bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Özetleme Mekanizması Kullanılarak Bilgi Çizgesine Yeni Eklentiler
Authors: TAKAN Savaş
Published: September 2023

Bilginin doğasına ilişkin, onu şekillendiren çok çeşitli unsurlar bulunmaktadır. Örneğin güvenirlik, tutarlılık, değişmezlik ve bağlam gibi mekanizmalar bunların başında gelir. Ancak söz konusu mekanizmaların bilgi çizgesinde temsil edilmesi oldukça yaygın bir problemdir. Çalışmamızda bu problemin çözümüne katkıda bulunmak amacıyla, bilginin karmaşık doğasına ilişkin güven, tutarlılık, değişmezlik ve bağlam gibi temel mekanizmalar, hashing teknolojisi kullanılarak bilgi çizgesine entegre edilmiştir. Çalışmamızda bu eklentiler, bilgi çizgesinden ayrı tutularak, yapıların işlevselliklerinin bozulmaması sağlanmıştır. Geliştirdiğimiz eklentiler sayesinde bir bilgi değiştiğinde onu etkileyen tüm bilgilerin otomatik güncellenmesi, belirsizlik, bilgiler arasında sıralama yapılamaması, bazı bilgilerin değişmez olarak tutulamaması ve bilgiler arasında hızlı bir karşılaştırmanın yapılamaması gibi yaygın bilgi çizgesi problemleri, örnek senaryolar üzerinden test edilerek çözüme kavuşturulmuştur. Çalışmamızın, bilgi çizgesinin iyileştirilmesine yönelik literatüre ve bilgi çizgesini kullanan yapay zeka yazılımlarının geliştirilmesine katkı sunması beklenmektedir.
Metformin Administration to Glucose-restricted Cells Attenuates PKA Signaling in S. cerevisiae
Authors: BÖRKLÜ Esra
Published: September 2023

Recent research in cancer treatment points to metformin, a drug for type 2 diabetes, as a potential anti-cancer therapeutic, as well as carbon limitation as a dietary measure. A new study, investigating effects of metformin treatment on colorectal cancer cells, pointed to the fact that response to metformin treatment depended on extracellular glucose concentration. That is why in the current study, effects of both carbon limitation and metformin treatment are explored via transcriptomics analyses. It is demonstrated that cells grown in glucose-limited and metformin treated medium had the highest variance according to transcriptional profiles, compared to individual treatments. Metformin administration, when combined with glucose restriction, downregulates proliferative pathways such as transcription initiation and ribosome biogenesis while upregulates energy derivation and autophagic mechanisms. Enrichment analyses point to an attenuated cAMP-PKA signaling pathway in the cells grown in combined treatment medium. It is proposed that combined treatment exerts its beneficial effect on this pathway, since cAMP-PKA signaling may be a potential target for pharmacological treatment of tumors.
Recycled EPS and Epoxy Based Composite Materials: The Combination of Sustainability and Performance
Authors: ÇAVUŞOĞLU Aysu , KARAGÖZ İdris
Published: September 2023

Epoxy composites are high-strength and lightweight materials created by combining epoxy matrix with reinforcing materials. Such composites have a wide range of applications in aviation, automotive, energy, and many other industrial sectors. In this study, the effects of surface-coated expanded polystyrene (rEPS) bubbles added to epoxy matrix at different ratios (%1, %3, %7, %11, and %14) on material properties were investigated. Material properties such as density, hardness, surface gloss at a 60° angle, and Charpy impact strength were measured according to varying rEPS ratios. The results showed that rEPS bubbles reduced density, thereby reducing the weight of the material, affected surface gloss, and decreased impact strength. There was no significant difference in hardness values, but impact strength decreased with increasing rEPS content. The effects of homogeneous distribution of rEPS bubbles on material properties were examined, and it was emphasized that the use of rEPS should be optimized with appropriate production processes. This study has been an important step in understanding the performance of rEPS in epoxy composite materials and has provided a foundation for future research.
İş Güvenliği Uzmanlarında Rol Belirsizliği ve Rol Çatışmasının Mesleki Tükenmişlikle İlişkisi
Authors: OZTURK Tufan
Published: September 2023

Bu araştırma, iş güvenliği uzmanlarının rol belirsizliği, rol çatışması ve tükenmişlik durumlarını çeşitli değişkenler açısından incelemeyi amaçlamıştır. Araştırmada kullanılan veriler anket sistemiyle toplanmıştır. Bu amaçla rol çatışması ve rol belirsizliği ölçeği ile Maslach Tükenmişlik ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Araştırmaya 308 iş güvenliği uzmanı katılım sağlamıştır. Araştırmada t testi, ANOVA, MANOVA, pearson korelasyon analizi ve doğrusal regresyon analizi gibi parametrik istatistiksel yöntemler kullanılmıştır. Bu analiz sonuçlarına göre iş güvenliği uzmanlarının rol çatışması puanının, rol belirsizliği puanına göre daha yüksek olduğu; orta düzeyde duygusal tükenme, yüksek düzeyde duyarsızlaşma ve düşük düzeyde kişisel başarı hissi yaşadıkları; bunların da iş güvenliği uzmanının sınıfına, yaşına, cinsiyetine medeni durumuna, çalışılan sektörün tehlike durumuna göre değiştiği; ayrıca rol belirsizliği ve rol çatışmasının tükenmişliği yordadığı bulgularına ulaşılmıştır. Çalışma sonunda bulgular yorumlanmış ve çeşitli önerilerde bulunulmuştur.
The Price of Truth
Authors: Fine Richard
Published: September 2023

This book recounts the intense drama surrounding the German surrender at the end of World War II and the veteran Associated Press journalist Edward Kennedy's controversial scoop. On May 7, 1945, Kennedy bypassed military censorship to be the first to break the news of the Nazi surrender executed in Reims, France. Both the practice and the public perception of wartime reporting would never be the same. While, at the behest of Soviet leaders, Allied authorities prohibited release of the story, Kennedy stuck to his journalistic principles and refused to manage information he believed the world had a right to know. No action by an American correspondent during the war proved more controversial. The Paris press corps was furious at what it took to be Kennedy's unethical betrayal; military authorities threatened court-martial before expelling him from Europe. Kennedy defended himself, insisting the news was being withheld for suspect political reasons unrelated to military security. After prolonged national debate, when the dust settled, Kennedy's career was in ruins. This story of Kennedy's surrender dispatch and the meddling by Allied Command, which was already being called a fiasco in May 1945, revises what we know about media–military relations. Discarding “Good War” nostalgia, the book challenges the accepted view that relations between the media and the military were amicable during World War II and only later ran off the rails during the Vietnam War. The book reveals one of the earliest chapters of tension between reporters committed to informing the public and generals tasked with managing a war.
Media-Military Relations in the Good War
Authors: Fine Richard
Published: September 2023

This chapter begins with a description of Ed Kennedy's framed copy of his surrender story on the front page of the New York Times, which was both the signal achievement of his professional life and the reason for his promising career to be cut short. The chapter reviews Kennedy's previous work as a war correspondent, indicating that his actions in May 1945 were not a lapse in judgment by an overworked or shamelessly competitive reporter but were rather consistent with his beliefs. It also considers Kennedy as being as knowledgeable and competent as any other US reporter overseas, noting how he had locked horns with military authorities wherever he reported. The chapter highlights Kennedy's personal dislike of the army's public relations bureaucracy that dovetailed nicely with his professional distaste for political censorship. It traces scattered historical records that illuminate Kennedy's motives and actions and help sort through the tangle of ethical issues for journalism.
The States of New York
Authors: Schneier Edward V. , Pole Antoinette , Maniscalco Anthony
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the history of New York City. It notes the Dutch legacy in New York after introducing institutions, laws, and customary practices. New York City's combination of a magnificent natural harbor and a historic tradition of commerce. Beyond commerce, the city attracted cultural amenities and became the port of entry for millions of immigrants. Due to its demographic and political diversity, New York faces unique problems of balancing efficiency in government with accountability. The chapter details the New York Constitution, which is one of the most rights-protective in the nation, while acknowledging that New York's politics will continue to be shaped by the dynamics of divisions between upstate and downstate.
German Blood, Slavic Soil
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This book reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe's two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes. Drawing on sources and perspectives from both sides, the book explores not only what Germans and Soviets thought about each other, but also how the war brought them together. The book details an intricate timeline, first describing how Königsberg, a seven-hundred-year-old German port city on the Baltic Sea and lifelong home of Immanuel Kant, became infamous in the 1930s as the easternmost bastion of Hitler's Third Reich and the launching point for the Nazis' genocidal war in the East. The book then describes how, after being destroyed by bombing and siege warfare in 1945, Königsberg became Kaliningrad, the westernmost city of Stalin's Soviet Union. Königsberg/Kaliningrad is the only city to have been ruled by both Hitler and Stalin as their own—in both wartime occupation and as integral territory of the two regimes. The book presents an intimate look into the Nazi–Soviet encounter during World War II. It shows how this outpost city, far from the centers of power in Moscow and Berlin, became a closed-off space where Nazis and Stalinists each staged radical experiments in societal transformation and were forced to reimagine their utopias in dialogue with the encounter between the victims and proponents of the two regimes.
Introduction
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter provides a background on how Königsberg became Kaliningrad, highlighting how modern Europe's most violent revolutionary regimes battled over one city and the people who lived there. It offers a microcosm of the Nazi–Soviet conflict in the decade surrounding the Second World War. It also explores how two states sought to refashion Königsberg. The chapter reveals how local inhabitants became proponents of radical transformation, perpetrators of exclusionary violence, beneficiaries of social advancement, and victims of oppression. It describes the period from 1944 to 1948, when Germans and Soviets lived and died together, first under Nazi and then under Soviet rule, as they tried to make sense of the war that had drawn them together.
The Bridge and the Bulwark
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores how inhabitants of Königsberg created myths about their history and destiny in relation to the changing political climate following the First World War. It presents an overview of Königsberg's history from its origins in the medieval period through the Nazi seizure of power. It also focuses on the myths Königsberg's inhabitants constructed about the city and the province of East Prussia as they found themselves cut off from the mainland of the German Reich by the Polish Corridor. The chapter recounts how Königsbergers sought radical political solutions to the political and economic problems of Weimar amid rising fears of economic and political isolation. It talks about the Nazis by 1933 that became the party most successful in mobilizing East Prussians' fears of incursion, leading them to win an absolute majority of votes in the province.
Downfall
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter shows how East Prussia became the first German territory to experience total war as Königsberg's leaders mobilized the entire population for the defense of Germany's borders. It talks about how Königsberg became one of Adolf Hitler's fortress cities in the last months of the war. It also considers Königsberg's defense as a matter of political survival for the Nazi regime and as an effort to stem the tide of barbarism that was threatening to extinguish European civilization. The chapter highlights the Nazi leaders' use of barbaric tools of mass violence which they had developed during the Nazi occupations of the Soviet Union to oppress their citizens and subjects inside Fortress Königsberg. It mentions memoirists and historians of East Prussia who tell the story of East Prussia's demise in the mode of tragedy, emphasizing the victimhood of ordinary German civilians at the hands of the Nazi party.
Liberation and Revenge
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines the perspective of the Soviet soldiers who invaded East Prussia in the fall of 1944 and the spring of 1945. It recounts how soldiers of the Red Army sought vengeance for the German occupation by looting and pillaging East Prussian villages and raping and murdering tens of thousands of German civilians. It also describes reactions of ordinary Soviet soldiers, officers, and propagandists on their first encounter with German territory, noting how they justified, rationalized, or condemned the mass violence against German civilians. The chapter discusses the Red Army soldiers' revenge against fascist Germans while maintaining the values of socialist humanism and refusing to stoop to the level of Adolf Hitler's criminals. It details how the Soviets' violent encounter with the German civilian population in East Prussia in the spring of 1945 exposed the internal tensions between the strands of Great Russian exclusionary nationalism and socialist internationalism within Soviet ideology.
Living Together
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter recounts the attempt of the Soviet civilian administration to end the military government's arbitrary rule and transform Kaliningrad into a genuine Soviet city at the beginning of summer in 1946. It demonstrates how German civilians and new Soviet settlers navigated living and working together after the war. In the wake of the improvised military occupation, Kaliningrad's Soviet civilian government sought to rebuild the city according to socialist principles and to integrate and rehabilitate the German population through education and social welfare. The chapter reviews ideological and practical internal contradictions that further entrenched the ethnic divide between Soviets and Germans, despite increasing efforts to convert the Germans to socialism and the Soviets' ostensible commitment to antiracism. It talks about how Germans and Soviets struggled side by side to survive in Kaliningrad's economy of shortages, eventually developing new practices of everyday life in dialogue.
Slavic Soil
Authors: Eaton Nicole
Published: September 2023

This chapter details how ongoing material hardship, a winter famine from 1946 to 1947, and mounting pressures from new Soviet settlers and institutions in Moscow to rebuild led local Soviet leaders to initiate a campaign to expel the Germans from Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad's party leaders blamed the Germans for the terrible conditions in the city, even as thousands of Germans starved to death because the Soviet government was unable to provide them with sufficient food. The chapter details the perception of the Soviets of Germans as incurable contaminants and saboteurs who were preventing Kaliningrad from being rebuilt. The chapter then recounts how the Germans were expelled so that Kaliningrad could become a real Soviet city. After the Germans left Kaliningrad, Soviet leaders and new settlers created new founding myths about Kaliningrad's history and its landscape to assert ideological, moral, and ethnic arguments for socialism's superiority over fascism.
Inside Out
Authors: Borenstein Eliot
Published: September 2023

This chapter takes a look at Stan Lee's contribution to 1970s Marvel. Lee's approach speaks to one of early Marvel's constant preoccupations: the nature and value of humanity. Whereas DC's Superman rarely portrayed the Clark Kent/Superman dual identity as a question of psychology or subjectivity, Marvel used the contrast between the human and the superhuman as both a source of personal drama and a brief in favor of Western humanism. Just as Lee portrays the heroic costume as the fancy, attention-getting wrapping around the much more important “character” of the person behind the mask, the juxtaposition of human and superhuman, while obviously based on the fantastic appeal of enhanced abilities, led to repeated encomiums on the nobility of “man.”
Chapter 2 Offering Hungry Minds a BetterDevelopment Project, 1955–1956
Authors: Gerits Frank
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on the Bandung Conference wherein delegates aim to create an anticolonial development agenda that produced Afro-Asian tensions and reshaped Northern economic aid doctrines. Bandung was a negotiation structured by hard geopolitical interests and shallow intellectual unity that resulted in disagreement about the definition of anti-colonialism. Moreover, delegates understood that the implementation of their program of internationalism, anti-racism, and development could only happen if they replaced colonial development with their modernization program. The chapter explains how Bandung forced a rethinking of foreign aid strategies in the North in conjunction with the Suez Crisis. Meanwhile, the British, Portuguese, French, and Belgians used informational resources to reassure their genuine interest in their colonial subjects' advancement.
Chapter 5 The Congo Crisis as the Litmus Test for Psychological Modernization, 1960–1961
Authors: Gerits Frank
Published: September 2023

This chapter notes how the Congo Crisis of 1960 made clear to Global North and South diplomats that psychological modernization failed. The Congo Crisis initially offered Ghana and the Afro-Asian community the opportunity to play an autonomous role on the international stage. However, competition between the Soviet and the US systems forced anticolonial leaders to abandon their liberationist fight and take the “real” balance of power into account. The chapter mentions how decolonization also strained the US public diplomacy machine. It elaborates on how Northern and Southern visions of a modern independent Africa clashed, while also referencing how the Congo emergency brought inter-African conflict to the surface and turned Kwame Nkrumah into a formidable opponent in the ideological scramble.
Conclusion
Authors: Gerits Frank
Published: September 2023

This chapter covers how decolonization and liberation shaped the North and the South. It elaborates on an ideological struggle over the meaning of European modernity and the Enlightenment values that justified the notion. The story of the ideological scramble for Africa suggests that the chronology of twentieth-century international history should be rethought as the battle between equality and freedom manifested in the debate over the role of race and federalism. The battle between imperialism and anticolonialism shaped international relations, especially when all powers had to take a stance on liberation. Moreover, the post-1945 wave of independence created a world of federations that jockeyed for the loyalty of other countries.
The Adventurer
Authors: Einhorn Cheryl Strauss
Published: September 2023

This chapter describes Adventurer as someone who makes decisions quickly and trusts their gut feeling. When faced with a challenge, big or small, they would rather do what feels right than spend their time thinking through all the choices. They know who they are, and they know what they want—so they aren't afraid to go get it. The chapter also defines one of their strengths—confidence. It emphasizes that they believe in themselves, and they know what they stand for. This confidence probably shows up in their lives in a lot of ways, including when they've got a big decision ahead of them. The chapter reveals another defining strength of Adventurers—they are built for speed. They are not afraid to go boldly toward what they want, and fast. They move quickly and are always up for something new, and are often high-energy. The chapter concludes by elaborating on some downfalls to this Problem Solver Profile: optimism bias, planning fallacy, confirmation bias, and closeness-communication bias. It also offers a few tips for Adventurers and describes some famous people who could be Adventurers.
The Detective
Authors: Einhorn Cheryl Strauss
Published: September 2023

This chapter illustrates Detective as someone who values information and is always looking for the facts and the data. They don't make their decisions based on how they feel—they want to see what the evidence says, and they listen to it. The chapter highlights that they believe that the more they learn and soak in the details, the better they'll do. As the chapter stresses, being the Detective means that you are committed to getting the facts. It also exemplifies that they don't like just any facts; they tend to prefer expert data rather than opinions from friends. The chapter then adds that they don't expect to know everything because they know that they can find the information that they need when they need it—through research. The chapter demonstrates a few drawbacks to being a Detective. It argues that they focus so heavily on gathering evidence that they don't know when to stop, and the amount of information leads them to lose sight of the forest (decision context) because they are so focused on the trees (data). The chapter then examines frame blindness, confirmation bias, projection bias, and planning fallacy.
The Thinker
Authors: Einhorn Cheryl Strauss
Published: September 2023

This chapter describes the Thinker as a thoughtful decision maker. It states that they like to take their time weighing the options before moving forward, and they tend to look at all the possibilities, wanting to understand the positives and negatives of each decision choice. Unlike the Detective, Thinkers don't necessarily need tons of data, but they do need the time and headspace to arrive at the best possible decision. The chapter looks at the strengths of being a Thinker. It underlines that they will not get caught off guard by the consequences of the decisions they make, and they are a master at making pro and con lists or following other established processes. It then shifts to investigate the negative side of being a Thinker. As the chapter shows, because they are so cautious, they pick the safest option rather than the best option in order to avoid any chance of failing. The chapter then explores loss aversion, relativity bias, frame blindness, and authority bias.
The Visionary
Authors: Einhorn Cheryl Strauss
Published: September 2023

This chapter characterizes the Visionary as someone who doesn't like to settle for the ordinary and likes to go their own way. When faced with any clear set of options, they are more interested in finding a different path, something that hasn't yet occurred to others. The chapter stresses that Visionary's great strength is being able to see possibilities that other people may miss. They prefer to imagine and dream up new ways of doing things that no one has ever thought of. As the chapter emphasizes, a Visionary is an innovator and an inventor; and these traits make them a powerful decision maker because, to them, the best option is the one they create themselves. As a natural leader, they aren't afraid to do what might be unpopular if they believe it will give them the best results. The chapter then shifts to address some drawbacks of being the Visionary. It particularly inspects the impact of optimism bias, planning fallacy, saliency bias, and scarcity bias.
PSPs and Risk Profiles
Authors: Einhorn Cheryl Strauss
Published: September 2023

This chapter reveals how the reader can use the information and knowledge they have gained in the Problem Solver Profile (PSP) and the profiles of other decision-making types to examine their own decision-making tendencies—and those of others—in order to make big decisions better. As the chapter underscores, the first step is becoming more self-aware and learning to better understand why the reader feels what they feel and why they behave in a particular way. It argues that each PSP thinks about risk—one of the biggest factors in decision-making—differently. The chapter then illustrates how people think about a problem differently and assess risk differently. It looks closely at the components of risk: appetite, assessment, and analysis. The chapter first describes that risk appetite is the level of exposure that we (or our organization) are willing to take. Once we've determined our risk appetite, risk assessment is the next step. Risk assessment, as the chapter defines, is about defining criteria to gauge if a decision is within your risk threshold. Risk analysis, the final step, comes when we are ready to analyze our results.
Pääskynpesä
Authors: Funahashi Daena Aki
Published: September 2023

This chapter details what constitutes the goals and objectives of rehabilitation for individuals with burnout in Finland. It spends time with clients who came to the rehabilitation center and resort hotel, Pääskynpesä (“Swallow's Nest”), during spring in 2007. Here, the chapter explores the daily rhythm of life for those placed within such centers to examine not only how the center gathers and consigns on clients certain ways of being but also how such order unleashes its own disorder. Following clients at Pääskynpesä and at other such facilities, the chapter finds that falling speechless was not a condition that went away with rehabilitation. Rather, it is discovered that the loss of one's capacity to gather oneself together around the coherence of concepts, words, and language went hand in hand with the capacity to see oneself through the lens of burnout.
The Question of “Finnishness”
Authors: Funahashi Daena Aki
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores the separation of the “forest” (metsä) as a space distinct from that of the social and how such a distinction contributes to the idea of the social. Specifically, the chapter questions what this separation of the forest from the social can say about the imagined relationship of the individual to the social. Through the use of several vignettes, the chapter examines why certain social spaces stand out in everyday discourse as desirable. It begins with the genealogy of the “Finns” as the “forest people” through an examination of Finland's national beginnings and its relationship to idealized European others. In light of Finland's “lack” of Europeanness, such positings of a judging social other contribute to the reproduction of the discourse of “Finnishness” and of the social reality of the national Volk.
Conclusion
Authors: Funahashi Daena Aki
Published: September 2023

This concluding chapter returns to spaces of care centered on occupational burnout and to the narratives of those discussed in this work. It depicts individual struggles with a force that remains out of control and yet drives action. The chapter first discusses mental health conditions through one of the Pääskynpesä's residents, Pekka. Next is Päivi, a schoolteacher whose participation in a “treasure map” activity led to a slippage between rehabilitative intent and outcome. Another individual given focus here is Sanni, who struggles with a sense of hopelessness and claims to have lost “the will to go on.” The banality of being burnt out is then examined in the case of Saija, before the chapter turns to the Kafkaesque condition of “finding oneself” in the story of Taru. Finally, the balance of “giving” is explored in the case of Tarja.
April 12, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter begins by looking at the classic Ithaca weather swing. At the height of the weather change, the author watched a group of turkey vultures circling overhead. Turkey vultures are summer visitors, but they are resident downstate. Another visitor to the author's backyard was a rabbit. The rabbit was not a European rabbit but an eastern cottontail, a solitary and a much more timid beast than the European. The author describes how the flourishing leaves of the grape hyacinth in the bed under the kitchen window had been neatly trimmed to 80 percent of their original length. As such, she sprayed the grape hyacinth with an all-organic spray of decayed “egg solids” and garlic, which makes the plants distasteful to rabbits and deer. Most plants in most Ithacan backyards are naturally deer-resistant, and anything else is an indulgence.
May 3, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter explains how Bellis perennis has not come to Ithaca. Bellis perennis is sometimes planted as an ornamental (the so-called English daisy) and has occasionally escaped, but it is not widespread in North America. The author describes the meadow violets (Viola papilionacea) that emerged at the far end of her lawn. Alongside the meadow violets and dandelions, hairy bittercress, red dead nettle, field forget-me-nots, and both birdeye and thyme-leaf speedwells were all flourishing. The author also recounts how it rained on the last day of April. By early morning of May Day, hermit thrushes visited the author's lawn. Hermit thrushes are summer visitors that can be seen occasionally in woodland.
May 10, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter describes the bud burst of the trees in the author's backyard. First is the serviceberry tree; the author's tree is the smooth serviceberry Amelanchier laevis. This species can be found in the Collins Field Guide to the Trees of Britain and Northern Europe (1974), where it is called snowy mespil with the explanation that it has escaped from gardens to Surrey heathlands. Second is the eastern redbud, Cercis canadensis. The redbud is loved by Ithacans, who plant it freely, and the redbud loves Ithaca, where it seeds equally freely. Its sister species in Europe is the Judas tree, which mostly blooms around famous archaeological sites. Third is the red maple tree. Sugar maples and red maples have been harvested for their syrup by the peoples of North America since for always. Until about a century ago, however, the dominant deciduous tree in much of the local forests was the American chestnut.
May 31, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on the black walnut tree at the southern end of the author's backyard. This black walnut tree is very different from the walnut trees in the UK, much beloved of National Trust properties and Oxford college gardens. That walnut tree is called “English walnut” in the US, even though it is from Central Asia and is as much a cultivated tree in England as in the US. The black walnut is mostly self-seeding, amply helped by squirrels, which love to carry the fruits around, bury them, and then forget about them. It is also harvested for very beautiful wood, on display in every craft shop and farmers' market hereabouts. The author describes the sky, which has been blue from horizon to horizon most days that week, or with patches of cumulus cloud. She also mentions the sighting of two species of birds: Canada geese and the turkey vultures.
June 14, 2002
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter describes the bees that visit the author's backyard. Feral colonies of honeybees are much more abundant in the US than in the UK because many of the European settlers failed to manage the bees that they brought with them, and some wild colonies have been so for centuries, dating back even to the 1600s. Many of the feral bees are believed to have come from East Europe and West Asia, and they are more tolerant of the cold winters than the strains of Apis mellifera mellifera brought from mild, wet England. Meanwhile, most of the bumblebees are the native Bombus impatiens (the common eastern bumblebee) with a yellow, furry thorax and black abdomen. Just like honeybees, bumblebees are bundled up and transported back and forth across the continent to pollinate crops. The author then mentions the carpenter bees, which chew out wood to make nests in the twigs or branches of trees or in wooden houses.
July 5, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter highlights the fireflies in the author's backyard. Fireflies are beetles of the family Lampyridae. Making light needs a lot of oxygen, and the beetles make each and every flash by releasing a tiny pulse of oxygen. Most of the fireflies in the author's backyard are Photinus pyralis, the common eastern firefly, which is said to be particularly common in gardens. The author then mentions the Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica. As the name suggests, this beetle came from Japan many years ago, and it has munched its way through the Northeast and Midwest ever since. It was a century ago, in 1920, that attempts to eradicate it were abandoned and defeat was admitted.
July 12, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the Deptford pink, which is the author's most cherished invasive. The Deptford pink is rare in the UK, but thriving in the US; it is widespread in fields and on the side of roads. The author mentions two sources to illustrate the rarity of the Deptford pink in Britain: David McClintock and Richard Fitter's 1956 Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers and Richard Mabey's Flora Britannica from 1996. She also describes the strawberries in her backyard. These include the British wild strawberry, misnamed as wood strawberry, and the Indian strawberry, also misnamed because it comes from China. In July, the wild strawberry runners are spreading fast under the maple tree.
August 16, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter highlights the orthopteran orchestra that can be heard in Ithaca during the month of August. Lots of players contribute to this orchestra of the Orthoptera. There are all sorts of crickets—various field crickets, ground crickets, and tree crickets. And then there are the long-horned grasshoppers (meaning with long antennae), which are called katydids in the US. The author then mentions Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger's guidebook, The Songs of Insects (2007). Orthopteran singing is much more energetic than cicada singing, although just as voiceless. Two of the big players in the author's backyard are the four-spotted tree cricket, Oecanthus quadripunctatus, and Davis's tree cricket, Oecanthus exclamationis.
September 13, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter details how the author's backyard was full of spinnerets and of silk. This silk does not come from silk moths which are so domesticated that they cannot survive naturally, but from other caterpillars and, above all, spiders. At that time of year, many tree caterpillars get to the ground by fastening the tip of their silk to a branch and reeling it out, so that they descend on a silver thread. The author identifies them as the fall cankerworm (aka Alsophila pometaria), and their adults are a dull-gray moth. Meanwhile, the spider spinnerets are much, much more complicated than the caterpillar ones. The funnel-web spiders are everywhere and their webs are large, flat expanses of dense silk with (as the name implies) a funnel woven in at the side. They are also called American grass spiders, and they are in the family Agelenidae.
November 1, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the end of the 2020 orthopteran orchestra in the author's backyard. The incessant stridulations that dominated the backyard life of August, September, and into October have been weakening day by day. Nevertheless, the author was confident that the next generation of orthopteran musicians are scattered in profusion above, around, and beneath them. They are inserted into suitably narrow and pliable stems of bushes and trees or hunkered down underground. In the author's neglected backyard, they will not be snuffed out by pesticides or pruning. However, they will have to take their chances with the woodpeckers and other birds, and with the underground predators. The author then identifies the unseen contributors to the orthopteran orchestra, including the lesser anglewing. She also highlights the migrating birds.
November 8, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter details the author's mistake in predicting that “winter is bounding in.” What really bounded in was weather from Florida. By Wednesday, the top temperatures in early afternoon were in the high sixties. Moreover, the orthopteran music had not died at all. The author still heard the unmistakable chirping of crickets, which she identifies as the snowy tree cricket, Oecanthus fultoni. She then describes how the leaves were falling from her neighbor's honey locust tree. When dry, the leaflets are carried fast and far in the slightest breeze, and so they end up across the road, all over the backyard, and beyond. When they get wet, they become heavy and sticky. Because they take an age to dry, one can end up with unbelievably heavy bags of moldering honey locust leaves.
November 22, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on skunks, which have to be seriously provoked to spray a foul liquid from their marble-sized anal glands. Rabid individuals will attack anything without warning, and rabies is endemic in skunk and raccoon populations. The species in the author's backyard is the striped skunk, well named for its jet-black coat with two white stripes along the back and into the tail and the white crown. It is very common throughout the continent, from about 60°N down to the northern part of Mexico. The author then discusses stink bugs, which have scent glands on the ventral surface between their first and second legs, and the living insects smell foul—skunk thiols mixed in with burning rubber. The local stink bug in the author's garden is the box elder bug, Boisea trivittata, and a native.
December 6, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter illustrates how a Cooper's hawk visited the author's backyard. To a first approximation, she is a super-sized UK sparrowhawk. While the sparrowhawk is eleven to fourteen inches long, the Cooper's hawk is fifteen to twenty inches, and this visitor was right at the top end of the size range. The Cooper's hawk visitation put an end to the author and her husband's debate on whether to reinstate the feeder for the cardinals. Another species in their backyard is the sharp-shinned hawk, which is very similar in appearance to the Cooper's but smaller, in fact much the same as the UK sparrowhawk. Both the Cooper's and the sharp-shinned are renowned for hunting around bird feeders. Not surprisingly, the sharp-shinneds tend to go for the sparrows and wrens, while the Cooper's major in the robins, doves, and blue jays, but nothing is safe because a meal of the sharp-shinneds can sometimes go big, and the Cooper's go small.
December 13, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter highlights how the leaves have started to fall in the author's backyard. At the start of the week, the author was not able to do her driveway run because of snow. By Thursday, she was back to her backyard laps and she enjoyed watching the squirrels. One of the gray squirrels has been collecting leaves from the maple tree and the slippery elm just beyond the southern stretch of the fence. The slippery elm gets its name from its inner bark, which is slimy and is claimed to cure every complaint one can think of. The author then describes the chickadees, which vary their bird feeder routine with forays to the outermost twigs of the trees, where they hang, often upside down, and forage for insect eggs. It is said that apple orchards that support chickadee populations have much-reduced problems with insect pests.
December 27, 2020
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses how a mass of sparrows descended upon the bird feeder in the author's backyard during the cold snowy weather. The house sparrow, or as it is widely known in the US, the English sparrow, was not supposed to be there. The author then explains how breeding house sparrows became a profitable business in the nineteenth century. Making loads of money out of house sparrows was possible because of two types of delusion. The first delusion can be encapsulated by the statement of the Cincinnati Acclimatization Society in 1872 that house sparrows were, in some mysterious way, ennobling for the populace of the city. The other delusion was that the house/English sparrow would control insect pests. One method for controlling house sparrows is the sparrow pot, developed in the Netherlands in the 1500s and rapidly taken up in England. Sparrow pots were hung on the walls of farm buildings in the hope that the sparrows would nest in the pot instead of damaging the thatched roof. Then the nestlings would be harvested to make sparrow pie.
January 10, 2021
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines the cardinals, which is a subtropical bird, living the year round in Mexico and the US southern states. The range of cardinals includes the entire eastern part of the US—and it is extending farther northward in recent years to Nova Scotia and central Quebec and Ontario. Aside from the cardinals, the squirrels, blue jays, chickadees, and Canada geese also made music in the freezing conditions of the author's backyard. Another sound that can be heard from the backyard is the hooting of the freight trains on the Ithaca Central Railroad, transporting rock salt from the Cayuga Salt Mine for use on the winter roads throughout the Northeast of the country. Lastly, there were the concerts of Cornell bell tower chimes that have been played over the holiday season. The author then explains how the repeated ice ages of the last two million years created the gorges of Ithaca.
January 17, 2021
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter details how the bird feeders in the author's backyard have become an integral part of the daily feeding routine for the house sparrows that live in the forsythia hedge at the bottom of the road. Anna Comstock's description of them as English sparrows is accurate only in a parochial sense—that they were brought across to the US from England. Really, house sparrows started out in the Middle East, where, with the advent of human agriculture about ten thousand years ago, they switched from being migratory birds that lived in natural grasslands to life with humans. Today, house sparrows live almost entirely in human-dominated places and they have the dubious distinction of being the most widely distributed of all bird species. The author then reflects on the practice of bird feeding, before describing the visit of a red-tailed hawk.
February 7, 2021
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This chapter recounts how the Ithaca Voice alerted the citizens to expect a Miller Type B nor'easter. Type B, as designated by J. E. Miller in 1946, starts up as a depression inland. When this low pressure hits the Appalachians and weakens, it somehow creates a second depression to the east near the coast. That week's Miller B lasted from Sunday lunchtime to Wednesday lunchtime. Just as the author hunkered down for the three days in their house, the birds and the squirrels hunkered down in tree holes and in the middle of large bushes. However, small birds cannot just sit out a long snowstorm; they have to find something to eat every day. Surviving the winter is all about getting calories to fuel the muscle central heating. The author then details the Bumpus event that happened to a flock of English sparrows in the vines of the old library at Brown University in the state of Rhode Island in 1898. The sparrows were picked by Hermon Carey Bumpus, professor of comparative anatomy and renowned for his obsession with shooting and stuffing animals. Over the subsequent century and more, bird statisticians have pored over the Bumpus sparrow data.
Postscript
Authors: Douglas Angela E.
Published: September 2023

This postscript begins by looking at the concept of the “circle of natural connections,” which offers a way to build the natural world into our day-to-day lives. Humans have always had an emotional connection with the natural world, but the relationship is neither consistent nor simple. On the one hand, humans perceive nature as nurturing and life-giving. On the other hand, the natural world is a hazardous place that is inhabited by dangerous and venomous creatures and is the source of countless catastrophes. Engaging in natural history enhances our appreciation of the natural world. Ultimately, feeling an emotional attachment to a place and coming to know a little about the organisms that live there lead to a desire to look after the place and its inhabitants. The postscript then addresses environmental stewardship and explains the art of strategic neglect in creating a wild-life friendly backyard. In the author's household, much of the discussion about what to neglect and how to intervene has revolved around three issues: alien plants, the creatures that eat the garden plants, and feeding the birds.
From Independence to Security
Authors: Shelton Jon
Published: September 2023

This chapter argues that prominent American intellectuals and policymakers saw public education as doing much more than preparing students for jobs for much of the nation's history. In the early years of American history, the chapter highlights that those who advocated for investment in public education did so as part of a broader project of developing the capacity of American citizens by ensuring their political independence. However, the chapter notes that this project was far from perfect: it grossly violated the sovereignty of Native Americans and accommodated and even expanded chattel slavery, and the role of white women was limited to that of mothers who would instruct future male citizens. The chapter follows how this imperative continued into the era of the market revolution, where the growth of wage labor began to diminish the potential of economic independence for a greater number of Americans. By the late nineteenth century, industrialization and the proliferation of wage labor created the so-called labor problem: who would do the work driving American capitalism and under what terms. The chapter considers how the seeds of the education myth were planted, and more working people began to consciously seek greater access to public education as one path toward economic livelihood during the first third of the twentieth century.
New Politics
Authors: Shelton Jon
Published: September 2023

This chapter shows how some Democratic leaders, increasingly driven by professional-class notions of meritocracy in the 1970s, stifled important reforms like the right to a job while elevating public education to a greater level of symbolic significance. It documents the political shifts of the 1970s, a decade that was perhaps more crucial than any other in the rise of the education myth. At the same time that blue-collar workers faced downward pressure on their livelihoods and more working people, especially women, joined the already low-wage service sector, the chapter unfolds how increased access to higher education continued to produce more and more professional-class workers, who did comparatively better than those without college degrees. As this demographic became central in the party's New Politics in the 1970s, the chapter emphasizes that Democrats' commitment to broad political economic interventions, even in a time of dire economic crisis, wavered. The chapter underlines that education was increasingly left alone to facilitate a mere chance at economic security by the end of the 1970s. Indeed, by the decade's conclusion, the myth that human capital was singularly responsible for economic opportunity had emerged at the center of American politics.