bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
CSGDN: contrastive signed graph diffusion network for predicting crop gene–phenotype associations
Authors: Pan Yiru , Ji Xingyu , You Jiaqi , Li Lu , Liu Zhenping , Zhang Xianlong , Zhang Zeyu , Wang Maojun
Published: February 2025

Positive and negative association prediction between gene and phenotype helps to illustrate the underlying mechanism of complex traits in organisms. The transcription and regulation activity of specific genes will be adjusted accordingly in different cell types, developmental timepoints, and physiological states. There are the following two problems in obtaining the positive/negative associations between gene and phenotype: (1) high-throughput DNA/RNA sequencing and phenotyping are expensive and time-consuming due to the need to process large sample sizes; (2) experiments introduce both random and systematic errors, and, meanwhile, calculations or predictions using software or models may produce noise. To address these two issues, we propose a Contrastive Signed Graph Diffusion Network, CSGDN, to learn robust node representations with fewer training samples to achieve higher link prediction accuracy. CSGDN uses a signed graph diffusion method to uncover the underlying regulatory associations between genes and phenotypes. Then, stochastic perturbation strategies are used to create two views for both original and diffusive graphs. Lastly, a multiview contrastive learning paradigm loss is designed to unify the node presentations learned from the two views to resist interference and reduce noise. We perform experiments to validate the performance of CSGDN in three crop datasets: Gossypium hirsutum, Brassica napus, and Triticum turgidum. The results show that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art methods by up to 9. 28% AUC for the prediction of link sign in the G. hirsutum dataset. The source code of our model is available at https://github.com/Erican-Ji/CSGDN.
Diagnostic accuracy of the faecal immunochemical test and volatile organic compound analysis in detecting colorectal polyps: meta-analysis
Authors: Afzal Asma , Aranan Yekaterina S , Roberts Tom , Covington James , Vidal Lorena , Ahmed Sonia , Gill Talvinder , Francis Nader
Published: February 2025

Background

For the early detection of colorectal cancer, it is important to identify the premalignant lesions to prevent cancer development. Non-invasive testing methods such as the faecal immunochemical test are well established for the screening and triage of patients with suspected colorectal cancer but are not routinely used for polyps. Additionally, the role of volatile organic compounds has been tested for cancer detection. The aim of this review was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the faecal immunochemical test and volatile organic compounds in detecting colorectal polyps.

Methods

Original articles with diagnostic test accuracy measures for both the faecal immunochemical test and volatile organic compounds for advanced adenomas were included. Four databases including Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Embase, and Web of Science were searched. The quality assessment tool for diagnostic accuracy study was used to assess the risk of bias and applicability. Meta-analysis was performed using RStudio® and the combined faecal immunochemical test-volatile organic compounds sensitivity and specificity were computed.

Results

Twenty-two faecal immunochemical tests and 12 volatile organic compound-related articles were included in the systematic review whilst 18 faecal immunochemical tests and eight volatile organic compound-related studies qualified for the meta-analysis. The estimated pooled sensitivity and specificity of the faecal immunochemical test to diagnose advanced adenoma(s) were 36% (95% c.i. 30 to 41) and 89% (95% c.i. 86 to 91) respectively, with an area under the curve of 0.65, whilst volatile organic compounds pooled sensitivity and specificity was 83% (95% c.i. 70 to 91) and 76% (95% c.i. 60 to 87) respectively, with an area under the curve of 0.84. The combined faecal immunochemical test-volatile organic compounds increased the sensitivity to 89% with a specificity of 67%.

Conclusion

Faecal immunochemical testing has a higher specificity but poor sensitivity for detecting advanced adenomas, while volatile organic compound analysis is more sensitive. The combination of both tests enhances the detection rate of advanced adenomas.
Understanding Immunological insights of Liver Transplantation: A practice for attaining Operational Tolerance
Authors: Dhayanithy Geethanjali , Radhakrishnan Subathra , Ann Martin Catherine , Caroline Martin Josette , Rahman Hakeem Abdul , Jothimani Dinesh , Narayana Kalkura Subbaraya , Rela Mohamed
Published: February 2025

Liver transplantation has been at the forefront of medical research, with efforts concentrated on understanding the intricate cellular and molecular dynamics involved this complex procedure. This body of work has chronicled critical clinical advancements, identified challenges, and highlighted progressive improvements in surgical practices. These concerted efforts have significantly contributed to the evolution and enhancement of liver transplantation, elevating it to its current level of sophistication. A successful liver transplant now demands an integrated, multidisciplinary approach that includes not only expanding the donor pool from deceased to living donors but also embracing advances in surgical methods, efficiently managing post-transplant complications, and, importantly, achieving operational tolerance. The latter, operational tolerance, is a state wherein the recipient’s immune system is coaxed into accepting the transplanted organ without the long-term use of immunosuppressive drugs, thereby minimizing potential side effects, and improving quality of life.

Understanding the critical immune mechanisms that aim to prevent graft rejection is essential from an immunological perspective. This review aims to highlight the crucial areas of host versus graft immune responses, making a clear distinction between organs received from living and deceased donors. It examines how these immune responses, both innate and adaptive, are initiated and proposes the exploration of molecular docking sites as a strategy to curb unwanted immune reactions. Additionally, this review explores the promising potential of biomarkers in predicting graft rejection, and emphasizes the importance of achieving tolerance and the continuous quest for innovative strategies to enhance the success and longevity of liver transplants.
Distinct insula subdivisions of resting-state functional connectivity in individuals with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders
Authors: Yang Wenhan , Wen Xinwen , Du Zhe , Yang Longtao , Chen Yanjing , Zhang Jun , Yuan Kai , Liu Jun
Published: February 2025

Different addictive drugs can impact the function and morphology of the brain in diverse ways. The insula cortex, an important brain node involved in craving and reward neural circuits in individuals with substance use disorders (including damage to the insula cortex), has been reported to reduce addictive behaviors. However, less is known about whether there is a functional difference between individuals with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders, especially regarding the function of the insula cortex. Fifty-eight individuals with opioid use disorder and sixty individuals with methamphetamine use disorder underwent resting-state and 3D-T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and completed craving questionnaires. Differences in insula subdivision resting-state functional connectivity between the groups were assessed, and their correlations with craving were analyzed. Compared with the methamphetamine group, the opioid group demonstrated increased connectivity of the right dorsal anterior insula but decreased connectivity of the right posterior insula and the left dorsal anterior insula/posterior insula/ventral anterior insula. Additionally, a negative correlation between functional connectivity and craving was observed in individuals with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders. This study provides insights into the various brain function connection patterns that are associated with different types of drug use with respect to opioid and methamphetamine use disorders.

Highlights
Impact of smoking habits on the postoperative outcome following lung surgery for cancer: results from the Epithor database
Authors: Leo Francesco , Migliaretti Giuseppe , Sobrero Simona , Angelescu Dan , Mc Bride Tarun , Dahan Marcel , Jougon Jacques ,   The Société Française De Chirurgie Thoracique Et Cardiovasculaire SFCTCV
Published: February 2025

OBJECTIVES

Smoking is a modifiable risk factors for lung resections but to what extent preoperative smoking cessation reduces that risk remains unclear. The study hypothesis was that potential benefit of smoking cessation can be assessed measuring the risk difference between active and former smokers in a large cohort of patients.

METHODS

Data were extracted from the French Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons (SFCTCV) database. The study cohort was composed of patients who underwent lung resection for cancer from January 2002 to December 2020 and for which information on smoking status was available. The risk of overall and specific postoperative complications according to smoking status was defined by logistic regression models and results were presented in terms of OR and relative 95% confidence intervals adjusted for confounding factors.

RESULTS

Out of the 7204 analysed patients, at the time of surgery, 20.2% were active smokers, 60.7% ex-smokers and 19.1% never smokers. As compared to former smokers, active smokers experienced a higher rate of respiratory complications (OR 1.5, CI 1.2–1.7) and infections (OR 1.6, CI 1.3–1.9). Postoperative atelectasis was significantly reduced in former smoker (3%) as compared to active smokers (6.9%, p < 0.01). In active smokers, the risk was related to the level of exposure, being higher for smokers of more than 40 P/Y.

CONCLUSIONS

After lung surgery, active smokers experience an higher risk of respiratory complications, infections and prolonged air leak as compared to former smokers. This risk seems to be related to the level of exposure.
Electrochemical performance improvement of coin cell lithium-ion lithium manganese dioxide battery
Authors: Shiue Angus , Chin Kai-Yen , Chen Po-Chou , Lin Jia-Xian , Lin Cheng-Liang , Chang Shu-Mei , Leggett Graham
Published: February 2025

Lithium-manganese oxide batteries are known for their long-term storage capabilities, characterized by low impedance and high discharge capacity. This study aims to enhance these properties by optimizing key battery components. XRD analysis of MnO2 (MD) powder, heat-treated at 400 °C for 5 hours, revealed improved discharge capacity. In addition, hot-pressed polypropylene nonwoven separators with electrolyte absorption exceeding 67 mg successfully reduced after-discharge impedance with minimal capacity loss (0.96%–1.26%). Last, the use of electrolyte additives led to a significant reduction in impedance for commercial electrolytes X and Y, contributing to overall battery performance improvement.
iHOT-12 item analysis: correlations between individual items and overall score within and across time points
Authors: Yuro Matthew , Martin Robroy , Wolff Andrew B , Nho Shane , Wuerz Thomas , Thiel Geoff Van , Christoforetti John , Salvo John P , Matsuda Dean , Carreira Dominic S
Published: February 2025

The main aim of this study was to analyze correlations between individual international hip outcome tool 12 (iHOT-12) items and overall iHOT-12 score within and across timepoints. A retrospective multicenter hip arthroscopy registry was queried for patients from January 2014 to October 2023 with completed iHOT-12 reports. Pearson coefficient analysis was used to identify correlations between individual iHOT-12 items and overall iHOT-12 score at each timepoint and between preoperative individual iHOT-12 items and postoperative overall iHOT-12 scores. Validity, reliability, and responsiveness of the iHOT-12 were analyzed at each timepoint. Within timepoints, correlations ranged in strength from fair (preoperative maintain fitness level, r = 0.52, P < .00001) to excellent (5-year hip pain after activity, r = 0.93, P < .00001). Correlations increased in strength over time. Across timepoints, correlations ranged in strength from no correlation (2-year maintain fitness level, r = −0.001, P = 0.94) to poor (6-month pushing or lifting heavy objects, r = 0.31, P < .00001). Correlations decreased in strength over time. No ceiling or floor effects were exhibited. The Cronbach alpha for the baseline, 6-month, 1-year, 2-year, and 5-year timepoints were 0.87, 0.96, 0.95, 0.96, and 0.97, respectively. Cohen’s d values at 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years were 1.19, 1.43, 1.71, and 1.58, respectively. Within timepoints, hip pain after activity had the strongest correlations to overall iHOT-12 score. Across timepoints, correlations between preoperative individual iHOT-12 items and postoperative overall iHOT-12 score were poor and weakened over time, suggesting similar long-term postoperative iHOT-12 scores among both high- and low-scoring preoperative patients. The iHOT-12 demonstrated good validity, reliability, and responsiveness at all timepoints.
Beats, Tactility, and the Politics of Deaf Representation in EDM
Authors: Holmes Jessica
Published: February 2025

This chapter challenges the symbolic prestige of “deafness” in electronic dance music (EDM) culture as it reflects on monolithic constructions of loudness, vibration, and tactility therein. It reveals that the music video for electronic musician Jamie xx’s 2014 track “Sleep Sound” champions a one-to-one overcoming logic that supplants hearing with tactility to the exclusion of vision, residual hearing, and technology in deaf experiences of EDM; the video appropriates deafness to affirm its white hearing bias while obscuring the sensory multiplicity of deaf subjecthood. The chapter’s discussion of DJ Troi Lee, founder of the Deaf-led musical collective Deaf Rave, rather sheds light on the material contingencies of vibration and tactility, and the reliability of vision and visuality as perceptual and expressive devices by contrast. It is argued that EDM is not automatically inclusive of deafness by virtue of any tactile substrata; rather, the synergy between EDM and deafness is cultivated and maintained through deaf perceptual agency.
Transmissions
Authors: Dilday Jess
Published: February 2025

Trans and non-binary underground electronic music producers and DJs have always been at the forefront of club trends, from the sound to the fashion. However, we are often not supported by the music industries that borrow so readily from our aesthetics, so we create our own communities, our own families, and our own industries. While in-person connections are always ideal, trans and non-binary DJs and producers prominently use social media such as Twitter and music streaming sites such as SoundCloud and Bandcamp to network with each other and to build each other up through online promotion and citation practices.
Puritans and Protest Songs in Revolutionary Britain
Authors: McShane Angela J.
Published: February 2025

This chapter offers a very early example of the connectivity between political protest and commercial systems of production and distribution by considering “protest” songs issued by the ballad trade during the period of the British Revolution (1640–1660). Rebellious Puritans in Scotland and England collaborated with the popular music trade to protest their religious and political complaints and to promote their ideological values; Puritan Republican regimes tolerated popular Royalist songs of resistance. With the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Royalist writers and government-appointed censors sought not only to mute Puritan popular music but also to obliterate it from historical memory. As such, the chapter illustrates the problematics of assuming a natural relationship between religious fundamentalism and social, political, and cultural conservatism.
Section II: Indigenous Worldviews
Authors: Smith Claire , Pollard Kellie
Published: February 2025

This chapter introduces Section II of this handbook. This section examines the evolution and challenges of Indigenous archaeology, emphasizing the integration of Indigenous worldviews into theory, method, and practice. It shows how non-Indigenous frameworks continue to dominate the discipline, reflecting a historical pattern of marginalizing Indigenous perspectives and reinforcing biases. It explores how Indigenous methodologies reshape archaeological research by prioritizing reciprocity, respect, and community empowerment. It highlights the transformative potential of centering Indigenous aspirations, as scholars advocate for archaeological sovereignty, healing, and reconciliation. Ultimately, this section calls for unlearning Western epistemic habits and embracing Indigenous understandings of history, culture, and time to foster genuine collaboration and innovation.
“They Trusted Me Even When I Didn’t Particularly Trust Myself”
Authors: Alvey Jamie
Published: February 2025

It is rare that horror films feature Black women characters as either the hero or experiencing a happy ending. Enter Australian horror film Little Monsters (2019), which emphasizes Black women’s interior profundity and their pursuits of and right to happiness and joy. Little Monsters tells the story of Miss Audrey Caroline (Lupita Nyong’o), an intrepid kindergarten teacher. Rather than facilitate the growth of her coworkers and the children under her care, Miss Caroline is her own person, resourceful, dynamic, and a departure from the Black best friend trope. This chapter illustrates the ways in which the film presents a beautiful, graceful, self-actualized Black woman who cuts against cinema’s long-standing stereotypes of Black femininity. It is also a particularly bold film, considering that it comes from Australia, a country steeped in its own innate and fraught racist history. Thus, this chapter also expands conceptions of global Blackness.
Freddie vs. Michael
Authors: Bryant Tiffany A.
Published: February 2025

Early 2000s media showcased a preoccupation with reality TV. Horror reality programming intersected the commodification of perspective with elements meant to evoke responses of fear. Yet these programs often focused on participants documenting their experiences in spaces with dark histories through a representational treatment that serviced white discourse endeavors. The inclusion of Black participants or Black productions of hi/stories (not including dark tourist places of historicized Black suffering) were rare or normalized through tokenish casting and setting representations. This chapter examines Black representations in Halloween: Resurrection (2002), in which the Black-owned production of a simulated horror experience turns deadly. The chapter interrogates the performance and construction of Black perspectives situated within the combined, white-dominated genre expectations of a slasher franchise and the simulated horror reality format. Scholarship on Black representation and reality cinematography contribute to critiquing dramatic agency in the film’s adoption of acts of Black looking and the meta-complications of Black objectification under layered gazes.
From Tales from the Hood to Candyman
Authors: Karn Colleen
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines the ways in which Black horror cinema, in particular Tales from the Hood, Candyman (1994), and Candyman (2021) can be used to teach trauma studies in undergraduate general education courses. Teaching complex and even uncomfortable cultural theories and concepts proves challenging; however, these courses often represent the only exposure some students will have to theories and concepts that will, hopefully, increase their awareness and understanding of crucial issues and ideologies. Pairing trauma theories and concepts with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s seven monster theses makes the analysis of the films and the concepts accessible to students. Tales from the Hood and the two Candyman films not only depict various types of trauma but also focus on Black Americans. The lessons aid in creating anti-racist pedagogy. The application of Cohen’s work to cinematic depictions of Black trauma provides students the opportunities to gain awareness of Black experiences in America.
The Yogyakarta Principles and the Yogyakarta Principles Plus 10
Authors: Narrain Arvind , Patel Pooja
Published: February 2025

The 29 Yogyakarta Principles have become a significant landmark in the struggle for LGBTI equality. They have been extensively cited by UN agencies, human rights organs, states, and the judiciary in various national jurisdictions. Apart from the enormous citational significance of the Yogyakarta articulation, its importance lies in advancing a collective understanding of the relationship between the violations suffered by LGBTI persons and international human rights law. This chapter points some of the ways in which the Yogyakarta Principles have advanced this understanding and will integrate an analysis of key aspects of the Yogyakarta plus 10 document into the analysis of the Yogyakarta Principles wherever relevant and conclude with an exposition of some of the unique features of the recently adopted Yogyakarta plus 10 document.
Military and Command Structures
Authors: Hilde Paal Sigurd
Published: February 2025

NATO’s military and command structures constitute the Alliance’s core institutional asset. These structures set NATO apart not only from most other alliances in history, but also from other contemporary international organizations. This chapter provides an overview of how NATO’s military and command structures work and analyses their development over the course of NATO’s history. That process of development reflects the evolution of the Alliance more broadly. The chapter highlights three analytical categories of allied national interests—‘national pride’, ‘strategic ambitions’, and ‘threat perceptions’—to show how shifting military requirements have interacted with strong national interests to create allied military and command structures that, like most things in NATO, are marked by the need for consensus.
Defence Planning and Force Generation
Authors: Foster Maryann
Published: February 2025

The NATO defence planning process identifies the capabilities needed to meet the Alliance’s agreed tasks; force generation ensures those capabilities accord with NATO’s level of operational ambition. Uncertainty in the security environment along with NATO enlargement have complicated both these tasks. Complicating matters further is a familiar institutional logic: NATO is comprised of subgroups of allies whose interests diverge, alongside an organizational bureaucracy with robust institutional interests. Decision-making in NATO is inter-governmental in nature. And this poses a problem of collective action. The members of NATO aim to protect their national interests while bureaucratic actors strive to advance institutional concerns. This can result in a discrepancy between the levels and types of military capabilities that NATO needs and what actually materializes from NATO defence planning and force generation. Allies claim to want greater NATO efficiency but not, seemingly, at the cost of greater infringements upon national sovereignty.
Representation and Decision-Making
Authors: Davis Ian
Published: February 2025

This chapter provides a multi-level, decision-making model that maps the complex decision-making process in NATO. Decisions are shown to occur across many ‘issue areas’ involving a range of actors drawn from both the NATO allies and the NATO bureaucracy. These decisions are shaped by both external/systemic and psychological/behavioural factors. The cornerstone of this model is the consensus procedure. A short analysis of the allied withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 is provided as an illustrative case. The chapter also explores contemporary debates about reform of decision-making in NATO, again with a focus on the consensus procedure. NATO’s political complexities mean that there are no simple fixes to improve decision-making within the organization.
Ballistic Missile Defence
Authors: Frühling Stephan
Published: February 2025

The history of missile defence debates in NATO includes European concerns about Sentinel and Safeguard programmes to defend North America in the 1960s, the Strategic Defence Initiative of the 1980s, theatre missile defence for out-of-area operations in the 1990s, and the development of missile defence to defend allied territory in the 2000s. Missile defence debates in the Alliance have historically been divisive as they have brought to the fore fundamental questions of extended deterrence the allies would otherwise prefer to have left unstated. That said, a broad consensus on the role and limits of missile defence in NATO strategy has emerged since 2009, so reducing the political salience of the issue. Such a state of affairs is testament to NATO’s ability to manage complex political–military issues among the allies.
Emerging and Disruptive Technologies
Authors: Sperling James
Published: February 2025

The emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) of the twenty-first century will narrow NATO’s technological advantage over its likely adversaries and may erode the credibility of the extended American deterrent. In this chapter, the concept of disruptive technologies frames the analysis of military EDTs and is extended to account for potential changes in the conduct of war. A brief overview of those EDTs shaping the future of warfare provides the empirical foundation for answering two questions. First: ‘what are the first-, second-, and third-order consequences of technology for the Alliance?’ Second: ‘what specific impacts will these technologies have on the conduct of warfare in the entangled war-fighting domains of land, sea, air, and space, and the enabling domains of cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly with respect to the offensive–defensive balance and nuclear deterrence?’ The conclusion questions whether the feared ‘algorithm gap’ of the 2030s will prove as illusory as the ‘missile gap’ of the late 1950s or if it is real and thus might leave NATO a relatively diminished military actor.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Authors: Marcus Jonathan
Published: February 2025

The Bosnia crisis of the early and mid-1990s was a new kind of challenge for NATO, one that would help set it on a new course of operational development. Involvement in Bosnia came in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the early stages of NATO’s post-Cold War transformation. This was NATO’s first offensive military action, its first air campaign, and its first ‘out of area’ peace-enforcement mission. These efforts culminated in Operation Deliberate Force. NATO was then the armature for the mustering of the implementation force (IFOR), at the time the largest military operation in Europe since World War II. NATO’s experience in Bosnia-Herzegovina paved the way for subsequent operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
Afghanistan
Authors: Rynning Sten
Published: February 2025

This chapter traces the history of NATO and Afghanistan and pinpoints the principal strengths and weaknesses of the Alliance’s operational involvement in the country. NATO’s security assistance mission (ISAF) and the subsequent training mission Resolute Support) ultimately failed, and NATO was forced to withdraw chaotically in August 2021. The record of Alliance involvement in Afghanistan defies easy interpretation. NATO was layered into a counter-insurgency campaign partly run by a US-led coalition and partly by United Nations agencies. NATO went big in terms of operational footprint, but its hand on the political steering wheel was always light. NATO demonstrated endurance, capacity, and political legitimacy, and yet Afghanistan became the graveyard of its good intentions. Three frameworks of interpretation help make sense of all this—highlighting, respectively, strategic leadership, institutionalized ideas, and the contingency of multinational warfare. In engaging these frameworks, the chapter demonstrates how, even as we now know the beginning and the end of NATO in Afghanistan, the full meaning of the intervention is still emerging. The case thus merits further scholarly attention.
Forward Deployment and Reassurance
Authors: Desmaele Linde , Simón Luis
Published: February 2025

Events in and around Ukraine occasioned a turning point for NATO. This chapter offers an overview of NATO’s adaptation since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and examines the main initiatives—centred on forward deployment and reassurance—adopted by the Alliance in the years that followed. It discusses NATO’s collective response as well as the contributions of different allies. The analysis is tethered to the challenge of designing NATO policies that credibly deter Russia, but do not provoke a security dilemma. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of NATO’s ongoing transformation.
Germany
Authors: Dyson Tom
Published: February 2025

Germany’s relationship with NATO was shaped by a unique set of historical, geopolitical and economic parameters after the then West Germany joined the Alliance in 1955. Germany’s post-Cold War relationship with NATO is seen by reference to four themes. First, Germany’s interests in NATO membership and the perceived benefits and liabilities of NATO membership over time. Second, German influence in NATO and the extent to which NATO accommodates German positions. Third, the impact that NATO has exerted on German defence and security policies. And finally, German input to NATO and its burden-sharing within the Alliance. With these themes in mind, the chapter explores Germany’s response to contemporary security challenges, including the war in Ukraine. It finds that Germany’s civilian-power foreign policy orientation, combined with dependence on Russian gas and decades of under-investment in the Bundeswehr, has left the country struggling to provide leadership in NATO—even though a greater material commitment to defence has recently emerged.
Poland
Authors: Lorenz Wojciech
Published: February 2025

NATO is one of the most important external pillars of Polish security. From the Polish perspective, accession to NATO in 1999 was crucial in removing post-Yalta divisions and in limiting the risk that Russia might rebuild a sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Although Poland has supported NATO’s adaptation to a new strategic environment by expanding its remit to encompass crisis management and cooperative security, it has perceived the Alliance mainly as a collective defence organization. Poland strongly supports NATO collective defence and has been determined to secure a permanent NATO (and American) military presence on Polish territory. Russian aggression against Ukraine has validated this approach.
The European Union
Authors: Whitman Richard G.
Published: February 2025

Despite overlapping memberships and shared concerns in the fields of security and defence, the European Union and NATO have travelled a rocky path of mutual accommodation. NATO–EU cooperation is ostensibly mutually beneficial. Joint action brings combined military and civilian capabilities and so provides the resources necessary for a wide spectrum approach to the task of crisis management, both inside and outside of Europe. This chapter considers the history and structures of the NATO–EU relationship, and how that relationship has been affected by the Russia–Ukraine war. Despite great potential, the promise of co-operation remains unfulfilled. However, a stable relationship has developed over time precisely because big and controversial questions such as European strategic autonomy have been left unresolved.
The Mediterranean Dialogue
Authors: Marrone Alessandro
Published: February 2025

This chapter looks at the Mediterranean Dialogue (MD) established by NATO in 1994 with seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It analyses the MD’s origins and rationale in the context of outreach by the allies towards the MENA region. The chapter also considers a number of structural constraints the Alliance faces in its approach to MD, mostly but not only due to the national security interests of the major allies (many of whom do not regard the MENA region as a priority). The states of the MD themselves, meanwhile, are not a coherent group and this too impedes partnerships and the progress of multilateral cooperation. The twin pillars of the MD—political dialogue and practical cooperation—are considered in this light. The chapter concludes that the MD offers only a limited contribution to regional stability and security.
Realisms
Authors: Johnston Seth A.
Published: February 2025

Realism (or, more accurately, realisms) is a foundational school of thought in the academic discipline of International Relations and an essential theoretical perspective for understanding NATO. It offers insight on cross-cutting themes relating to NATO’s purpose, adaptability, and endurance. Thinking on alliances is central to realist scholarship, and NATO itself is a common inspiration or test subject for realist ideas. Realism, like NATO itself, has evolved considerably since its twentieth-century beginnings. Home to several strands of thinking, realism remains a vibrant but diverse tradition with many specific theories loosely united around common core tenets. As applied to alliances generally and to NATO specifically, the following themes emerge: balancing an external threat by aggregating military capabilities; leadership and hegemony (especially concerning the role of the United States in NATO); and intra-alliance balancing to suppress latent conflict and antagonism. Taken together, these themes reflect a way of thinking on alliances and NATO that is adaptable and pluralistic.
Britain and Ireland
Authors: Pickard Catriona , Bonsall Clive
Published: February 2025

In this chapter, we review current interpretations of the material culture and lifeways of Mesolithic foragers living on the northwestern fringe of Europe. Settlement remains are sparse, although the corpus of evidence is expanding. Residential sites with posthole-defined structures and middens occur in both Britain and Ireland. Key challenges to understanding occupations and permanence of place in the Mesolithic are acidic soils and sea-level changes, which have distorted the Mesolithic settlement record. However, there is a growing awareness of the existence of sedentary or semi-sedentary settlements not previously associated with the region’s hunter-gatherers. Organic and lithic technologies offer insights into hunting, food preparation, and other everyday activities. Lithic assemblages are regionally diverse, reflecting raw material access but also distinct material culture trajectories. New statistical approaches to modelling past diets, using stable isotope data, hint at a greater use of plant foods than the traditionally assumed emphasis on fish and meat consumption. Mortuary practices remain poorly understood but diversity in approaches to the treatment of the dead is evident, with primary and secondary inhumations as well as cremation burials, and occasional evidence of ritual defleshing. Both isolated burials and cemeteries have been recorded, as well as sporadic, disarticulated human remains in shell middens. Parietal and portable art includes personal ornaments and abstract engravings on cave walls and on movable artefacts. Symbolism embodied in antler frontlets or headpieces from the Early Mesolithic has been linked to shamanistic cosmology.
Continental France and the Benelux
Authors: Vandendriessche Hans , Guéret Colas , Marquebielle Benjamin , Crombé Philippe
Published: February 2025

This chapter concerns the Mesolithic of a vast and highly diverse geographical area extending from the Pyrenees in the south of France to the North Sea coast of Belgium and the Netherlands. Because of this, it not only encompasses the Sauveterrian, but also parts of the Beuronian and Maglemosian cultural spheres. Typochronological data generally allows to divide the Mesolithic of this area in an Early and a Late stage, or in a Premier and Second Mésolithique. An exception is the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt area, where a Middle Mesolithic, characterized by the sudden appearance of microliths with flat retouch, is lodged in between this bipartite scheme. Regional geography and taphonomic settings heavily influenced research history and research focus in the different subregions that are addressed in this chapter. In southern France and the Belgian Meuse valley, information, for example, originates primarily from caves and rock shelters that offered rich faunal assemblages as well as extensive information on the diverse burial rites of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Conversely, in other areas, where large-scale open-air excavations are the rule, more information is available on settlement organization and settlement structures. Next to hearth features, artefact clusters, and possible post-hole configurations, the latter also consist of pit-features that are often found on the fringes—or completely outside—of traditional settlement terrains, such as the remarkable pit alignments from the Paris Basin and the many ‘pit-hearths’ of the northern Netherlands.
Rock Images of the Dead
Authors: Klungseth Lødøen Trond
Published: February 2025

This chapter connects the iconographical content of the Northern Tradition rock art of Scandinavia to both Late Mesolithic mortuary practices and to a dramatic demographic decline at the term of the Late Mesolithic. It addresses a specific focus towards Northern Tradition rock art sites in western Norway where a number of archaeological excavations and scientific investigations have been carried out and where representations of both human skeletons and defleshed animals are most apparent in the iconography. Through dialectic research towards both rock art and contemporary archaeological remains, it connects the Northern Tradition rock art of western Norway to the cultural historical development during the Late Mesolithic. The approach and the results suggest that the use of rock art was an institutionalized collective response to social pressure, most likely released by disease and dramatic demographic decline. The archaeological development indicates that populations were brought to extinction or close to extinction, something that also led to the end of the Northern Tradition rock art. The rock art can be understood as a pictorial language where the aims and perspectives in this dialectic approach adds to the deciphering of the iconographical narratives. Since the Late Mesolithic archaeological record of western Norway has rather limited information on mortuary procedures, future decoding of the human skeletons, and their interaction with excarnated animals in the rock art might provide valuable information on how death was handled in the Late Mesolithic.
Forager Cosmologies in Northernmost Europe
Authors: Damm Charlotte
Published: February 2025

Interpretations of hunter-gatherer cosmologies have, for the last few decades, focused on shamanism and animism. The discussion has been inspired by ethnographic accounts from recent foraging groups, but should to greater extent consider variation between and within shamanistic and animistic cosmologies. Similarly, it is crucial to investigate the prehistoric material for indications of past cosmologies, to avoid replicating beliefs and practices from more recent societies. The evidence from northern European foragers suggests narratives focused on a selected range of animals, notably elk, bear, and waterbirds, as well as the possibility of the presence of a range of environmental forces. A tiered world populated by a range of beings and forces, with the possibility for some beings to move between worlds is likely. In addition, fluidity of appearance and abilities is indicated by the material.
Orwell and Socialism
Authors: Woloch Alex
Published: February 2025

Orwell is well known for an insistent heterodoxy, even while he suggests, in “Why I Write,” that “every line of [his] serious work [ … ] has been written [ … ] for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” This chapter stages a dialogue between paradox and socialism in Orwell’s writing, looking at different ways in which ironic, and even self-contradictory, expression might be recruited into the service of political thought. It focuses, first, on Orwell’s searing political experience in wartime Spain, as offering the strongest biographical rationale for such a conjunction of commitment and uncertainty. It then turns to The Road to Wigan Pier, a book written before Orwell departs for Spain but that already combines his programmatic political urgency and paradoxical irony.
Orwell, Race, and Empire
Authors: Satia Priya
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines the evolution of Orwell’s thinking and writing about imperialism and race. It traces Orwell’s struggle to identify and divest himself of inherited prejudices against other peoples and to atone for his early employment in the Indian Imperial Police. These efforts remained in tension with his sociological outlook and strong identification as an Englishman of a particular class writing for Englishmen of a certain class. The result was a kind of “doublethink” about race and empire. The chapter homes in on the future-oriented nature of Orwell’s political thought, his disabling conviction that the value of liberatory struggles lies in their prospective success. His lingering commitment to the liberal notions of progress that underwrote British imperialism limited his capacity for consistent or committed anti-colonialism.
Orwell and Justice
Authors: Williams Kristian
Published: February 2025

This chapter examines Orwell’s conflicting ideas of justice—accepting the authority of the law while refusing to idealize it, admitting the necessity of coercion even while decrying its cruelty, recognizing that both lawlessness and legal order tend to favor the powerful. Particular attention is paid to his efforts to distinguish in principle between justice and vengeance, while noting that in practice the one is often merely an excuse for the other. It is argued that Orwell had no theory of justice, but instead developed a set of mental associations, relating justice to freedom and equality, to democracy and socialism, to honesty and decency. In his thinking, justice both depends on and guards the individual conscience. Its approximate opposite is tyranny.
Orwell and the Body
Authors: Fifield Peter
Published: February 2025

Orwell uses the body both as the means of experience and knowledge, and as an object in its own right. In both cases, though, bodies are more often negatively than positively charged: they are vulnerable, subject to trauma, and often placed in states of suffering and pain. Despite the evocative and argumentative potency of bodily experience for functions ranging from plot, to image, to mood, to politics, Orwell does not imagine the body as a pre-cultural site, but one rich with meaning from the start. The body is structured by expectations, cultural norms, and social values. The body may be the foundation for human experience, but this function is inscribed by a process of ongoing education about what feels good, what hurts, what pleases the senses, and what disgusts.
Orwell’s Jewish Problem
Authors: Carlston Erin G.
Published: February 2025

This chapter explores Orwell’s complicated views on Jewishness, suggesting that his progressive, anti-totalitarian politics are articulated in terms of a discourse of populism that could have lethal consequences for Jews, as well as other marginalized groups. Looking beyond Orwell’s occasional recourse to antisemitic slurs and stereotypes, already well-documented, I propose that these eruptions of antisemitism were not a perplexing departure from his liberalism but a predictable consequence of the equation he draws between ‘decency’ on the one hand, and the ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ on the other. I contrast Orwell’s populist stance with James Joyce’s suspicion of moral majorities and focus on social outliers, including Jews.
Orwell and Sexuality
Authors: Stanley Rachael
Published: February 2025

This chapter discusses how Orwell positions sex within a political dimension, a social dimension, and even a literary dimension, in order to avoid giving it an erotic quality. By matter-of-factly presenting sex as a biological urge to be satisfied, Orwell deliberately side-steps having to discuss what the nature of desire might be, because the conclusion he eventually comes to in Nineteen Eighty-Four is too unpalatable for him—namely, that even our deepest, most private desires are always socially constructed and not personal at all. This leads Orwell to reflect that our only true desires would be for that which we have been led to believe we do not want, and that it is therefore only through perversion that any real freedom of expression might be possible.
Orwell and Jack Common
Authors: Haywood Ian
Published: February 2025

This chapter takes a fresh look at the professional relationship between Orwell and his friend Jack Common, a working-class writer from the north-east of England. The chapter focuses on the world of 1930s literary journalism to show how both writers interrogated the links between writing, social mobility, class conflict, and masculinity. Close readings of Common’s essays for The Adelphi magazine shed new light on Orwell’s attempts to renounce his upper-class, imperialist origins and to identify with the ‘common’ person. The Road to Wigan Pier and Keep the Aspidistra Flying are reinterpreted as quests for cultural classlessness and meaningful literary labour.
Orwell and Katharine Burdekin
Authors: English Elizabeth
Published: February 2025

Critics have commented on the resemblance between Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Is it possible that Orwell’s dystopian novel, published twelve years after Burdekin imagined the consequences of a Nazi victory, was influenced by Swastika Night’s plot and themes? This chapter does not attempt to prove a direct link, but it does bring the novels face to face, to examine their meeting points and divergences and to position Burdekin and Orwell as worthy contemporaries. The chapter considers how each text treats gender, how they interrogate or normalize sexual violence, their attitudes to reproduction and the body, the worship of heteronormative desire and the family, the taint of homophobia, and the defence of individual freedom. It argues that while Swastika Night may be the lesser-known novel, it deserves to be remembered as a compelling response to contemporary politics, exploring the same questions as Nineteen Eighty-Four but with a decidedly feminist and gender-conscious voice.
Orwell and Wyndham Lewis
Authors: Munton Alan
Published: February 2025

This chapter explores the unexpected relationship between Wyndham Lewis and Orwell, who recognized in 1939 that Lewis had moved politically to the left. Strangely, during the Second World War he writes as though Lewis had not done this. Orwell first wrote about Lewis in the early 1930s, whilst Lewis first discussed Orwell in 1941 and went on to write about him often, though they never met. In 1953 he published an admiring critique of Orwell in The Writer and the Absolute. Orwell suggested that Lewis should read the Italian radical Ignazio Silone to increase his political understanding, and this chapter discusses Silone’s The School for Dictators (trans. 1939), and the wartime Orwell-Silone relationship and friendship, which have not been previously examined. Also discussed is their mutual interest in Henry Miller.