bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cerebrovascular responses to exercise
Authors: McManus Ali M , Tallon Christine M
Published: August 2023

Various studies have linked exercise to brain structure and function, but the mechanistic pathways underlying exercise-induced benefits are poorly understood. Augmented brain function is related to cerebrovascular responses to exercise in adults; however, evidence in children is limited. This is an emerging area of integrative paediatric exercise physiology and this chapter provides insight into the development of cerebral metabolism and blood flow, key mechanisms that regulate cerebral blood flow at rest, and responses to exercise. Similar to adults, the cerebral blood flow response to incremental exercise to exhaustion in children and adolescents is biphasic, increasing up to the ventilatory threshold, then declining back to resting values from the respiratory compensation point to maximum. In contrast, the amplitude of the increase in cerebral blood velocity is about half of that noted in adults. Unlike adults, the biphasic response in cerebral blood flow is not mirrored by end-tidal carbon dioxide partial pressure (PETCO2), and the cerebral blood flow–ventilation relationship differs, suggesting underlying exercise regulatory pathways are developmentally distinct. The paucity of evidence on acute and chronic cerebrovascular responses to physical activity and exercise training in the child or adolescent means the true impact of exercise on brain structure and function and future brain health has yet to be fully understood.
Endocrine responses to exercise
Authors: Eliakim Alon , Nemet Dan
Published: August 2023

The complex endocrine response to exercise in children and adolescents includes significant changes in hormones that regulate muscle adaptations and growth. Better understanding of this system creates the possibility of using hormonal changes as an objective tool to gauge exercise intensity and duration, to assess training response, and to improve our understanding of the beneficial and deleterious hormonal effects of competitive sports (e.g. on growth and reproduction). Moreover, better understanding of the unique relationship between exercise and the endocrine system is important not only for children and adolescents engaged in competitive sports but also for those with chronic diseases and disabilities who wish or need to increase their physical activity levels. The effect of a single exercise bout on the endocrine system, and in particular the effect on the growth hormone–insulin-like growth factor-1 axis, the reproductive system, and the adrenal gland, is discussed.
The role of molecular mechanisms in transducing physical activity and exercise into health benefits: immune and inflammatory pathways
Authors: Cooper Dan M , Radom-Aizik Shlomit
Published: August 2023

Many of the health benefits of regular physical activity are directly related to activation, modulation, and conditioning of the immune system. The immune system is a dynamic and complex set of cells and mediators capable of reacting rapidly to pathogens and environmental threats. New insights reveal that immune cells can also play significant roles in growth and tissue repair. This chapter presents the idea that physical activity, like exposure to pathogens, is a critical feature of immune conditioning throughout childhood and adolescence. It focuses on molecular pathways, a variety of many genes acting in concert to stimulate or inhibit cell activities. The chapter reviews genomic responses of key innate immune cells such as neutrophils and monocytes to exercise and how these responses mould early life development and prevention of adult diseases like atherosclerosis. The concept of immune conditioning, the ‘old friends’ hypothesis, is highlighted with an emphasis on the dual role of immune and inflammatory activation and inhibition, mechanisms responsible for homeostasis and self-tolerance. The relevant immune and inflammatory pathways that can enhance the ability to promote healthy exercise in childhood diseases like asthma are outlined. The chapter presents a new look at the role of immune conditioning during childhood, highlighting the need to consider environmental factors such as exercise and the role of social determinants of health in these processes. The critical need to address the many gaps in the understanding of the mechanisms that govern immune and inflammatory responses to exercise is a major theme of this chapter.
Systematic promotion of physical activity
Authors: Kremers Stef PJ , Meertens Ree M , Ruiter Robert AC
Published: August 2023

An overview is provided of relevant theoretical and empirical insights regarding the development of interventions to promote physical activity in young people. It is argued that physical activity-promoting programmes should be based on a systematic approach combining empirical findings, theoretical insights, and practical considerations. Successful health promotion interventions to increase physical activity typically consist of strategies to improve intra-personal determinants of physical activity, as well as environmental strategies that facilitate the behaviour, break unhealthy habits, or sustain healthy ones. The Intervention Mapping protocol can be a helpful tool in the systematic development, implementation, diffusion, and evaluation of interventions aimed at the promotion of physical activity in young people.
Physical activity, exercise, and the metabolic syndrome
Authors: Haapala Eero A , Leppänen Marja H
Published: August 2023

The metabolic syndrome refers to a clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors to one individual. The metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents is still a debated concept and there are over 40 different definitions of paediatric metabolic syndrome. Using a continuous cardiometabolic risk score may be the most appropriate method to describe the clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors in children and adolescents. Observational studies suggest inverse dose–response associations between physical activity and clustered cardiometabolic risk score and individual cardiometabolic risk factors, such as adiposity, insulin resistance, blood pressure, and dyslipidaemia. Intervention studies have produced inconsistent results with some studies inducing beneficial effects on cardiometabolic risk factors while others show no effects. High-volume exercise interventions emphasising higher exercise intensity could decrease adiposity and help to prevent overweight and obesity. Such exercise interventions may also improve general cardiometabolic risk profile. Resistance training may produce beneficial effects on body composition, but the effects on other cardiometabolic risk factors are inconsistent. The optimal dose of physical activity and exercise for preventing and treating metabolic syndrome in children and adolescents is yet to be described. The evidence also suggests that higher levels of physical fitness are linked to lower risk of metabolic syndrome and clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors as well as lower levels of individual cardiometabolic risk factors. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that several measures of physical fitness are confounded by adiposity when assessing the associations of physical fitness with cardiometabolic health.
Physical activity, exercise, and bone health
Authors: Gabel Leigh , Macdonald Heather , McKay Heather
Published: August 2023

Weight-bearing physical activity and exercise are essential for developing and maintaining a strong and healthy skeleton. A large body of evidence supports the osteogenic benefits of regular weight-bearing activity, particularly during the growing years. Bone is most responsive to short, high-impact loads; however, the specific exercise prescription for optimal bone strength accrual during growth is not yet known. With advances in imaging technologies, the complex hierarchy of bone, and how bone adapts not only its mass, but also its structure, microarchitecture, and, ultimately, its strength to withstand the loads imposed upon it are beginning to be understood. Childhood and adolescence are critical periods for bone growth. Specifically, prepuberty and early puberty appear to offer a ‘window of opportunity’ during which the skeleton is most responsive to weight-bearing activity. As the use of advanced imaging modalities becomes more widespread, these tools will help enhance the understanding of bone structural adaptations to physical activity and allow the investigation of whether bone strength gains achieved during childhood are sustained into older age.
Physical activity, exercise, and cystic fibrosis
Authors: Radtke Thomas , Kriemler Susi , Hebestreit Helge
Published: August 2023

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disease resulting in an impaired mucociliary clearance, chronic bacterial airway infection, and inflammation. The progressive destruction of the lungs remains the main cause for morbidity and premature death. Life expectancy has increased remarkably over the last decades because of improved diagnostics, treatment opportunities, and widespread implementation of newborn screening. Children and adolescents with CF are healthier than ever, and a substantial proportion can expect to live into their fifth decade. Highly effective CF transmembrane conductance regulator therapies are now available for the vast majority of children and adolescents and are having a major impact on children’s overall health status. Many children with mild CF lung disease have lower maximal aerobic exercise capacity with impaired skeletal muscle oxygen extraction and utilisation being an important contributing factor. In moderate and advanced lung disease, exercise intolerance is the consequence of multisystemic abnormalities of muscle, lung, and/or heart function. Although growing evidence suggests beneficial effects of regular physical activity on aerobic exercise capacity and rate of lung function decline, healthcare professionals often lack confidence in providing individualised physical activity advice to people with CF. More research is needed to better understand the pathophysiological mechanisms of exercise limitations and to find optimal physical activity and exercise modalities to support children and adolescents to benefit from the multiple positive effects of living a physically activity lifestyle, including lung health and quality of life.
Physical activity, exercise, and intellectual disability
Authors: Fernhall Bo , Baynard Tracy , Hilgenkamp Thessa
Published: August 2023

Intellectual disability (ID) is a condition characterised by intellectual limitations and limitations in adaptive (social, behavioural, self-care) skills occurring and diagnosed before the age of 18 years. The aetiology of ID is often unknown but common aetiologies include Down syndrome (DS), foetal alcohol syndrome, disease/infection, and birth defects. Physical fitness and physical activity can be accurately measured following appropriate familiarisation using validated tests with excellent reliability. This includes treadmill protocols with oxygen uptake measurements, various field tests of aerobic capacity, isokinetic and isometric muscle testing, and field tests such as sit-ups, push-ups, and standing long jump. Physical activity is typically measured using steps per day or accelerometery, but to accurately interpret results population-specific cut-points need to be used. Children with ID typically have low aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, muscle strength, and physical activity levels. Furthermore, children with ID with DS have even lower values, yet obesity does not appear to influence aerobic capacity in the same manner as the general population in children with DS. Interventions have been shown to increase aerobic capacity in children with ID, but it is unclear if aerobic capacity is increased in children with DS. Run performance is improved with exercise training, as is muscle strength and endurance. Body weight and body composition are not likely to change appreciably with exercise training alone but can be improved with multifactorial interventions.
Epidemiology and prevention of injuries in competitive non-contact sports
Authors: Hespanhol Luiz , Yamato Tiê Parma , Mahler Per Bo
Published: August 2023

To discuss the aetiology and prevention of paediatric sports injuries in non-contact sports, the following sports were selected based on their worldwide popularity: bicycling, dance, gymnastics, running, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, tennis, badminton, and volleyball. Each sport is covered in a systematic manner including a brief introduction of the sport practice, the epidemiology and aetiology of sport-specific injuries, risk factors, and preventive strategies. Because of similarities, skiing and snowboarding are grouped and discussed together, in the same manner as for tennis and badminton. The knowledge summarised should be implemented in real-life situations to encourage children and adolescents to participate in sports, allowing them to benefit from the well-known health benefits of sports participation with the lowest risk of injury as possible.
Doping and anti-doping in youth sport
Authors: Vernec Alan , Gerrard David
Published: August 2023

Implicit in the benefits of regular physical activity and athlete development is provision of a duty of care by physicians knowledgeable in sport and exercise medicine, respectful of the World Anti-Doping Code (the Code). History has shown that when success assumes overriding priority, sport may be a target for unethical practices with attendant threats to youth athlete health and safety. Since the advent of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), anti-doping strategies and regulations embodied in the Code have established clear stakeholder boundaries and provided a platform for international harmonisation, respecting the rights of every athlete to compete on a level playing field. Of particular relevance in youth athlete care is the provision to legitimately prescribe a substance that is on the Prohibited List on the basis of established clinical need. This concept of Therapeutic Use Exemption permits a physician, in strict compliance with an International Standard and accompanying guidelines, to appropriately manage common medical conditions for athletes competing in sport. Anti-doping education remains the priority, promoted by WADA and continued by anti-doping organisations internationally via several platforms. Local values-based educational programmes target youth athletes at vulnerable stages of development in sport. Sound nutritional practice including scrutiny in the use of dietary supplements, and temptations to use recreational performance-enhancing drugs need be addressed. Medical professionals are also afforded educational opportunities to maintain knowledge and skills consistent with contemporary sports medicine practice, protecting values of sport and the welfare of youth athletes.
Safeguarding child athletes
Authors: Mountjoy Margo , Vertommen Tine
Published: August 2023

As a member of the athlete medical/sport science support team, do you have a clinical approach to recognising harassment and abuse in your child athletes, and managing allegations? Are you confident that your medical interventions cannot be classified as medical mismanagement? While participation in sport has many physical and psychological health benefits, athletes are not immune to harassment and abuse that occurs during sport participation. Psychological abuse, the gateway to other forms of abuse such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect, is prevalent in all sports and at all levels. Specifically, the science base informs us that child athletes have a significant prevalence of harassment and abuse with potentially long-lasting and devasting psychological sequelae for the affected athlete. Particularly vulnerable groups of child athletes for harassment and abuse include elite athletes, athletes with a disability, and athletes that identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Ethical frameworks and codes of conduct for physician practice and behaviours exist that identify the requirement for sport medicine physicians to have the clinical competence to recognise harassment and abuse, to manage allegations, and to support recovery, using a trauma-informed approach. The sport medicine physician also has a role to play in prevention of harassment and abuse in sport through educational initiatives, supporting research, as well as advocacy work to ensure sport organisations have effective safeguarding policies and procedures. Sport medicine physicians should ask themselves, are you doing all that you should to protect and support the child athletes under your care?
Musculoskeletal
Authors: Molloy Phillip
Published: August 2023

This chapter studies bones of the body, including the spine. An understanding of this anatomy will help you appreciate the interpretation of radiographs and diagnose commonly seen fractures.
Ophthalmic Histology
Authors: Molloy Phillip
Published: August 2023

This chapter scrutinizes the histology of the eye, allowing you to comprehend the several layers of cells that are found in the eyeball.
An Overview of EEG and MEG
Authors: Hari Riitta , Puce Aina
Published: August 2023

This brief chapter begins by describing the relatively different historical trajectories of the development of EEG and MEG methods, starting for EEG already in 1875 and for MEG in the 1960s. The main prominent brain rhythms (e.g., alpha and mu), well visible in both MEG and EEG, are briefly introduced. The principle of evoked MEG and EEG responses is described, explaining how they are triggered by incoming sensory stimuli or other events. The chapter ends by summarizing the various advantages and disadvantages of MEG and EEG methods, which are essential for understanding the side-by-side comparisons of electric and magnetic recordings presented in later chapters of the book.
Auditory Responses
Authors: Hari Riitta , Puce Aina
Published: August 2023

This chapter—devoted to MEG/EEG recordings of the human auditory system—begins by briefly outlining the multiple types of auditory responses that can be recorded from the human brainstem and cerebral cortex. After introducing important experimental variables, such as hearing threshold and stimulus parameters that will affect neurophysiological responses, the chapter continues with a description of experimental setups and typical waveforms and sources of auditory brainstem responses, middle-latency auditory-evoked responses, long-latency auditory-evoked responses, and auditory steady-state responses. Frequency tagging, by stimulating the two ears with steady-state stimuli of slightly different repetition rates, is then introduced as a means to explore binaural interaction. The chapter also discusses some historical controversies of the generation of long-latency auditory evoked responses.
Visual Responses
Authors: Hari Riitta , Puce Aina
Published: August 2023

This chapter is devoted to task-related neurophysiology of the human visual system. Starting with a brief historical introduction of how task-related responses were first averaged, the discussion continues with some early controversies in the field. The types of transient and steady-state visual responses that can be recorded from the human retina and cerebral cortex are then briefly outlined, followed by introducing the most important experimental stimulus parameters that affect the evoked responses: visual acuity, distance and visual angle of the stimulus, full-field or partial-field (foveal, extrafoveal) visual stimulation, luminance and contrast, and spatial and temporal frequencies. Presentation of visually evoked electric and magnetic signals and their neural sources starts from the retinogram and continues to transient and steady-state visual responses, frequency tagging, multifocal stimulation, and differential responses from the ventral and dorsal streams. The chapter closes with a brief look at decoding stimulus categories.
The Social Brain
Authors: Hari Riitta , Puce Aina
Published: August 2023

This chapter covers the wide range of neurophysiological responses associated with the processing of social information. The discussion begins by presenting ecologically valid perspectives that incorporate setups for both one-person and two-person neuroscience. In contrast to early experiments in social neuroscience that applied static stimuli and considered the subject as an observer, the newer approaches consider the subject as an active, engaged participant whose brain does not stay the same during the whole experiment. The examples include neurophysiological responses to viewing static and dynamic faces, face parts and bodies, and other persons’ emotional expressions, all the way to action observation and mirroring. The chapter ends by discussing hyperscanning methods for MEG and EEG and by reviewing some existing studies and possible pitfalls. Finally, work devoted to the neurophysiology of human verbal communication is briefly examined.
Post-trial access to investigational drugs in India: addressing challenges in the regulatory framework
Authors: Mehrotra Nidhi , Manchikanti Padmavati
Published: August 2023

Through the New Drugs and Clinical Trials Rules, 2019 (2019 Rules), India has developed the rules governing post-trial access (PTA) to new drugs or investigational new drugs. However, inconsistencies and interpretational challenges exist in the application of the 2019 Rules and the Indian Council of Medical Research Guidelines 2017. This conflation poses a real harm to the trial participants, specifically the ones with limited access to healthcare facilities. Since drug laws in India do not expressly deal with other forms of access like the ‘Compassionate Use’ or ‘Expanded Access’ mechanism, demarcating the scope and describing the strategies for PTA are the need of the hour. We propose possible strategies to address inadequacies in the regulatory regime and establish ‘win–win’ situations among all stakeholders. We further argue that India is well positioned to provide leadership by developing detailed PTA provisions and may set a potential path for the other clinical trial host countries.
Fixing the Future
Authors: Reside Douglas L.
Published: August 2023

In March of 2020, Broadway was closed and most writers and actors were “sheltering in place” as the COVID-19 virus began to ravage New York City. Over the next eighteen months theatre artists experimented with making work in the new, “socially distanced” digital environment. Pandemic theatre was largely, by necessity, internet theatre, and one of the most popular tools for live communication over the internet in early 2020 was Zoom video chat. Many musical artists quickly discovered, though, that singing together on Zoom was frustrating and often impossible because differing internet speeds meant each participant on a call would receive the audio stream at slightly different times. While this was not especially noticeable in most meetings (when, ideally, each participant waits to take their turn to speak), when singing or playing instruments together, the delay made synchronization almost impossible. From 2020 to late 2021, many artists experimented with techniques to create live (or almost live) theatre even in the very difficult conditions of a world-wide pandemic. This chapter examines several of these approaches and the potential impact they may have on musical theatre of the future.
Woman at Work
Authors: Rao Maithili
Published: August 2023

Millennial women have a presence in almost every profession. This fact is beginning to be reflected in films albeit partially. Doctors (Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, 2013; 3 Idiots, 2009) and journalists, print and electronic, seem to be favourites. Corporate (2006) and Inkaar (2013) are set in high-profile companies which are depicted as hostile places for women. The low-key office worker (Bareilly Ki Barfi, 2017) is a rarity. Chandni Bar (2001) is a comment on the displacement of the tawaif from the courtly nawabi culture to her downmarket avatar of bar girl in a grimy Bombay slum. Filmmaker and cinematographer heroines have made it into narratives (Akira in Jab Tak Hai Jaan, 2012; Kiara in Dear Zindagi, 2016). No One Killed Jessica (2011) based on the shooting of Jessica Lall contrasts the glitz of TV with the drudgery of mundane work. The army and the police force epitomize male bastions that women have broken into. An intelligence agent (Yami Gautam) and a pilot (Kirti Kulhari) conduct high risk operations in Uri: the Surgical Strike (2019). Protagonists assume stereotypical male personae in police dramas and fulfil the expected male norm (Mardaani, 2014; Drishyam, 2015). These films break boundaries but perpetuate the stereotype of the wounded tigress mother. Bollywood gives us a glimpse of the professional and personal lives of professional millennial women in Mumbai (Page 3, 2005; Wake up, Sid, 2009; Luck by Chance, 2009; Dear Zindagi, 2016).
Subversion in Retro Mode
Authors: Rao Maithili
Published: August 2023

Pre-millennial divas have come back triumphantly, swept on the tide of subtle subversion. Maqbool, Haidar, English Vinglish, Dedh Ishqiya, Cheeni Kum, Andhadhun, De De Pyar De have pre-millennial heroines who defy stereotypes and subvert them in persuasive ways. Family dramas and the ‘housewife’ trope have been shaken to give us films like Astitva (2000, Hindi and Marathi) which affirms a middle-class wife’s right to shed her guilt about a past affair. De De Pyar De (2019) is a non-judgemental story of a separated couple who negotiate the presence of the man’s 26-year-old girlfriend. Sridevi’s comeback film English Vinglish (2012) celebrates an underestimated homemaker who breaks her inhibitions and learns English. Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool (2003) and Haider (2014), reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet, have produced complex women protagonists. Nimmi (Tabu), Lady Macbeth’s counterpart, is a young, sensuous, and ambitious mistress of the underworld patriarch Abbaji. She woos Maqbool (Irrfan Khan) and participates in the blood crime to fulfil her ambition. In Haider, it is the mother Ghazala who takes centre stage. In a culture that deifies motherhood, Ghazala is imperious and decisive but also sensuous and playful, even with her son. She is a tragic hero who chooses a blazing death to incinerate her wrongs. Dedh Ishqiya (2014) is a new take on nawabi culture. An aristocratic widow conjures up a mushaira to con possible suitors. On the ground, millennium stars have outed their causes. This trend is a hopeful augury for positive and enduring changes.
Introduction
Authors: De Aniket
Published: August 2023

Gambhira is a form of street theater (jatra) performed in a region of Bengal called Malda, today divided by the India-Bangladesh. On the Indian side, it is enacted as a conversation between the god Shiva and the peasants, where the latter voice their grievances to the god. In Bangladesh, the performance takes the form of conversations between a grandfather (nana) and his grandson (nati). This chapter introduces the performance form, and frames the critical questions to be addressed in this book: how can we interpret this performance form, which crosses religious and national boundaries? Rejecting the division of the two form as ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ or the characterization of the whole performance as a liminal ‘borderland’ phenomenon, I propose understanding Gambhira as a shared social space, historically constituted through relations between Hindus and Muslims in the region.
Chronicles of a Toiling God
Authors: De Aniket
Published: August 2023

Stories of Shiva’s toils as a peasant constitute the vocabulary of Gambhira performances, and both Hindus and Muslims in Malda draw upon these stories to voice their grievances. This chapter analyzes how the image of Shiva as a peasant has shaped elite and non-elite imaginations of space, power, and class in Bengal. Tales of Shiva’s and Pir-baba’s travels up and down the Mahananda have endowed new meanings to the space of Malda and have preserved memories of peasant and labour migrations that shaped the region’s demography. The practice of bargaining or dardam with Shiva- a common idiom in the pre-colonial Shibayan poetry- has been reworked by Gambhira performers to address inequities in contemporary peasant life. Finally, the gentlemanly (bhadralok) class’s changing attitudes to the peasant Shiva since the late eighteenth century show the ambivalences of class and cultural identity in a colonial society.
Theatres of Nationhood
Authors: De Aniket
Published: August 2023

Gentlemanly attitudes towards ‘folk’ culture shifted at the turn of the twentieth century, when urban leaders of the anti-colonial Swadeshi Movement (1905-1914) began seeing peasant rituals as the soul of the Bengali nation. It was in context of this movement that Gambhira, previously dismissed as ‘revelry’ of the lower castes, came to be championed as a ‘national task.’ This chapter delves into this moment by exploring the actions of the swadeshi intellectual Benoy Kumar Sarkar, who, along with his compatriots like Haridas Palit and Baladevananda Giri, reshaped Gambhira as a form of political theatre. They not only trained Gambhira performers to perform political plays, but also constructed a historical narrative around Gambhira, tracing its lineage back to ancient Hindu-Buddhist festivals. Paying attention to the specificities of ‘mofussil’ towns like Malda and Rajshahi, the chapter shows how a new Gambhira was produced through mediations between urban ideologies and rural cultural worlds.
Unparalleling Biblical Poetry
Authors: Grosser Emmylou J.
Published: August 2023

Chapter 1 begins with a well-known biblical poem, Psalm 23, to illustrate two problems facing biblical poetry readers: What are “lines” in (traditionally unlineated) biblical poetry, and why does it even matter? The chapter sets these overarching problems in the context of modern biblical poetry scholarship: the frameworks of parallelism and meter, and the confusion over whether “biblical poetry” is best defined by style or structure. While parallelism and meter are rejected, Robert Lowth’s early observation of “conformation” is affirmed: biblical poetry does relate to structure, and it is built from lines that fit to each other, not lines that fit to a meter. This raises the question of how the free-rhythm (unlineated) lines of biblical poetry can be perceived or mentally organized as structural-rhythmic units by the listener or reader. A cognitive approach informed by the theory and method of Reuven Tsur is introduced as the solution.
Perceptual Organization and the Law of Simplicity, Proximity and Similarity
Authors: Grosser Emmylou J.
Published: August 2023

Chapter 4 introduces Gestalt perceptual theory, explains its relevance to biblical poetic structure, and discusses the first two principles of perception, proximity and similarity. The problem of the free-rhythm biblical poetic line is a perceptual problem: how the line can be heard or mentally organized in the absence of a patterned template. The line and line-grouping must be heard within the constraints of part-whole organization. The fundamental Gestalt law, simplicity, and the specific properties associated with simplicity, the Gestalt principles of perception, account for how different human minds can organize complex stimuli in common ways. Through the principle of proximity, prosodic phonological phrasing provides the potential for line boundaries and thus line segregation in biblical poetry. In combination with proximity, similarity of various aspects of language is a force of cohesion and grouping in biblical poetic structure.
On Touching
Authors: Hsieh I-Yi
Published: August 2023

This chapter addresses the sensorial practice of touching and its centrality to the formation of Chinese “literati connoisseurship.” Drawing from ethnographic research between 2010 and 2016, it explores touching as embodying the sense of “being a literatus” among literati walnut connoisseurs in Beijing. An urban hobby often associated in Beijing with the lifestyle of the Qing dynasty’s Manchus, collecting literati walnuts has recently emerged as one of the most popular genres of cultural collecting currently being revived in the city’s folklore markets. Their natural texture, which makes them appear to have been artificially carved and etched into their unique shapes, renders these walnuts a highly desired commodity in Beijing’s expanding cultural collecting scene. This chapter examines the revival of literati connoisseurship as an embodied practice that is increasingly incorporated into the market of cultural collecting emergent in post-socialist China.
Consensus, Collaboration, Compromise
Authors: Corduwener Pepijn
Published: August 2023

The 1960s were with the benefit of hindsight the high tide of the people’s parties in Western Europe. Under their wings and leadership (often in the form of coalition governments), democracy took on a consensual tone in which pragmatic governing in the name of the general interest preceded over ideological strife. The leaders of the Social democrat and Christian Democrat parties agreed on the importance of collaboration, consensus, and compromise and brought these into practice in the form of government led and controlled by these parties on all levels. This chapter shows how they were motived by a lasting quest for political stability that was the legacy of the Interwar era and how this quest for stability led to party control and patronage in all levels of the state apparatus as well as a desire to curb any social tensions, for instance by controlling social partners of the government and the public media. However, if the 1960s were the high tide of the people’s party they were also a turning point, and the end of the decade witnessed growing unease and dissatisfaction with the power of the people’s parties and what was perceived as their managerial style of politics.
The ‘Open Party’ and Its Limits in the 1980s
Authors: Corduwener Pepijn
Published: August 2023

This chapter turns to the belated reaction of the people’s parties to the draining of their social support and legitimacy, which had been proceeding slowly since the 1970s. The so-called ‘open party’ was, in name, a far-reaching attempt to redefine their relationship with citizens that aimed to move away from integration of their own constituencies inside party wings towards opening the party to society as a whole. The open party came with a few real reforms, such as the introduction of quotas to address persisting gender imbalances in party ranks. However, it was in the end mostly rhetorical and therefore had limited effect. Parties struggled to come up with creative initiatives that could really (re-)connect them to a society which was ever more fluid and individualistic, and failed to enact reforms that touched upon the privileges of established party elites. By the end of the 1980s the aspiration to open parties to society had even produced the contrary effect: by aiming to ‘dissolve’ into society people’s parties seemed to confirm that they were increasingly superfluous as a means of political participation.
Descent, Spirit, Heart, Senses
Authors: Zemka Sue
Published: August 2023

This chapter probes the writings of the great theoretician of the senses, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and demonstrates how crucial his biography is to his philosophy. It tells the story of his tragic love affair with Elisabeth ‘Zaza’ Lacoin—an affair that was triangulated with their mutual friend Simone de Beauvoir—and traces echoes of this loss in his theories of embodiment, perception, and ‘the flesh’. Merleau-Ponty derived additional inspiration from Paul Cézanne, who with his insistence on painting from sensations provides the seeds of a wide-ranging aesthetics of visual art and written literature as activities that transform the private life of the senses (perception foremost) into sociable forms. The chapter argues that death and its aftermath of grief find expression and consolation in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the senses. Mourning a loved one is a way of seeing that elevates the power of sensation into a creative force for painting, literature, and philosophy.
Partial Sight, Dependency, and Open Poetic Form
Authors: Watt Nuala
Published: August 2023

This chapter aims to characterize the poetics of partial sight. It places these poetics within a theoretical framework and enacts them in four poems. The poems showcase a growing awareness of how partial sight affects poetic form. Treating partial sight as symbolic of the limitations of human vision, the poems move from exploring partial sight as a source of identity to using the combination of partial sight and dependency as a generative principle. They express this principle through increasingly troubled syntax, variable lineation, and the deformation by erasure of pre-existing texts on blindness. The chapter posits that partial sight and dependency are relevant to all poetic composition, not sources of social anxiety but catalysts for creativity. In the ‘Coda’, I explore whether identity poetics and partial sight as a formal principle can be combined to challenge the current dehumanization of disabled people by the UK government.
Olfactory Futures in Bipoc Speculative Fiction
Authors: Hsu Hsuan L.
Published: August 2023

Whereas Western, colonial imperatives of deodorization have simultaneously devalued the sense of smell and instrumentalized it as a tool of racism, BIPOC authors have mobilized olfaction to critique and unravel this colonial hierarchization of the senses. This chapter considers speculative novels by Octavia Butler, Larissa Lai, Lee Maracle, and Cherie Dimaline as experiments in sensory estrangement that explore how olfaction might communicate—and biochemically enact—queer, interspecies, and decolonial relations. Whether as xenogenetic substance or a place-based medium of environmental and spiritual reciprocity, scent functions in these works as a pathway to embodied intimacies and sensory relationships proscribed by racial, colonial capitalism’s ordering of the senses.
Contact, Conduct, and Tactile Networks
Authors: Piercy Hannah
Published: August 2023

What might it mean to read touch through Middle English verse romances, and to read verse romances through touch? This chapter explores four short, plot-driven Middle English romances—Havelok, Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, Eger and Grime, and Sir Degaré—to investigate how the brevity and functionality of their descriptions of touch might make them particularly useful sources for reconstructing everyday understandings of how touch worked in medieval society. The formality of touch in romance writing challenges the association of both touch and romance with the bodily and carnal, often opposed to moral and religious writing or to the supposedly more refined senses like sight and hearing. The portrayal of touch in romance is much more restrained, codified, and ordered than we might expect, opening up surprising connections between the ways the senses are represented and controlled in romances, conduct literature, and religious writing.
Touch and the Sensible in the Play of Mary Magdalene
Authors: Amsler Mark
Published: August 2023

Literature can reveal aspects of feeling and sensation otherwise inchoate in society. This chapter proposes a historicized biocultural reading of late medieval sensation, and especially touch, as it informs and emerges in the Middle English Play of Mary Magdalene. Drama instantiates feeling and sensation as part of a semiotics of embodied speech, movement, and object relations within a culturally conditioned space of imagined performance. In Christianity’s core narrative, the apostle Thomas is the most prominent ‘toucher’. However, in late medieval England Mary Magdalene was central to a complex aesthetic and religious understanding of embodiment, flesh, and sensation, especially touch. How the play performs, not just represents, sensation and different touch experiences can give us more detail about what touch signifies and how the medieval sensorium was configured as embodied experience.
Histories of the Human Hand
Authors: Garrington Abbie
Published: August 2023

Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood’s Jacob’s Hands (1944) has long been thought a curiosity or a failure—a screen treatment that never became a film. Yet it might reasonably be reframed, indeed best understood, as a vital text exploring modernist manual cultures. This chapter reads the titular Great War veteran Jacob Ericson as a traumatized figure to set alongside parallels from Lawrence’s short stories, clarifying the influence of the latter author upon the work of Huxley in particular. It considers the spiritual and pseudoscientific theorizations of the hand available at Huxley and Isherwood’s time of writing, including the trend of ‘hand-reading’. Finally, it reads Jacob’s Hands’ engagement with Black figures of the Pentecostal Church, influenced by the important Azusa Street revival, as a means of exploring the use of Black actors on-screen to attempt to exploit the haptic capacities of modernist cinema itself.
Touching Wounds
Authors: Das Santanu
Published: August 2023

How does the most intimate and elusive of the senses bear witness to historical violence, or, to put it differently, is there a perilous intimacy between violence and the tactile, whether touching at a distance—through sight or hearing—or through our skin? How does literary language evoke the processes of touch? This chapter looks at a range of representations from the First World War, starting with the letters and poetry of Wilfred Owen, then moving beyond the trenches to investigate their colonial (particularly South Asian), African American, and modernist imaginings. What fresh intensities of meaning—epistemological, erotic, political—do such moments of tactile engagement get invested with and what is their relationship to poetic form? Writers discussed range from the British Indian military officer ‘Roly’ Grimshaw and the Harlem Renaissance novelist Jessie Fauset to modernist writers such as D. H. Lawrence and Claire Goll.
Tense inhow- andthat-clauses under visual perception
Authors: Grønn Atle
Published: August 2023

Russian exhibits a puzzling tense alternation between present and past in the complement under a matrix past perception verb. The paper proposes an analysis of how the tense data relate to the choice of complementizer: kak/how vs. chto/that. A challenge for Russian is to explain how the simultaneous interpretation arises with past under past without Sequence-of-tense rules characteristic of Germanic languages. The paper argues that the embedded past is independent of the matrix tense and gets a de re interpretation. On the other hand, present tense morphology in the complement under a past perception verb is only licensed in intensional environments, such as belief-contexts, hence in cases of epistemic perception. The complement clause is then semantically dependent on the matrix (de dicto reading), as with ordinary attitude verbs.
Judging European Democracy
Authors: de Boer Nik
Published: August 2023

In several EU Member States, constitutional courts have reviewed European law on its compatibility with national constitutional law. These EU-related judgments deal with issues of major importance such as the EU’s democratic legitimacy, protection of fundamental rights, division of competences between the EU and the Member States, and the status of national sovereignty within the EU. Yet, should constitutional courts decide such issues of major constitutional importance for the EU? Or is it more democratic to leave these matters to political institutions that represent Europe’s citizens and are politically accountable to them? This book argues that national constitutional courts’ review of European law frequently risks constraining and narrowing democratic debate over the EU’s constitutional underpinnings. The book challenges accounts that value national constitutional courts’ EU-related case law for helping to ensure respect for national constitutional identities, opening up a space for contestation and dialogue, or for addressing democratic problems with the EU’s decision-making process. Instead, constitutional courts risk taking sides in good faith political disagreements among elected legislators about constitutional questions relating to the EU, thus distorting, rather than protecting, the democratic decision-making process. The book uniquely combines constitutional and political theory with an in-depth case study of the German Constitutional Court, Europe’s most authoritative constitutional court. Based on an extensive study of parliamentary debates, EU policy documents and interviews with politicians, policymakers, and constitutional court judges, the case study shows how the German Constitutional Court has distorted political debate on European integration.
Electrokinetics
Authors: Tabeling Patrick
Published: August 2023

The chapters concerns electrokinetic phenomena, treated in general and in the context of microfluidics. Bascic laws are reviewed. Electrokinetic equations are given, leading to Debye layer, elecroosmosis, sedimentation potential, electrophoresis, along with the various methods of separation used in the field, such as free electrophoresis, gel electrophoresis or micellar electrokinetics. Special consideration is given to DNA separation, and the subsequent gene sequencing revolution, which uses different separation techniques, from gel electrophoresis to single molecule techniques. Dielectrophoresis and electrowetting are presented.
Essays on Relativism
Authors: Wright Crispin
Published: August 2023

The classical Protagorean idea that the idea of absolute truth is an illusion—that there is only ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’, or perhaps ‘our truth’ and ‘their truth’—was until quite recently widely regarded as thoroughly STET, and deservedly discredited. However there has been a sea-change among professional philosophers in the analytical tradition, with distinguished specialists arguing that, when suitably disciplined and refined, relative truth can play a central, illuminating role in the theory of the workings of important regions of thought and discourse. Crispin Wright has been a leading protagonist in the resulting debates. The papers gathered here chart the development of his ideas over the last two decades on three interconnected sets of issues in which the renaissance of relative truth has intensified interest: (1) the general metaphysics of relativism and whether it can rebut the traditional objections to it; (2) the significance of the “standards-variability” phenomena seeming to afflict ascriptions of knowledge and claims featuring epistemic ‘mights’/‘coulds’; and (3) the challenge to find the best formulation of anti-realism about certain areas of our thought and discourse—taste, humour, or etiquette, perhaps—so as to make sense of the intuitive idea that disagreement about matters within these areas can be and often is “faultless.” Overall, the chapters tend to call into question the claimed theoretical advantages of ‘New Age’ relativism and to sketch an alternative ‘minimalist’ account of the function of truth within those discourses where the case for relativism seems most powerful.
On Being in a Quandary
Authors: Wright Crispin
Published: August 2023

The chapter addresses three problems: the problem of formulating a coherent form of relativism, the Sorites paradox, and a seldom noticed difficulty in the best intuitionistic case for the revision of classical logic. A response to the latter is proposed which, generalized, contributes towards the solution of the other two. The key to this response is a generalized conception of indeterminacy as a specific kind of intellectual bafflement—Quandary. Intuitionistic revisions of classical logic are merited wherever a subject matter is conceived both as liable to generate Quandary and as subject to a broad form of evidential constraint. So motivated, the distinctions enshrined in intuitionistic logic provide both for a satisfying resolution of the Sorites paradox and a coherent outlet for one form of relativism about, e.g., matters of taste and morals. An important corollary of the discussion is that an epistemic conception of vagueness can be prised apart from the strong metaphysical realism with which its principal supporters have associated it, and acknowledged to harbour an independent insight.