Carl B. , Mont Michael A.
Published: September 2018

Background:

Understanding the risks and trends of soccer-related injuries may prove beneficial in creating preventative strategies against season-ending injuries.

Hypothesis:

Soccer-related fractures will have decreased over the past 7 years.

Study Design:

Descriptive epidemiology study.

Level of Evidence:

Level 3.

Methods:

The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database was queried to identify soccer-related injuries from 2010 through 2016. The sum of the weighted values provided in the NEISS database was used to determine injury frequency and allowed us to estimate the incidence and annual trends of soccer-related fractures. The estimated annual number of hospital admissions resulting from each fracture location was calculated. Statistical analyses were performed, and a linear regression was used to analyze the annual injury trends, reported as the correlation coefficient.

Results:

Over the 6-year period, there were an estimated 1,590,365 soccer-related injuries. The estimated annual frequency of soccer-related injuries slightly increased from 225,910 in 2010 to 226,150 in 2016 ( P = 0.477). The most common injuries were sprains/strains (32.4%), followed by fractures (20.4%). Fractures at the wrist were the most common (18%), while upper leg fractures were the most common soccer-related fractures to be admitted to the hospital (51.6%). The annual trends of the most common soccer-related fractures demonstrated increases in shoulder ( r = 0.740; R2 = 0.547; P = 0.057) and wrist ( r = 0.308; R2 = 0.095; P = 0.502) fractures. There were no significant changes in the trends of soccer-related fractures of the lower arm ( r = 0.009; R2 = 7.3 × 10−5; P = 0.986), finger ( r = 0.679; R2 = 0.460; P = 0.094), lower leg ( r = 0.153; R2 = 0.024; P = 0.743), ankle ( r = 0.650; R2 = 0.422; P = 0.114), toe ( r = 0.417; R2 = 0.174; P = 0.353), or foot ( r = 0.485; R2 = 0.235; P = 0.270).

Conclusion:

Despite the reported growing number of soccer players in the United States, the overall number of soccer-related injuries has remained relatively stable. Overall, 60% of reported fractures occurred in the upper extremity, with the wrist being the most common site, while lower extremity fractures were the most likely to lead to hospital admission.

Clinical Relevance:

This study offers an overview of the most common types of fractures that affect soccer players and may prove beneficial in creating preventative strategies against season-ending injuries.
Obesity and hemoglobin content impact peak oxygen uptake in human heart failure
Authors: Van Iterson Erik H , Kim Chul-Ho , Uithoven Katelyn , Olson Thomas P
Published: September 2018

Background

Exercise intolerance, obesity, and low hemoglobin (hemoglobin<13 and <12 g/dl, men/women, respectively) are common features of heart failure. Despite serving as potent contributors to metabolic dysfunction, the impact of obesity and low hemoglobin on exercise intolerance is unknown. This study tested the hypotheses, compared with non-obese (NO) heart failure with normal hemoglobin, (a) counterparts with low hemoglobin and obesity or non-obesity will demonstrate reduced peak exercise oxygen uptake; (b) obese with normal hemoglobin will demonstrate decreased peak exercise oxygen uptake; (c) compared across stratifications, obese with low hemoglobin will demonstrate the sharpest decrement in peak exercise oxygen uptake.

Methods

Adults with heart failure ( n = 315; left ventricular ejection fraction≤40%; 77% men) (Group 1: normal hemoglobin and non-obese, n = 137; Group 2: low hemoglobin and non-obese, n = 51; Group 3: normal hemoglobin+obesity, n = 89; Group 4, n = 38: low hemoglobin+obesity; body mass index = 26 ± 3, 26 ± 2, 34 ± 4, 34 ± 4 kg/m2, respectively) completed treadmill cardiopulmonary exercise testing as part of routine clinical management. Peak exercise oxygen uptake was measured via standard metabolic system.

Results

There were no group-wise differences for heart failure class, gender, left ventricular ejection fraction, and resting cardiopulmonary function. Group 1 demonstrated increased peak exercise oxygen uptake versus Groups 2–4 (20 ± 6 versus 17 ± 6, 17 ± 5, 13 ± 4 ml/kg/min, respectively; all p < 0.001); whereas Group 4 peak exercise oxygen uptake was reduced versus all groups ( p < 0.001). Additionally, both body mass index (R2 = 0.10) and hemoglobin (R2 = 0.12) were significant predictors of peak exercise oxygen uptake in Group 1; which were relationships not mirrored for Groups 2–4.

Conclusion

These data suggest obesity together with low hemoglobin are potent contributors to impaired peak exercise oxygen uptake and, hence, oxidative metabolic capacity. In diverse populations of heart failure where obesity and/or low hemoglobin are present, it is important to consider these features together when interpreting peak exercise oxygen uptake and underlying exercise limitations.
SKI controls MDS-associated chronic TGF-β signaling, aberrant splicing, and stem cell fitness
Authors: Muench David E. , Ferchen Kyle , Velu Chinavenmeni S. , Pradhan Kith , Chetal Kashish , Chen Xiaoting , Weirauch Matthew T. , Colmenares Clemencia , Verma Amit , Salomonis Nathan , Grimes H. Leighton
Published: September 2018

The transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway controls hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) behavior in the marrow niche; however, TGF-β signaling becomes chronic in early-stage myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). Although TGF-β signaling normally induces negative feedback, in early-stage MDS, high levels of microRNA-21 (miR-21) contribute to chronic TGF-β signaling. We found that a TGF-β signal–correlated gene signature is sufficient to identify an MDS patient population with abnormal RNA splicing (eg, CSF3R) independent of splicing factor mutations and coincident with low HNRNPK activity. Levels of SKI messenger RNA (mRNA) encoding a TGF-β antagonist are sufficient to identify these patients. However, MDS patients with high SKI mRNA and chronic TGF-β signaling lack SKI protein because of miR-21 activity. To determine the impact of SKI loss, we examined murine Ski−/− HSC function. First, competitive HSC transplants revealed a profound defect in stem cell fitness (competitive disadvantage) but not specification, homing, or multilineage production. Aged recipients of Ski−/− HSCs exhibited mild phenotypes similar to phenotypes in those with macrocytic anemia. Second, blastocyst complementation revealed a dramatic block in Ski−/− hematopoiesis in the absence of transplantation. Similar to SKI-high MDS patient samples, Ski−/− HSCs strikingly upregulated TGF-β signaling and deregulated expression of spliceosome genes (including Hnrnpk). Moreover, novel single-cell splicing analyses demonstrated that Ski−/− HSCs and high levels of SKI expression in MDS patient samples share abnormal alternative splicing of common genes (including those that encode splicing factors). We conclude that miR-21–mediated loss of SKI activates TGF-β signaling and alternative splicing to impair the competitive advantage of normal HSCs (fitness), which could contribute to selection of early-stage MDS-genic clones.
Feeling useless: the effect of unemployment on mental health in the Great Recession
Authors: Farré Lídia , Fasani Francesco , Mueller Hannes
Published: September 2018

This article documents a strong connection between unemployment and mental distress using data from the Spanish National Health Survey. We exploit the collapse of the construction sector to identify the causal effect of job losses in different segments of the Spanish labor market. Our results suggest that an increase of the unemployment rate by 10 percentage points due to the breakdown in construction raised reported poor health and mental disorders in the affected population by 3 percentage points, respectively. We argue that the size of this effect responds to the fact that the construction sector was at the center of the economic recession. As a result, workers exposed to the negative labor demand shock faced very low chances of re-entering employment. We show that this led to long unemployment spells, stress, hopelessness, and feelings of uselessness. These effects point towards a potential channel for unemployment hysteresis.
Longitudinal assessment of an anti-stigma campaign related to common mental disorders in rural India
Authors: Maulik Pallab K. , Devarapalli Siddhardha , Kallakuri Sudha , Tripathi Anadya Prakash , Koschorke Mirja , Thornicroft Graham
Published: September 2018

Background

Stigma related to mental health and lack of trained mental health professionals is a major cause for an increased treatment gap, particularly in rural India. The Systematic Medical Appraisal, Referral and Treatment (SMART) Mental Health project delivered a complex intervention involving task sharing, an anti-stigma campaign and use of technology-based, decision-support tools to empower primary care workers to identify and manage depression, anxiety, stress and suicide risk.

Aims

The aim of this article is to report changes in stigma perceptions over three time points in the rural communities where the anti-stigma campaign was conducted.

Method

A multimedia-based anti-stigma campaign was conducted over a 3-month period in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Following that, the primary care-based mental health service was delivered for 1 year. The anti-stigma campaign was evaluated in two villages and data were captured at three time points over a 24-month period (N = 1417): before and after delivery of the campaign and after completion of the health services delivery intervention. Standardised tools captured data on knowledge, attitude and behaviour towards mental health as well as perceptions related to help seeking for mental illnesses.

Results

Most knowledge, attitude and behaviour scores improved over the three time points. Overall mean scores on stigma perceptions related to help seeking improved by −0.375 (minimum/maximum of −2.7/2.4, s.d. 0.519, P < 0.001) during this time. Loss to follow-up was 10%.

Conclusions

The data highlight the positive effects of an anti-stigma campaign over a 2-year period.

Declaration of interest

None.
The Natural History of Adrenal Insufficiency in X-Linked Adrenoleukodystrophy: An International Collaboration
Authors: Huffnagel Irene C , Laheji Fiza K , Aziz-Bose Razina , Tritos Nicholas A , Marino Rose , Linthorst Gabor E , Kemp Stephan , Engelen Marc , Eichler Florian
Published: September 2018

Context

Primary adrenal insufficiency is an important clinical manifestation of X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). Other manifestations include spinal cord disease and/or inflammatory demyelinating cerebral disease. Implementation of newborn screening requires natural history data to develop follow-up recommendations.

Objective

To delineate the natural history of adrenal insufficiency in male patients with ALD and to assess associations between the risk for developing adrenal insufficiency, spinal cord disease, or cerebral disease and plasma C26:0/C22:0 and C24:0/C22:0 ratios, which are diagnostic biomarkers for ALD.

Design

Retrospective review of medical records.

Setting

Two international tertiary referral centers of expertise for ALD.

Patients

Male patients with ALD followed at the centers between 2002 and 2016.

Main Outcome Measures

The primary endpoint was adrenal insufficiency; secondary endpoints were spinal cord and cerebral disease.

Results

Data on 159 male patients was available. The probability of developing adrenal insufficiency was described with survival analysis. Median time until adrenal insufficiency was 14 years (95% CI, 9.70 to 18.30 years). The cumulative proportion of patients who developed adrenal insufficiency was age-dependent and highest in early childhood [0 to 10 years, 46.8% (SEM 0.041%); 11 to 40 years, 28.6% (SEM, 0.037%); >40 years, 5.6% (SEM, 0.038%)]. No association between clinical manifestations and plasma ratios was detected with Cox model or Spearman correlation.

Conclusions

Lifetime prevalence of adrenal insufficiency in male patients with ALD is ~80%. Adrenal insufficiency risk is time-dependent and warrants age-dependent follow-up. Besides on-demand testing if symptoms manifest, we suggest a minimum of adrenal testing every 4 to 6 months for patients age ≤10 years, annual testing for those age 11 to 40 years, and solely on-demand testing for those age >40 years.
Recent advances in understanding colorectal cancer
Authors: Stintzing Sebastian
Published: September 2018

The achievements in the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer during recent years are based on a better understanding of the disease and individualized regimen planning. In adjuvant treatment, the highly important IDEA (International Duration Evaluation of Adjuvant Chemotherapy) study has shown that treatment duration can safely be reduced in selected patient populations. In patients with pN1 and pT1-pT3 tumors, 3 months of treatment with 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin is comparable with respect to 3-year survival rate to 6 months of treatment. For patients with N2 tumors, 6 months of treatment should stay the standard of care. The limitation of the duration of the adjuvant treatment is significantly reducing the chemotherapy-induced morbidity. New studies will explore the use of immune-checkpoint inhibitors in the adjuvant setting in microsatellite-instable (MSI) tumors. In metastatic disease, next to the required molecular testing for RAS and BRAF mutations, MSI testing is recommended. In the rare group of patients with a MSI tumor, immune-checkpoint inhibition is changing the course of the disease dramatically. Therefore, it is important to identify those patients early. For the RAS-mutant cases, no new and targeted treatment options have been identified yet. An optimal treatment strategy for those patients is urgently needed. RAS wild-type patients with tumors derived from the left side of the colon (splenic flexure to rectum) should be treated in first line with epithelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies. This selection by a molecular and a clinical marker increased the benefit derived by EGFR antibodies dramatically and defined the most effective treatment option for those patients. New selection criteria based on gene expression, methylation, and other molecular changes are explored and will further influence our therapeutic strategies in the future.
Recent advances in understanding and managing cholesterol gallstones
Authors: Di Ciaula Agostino , Portincasa Piero
Published: September 2018

The high prevalence of cholesterol gallstones, the availability of new information about pathogenesis, and the relevant health costs due to the management of cholelithiasis in both children and adults contribute to a growing interest in this disease. From an epidemiologic point of view, the risk of gallstones has been associated with higher risk of incident ischemic heart disease, total mortality, and disease-specific mortality (including cancer) independently from the presence of traditional risk factors such as body weight, lifestyle, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. This evidence points to the existence of complex pathogenic pathways linking the occurrence of gallstones to altered systemic homeostasis involving multiple organs and dynamics. In fact, the formation of gallstones is secondary to local factors strictly dependent on the gallbladder (that is, impaired smooth muscle function, wall inflammation, and intraluminal mucin accumulation) and bile (that is, supersaturation in cholesterol and precipitation of solid crystals) but also to “extra-gallbladder” features such as gene polymorphism, epigenetic factors, expression and activity of nuclear receptors, hormonal factors (in particular, insulin resistance), multi-level alterations in cholesterol metabolism, altered intestinal motility, and variations in gut microbiota. Of note, the majority of these factors are potentially manageable. Thus, cholelithiasis appears as the expression of systemic unbalances that, besides the classic therapeutic approaches to patients with clinical evidence of symptomatic disease or complications (surgery and, in a small subgroup of subjects, oral litholysis with bile acids), could be managed with tools oriented to primary prevention (changes in diet and lifestyle and pharmacologic prevention in subgroups at high risk), and there could be relevant implications in reducing both prevalence and health costs.
ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ИНФОРМАЦИОННЫХ СИСТЕМ В ПОДГОТОВКЕ БУДУЩИХ МЕНЕДЖЕРОВ
Authors: Manyukova Natalya Vladislavovna , Nikonova Elena Zakharovna
Published: September 2018

Цель исследования. Статья посвящена актуальным в условиях ФГОС ВО вопросам подготовки менеджеров к информационно-аналитической деятельности, позволяющей решать профессиональные задачи в области социально-экономического управления. Предметом исследования являются прикладные программные средства, предоставляющие возможность проводить всесторонний экономический анализ для поддержки принятия управленческих решений. Авторы статьи ставят перед собой цель рассмотреть аналитические информационные системы, используемые в процессе подготовки будущих менеджеров.Метод проведения работы. Основу исследования составляют общенаучные методы, анализ нормативной документации, сравнительный анализ возможностей прикладных программных средств в области социально-экономического управления, моделирование, наблюдение и эксперимент.Результаты. Результаты работы заключаются в проведении аналитического обзора прикладного программного обеспечения, используемого в обучении студентов направления подготовки «Менеджмент», выявлении особенностей структурирования дисциплин с учетом уровней управления (оперативного, тактического и стратегического) и специализированных ИС и ИТ.Область применения результатов. Результаты исследования могут быть использованы при разработке учебных планов по направлению подготовки «Менеджмент» и УМК по дисциплинам: «Информатика и информационные технологии», «Программное обеспечение в управлении человеческими ресурсами», «Практикум 1С:Предприятие», «Разработка управленческих решений», «Документационное обеспечение управленческой деятельности», «Бизнес-планирование», «Оценка эффективности управления человеческими ресурсами», «Оценка бизнеса и управление стоимостью фирмы».
A History That Dare Not Be Told: Political Culture and the Making of Revolutionary Cuba, 1946–1958
Authors: Guerra Lillian
Published: September 2018

This introductory chapter briefly illustrates Cuba's underground revolutionary culture and the challenges it faced during Fulgencio Batista's regime. It argues that the “New Cuba” that allegedly emerged in January 1959 did not rise from the ground up. The seeds of revolutionary Cuba were not just planted in the years before, they had sprouted and flourished. This Cuba began to flourish in the late 1940s and came to fruition in the last months of 1958 when Cubans consumed, constructed, and helped craft the image of a generous, accountable, morally pure, and messianic revolutionary state that Fidel Castro was committed to lead. In addition to this, the chapter also delves into the political culture of 1940s Cuba.
El Último Aldabonazo: Fulgencio Batista’s “Revolution” and Renewed Struggle for a Democratic Cuba, 1952–1953
Authors: Guerra Lillian
Published: September 2018

This chapter shows that partisan fragmentation characterized Cuba's political scene in the years after Chibás's death. Foremost among its causes was General Batista's unexpected seizure of power on March 10, 1952. With the near full support of Cuba's armed forces, Batista's coup led to the subsequent cancellation of the election that, by all accounts, the Ortodoxos would have won by a landslide. Indeed, Eddy Chibás's final public words were a prophecy: “el último aldabonazo” turned out to be the blow to democracy that the coup represented. Batista's actions quickly became a wake-up call to fight for what generations had longed for and believed in: a different, better, socially just, and more egalitarian Cuba.
Civic Activism and the Legitimation of Armed Struggle Against Batista, 1955–1956
Authors: Guerra Lillian
Published: September 2018

This chapter looks at how José Antonio Echeverría, president of the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios (Federation of University Students, FEU), prepared the public to back the violent overthrow of the regime that he and his FEU allies were secretly plotting by appealing to Cubans with the claim that an armed challenge to Batista's power could only renew and refresh the national collective union. Castro and his supporters took this argument several steps further, couching their own movement's already proven commitment to violence in discursive histrionics of “making love, not war” in defense of la patria. In adopting the prose and pose of reluctant revolutionaries who loved rather than hated, Echeverría, Castro, and their respective movements attempted to undercut the very claims Batista had made all along, since the very day of his coup.
Clandestinos, Guerrillas, and the Making of a Messiah in the Sierra Maestra, 1957–1958
Authors: Guerra Lillian
Published: September 2018

This chapter argues that Castro's image as a selfless, Christ-like redeemer with similarly altruistic followers owed its origins as much to the actions of the clandestinos who withstood the brunt of the violence and constructed Fidel's messianic portrayal for Cubans and for the outside world as it did to the political strategies of the guerrillas themselves in the Sierra Maestra. Unknown but central to the guerrillas' importance was the way that they, like the clandestinos, sought to “humanize” war and violence by inviting citizens to see their actions as defensive efforts to reunite a Cuba that Batista—not the insurrectionists—had divided.
Transformation Masks: Recollecting the Indigenous Origins of Global Consciousness
Authors: Wilner Isaiah Lorado
Published: September 2018

This chapter argues that indigenous people were not merely recipients of history, playing bit roles to accommodate others' inventions or stage a forlorn act of resistance. They were inventors of modernity, innovators on a global stage who transformed the lives of people beyond their communities. The chapter draws on two areas of study that are usually treated separately: material culture and mythology. On the Northwest Coast, masks and “myths” are parts of a whole. Masks and stories unite to create a narrative, a packet of messages embedded in expression that convey a worldview, which individuals transmit to the world. Through an effort to recover the narratives embodied in masks yet masked by the Western archive, scholars may draw upon this stream of agency, reuniting objects and stories to read the messages indigenous performers and intellectuals have communicated.
Expressive Enlightenment: Subjectivity and Solidarity in Daniel Garrison Brinton, Franz Boas, and Carlos Montezuma
Authors: Carr Ryan
Published: September 2018

This chapter considers Franz Boas's affiliations with American ethnologist Daniel Garrison Brinton and Yavapai doctor, pamphleteer, and founding member of the Society of American Indians, Carlos Montezuma. Boas saw Brinton as having fostered a project known as “the philosophy of expression.” He also credited Brinton's attempt to conduct the human sciences from a first-personal perspective with putting their common discipline on a “firm footing.” Montezuma's efforts to make expressive enlightenment the basis of a pan-Indian social movement led to his adoption of an ethical attitude toward history and language that faced the same direction as that of Boas. For both Boas and Montezuma, the main obstacle facing the global community they envisioned was the widespread conception of human history as an unending race war.
Utter Confusion and Contradiction: Franz Boas and the Problem of Human Complexion
Authors: Hodes Martha
Published: September 2018

In the late nineteenth century, Franz Boas joined other men of science who sought to establish a rational method of labeling and organizing variations in human complexion. For Boas, it was imperative to include Native Americans, especially given the prevailing notion that, in collision with white civilization, they were soon to become extinct. Thus, Boas undertook the massive endeavor of calculation and quantification of Indian bodies. This chapter argues that when Boas published his key work, The Mind of Primitive Man in 1911, he had taken important, if tentative, steps toward disrupting the scientific drive toward racial classification. By reading Boas's raw data sheets from the early 1890s along with his writings on an array of topics, one can speculate on the significance of this little-studied aspect of his progressive assertions about race in The Mind of Primitive Man.
The River of Salvation Flows Through Africa: Edward Wilmot Blyden, Raphael Armattoe, and the Redemption of the Culture Concept
Authors: Hanretta Sean
Published: September 2018

The concept of culture, in the Boasian sense of the learned, variable, and mutable “structures” underlying “the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually,” has played an important role in the production of knowledge about many human societies. This chapter examines two moments in the history of the culture concept as applied to West Africa. First, a moment during the process of the concept's formation in the mid-nineteenth century; second, a moment in the 1950s that revealed the political limits of appeals to culture. Juxtaposing the lives of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the father of Pan-Africanism, and the Ghanaian doctor and poet Raphael Armattoe, one of the first Africans nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the chapter illuminates the diverse networks and shifting political valences that shaped the rise, redemption, and circumscription of the culture concept in Africa from colonialism to neoliberalism.
War
Authors: Chopra Ruma
Published: September 2018

By the late 1730s, the Jamaicans had grown weary of battling with the Maroons. The shortage of white militia and British regulars, along with the Maroons’ proficiency in guerrilla warfare and their knowledge of the terrain, led to high white casualties and heavy expenses. In the treaties of 1738-39, the Jamaicans granted autonomy to the Maroons. In return, the Maroons agreed to live in isolated reservations and serve as slave catchers for the whites. They would preserve white freedom and black slavery. But in July 1795, the turmoil by the Trelawney Town Maroons in the northern mountains caught the colony by surprise. The St. Domingue rebellion, just a day’s sail from Jamaica, created paranoia. The Jamaican elite did not worry unduly about a few hundred Maroons in the distant northwest village of Trelawney Town, far from the urban centers of Spanish Town and Kingston. Rather, the fear loomed that the uprising would “corrupt” the slaves who comprised 90 percent of the population. This chapter describes the exigencies that led the island to instigate war against the Maroons.
Resistance
Authors: Chopra Ruma
Published: September 2018

Once aware of the possibility of relocation, the Maroons launched a determined campaign to leave Halifax. They refused to work and threatened to punish other Maroons who conceded to Nova Scotians’ demands. They sent petitions to Parliament. Unable to force a military community to convert to handymen-laborers, Nova Scotia’s government made arrangements for them to permanently leave the colony. The British government subsidized the Maroons’ relocation to Sierra Leone. The military-trained Maroons were viewed as potential colonizers, collaborators in British claims to West Africa.
Accommodation
Authors: Chopra Ruma
Published: September 2018

Over time, the Maroons separated themselves from the indigenous Africans and allied with the Nova Scotian Loyalists. Some found military and civil service roles in the British establishment of Sierra Leone. They benefited from knowing English, and understanding British manners and customs, including Christianity. As British Africa grew in scope, and as Sierra Leone became a Crown colony by 1808, some Maroons rose to positions of privilege.
Epilogue
Authors: Chopra Ruma
Published: September 2018

When the British Empire abolished slavery in 1833, their West Indian colonies confronted a severe labor shortage. Caribbean elites knew that slaves despised fieldwork and would not be ready to voluntarily perform the labor they had endured as slaves. Unprepared to forgo the profits of sugar plantations, the British government looked to Africa and Asia for new sources of dependent labor. The Maroons of Trelawney Town unexpectedly found a route to return home.
Introduction: You Are Your Brain, You Are Not Your Brain
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

The introduction examines contemporary debates in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind, demonstrating the conceptual impasses inevitable when writers adopt extreme rhetorical positions about the so-called “cerebral subject”—for example, “you are your brain” or “you are not your brain.” Literary works, literary criticism, and the neurohumanities respond to such debates by eschewing reductive rhetorical positions in favor of representing the complex questions that arise when they ask what philosophers call “the hard problem” of identifying roles the brain plays in the making of identity, consciousness, and self.
Brain Memoirs
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

In this chapter, Tougaw argues that brain memoirs evolve from a long tradition of autobiographical writing that chronicles mind-body relationships and their implications for selfhood, including the work of Augustine, Montaigne, Thomas De Quincey, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Broadly speaking, brain memoirs make at least five significant contributions to culture—in varying degrees for each particular memoir: 1) they enable their writers to gain a sense of agency or control in the face of the accidents that shape lives, including the accidents of genes, disease, or physical injury; 2) they offer much-needed solace and information to readers who suffer in ways similar to the writer as well as the loved ones and caretakers who support them; 3) they provide detailed, first-person accounts of neurological difference that have the potential to inform and influence brain research and clinical practice; 4) they renew and invigorate philosophical debates about mind and body, qualia, memory, and relationships between self and narrative; and 5) they develop narrative strategies for representing the complexities of the minds and bodies of their authors.
Interlude: If You’ve Met One Autistic Reviewer …
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

In this interlude, Tougaw examines cultural responses to Christopher Haddon’s highly acclaimed and controversial novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Building on a mantra of activists in the autistic community—“If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person”—the interlude argues that debates about whether the novel represents autism accurately or even responsibly are unresolvable, precisely because there is no single or unified autistic experience. Instead, the interlude emphasizes varying responses to the novel by reviewers who identify as autistic (and those who do not). Tougaw concludes that the most responsible approach for educators is to teach the novel in the context of these debates.
Narrating Neurological Difference
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

In this chapter, Tougaw examines novels by Christopher Haddon, Jonathan Lethem, and Tom McCarthy, all of which narrate neurological difference in fiction, translating traits associated with autism, Tourette’s, PTSD, amnesia, or Capgras into a narrative voice. As an aesthetic strategy, narrating neurological difference in fiction is fraught, likely to reinforce cognitive norms in some ways and challenge them in others. The chapter argues that the ethical questions raised by appropriating neurodivergent experience for the sake of aesthetic experiment are unresolvable, but important to consider. What we can—and should—learn from these novels is that the affordances and misfittings involved in the representation shape understandings the circulation of ideas about neurological difference. We won’t understand the potential of neurodiversity politics or the implications of neurodivergent identities unless we attend to the specific representational techniques that construct the cultural niches that make debates about the brain possible and necessary.
Touching Brains in the Neuronovel
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

In contemporary fiction, the appearance of a physical brain leads swiftly to explicit focus on questions that proliferate from the explanatory gap. Writers don’t use the term, but they explore and contextualize its implications in considerable detail. In this chapter, Tougaw examine the portrayal of those three pounds of intricately designed flesh in five novels: Thomas Harris’s Hannibal (1999), Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2006), Siri Hustvedt’s The Sorrows of an American (2009), John Wray’s Lowboy (2010), and Maud Casey’s The Man Who Walked Away (2014). These novels are representative of a common literary phenomenon: the dramatization of a fantasy whereby touching brains may reveal the stuff of which self is made. In each of these novels, the representation of physical brains provokes questions about the relationship between physiology and the self that become central to narrative closure.
Neurocomics and Neuroimaging
Authors: Tougaw Jason
Published: September 2018

This chapter examines a small number of recent graphic brain narratives that experiment with novel methods of visualizing the brain—including David B.’s Epileptic, Ellen Forney’s Marbles, and Matteo Farinella and Hana Ros’s Neurocomic. Tougaw argues that these narratives both draw from and challenge cultural responses to high-profile neuroimaging techniques, including PET and fMRI. Graphic narratives are a subcultural genre celebrated for their rebellious aesthetics and emphasis on narratives that challenge mainstream social and political assumptions. Brain scanning technologies are highly specialized tools that have revolutionized brain research and gained considerable mainstream attention. The mainstreaming of these technologies oversimplifies the images they produce, creating a widely held sense that they offer direct access to the brains they visualize. By contrast, graphic narratives put heavy emphasis on the aesthetic process involved in their making of brain images. While careful not to minimize these differences, the chapter argues that key similarities between neurocomics and neuroimaging techniques can be a means for clarifying the roles played by the sciences and the humanities in the cultural laboratory of contemporary neuromania.
White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic
Authors: Bockstoce John R. , Barr William
Published: September 2018

This book examines the challenges that confronted the peoples of the Western Arctic in the early twentieth century, a result of the collapse of the whaling industry and the nearly simultaneous rise of the market for white fox skins. The fur trade created temporary wealth for the Northerners and induced population movements throughout the region. When the price of white fox skins declined during the 1930s these peoples, who had dispersed for trapping opportunities, consolidated into towns and villages that possessed schools, missions, and stores – a movement that was the beginning of today’s arctic demographic condition.
The Advance of the Maritime Trade in the Bering Strait Region
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter traces the development of the arctic marine fur trade in the greater Bering Strait region (including the Chukchi Peninsula and Northwestern Alaska) from the founding of the gold rush town of Nome in 1899 until 1914. This includes the rise of the “mosquito fleet” of small trading schooners that wintered in the North and worked throughout the region.
Expansion of the Trade in Northern Alaska and Western Arctic Canada
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter focuses on the development and advance of the arctic fur trade to the year 1914: the decline of the shore whaling industry and the rise of the market for white fox furs; the beginning of the dispersal of trapping families along the coast; the importance of the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company at Barrow, Alaska; and the activities of H. Liebes and Company, furriers of San Francisco.
Growth of the Trade in Northern Alaska
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter examines the rise in the number of trading posts and the population dispersal that took place in Northern Alaska in response to the quest for white fox pelts, the price of which rose throughout the 1920s. It also discusses the loss of the schooners Arctic and Lady Kindersley.
Competition among Traders in Western Arctic Canada
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter depicts the growth and development of the fur trade during the 1920s in Western Arctic Canada: its swift eastward expansion (as far as King William Island), and the rivalries that developed among several trading companies, particularly the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Klengenberg family, and the Canalaska Company.
Contraction of Trade in Northern Alaska
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter recounts the difficulties that trappers and traders faced in the 1930s: low fur prices, poor fur harvests, the closure of trading posts, and very difficult ice conditions during the shipping season.
Toward Monopoly Control in Western Arctic Canada
Authors: Bockstoce John R.
Published: September 2018

This chapter delineates the Hudson’s Bay Company’s efforts to achieve monopoly control of the fur trade and the efforts of Captain C. T. Pedersen to prevent the HBC from achieving it.
Social Materialism
Authors: Stern Eliyahu
Published: September 2018

The 1860s mark a watershed in the way Jews conceived of Judaism. During this period Jewish intellectuals started employing empirical methods of analysis to examine life in the Pale of Settlement and began formulating a Jewish “materialistic perspective on life” in general. These developments arose from new streams of thought as well as in response to the financial strains placed upon all inhabitants of Russia in the 1860s. Increased economic competition in the handcraft industries, periodic famines, and the slow exodus of wealthy Jews to Saint Petersburg affected everyone residing in the Pale of Settlement, but especially its Jewish population. Judaism offered an endorsement of a materialistic perspective on life. These developments arose from new ideas culled from Russian nihilistic literature as well as in response to the financial strains placed upon all inhabitants of Russia in the 1860s.
Jewish Body Politics
Authors: Stern Eliyahu
Published: September 2018

The idea of a Jewish body provides the background to understand the major Jewish migrations, the core features of modern Jewish politics, the transformation of Judaism as a religion and the role played by Jews in the Minority Rights Movement. Eastern European Jews’ immigration to the United States or Palestine as two sides of the same coin.
From Toleration to Liberty
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter offers a broad overview of the history of religious liberty in France from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Early in this period philosophers such as Montaigne, Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Constant moved from an understanding of religious liberty as a collective right designed to protect minority religious communities to an increased sensitivity to the right of individuals to make personal religious choices. The chapter situates Article Ten of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), which established religious liberty as a fundamental right, within this historical context. It concludes with an examination of the political theory and constitutional structures of Restoration France that created the space for individuals to realize the right announced in Article Ten.
Religious Wandering in French Romantic Culture
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter presents the “wandering Jew” as a symbol that captures the significance of religious choice in French culture during the Romantic era (1800-1848). It relates the surge of interest in the story of the “wandering Jew” to other major works of the period which focus on religious conversions. Novelists Chateaubriand and Eugène Sue, operatic composers Halévy and Meyerbeer, the essayist and poet Heinrich Heine, all created works in which religious conversion is at the center of tragic scenes that show individuals in conflict with themselves, their families, and their communities. These stories establish the cultural context within which the converts studied in this book lived and thought.
Prodigal Sons and Daughters?
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter portrays several prominent Jewish converts to Catholicism, whose stories troubled the Jewish community of France in the first half of the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on Alphonse and Théodore Ratisbonne, from a banking family in Strasbourg, who founded the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a women’s order dedicated to the conversion of Jews. The aggressive proselytism of the Congregation in the 1840s generated public controversy about religious freedom and conversion. Hostile exchanges in the press over the work of the Congregation led to heightened tension between Catholics and Jews and a paradoxical situation in which greater religious liberty was accompanied by a stricter enforcement of religious boundaries.
Family, Nation, and Freedom
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter studies the salon of Sophie Swetchine, a Russian émigré and Catholic convert who moved to Paris in 1826, and whose home became a center of religious life that brought together Roman Catholics and Russian Orthodox believers. It focuses on the Russian diplomat Ivan Gagarin, who saw in the Catholicism of the Swetchine circle a path to personal salvation and the political and social regeneration of Russia. Gagarin participated in the debates between Slavophiles and Westernizers about the future of Russia, arguing that Catholicism represented a middle way between Russian autocracy and the corrosive individualism that threatened western Europe. Gagarin concluded his career by joining the Jesuit order, a freely made decision to accept the bonds of religious authority.
God and Liberty?
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter examines the religious choices of Félicité Lamennais, a key figure in the political and religious debates of the French Restoration. After flirting with the doctrines of Rousseau as an adolescent, Lamennais converted to ultramontane Catholicism, convinced that papal authority was the only reliable basis for social order. State repression of Catholicism in Poland, Belgium, Ireland, and France in 1830 led Lamennais to alter his views and embrace a marriage of “God and Liberty” in which Catholics would support the separation of church and state, and defend political and civil liberties, in particular the freedom of the press. Twice condemned by Pope Gregory XVI, Lamennais abandoned Catholicism and embraced the right of freedom of conscience that he had formerly condemned.
Mysticism, Despair, and Progress
Authors: Kselman Thomas
Published: September 2018

This chapter traces the complicated religious journey of George Sand, from an unorthodox education guided by her free-thinking grandmother to a mystical Catholicism while an adolescent, and finally to a form of social Christianity as an adult. It links Sand’s evolving religious ideas to her tumultuous personal life and her radical positions on social institutions, in particular marriage and the status of women. Although she moved away from Catholicism Sand continued to believe in a benevolent but inscrutable God who oversaw a universe marked by spiritual and material progress. This chapter presents Sand’s life as exemplifying the religion of humanitarianism that emerged in the post-revolutionary era.
Sons and Daughters
Authors: Bushman Richard Lyman
Published: September 2018

Out of lands that were once Indian, Hempstead provided for his six sons and four daughters. He accumulated the resources required by expanding his holdings when his children arrived at the age when they were useful workers. He opened a sheep operation in Stonington and brought in new pasture. With bequests from him, all of his children established themselves without moving to a frontier or taking up lands that were in dispute. Hempstead also passed along the subtle skills it took to be a successful farmer and citizen. The Hempsteads flourished on the lands once possessed by the Indians, benefiting from the privileges of imperial families in the European conquest of America. No record exists of Hempstead’s wife passing along skills to her daughters—Abigail Hempstead died in 1716. But the diary of Mary Cooper just across the Sound on Long Island depicts the skills daughters had to master and just as important the endurance required to keep working when fatigued, ill, or discouraged. Indian families had a culture to transmit to the rising generation that was fully as intricate as Hempstead’s, but transmission was hindered by general social decay in Native American society. Against all expectations, Mohegan culture survived and persists to this day.
Farmers’ Markets
Authors: Bushman Richard Lyman
Published: September 2018

Hempstead’s household economy produced enough to supply his family and to yield a surplus for exchange in the town economy. He was constantly performing services for his neighbors or trading goods. These exchanges which bound townspeople together in a web of debt and obligation formed the sinews of local society. Relationships of trust developed over years of economic exchange, becoming the basis for selecting spouses, electing people to public office, and granting credit. Had Hempstead lived in Virginia, less trust would have been required for exchanges. Warehouse receipts issued by tobacco inspectors facilitated exchange without the parties needing to evaluate each other’s credit worthiness. Hempstead’s ability to incur debt measured his economic strength. Most active farmers were both debtors and creditors. Debt was a sign of vigor not of weakness. Those who could not buy on credit were at a disadvantage in purchasing land for their children or expanding their enterprise in any way. Debt was a necessary outgrowth of engaging in the exchange economy.
Crèvecoeur’s Pennsylvania
Authors: Bushman Richard Lyman
Published: September 2018

Slavery existed in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, just north of the Maryland line, but it was spotty and restricted to a small number of families. The relatively few slaves put a cap on Pennsylvania’s wealth. There were no vast estates like the great southern plantations and wealth per capita was much less. But Pennsylvania was more prosperous than New England. Wealth per capita was substantially higher. It stood in the middle between the South and New England. Wheat with its thriving markets in the West Indies and Europe buoyed all aspects of the Pennsylvania economy. There were far more shops and tradesmen in Lancaster borough, for example, than in comparable towns in New England like Springfield, Massachusetts, or Hartford, Connecticut. It was a prosperous society but rent with conflict. The most telling division in Pennsylvania society was not between rich and poor but between frontier farmers exposed to Indian attacks and more protected areas. Stories of atrocities formed a distinctive mentality. Frontier towns were outraged by the failure of the government to protect them and took affairs into their own hands by slaughtering the Indians. Crèvecouer, who observed both the prosperity of Pennsylvania and its bitter conflicts, marveled that a society with so much promise endured so many miseries.