bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Movements of the Mind
Authors: Wu Wayne
Published: May 2023

Movements of the Mind explains what it is to be an agent. Focusing on mental agency, the book’s eponymous topic, it investigates an agent’s doing things by integrating multiple approaches, from philosophical analysis of how we conceptualize agency to the recording of the activity of single cells in the brain. Philosophical and empirical work are integrated in an accessible way that generates concrete explanations of key aspects of mind including the central role played by attention and intention. The theory is applied to illuminate automaticity in biased behavior, the dynamics of deductive reasoning, and the psychology of introspecting perceptual consciousness. Topics covered include attention, intention, working memory, learning, skill, automaticity, control, bias, reasoning, introspection, self-awareness, and consciousness.
Vulnerability and Data Protection Law
Authors: Malgieri Gianclaudio
Published: May 2023

Vulnerability is the hallmark of human beings in the twenty-first century. In the digital environment, this is particularly evident. Vulnerabilities are generally considered using a group-based approach: ethnic minorities, children, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc. However, this static approach might prove to be inaccurate: the digital media have reshaped groups and individuals by inducing new vulnerabilities and creating different vulnerable sub-groups of users, consumers, citizens, and data subjects. This book is conceived not only to show problems but to offer a perspective of critical optimism towards viable solutions. The EU General Data Protection Regulation is not just the legal instrument used to analyse criticalities in the existing digital world but it is also primarily a forward-looking set of tools that, though largely underexplored, might prove to be essential in rebalancing power asymmetries and mitigating induced vulnerabilities in the age of AI. While many authors have focused on the nuances of data controllers and data processors, few scholars have focused on the characteristics of the data subjects. Accordingly, this book has three related goals: (i) investigating the notion of the data subject and understanding whether and how personal conditions influence the definition and the protection this subject; (ii) reconceptualizing the notion of vulnerability in the data protection framework, proposing a layered, contextual, and relational notion; (iii) promoting a vulnerability-aware interpretation of the GDPR. The aim of this book is to start promoting the data subjects’ layered vulnerability as a heuristic tool in order to re-interpret the GDPR and to reconceptualize the risk-based approach on an individual-centred basis.
Antígonas
Authors: Fradinger Moira
Published: May 2023

The first book in the English language to approach classical reception through the study of one classical fragment as it circulates throughout Latin America, this interdisciplinary research engages comparative literature, Latin American studies, classical reception, history, feminist theory, political philosophy, and theater history. It tracks the ways in which, since the early nineteenth century, fragments of Antigone’s myth and tragedy have been persistently cannibalized and ruminated throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean, quilted to local dramatic forms, revealing an archive of political thought about Latin America’s heterogeneous neocolonial histories. The book constructs a corpus of over seventy vernacular Antígona plays and studies its intra-American variations and patterns across time, finding a continental set of interrelated discourses about politics, womanhood, motherhood, sisterhood, and, to a certain extent, burials. Antígona is consistently characterized as a national mother and, as the twentieth century advances, multiplied on stage, forming female collectives, foregrounding the urgency of systemic change or staging gender politics. As it examines classical culture in neocolonial contexts, the book explores ways of reading Creole texts from the geopolitical South that disrupt the colonial reading protocols that deracinate texts or lock them into locality. By historicizing Antígona plays and interpreting them with homegrown terminology that addresses specific colonial legacies, the book reveals how Antígona has ceased being Greek and instead tells stories of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin America. Antígonas rethinks the paradigms through which we understand the presence of ancient cultural materials in former colonial territories, while illuminating an understudied continent in Anglophone reception studies.
The Incorruptible
Authors: Fradinger Moira
Published: May 2023

Chapter 6 examines Griselda Gambaro’s 1986 Antígona Furiosa, written in honor of the Argentine Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a political movement of mothers who defied dictatorship by taking to the streets to search for their missing, searching for them to this day, more than forty years later. Gambaro’s Antígona has gathered robust international critical attention. Nonetheless, it is also one of the plays most deracinated from its context by critics, seen as referring to an abstract notion of dictatorship or through the lens of ethical lessons of ancient and modern European philosophers. This chapter engages the Argentine historical specificity embedded in the play, missed by international criticism, arguing that the play refers not to dictatorship alone but most importantly to a precise historical problem surrounding the 1985 civilian trial of the military and the 1986 split within the movement of the Mothers of the Plaza, as the Mothers saw liberal democratic notions of justice as inadequate in the case of the nation’s civilian trial of the military for crimes against humanity. The chapter argues that Antígona is a figure both for the Mothers and for the disappeared, radicalizing utopian politics by positing a demand impossible to meet without systemic social change.
Introduction
Authors: Dagher Munqith , Kaltenthaler Karl , Gelfand Michele J. , Kruglanski Arie W. , McCulloh Ian
Published: May 2023

The introduction sets up the research questions that the book explores: What factors conditioned public support and opposition toward ISIS in Iraq? Why did some Iraqi move from passive support for the group and actively participate in the group’s activities, including fighting? The chapter also introduces the argument of the book, namely that ISIS’s rise and fall in Iraq were largely due to the group’s impact on the human needs of Iraqis in the areas where it operated. The group was successful when it was viewed as meeting security, sustenance, and significance needs. It declined when it could no longer provide for those needs.
Joining ISIS
Authors: Dagher Munqith , Kaltenthaler Karl , Gelfand Michele J. , Kruglanski Arie W. , McCulloh Ian
Published: May 2023

By leveraging data collected in the years between 2012 and 2018, this chapter seeks to explain why Iraqis came to join and otherwise participate in ISIS. The data used in this chapter come from interviews with captured ISIS foot soldiers and leaders, as well as dozens of focus group interviews with Iraqis who lived in ISIS-occupied areas of Iraq and witnessed firsthand how Iraqis they knew, some from their own families, were drawn into ISIS. The data will show that there was no single path into ISIS for the Iraqis who participated in the organization. The data show that ISIS was a means for Iraqis who joined it to meet needs they faced at the time, be it for security, sustenance, or significance. What is clear is that most Iraqis did not join ISIS out of religious zealotry.
Dying by the Sword
Authors: Toft Monica Duffy , Kushi Sidita
Published: May 2023

Through a historical and data-driven review of the United States’ dominant foreign policy trends from 1776 until today, Dying by the Sword argues that since the end of the Cold War and especially post-9/11, the United States has initiated higher rates of military interventions, drastically escalating its usage of force abroad. Lacking clear national strategic goals, the United States now pursues a security whack-a-mole policy, more reactionary than deliberate. Dying by the Sword dedicates a chapter to each defining era of US foreign policy, applying selected historical narratives, anecdotes of US foreign policy officials, case study examples, and compelling patterns derived from the data in the Military Intervention Project (MIP). Each chapter highlights the ways in which the United States used and balanced primary tools of statecraft—War, Trade, and Diplomacy—to achieve its objectives. It showcases, however, that in recent decades, the United States has heavily favored force over the other pillars of statecraft. The book concludes with a warning that if the United States does not stem increasing trends of kinetic diplomacy, it may do irrevocable damage its diplomatic corps, dooming it to costly and often useless wars of choice. It may be doomed to the path of reactionary aggression, increasing its military footprint internationally to the detriment of its diplomatic and economic influence. If this trend continues, it could spell disaster for the United States’ image, credibility, and ultimately, its international and domestic stability.
America the Hesitant Helper
Authors: Toft Monica Duffy , Kushi Sidita
Published: May 2023

This chapter highlights stark reversals in US foreign policy in the pre–World War II era, moving from its previously imperialist ambitions to isolationist tendencies, and then finally to a hesitant helper of its European allies. American political and economic isolationism fanned the flames of rising fascist movements around the world, which ultimately dragged the reluctant United States from its political hibernation. This era concludes with the United States extending its tools of war, trade, and diplomacy far beyond its neighborhood to come to the rescue of Europe to end another world conflagration. Across the Western world, this era propelled the isolationist United States from that of an emergency ally to that of an often-benign great power, ready to act on the world stage. Key historical events include interventions in Central America, interventions in the Far East, the impact of the global economic crisis, isolationism, the rise of fascism, as well as World War II.
America the Unipolar Hegemon
Authors: Toft Monica Duffy , Kushi Sidita
Published: May 2023

As the victor of the Cold War, the United States had emerged as the liberal world hegemon, the unipolar power in the 1990s. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the United States lost its sense of purpose, driven by the clear rivalry and acute security challenges that its Cold War grand strategy rested upon. The post–Cold War era required a reorientation of US grand strategy and the identification of new, less threatening national interests to pursue, which proved difficult. From 1990 to 2000, the United States held to self-proclaimed good intentions (albeit selectively applied and often disastrous) of democratization, human rights promotion, and free-market expansion, evident in its foreign policies of humanitarian military interventions, regime change, multilateral missions, and free trade deals. Despite its increasing influence and power, the United States continued to rely on diplomacy and trade as pillars of its foreign policy, on top of its multilateral militarism.
Advanced Seesaw
Authors: de Alcantara Pedro
Published: May 2023

“Advanced Seesaw” further develops the relationship between finger action and rhythmic stimulus. It opens with a comfortable two-hand chord played over a bouncy rhythm that allows for an easy up-and-down motion of hands working together. Then it introduces a left-hand pattern with a new rhythmic structure. Over the left-hand pattern, which is repeated like a drone, the right hand plays a variety of melodies, some tonal, others modal. The sequence of compositions culminates in an extended piece that travels along the entire circle of fifths, in which every second melody calls for hand crossing. There follows a right-hand pattern that requires some stretch between fingers and that employs a new rhythmic structure, then an adaptation of this same pattern to the left hand. The chapter closes with a trio of ever more demanding pieces where the primary seesaw pattern is assigned to the left hand.
Psychic Relief and Nonnarrative Configurations in Graphic Memoirs About Mental Health
Authors: Gammelgaard Lasse R.
Published: May 2023

In this chapter, the concept of nonnarrative configurations is introduced to account for abstract, nonnarrative and poetic devices that are frequently employed in graphic memoirs about mental illness. Narrative medicine and health humanities approaches to graphic medicine, and in this case to graphic memoirs about mental illness, often hypothesize that composing graphic memoirs afford measures of psychic relief, and, furthermore, that this catharsis lies in the action of turning the experience of illness into a coherent narrative. That position is not refuted, but the author claims that the focus on catharsis rooted in the act of narration has overshadowed the fact that multiple nonnarrative configurations are employed for the same purpose. These configurations can either dominate (hence, the work presents itself as comics poetry), or they can be employed to produce meaning within the narrative. Nonnarrative configurations are then explored in interpretations of graphic memoirs by Art Spiegelman, Terian Koscik, and Ellen Forney.
Biomedical Human Enhancement
Authors: Szocik Konrad
Published: May 2023

The subject of this chapter is a complete analysis of the concept of human enhancement. Human enhancement is narrowed down to biomedical modifications. The concept of human enhancement is central to space bioethics. The chapter examines various ways of understanding human enhancement. It points out the difficulties but also the advantages of the criticized distinction between therapy and enhancement. Numerous arguments against as well as in favor of the application of human enhancement are discussed. The chapter shows that basically all arguments raised against human enhancement lack strong justification. The argument for human enhancement for space missions is stronger than for terrestrial purposes, but this does not change the argument for human enhancement per se. The chapter concludes by arguing that a future in which humanity makes extensive use of human enhancement is a more preferable future than a future without human enhancement.
A Poetics of Handel's Operas
Authors: Link Nathan
Published: May 2023

A Poetics of Handel’s Operas investigates the rich representational fabric of Handel’s stories, drawing upon musicology, narratology, drama, and film in offering a study with appeal to scholars, producers and performers, opera aficionados, and anyone fascinated by storytelling. In most storytelling genres, we often distinguish between the story, on the one hand, and the way that story is represented, on the other, without a second thought. We know that a character in a film hears neither her own voice-over nor the ambient music that accompanies it, and that she does not really build a house from the ground up in the three minutes spanned by the cinematic montage that depicts its construction. In opera, however, many commentators to this day characterize the medium as “unrealistic,” since we know, for example, that people in the real-world do not sing to each other, nor does orchestral music accompany their utterances. This said, the vocal and orchestral music, while not literally present in the world of the story, surely has a great deal to tell us about the opera’s story and its characters, and if we distinguish the performance we see and hear on the stage and in the orchestra pit from the story represented, we enable ourselves to construct stories that are no less coherent than those conveyed by other media. By avoiding conflation of the story and its representation, we enable ourselves to engage more meaningfully with the significance of these and many other unique aspects of operatic storytelling.
Engaging Poverty and Inequality
Authors: Markofski Wes
Published: May 2023

This chapter investigates multicultural evangelical approaches to combating poverty and economic inequality through grassroots community development, community organizing, public service, and political advocacy. The first two sections focus on grassroots food security and community development efforts in Atlanta (The Food Co-op) and Portland (Neighborhood Partners), exploring how multicultural evangelicals enact ethical democratic principles of empowerment, participatory governance, pluralism, redistribution, and reciprocal learning and solidarity across difference. The next section builds on Chapter 2’s investigation of “gentrification with justice” as a strategy of economic empowerment in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Next I describe how research participants answered questions about the biblical view of poverty, economic inequality, the role of government, and the role of individual Christians or the church in addressing them. The chapter concludes with a summary and assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to combating poverty and economic inequality observed in my research.
Imperial Cults
Authors: Robinson Rebecca
Published: May 2023

Imperial Cults: Religion and Politics in the Early Han and Roman Empires is a comparative study of the transformation of imperial cult and imperial authority in the early Han and Roman empires. The book begins with a simple observation: that during the reigns of the Emperor Wu of Han and Octavian Augustus of Rome, the rulers undertook substantial reforms to their respective systems of cult, at a time when they were reshaping the idea of imperial authority and consolidating their own power. Imperial Cults demonstrates that the reforms to cult were a fundamental part of this imperial consolidation. Employing a comparative methodology, Imperial Cults demonstrates some of the common strategies employed by the two rulers in order to centre religious and political authority around themselves. Both rulers incorporated new men into their religious institutions, expanded the reach of their imperially sponsored cult, and refashioned important ceremonies to demonstrate and communicate the unprecedented achievements of each ruler.
Original Sin
Authors: Bowen Bleddyn E.
Published: May 2023

Space technology was developed to enhance the killing power of the state. The Moon landings and the launch of the Space Shuttle were mere sideshows, drawing public attention away from the real goal: military and economic control of space as a source of power on Earth. Today, as Bleddyn E. Bowen vividly recounts, thousands of satellites work silently in the background to provide essential military, intelligence, and economic capabilities. No major power can do without them. Beyond Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, truly global technologies have evolved, from the ground floor of the nuclear missile revolution to today’s orbital battlefield, shaping the wars to come. World powers including India, Japan, and Europe are fully realizing the strategic benefits of commanding Earth’s “cosmic coastline,” as a stage for war, development, and prestige. Yet, as new contenders spend more and more on outer space, there is scope for cautious optimism about the future of the Space Age--if we can recognise, rather than hide, its original sin.
Introduction
Authors: Fraser Chris
Published: May 2023

The Introduction explains the focus of the book, the thought of the last century of the Warring States or pre-imperial period, an especially rich and lively period in the development of Chinese philosophy. It introduces the sources to be discussed—the Guǎnzǐ, Hánfēizǐ, Lǚ’s Annals, Mǎwángduī silk manuscripts, Mòzǐ, Shāngjūn Shū, Xúnzǐ, and Zhuāngzǐ—and discusses the distinctive features of these sources as collections of short, largely anonymous writings. It then surveys the topics to be addressed in the book, specifically the nature of dào; the origin, justification, and methods of government; the content of dào or the apt way of life; methods of training or orienting people to follow dào; conceptions of knowledge and how to improve one’s epistemic competence; and discourse on the functions of language and the methods of reasoning.
Bad Debt
Authors: Ebels-Duggan Kyla
Published: May 2023

Kant’s claim that virtue has nothing to do with the content of our desires, but depends only on the strength of will needed to manage our desires, depends on an unattractive conception of inclination that he inherits from Hume. But Kantians can replace this with a better view of desire without giving up any central Kantian commitments. The Kantian claims that we can reason about what to do and can come to a conclusion that conflicts with what we want. Kantian practical freedom consists in such self-determination through reasoning. This chapter argues that we have this same sort of freedom in important measure with respect to our desires themselves. This explains why our desires, like our actions, are attributable to us as something that we do, and so why it makes sense to think of character as revealed or constituted by both desires and actions.
Yayori Matsui
Authors: Yoshida Keina
Published: May 2023

Yayori Matsui (1934–2002) was a Japanese journalist, women’s rights activist, and organizer of women’s tribunals, including the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in 2000. Despite the important contribution which Yayori Matsui made to peoples’ tribunals, her personal work and activism remains relatively unacknowledged within the international legal canon. Born in Kyoto and raised in Tokyo, Matsui became a controversial figure in Japan due to her activism and advocacy on the establishment of pan-Asian feminist solidarity. Much of this activism sought to draw attention to Japan’s ongoing colonial legacy in the Asia Pacific including on the issue of so-called ‘comfort women’ and the export of pollution. The portrait was sketched following a visit to the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo where Matsui’s books, desk, and archive is kept.
Paula Escarameia
Authors: Fouto Ana Caldeira , Homem António Pedro Barbas , Freitas Pedro Caridade de
Published: May 2023

Portuguese jurist Paula Escarameia was one of the two first women to be elected by the United Nations General Assembly to the International Law Commission. But for much more than that Paula Escarameia stands out amongst twentieth-century Portuguese internationalists. Her writings resonate with an obvious confidence in the power of international law to improve the lives of peoples and individuals alike in her time. That confidence translated into an active role in key international events such as the East Timor independence process and the creation of the International Criminal Court. The disruption that seemed to characterize international relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century did not overcome her thoughts on the legal development of a new world order in formation.
Exile and Access
Authors: Kemmerer Alexandra
Published: May 2023

In her two consecutive and yet closely interwoven legal careers, as a corporate lawyer in one of Berlin’s premier transnational law firms in the years of the decline of the Weimar Republic and as a law librarian and bibliographer in one of the world’s leading law libraries at the height of the Cold War, Lilly Melchior Roberts (1903–1966) was part of an intellectual project that encompassed the disciplinary fields of international law, comparative law, and the emerging field of European legal integration, inspired by conceptual frameworks and perspectives of transnational law. In this chapter, which narrates a biographical journey from Hamburg and Berlin to Ann Arbor, challenging well-worn distinctions between content and infrastructures, scholarship and practice, faculty and library, the German-Jewish émigré lawyer Lilly Melchior Roberts is portrayed as a transformative actor in the emerging field of transnational (and, in particular, European) legal studies as well as in the disciplines of comparative and international law. The portrait emerged from a small and intuitive sketch drawn in the context of a larger biographical approach to the history of European legal integration (featuring a male protagonist), and evolved into a painting with the habitus of the formal and official. It draws from archival research, extensive readings, and personal conversations. At the same time, however, it is shaped by the places where the first preliminary sketches were made, and by their history and ambience: the Michigan Law Quadrangle in Ann Arbor, Berlin’s Tiergarten district, and the Kösterberg in Hamburg-Blankenese.
Isabella Diederiks-Verschoor
Authors: Verwer Christiaan , Velde Anna van der
Published: May 2023

Isabella Diederiks-Verschoor was one of the first women in academia in the Netherlands and worldwide to significantly shape the field of air and space law. Among others as a co-founder of the International Institute of Space Law and the International Institute of Air and Space Law, and as a teacher at the University of Utrecht, she promoted and popularized the research and teaching of air and particularly space law. This portrait reflects on her work through the eyes of one of her former students, highlighting her impact as a teacher and networker bridging the gaps between academic and professional air and space law institutions. It looks at her personal challenges and resulting vocal advocacy for women’s equality and economic independence through promoting education both in her national context but also within developing economies.
Marie Theres Fögen
Authors: Paz Reut Yael
Published: May 2023

This contribution weaves together the life and work of Marie Theres Fögen (1946–2008). Her premature death ended both her professorship at the University of Zurich and her directorship at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt (MPIeR). Fögen, who was an exceptionally gifted German legal historian, remains neglected primarily due to the insularity of the German legal culture which sustains a conservative, if not reactionary, status quo in terms of a constant reproduction of an exclusive and elitist class of jurists. This implicates obvious gender biases too. Keeping a close eye on her German patriarchal and sexist academic context, this chapter links Fögen’s unique historical approach to Roman law that insists on both the importance of the “lyrical” (i.e. witchery, poetry, miracles etc.) and Niklas Luhmann’s theoretical narrative.
Aleksandra Kollontai
Authors: Vasiliev Sergey
Published: May 2023

Aleksandra Mikhailovna Kollontai (1872–1952) was a prominent European socialist, Russian revolutionary and stateswoman, and a working women’s rights champion. Upon serving as the minister of social welfare in the post-October 1917 government in Russia and having headed the Party’s Women’s Departments until her removal in 1922 in reaction to her opposition to Lenin, Kollontai went on to make a distinguished diplomatic career. As the USSR’s envoy and ambassadress to Norway, Mexico, and Sweden (1922–1945), she played a key role in the European affairs during the interbellum, represented the country in the League of Nations, and was directly involved in negotiating Soviet–Finnish peace agreements in 1940 and 1944. Peering beyond the ‘first and only woman ever’ trope often applied to her, this portrait is an invitation to rediscover Kollontai’s silenced and forgotten voice as the pioneering Marxist-feminist intellectual and a bold advocate of gender equality under socialism. The sketch also tells a more personal story of Kollontai as defined by her unequal struggles with the patriarchal system, aborted women’s emancipatory politics, and her miraculous survival in the era of Stalinist terror.
Working from ‘Rooms of Their Own’
Authors: Pereira Luiza Leāo Soares
Published: May 2023

Joyce Gutteridge, CBE, was the first woman Legal Adviser at the UK Foreign Office (as it then was). She is pictured here at the Second Session of the UN Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, in New York in 1962, alongside Ambassador Agda Rossell (Sweden). Gutteridge’s written Portrait contextualizes her undoubtedly ‘trailblazing’ work in international law, with the structural conditions that both hindered and helped her in ascending to a prominent position in the UK Foreign Office (FO). I draw from original interviews and communications with Gutteridge’s contemporaries, and my own work mapping out networks of international lawyers through obituaries, to sketch out a more detailed and complex portrait of this particular subject. I advocate that portraits of trailblazing women’s stories must be seen through an intersectional lens. The final picture is a realistic one, that juxtaposes difficulties faced by women lawyers and diplomats, with the particular situation of Gutteridge, a woman educated in elite institutions with privileged professional networks.
Epilogue
Authors: Charlesworth Hilary
Published: May 2023

This epilogue identifies some general themes in the collection. These include the important contribution of the portrayed women to shaping ideas about international law; the recovery of details of the women’s lives; the significance of their relationships with men; the variety of feminist methodologies they used; and ways of challenging the absence of women in histories of international law. What emerges is the profound contribution of these women to shaping ideas about international law as well as the radical nature of their thought—often against barely-veiled misogyny and dismissive treatment that many encountered trying to express their ideals. But it is also the systems and structures of the world of international law that restrict women’s progress within it that is revealed in these portraits, making the contributions of these women even more remarkable.
Gendered Patterns of Committee Assignments—To What Extent Are Women in Parliamentary Party Groups Game Changers?
Authors: Kroeber Corinna
Published: May 2023

Committee assignments continue to be gendered with men having higher chances than women to be appointed to the most visible, resourceful and influential committees. I contribute to a better understanding of this phenomenon by investigating to what extent women in parliamentary party groups push for gender parity in committee assignments. The empirical analyses build on original data from the 16 German states between 1990 and 2021. I find no indication that women as leaders of parliamentary party groups narrow sex gaps in appointment to the most prestigious committees, but higher shares of women representatives enhance women’s access to these posts.
An extensive survey of phytoviral RNA 3′ uridylation identifies extreme variations and virus-specific patterns
Authors: Joly Anne Caroline , Garcia Shahinez , Hily Jean-Michel , Koechler Sandrine , Demangeat Gérard , Garcia Damien , Vigne Emmanuelle , Lemaire Olivier , Zuber Hélène , Gagliardi Dominique
Published: May 2023

Viral RNAs can be uridylated in eukaryotic hosts. However, our knowledge of uridylation patterns and roles remains rudimentary for phytoviruses. Here, we report global 3′ terminal RNA uridylation profiles for representatives of the main families of positive single-stranded RNA phytoviruses. We detected uridylation in all 47 viral RNAs investigated here, revealing its prevalence. Yet, uridylation levels of viral RNAs varied from 0.2% to 90%. Unexpectedly, most poly(A) tails of grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV) RNAs, including encapsidated tails, were strictly monouridylated, which corresponds to an unidentified type of viral genomic RNA extremity. This monouridylation appears beneficial for GFLV because it became dominant when plants were infected with nonuridylated GFLV transcripts. We found that GFLV RNA monouridylation is independent of the known terminal uridylyltransferases (TUTases) HEN1 SUPPRESSOR 1 (HESO1) and UTP:RNA URIDYLYLTRANSFERASE 1 (URT1) in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). By contrast, both TUTases can uridylate other viral RNAs like turnip crinkle virus (TCV) and turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) RNAs. Interestingly, TCV and TuMV degradation intermediates were differentially uridylated by HESO1 and URT1. Although the lack of both TUTases did not prevent viral infection, we detected degradation intermediates of TCV RNA at higher levels in an Arabidopsis heso1 urt1 mutant, suggesting that uridylation participates in clearing viral RNA. Collectively, our work unveils an extreme diversity of uridylation patterns across phytoviruses and constitutes a valuable resource to further decipher pro- and antiviral roles of uridylation.
Chemical screening approach using single leaves identifies compounds that affect cold signaling in Arabidopsis
Authors: Kitawaki Kohei , Mihara Ryota , Kamimura Saori , Sato Akito , Ushiyama Mari , Ito-Inaba Yasuko , Inaba Takehito
Published: May 2023

The identification of chemical compounds that affect intracellular processes has greatly contributed to our understanding of plant growth and development. In most cases, these compounds have been identified in germinated seedlings. However, chemical screening using mature plants would benefit and advance our understanding of environmental responses. In this study, we developed a high-throughput screening method using single leaves of mature plants to identify small molecules that affect cold-regulated gene expression. A single excised leaf of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) grown in submerged cultures responded to low temperatures in terms of COLD-REGULATED (COR) gene expression. We used transgenic Arabidopsis harboring a COLD-REGULATED 15A (COR15A) promoter::luciferase (COR15Apro::LUC) construct to screen natural compounds that affect the cold induction of COR15Apro::LUC. This approach allowed us to identify derivatives of 1,4-naphthoquinone as specific inhibitors of COR gene expression. Moreover, 1,4-naphthoquinones appeared to inhibit the rapid induction of upstream C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR (CBF) transcription factors upon exposure to low temperature, suggesting that 1,4-naphthoquinones alter upstream signaling processes. Our study offers a chemical screening scheme for identifying compounds that affect environmental responses in mature plants. This type of analysis is likely to reveal an unprecedented link between certain compounds and plant environmental responses.
The impact of information and communication technology on the technical efficiency of smallholder vegetable farms in Shandong of China
Authors: Kang Shijia , Ait Sidhoum Amer , Frick Fabian , Sauer Johannes , Zheng Shaofeng
Published: May 2023

Farmers have started to adopt information and communication technology (ICT), which has considerable potential to impact farm performance. This study uses data from a 2018 survey of 763 vegetable smallholder farms in China to estimate the impact of ICT on technical efficiency (TE). We adopt propensity score matching to create a balanced sample of ICT users and non-users and a stochastic frontier model with sample selection correction to compare the two groups’ TE. After accounting for self-selection bias from both observables and unobservables, the study finds a positive effect of ICT use on TE. On average, the TE score of ICT users is 0.64, whereas ICT non-users have a lower score of 0.57. A quantile regression analysis further reveals a heterogeneous impact of ICT on TE, with the largest effects among less efficient farms. These results suggest that vegetable farmers’ performance could be fostered by the widespread use of ICT.
Buying into Reproductive Modernity: Tracing the Transnational History of Two Contraceptives in Britain and China
Authors: Rodriguez Sarah Mellors
Published: May 2023

Set in the early twentieth century, this article maps the parallel histories of two popular contraceptive pessaries: ‘Wife’s Friend’ in Britain and ‘Lady’s Friend’ in China. Despite their limited efficacy, both products became commercially successful in their respective markets. Drawing on news articles and opinion columns, this article investigates how these two similar products were marketed to different demographics and adapted to meet the needs of local consumers, highlighting the ways in which medicines take on new meanings in different social and historical contexts. At the same time, the case of ‘Wife’s Friend’ and ‘Lady’s Friend’ pessaries also exposes the blurriness between the categories of Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine and the shortcomings of both types of medicine in the early twentieth century. Ultimately, this research shows that interrogating medicine from a comparative transnational perspective can yield new insights into the relationship between commercialisation, modernity and perceptions of health.
Age‐related metabolite profiles and their relation to clinical outcomes in young adults, middle‐aged individuals, and older people
Authors: Giesbertz Pieter , Brandl Beate , Volkert Dorothee , Hauner Hans , Skurk Thomas
Published: May 2023

Age is a significant risk factor for common noncommunicable diseases, yet the physiological alterations of aging are poorly understood. We were interested in metabolic patterns between cross‐sectional cohorts of different age ranges with particular emphasis on waist circumference. We recruited three cohorts of healthy subjects with different age ranges (adolescents 18–25 years, adults 40–65 years, and older citizens 75–85 years) and stratified these based on waist circumference. Using targeted LC‐MS/MS metabolite profiling, we analyzed 112 analytes in plasma (amino acids, acylcarnitines, and derivatives). We associated age‐related alterations with various anthropometric and functional parameters such as insulin sensitivity and handgrip strength. Strongest age‐dependent increases were found for fatty acid‐derived acylcarnitines. Amino acid‐derived acylcarnitines displayed increased associations with BMI and adiposity. Some essential amino acids changed in opposite directions, being lower at increased age and higher with increasing adiposity. τ‐methylhistidine was elevated in older subjects, especially on an adiposity background, suggesting an increased protein turnover. Both aging and adiposity are associated with impaired insulin sensitivity. Skeletal muscle mass decreased with age and increased with adiposity. Profound differences in the metabolite signatures during healthy aging and elevated waist circumference/body weight were found. Opposite changes in skeletal muscle mass as well as possible differences in insulin signaling (relative insulin deficiency in older subjects versus hyperinsulinemia associated with adiposity), might be underlying origins for the observed metabolite signatures. We describe novel associations between metabolites and anthropometric factors during aging which underlines the complex interplay of aging, insulin resistance, and metabolic health.
Endothelial cell‐released extracellular vesicles trigger pyroptosis and vascular inflammation to induce atherosclerosis through the delivery of HIF1A‐AS2
Authors: Li Pengcheng , Hong Jin , Liang Cui , Li Yapeng , Gao Lu , Wu Leiming , Yao Rui , Zhang Yanzhou
Published: May 2023

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) possess great potential in the modulation of cardiovascular diseases. Our current work intended to assay the clinical significance of endothelial cell (EC)‐derived EVs in atherosclerosis (AS). Expression of HIF1A‐AS2, miR‐455‐5p, and ESRRG in plasma from AS patients and mice and EVs from ox‐LDL‐treated ECs was measured. Interactions among HIF1A‐AS2, miR‐455‐5p, ESRRG, and NLRP3 were analyzed. Next, EVs were co‐cultured with ECs, and ectopic expression and depletion experimentations of HIF1A‐AS2, miR‐455‐5p, ESRRG, and/or NLRP3 were carried out to assay their roles in pyroptosis and inflammation of ECs in AS. At last, the effects of HIF1A‐AS2 shuttled by EC‐derived EVs on EC pyroptosis and vascular inflammation in AS were verified in vivo. HIF1A‐AS2 and ESRRG were highly expressed, while miR‐455‐5p was poorly expressed in AS. HIF1A‐AS2 could sponge miR‐455‐5p to elevate the expression of ESRRG and NLRP3. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments revealed that ECs‐derived EVs carrying HIF1A‐AS2 induced the pyroptosis and vascular inflammation of ECs to promote the progression of AS by sponging miR‐455‐5p via ESRRG/NLRP3. HIF1A‐AS2 shuttled by ECs‐derived EVs can accelerate the progression of AS by downregulating miR‐455‐5p and upregulating ESRRG and NLRP3.
Using machine learning to realize genetic site screening and genomic prediction of productive traits in pigs
Authors: Xiang Tao , Li Tao , Li Jielin , Li Xin , Wang Jia
Published: May 2023

Genomic prediction, which is based on solving linear mixed‐model (LMM) equations, is the most popular method for predicting breeding values or phenotypic performance for economic traits in livestock. With the need to further improve the performance of genomic prediction, nonlinear methods have been considered as an alternative and promising approach. The excellent ability to predict phenotypes in animal husbandry has been demonstrated by machine learning (ML) approaches, which have been rapidly developed. To investigate the feasibility and reliability of implementing genomic prediction using nonlinear models, the performances of genomic predictions for pig productive traits using the linear genomic selection model and nonlinear machine learning models were compared. Then, to reduce the high‐dimensional features of genome sequence data, different machine learning algorithms, including the random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) and convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithms, were used to perform genomic feature selection as well as genomic prediction on reduced feature genome data. All of the analyses were processed on two real pig datasets: the published PIC pig dataset and a dataset comprising data from a national pig nucleus herd in Chifeng, North China. Overall, the accuracies of predicted phenotypic performance for traits T1, T2, T3 and T5 in the PIC dataset and average daily gain (ADG) in the Chifeng dataset were higher using the ML methods than the LMM method, while those for trait T4 in the PIC dataset and total number of piglets born (TNB) in the Chifeng dataset were slightly lower using the ML methods than the LMM method. Among all the different ML algorithms, SVM was the most appropriate for genomic prediction. For the genomic feature selection experiment, the most stable and most accurate results across different algorithms were achieved using XGBoost in combination with the SVM algorithm. Through feature selection, the number of genomic markers can be reduced to 1 in 20, while the predictive performance on some traits can even be improved compared to using the full genome data. Finally, we developed a new tool that can be used to execute combined XGBoost and SVM algorithms to realize genomic feature selection and phenotypic prediction.
Postpartum Readmission for Hypertension: The Patient Experience [ID: 1377602]
Authors: Viswanathan Radhika , Berhie Saba , Little Sarah , Seely Ellen W. , Wilkins-Haug Louise
Published: May 2023

INTRODUCTION:

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are the most common cause of postpartum readmission. Prior research has led to the creation of clinical guidelines for postpartum management; however, the patient experience is often missing from this work. The objective of this project is to understand the perspective of patients readmitted for postpartum hypertension.

METHODS:

Institutional review board committee approval was obtained for the study. This was a qualitative study with data generated through semistructured interviews. Patients readmitted with postpartum HDP at an urban academic medical center were approached and consented for a single interview. The same researcher conducted all interviews and patient recruitment continued until thematic saturation was reached (n=9). Two coders coded all interviews using NVivo software with both deductive and inductive coding processes. Discrepancies were discussed and resolved with consensus. Researchers identified themes through grounded theory and were reflexive in their thematic generation.

RESULTS:

Five themes were generated through the grounded theory analysis: Every pregnancy is different, symptoms of preeclampsia are easily dismissed or often not taken seriously, miscommunication regarding medical changes can hinder patient care, readmission logistics are not baby-friendly, and patient well-being improved when conversations acknowledged the struggles of readmission.

CONCLUSION:

A qualitative research process revealed patient-identified gaps in care that may have led to readmission for HDP. The specific recommendations that emerge from these themes include: addressing barriers to blood pressure management prior to discharge, improving postpartum discharge follow-up, providing newborn care coordination, and improving counseling on the risk of postpartum preeclampsia during discharge. Incorporating these patient perspectives in hospital discharge policy can be helpful in creating patient-centered systems of care and may help reduce rates of readmission.
Comparison of Robotics and Navigation for Clinical Outcomes Following Minimally Invasive Lumbar Fusion
Authors: Shahi Pratyush , Subramanian Tejas , Araghi Kasra , Singh Sumedha , Asada Tomoyuki , Maayan Omri , Korsun Maximilian , Singh Nishtha , Tuma Olivia , Dowdell James , Sheha Evan , Qureshi Sheeraz , Iyer Sravisht
Published: May 2023

Study Design.

Retrospective cohort

Objective.

To compare navigation and robotics in terms of clinical outcomes following minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion (MI-TLIF).

Summary of Background Data.

While robotics has been shown to have advantages like reduced radiation exposure, greater screw size, and slightly better accuracy over navigation, none of the studies has compared these two modalities in terms of clinical outcomes.

Methods.

Patients who underwent single-level MI-TLIF using robotics or navigation and had a minimum of 1-year follow-up were included. The robotics and navigation groups were compared for improvement in patient reported outcome measures (PROMs), minimal clinically important difference (MCID), patient acceptable symptom state (PASS), response on global rating change (GRC) scale, and screw-related complication and reoperation rates.

Results.

278 patients (143 robotics, 135 navigation) were included. There was no significant difference between the robotics and navigation groups in the baseline demographics, operative variables, and preoperative PROMs. Both groups showed significant improvement in PROMs at <6 and >6 months with no significant difference in the magnitude of improvement between the two groups. Most patients achieved MCID and PASS and reported feeling better on the GRC scale with no significant difference in the proportions between the robotics and navigation groups. The screw-related complication and reoperation rates also showed no significant difference between the two groups.

Conclusion.

Robotics did not seem to lead to significantly better clinical outcomes compared to navigation following MI-TLIF. While the clinical outcomes may be similar, robotics offers the advantages of reduced radiation exposure, greater screw size, and slightly better accuracy over navigation. These advantages should be considered when determining the utility and cost-effectiveness of robotics in spine surgery. Larger multicenter prospective studies are required in future to further investigate this subject.

Level of Evidence.

3