bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Influence of impaired selective motor control on gait in children with cerebral palsy
Authors: Zhou J. Y. , Lowe E. , Cahill-Rowley K. , Mahtani G. B. , Young J. L. , Rose J. 
Published: December 2018

Purpose Spastic cerebral palsy (CP) is characterized by four neuromuscular deficits: weakness, short muscle-tendon unit, muscle spasticity and impaired selective motor control (SMC). We examined the influence of impaired SMC on gait in children with bilateral spastic CP. Delineating the influence of neuromuscular deficits on gait abnormalities can guide surgical and therapeutic interventions to reduce long-term debilitating effects of CP. Methods The relationship between impaired SMC and gait was assessed using multivariate linear regression analysis of Selective Control Assessment of the Lower Extremity (SCALE) in relation to stance phase knee flexion and temporal-spatial gait parameters calculated using 3D kinematics for 57 children with bilateral spastic CP, ages seven to 11 years. Results Mean SCALE values were 5.8 (0 to 10, sd 3.0) and 5.7 (0 to 10, sd 2.9) for right and left legs, respectively. Multivariate linear regression models, including right and left SCALE and height, significantly predicted right and left knee flexion at initial contact (R = 0.479, p = 0.003; R = 0.452, p = 0.007, respectively) and right and left knee flexion in midstance (R = 0.428, p = 0.013; R = 0.407, p = 0.022, respectively). The model significantly predicted right and left step length (R = 0.645, p = 0.000; R = 0.523, p = 0.001, respectively) and predicted gait velocity (R = 0.444, p = 0.008). The model including SCALE did not predict step width. Conclusion Results indicate impaired SMC predicts increased knee flexion at initial contact, and reduces step length and velocity. Understanding the influence of impaired SMC on gait can inform decisions regarding therapy and surgery, such as hamstring lengthening. Level of evidence Level II Retrospective Study
A FRAMEWORK USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN JAPAN TO EVALUATE PROJECTS BASED ON OUTCOMES
Authors: Iida Yoichi , Koizumi Ryo 
Published: December 2018

Currently, in Japan, women are required to participate and advance in the workplace because of the decline in the labor population. However, it is very difficult for them to do so because of the patriarchal system within Japanese history. In the 1990s, local governments began various projects to encourage women to participate in society. At the same time, local government administrations were introduced to project evaluation to boost the efficiency of their projects. However, project evaluation did not function well because project evaluation needs to be linked to outcomes of the program, and the outcome step was often performed independently. The purpose of this paper is to show how to perform project evaluation to promote women’s active participation in society in Japan. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, we show how to evaluate projects in a way that can connect to the outcomes of the program. This framework can also be used to calculate the degree of contribution of projects in the program from two perspectives. First, the decision makers in a local government evaluate the outcomes of the program and second, the people in charge of the projects that make up the program do the evaluation for their own projects. In this paper, we evaluated actual projects of a city in Japan and were able to show the direction they should take, such as reduction or expansion for each project in the next fiscal year, by using numerical values obtained in the process of calculation by this framework.
The role of genre-based community music: A study of two UK ensembles
Authors: Tapson Kit , Daykin Norma , Walters David M. 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Background: there is a growing trend towards addressing social inclusion through community music, and at the same time, increasing interest in the way that participatory music can benefit health and well-being. However, relatively little research has been undertaken on community ensembles that addresses personal and social well-being through genre-based music. This pilot study examined community music impacts and processes in contexts where there are higher than average health needs and well-being inequalities. Methods: participant observation and semi structured interviews were undertaken with music leaders, project managers and musicians in two UK ensembles: a Community Orchestra (CO) that focuses on reggae and a jazz Big Band (BB). Thematic analysis identified twelve key themes. Findings: while each ensemble addresses specific needs, common themes and challenges were identified. These include positive and negative experiences that are mediated by musical identity and genre, inclusive practices, the role of the Music Director (MD), community connections, and governance and structure. Conclusions: membership of a community ensemble can afford creative and educational opportunities as well as supporting the well-being of members and a wider sense of empowerment in the communities from which they are drawn.
Effects of the parasite, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, on wing characteristics important for migration in the monarch butterfly
Authors: Davis Andrew K. , de Roode Jacobus C. 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
There is mounting evidence that the longterm declines of overwintering monarchs in Mexico are exacerbated by losses during the fall migratory journey. Infection with the protozoan, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), is known to negatively impact migration success. Here we examine how infections affect specific wing traits of monarchs that are important for migratory success. We used a collection of infected and uninfected monarchs reared under identical conditions, and from the (deceased) specimens, measured wing area (larger monarchs are known to have greater migratory success), wing color (the shade of orange pigmentation in monarchs is a known predictor of migration and flight ability), and the physical density of wings (a measure of wing mass per unit area). We also measured the tear-resistance of wings, using an apparatus that measured the force needed to cause a tear in the wing. Results showed no effect of OE on overall wing size, nor on the shade of orange pigmentation, but a clear effect on measures of physical density and tensile strength. Wings of infected monarchs weighed less per unit area (by 6%), and there was a 20% reduction in tear-resistance of wings. All results were qualitatively similar in a follow-up investigation using freshly-killed specimens. Collectively, this indicates infected monarchs are more prone to wing damage, which would be costly during long-distance migration. As such, this would be one more way in which OE infections reduce migratory success. Given the toll of OE to the monarch population, especially during migration, it would be prudent to focus conservation efforts on mitigating human activities that spread this disease.
Entry Deterrence, Coordinating Advertising and Pricing in Markets with Consumption Externalities
Authors: Whelan Adele 
Published: December 2018

AbstractThis paper extends the entry deterrence literature by examining coordinating advertising and pricing in markets with consumption externalities using a stochastic success function. Optimal advertising and pricing strategies are analysed when an incumbent firm faces a challenger with a product of equal quality. I show that strategic entry deterrence using advertising is possible and optimal entry deterrence involves strategic pre-commitment to over-investment relative to the non-strategic simultaneous advertising benchmark. I show that when entry deterrence is not possible the incumbent does not possess a first mover advantage and optimal entry accommodation involves strategic investment in advertising with intensified price competition congruent with the non-strategic simultaneous advertising benchmark. The findings suggest that an incumbent’s ability to deter entry through coordinating advertising in a market with products of equal quality is sensitive to the size of the fixed cost of entry that the challenger must incur and the consumption externality parameter.
Morphological characteristics of judo cadets with respect to sex-related differences and athletic achievements
Authors: Nikolova Anna , Dimitrova Diana 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Study aim: Understanding the morphological determinants of performance is important for talent identification and optimiza­tion of training programs. The aim of this study was to examine the morphological characteristics of male and female cadet judokas considering the sex-related differences and athletic achievements. Material and methods: Seventy-four (30 female and 44 male) cadet judokas from the Bulgarian National Team underwent an anthropometric assessment of height, weight, lengths, circumferences, and 8 skinfolds. Body fat percentage (%BF) was calcu­lated using Slaughter et al. skinfold equations. Absolute and relative muscle mass, and arm and thigh muscle circumferences were also evaluated. Results: Except for the lower limb circumferences and thigh muscle circumference, a significant difference in most body dimensions was observed between the sexes. Male cadets had lower body fatness, but greater muscle mass as compared to female cadets. Medal winners from both sexes had lower %BF as compared to non-medalists. Male judokas with higher athletic achievements were significantly taller and had a larger arm span than their counterparts who are non-medalists (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Identified apparent sex-specific differences in almost all anthropometric variables and body composition param­eters in adolescent judo cadets followed the pattern typical for adult athletes. Both male and female medal-winner cadets had lower %BF compared to the less successful athletes, but did not differ from them in the absolute and relative muscle mass and limb muscle circumferences. Our results suggest that maintenance of low body fat rather than higher muscle mass is essential for the competitive success of judo players.
Zur Beeinflussung der homerischen Epen durch das Gilgamesch-Epos. Mit einem Exkurs zu einer neuen Datierungsthese der Ilias
Authors: Matijević Krešimir 
Published: December 2018

ZusammenfassungSeit der Entdeckung des Gilgamesch-Epos am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts wird von der Forschung angenommen, dass dieses Epos den Inhalt der homerischen Epen beeinflusst habe. Der Beitrag legt dar, wann und auf welchem Wege der kulturelle Transfer zwischen Mesopotamien und Griechenland stattgefunden haben kann. Ferner werden mehrere Passagen aus den homerischen Epen diskutiert, in denen die Forschung eine Beeinflussung durch das Gilgamesch-Epos erkennen möchte. Gezeigt wird, dass diese Ansicht zum Teil subjektiv ist und zum Teil auf veralteten Ausgaben des Gilgamesch-Epos beruht. In einem Exkurs wird zuletzt eine aktuelle These zur Datierung der Ilias analysiert.
When valor isn’t always superior to numbers:homoioioliganthrôpia caused by attrition in incessant warfare
Authors: Decety Nathan 
Published: December 2018

SummaryOver the course of about two centuries, the population of Ancient Spartan full citizens –homoioi – declined precipitously. Historians typically ascribe structural, social and economic causes to this decline. In what follows, I use sample statistics to argue that despite scant evidence, the attrition rate suffered by Spartan armies on the battlefield was enough to intensify or cause the enormous population decline.
La legge ateniese sull’interdizione degli stranieri dal mercato: da Solone ad Aristofonte di Azenia
Authors: Loddo Laura 
Published: December 2018

RiassuntoL’articolo analizza un passo di un’orazione demostenica (57.32) in cui vengono invocate due leggi –la prima ascritta al legislatore Solone, la seconda al politico ateniese Aristofonte di Azenia – il cui contenuto divide la critica. Se la contestualizzazione della legge all’interno dell’argomentazione dell’attore Eussiteo permette di identificare il contenuto delle due leggi, l’analisi dell’attività legislativa di Solone e Aristofonte consente di chiarire il rapporto esistente fra la promulgazione della norma soloniana e la ripresa della stessa promossa da Aristofonte. Lo studio della legge nel quadro delle riforme attribuite a Solone, infine, autorizza a difenderne la storicità e a propendere per il carattere genuino dell’attribuzione all’antico legislatore.
Babylonisches zu Artaxerxes IV.
Authors: Hackl Johannes , Oelsner Joachim 
Published: December 2018

ZusammenfassungEine Anzahl babylonischer Texte archivalischen, astronomischen und anderen Charakters zeigt, dass der als Arses bekannte Achämenidenherrscher (338–336 v. Chr.) den Thronnamen Artaxerxes (IV.) führte. Die babylonischen Quellen fügen sich damit in das bereits aus anderen Quellen bekannte Bild ein – darunter die Trilingue von Xanthos. Im Beitrag werden Kriterien dargelegt, die eine Zuordnung babylonischer Texte zu Artaxerxes IV. ermöglichen.
„La punizione dei vinti“: dibattiti e decreti senatori su Campani e Tarentini dopo la riconquista (211–208 a. C.)
Authors: Gallo Annarosa 
Published: December 2018

RiassuntoLa punizione inflitta, nel 211 a. C., ai Campani,municipes sine suffragio, per la loro defezione ad Annibale, era stata assunta da una parte del senato a paradigma anche per i soci Tarentini, nel 208 a. C., rei allo stesso modo. Tale valutazione politica poggiava sull’assunto che la pena dovesse essere commisurata alla colpa, indipendentemente dal differente statuto giuridico dei defezionisti. Questa è espressione della linea rigorista perseguita contro i traditori, tra alti, da Q. Fulvius Flaccus (conquistatore di Capua), all’opposto di quella moderata e pragmatica sostenuta da Q. Fabius Maximus (conquistatore di Tarentum).
Hellenistic-Roman Idumea in the Light of Greek and Latin Non-Jewish Authors
Authors: Marciak Michał 
Published: December 2018

SummaryAlthough ancient Idumea was certainly a marginal object of interest for classical writers, we do possess as many as thirteen extant classical non-Jewish authors (from the 1stc. BCE to the 3rdc. CE) who explicitly refer to Idumea or the Idumeans. For classical writers, Idumea was an inland territory between the coastal cities of Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia that straddled important trade routes. Idumea is also frequently associated in ancient literature with palm trees, which grew in Palestine and were exported throughout the Mediterranean. In the eyes of classical authors, the Idumeans were a distinctiveethnosliving in the melting pot of southern Palestine. Ancient writers emphasized the Idumeans’ ethnic and cultural connections with the Nabateans, the Phoenicians and Syrians, and, finally, the Judeans, and also indicated that a great deal of Hellenization occurred in western Idumea in an urban context.
Precision and speaker qualities. The social meaning of pragmatic detail
Authors: Beltrama Andrea 
Published: December 2018

AbstractThe present article focuses on two questions: (i) How do listeners infer the social identity of a speaker based on how they choose to describe the world? (ii) Are these inferences informed by similar principles to those motivating the social significance of linguistic phenomena in other domains of the grammar? We address this issue by exploring the social meaning of imprecision (Lasersohn 1999): speakers’ well-attested tendency to apply varying degrees of deviation from the truth when reporting facts (e.g., describing a car as going 70 MPH, instead of 69). Based on results from a social perception study, we found (i) that a high degree of precision is associated with a constellation of both favorable and unfavorable qualities; (ii) that different linguistic cues to signal precision differentially affect the social meaning of the utterance; (iii) and that most such qualities bear a striking resemblance to those associated to variation in other realms – e.g., the hyper/hypo-articulation of sounds. We take this as evidence that semantic variation can be socially meaningful across the specific lexical items in which it manifests itself, and that such social meanings can be linguistically motivated by similar principles across different domains of the grammar.
Mirativity in Mandarin: The Sentence-Final Particle Le (了)
Authors: Fang Hongmei 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
Mirativity is a distinct grammatical category. In the literature, no mirative marker has been identified so far in Mandarin Chinese. This paper aims to argue that Mandarin Chinese is a language that has grammatical means of expressing mirativity. The sentence-final particle le (SF le) in Mandarin is a mirative marker in its own right. It encodes the information as newsworthy or surprising and occurs with different time references and Illocutions. Based on the data from SF le, this paper extends the definition of mirativity given by Hengeveld & Olbertz (2012) by proposing that mirativity can not only be targeted towards either the speaker or the addressee, but also towards both. Lastly, it is argued that mirativity should be accounted for at the layer of Communicated Content at the Interpersonal Level in Functional Discourse Grammar.
Deep reinforcement learning using compositional representations for performing instructions
Authors: Zamani Mohammad Ali , Magg Sven , Weber Cornelius , Wermter Stefan , Fu Di 
Published: December 2018

AbstractSpoken language is one of the most efficientways to instruct robots about performing domestic tasks. However, the state of the environment has to be considered to plan and execute actions successfully. We propose a system that learns to recognise the user’s intention and map it to a goal. A reinforcement learning (RL) system then generates a sequence of actions toward this goal considering the state of the environment. A novel contribution in this paper is the use of symbolic representations for both input and output of a neural Deep Q-network (DQN), which enables it to be used in a hybrid system. To show the effectiveness of our approach, the Tell-Me-Dave corpus is used to train an intention detection model and in a second step an RL agent generates the sequences of actions towards the detected objective, represented by a set of state predicates. We show that the system can successfully recognise command sequences fromthis corpus aswell as train the deep- RL network with symbolic input.We further show that the performance can be significantly increased by exploiting the symbolic representation to generate intermediate rewards.
The corporeal meaning of language: A semiotic approach to musical glossolalia
Authors: Stano Simona 
Published: December 2018

Abstract
A number of studies have investigated glossolalia from different points of view, dealing with its various occurrences in the religious, psychopathological, and – more recently – also poetic and musical domains. The impossibility of fully understanding such a phenomenon through a purely linguistic approach has then increasingly emerged, pointing out the need to adopt a broader perspective. However, no extensive research has been developed on musical glossolalia – and especially on its non-religious forms – from such a point of view. The present paper aims precisely at filling this gap: philosophical discussion of existing literature and the semiotic analysis of particularly relevant case studies of glossolalia in the musical domain help us shed new light on the functioning mechanisms of such a phenomenon, hence suggesting effective tools for understanding how it acquires meaning and produces sense.
Saturnalia in the Theory of Niklas Luhmann: The Terror Program Manifest Through Charles Manson’s Family with Reference to additional Groups such as Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS
Authors: Weaver William N. 
Published: December 2018

AbstractThe terror program, considered within the framework of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, serves to contradict society in many ways, functioning as a form of saturnalia to expose paradox. Though terror and terrorism have roots in antiquity, modern differentiated systems of communication and society’s oppositional/terrorist organizations have evolved into distinct forms, and terrorist events can trigger information processing in a variety of society’s subsystems, including but not limited to the political system. Charles Manson and his Family, considered alongside the groups Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS, serve to illustrate the ongoing terror program as manifest in modern society. Despite the best efforts of security analysts and related system observations, the evolution of these violent communications is highly unpredictable. Though terrorism that achieves quasi-state (‘successful insurgency’) or full state authority (a ‘terror regime’) may reduce complexity or distinctions among modern political, legal or other subsystems, the same destabilizing operations conducted by terrorist organizations that fail to achieve the authority of states may nonetheless influence the increasing complexity of modern society.
“Altogether a Different Thing”: The Emerging Social Sciences and the New Universalisms of Religious Belief in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim
Authors: Werner Winter Jade 
Published: December 2018

Winter Jade Werner, “‘Altogether a Different Thing’: The Emerging Social Sciences and the New Universalisms of Religious Belief in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim” (pp. 293–325)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the needs of some religious practitioners began to conflict with secular scholars in the developing social science disciplines. According to the secular scholars of these disciplines, religion was subordinate to culture; it functioned to delimit one social group from another. A number of religious practitioners, including Protestant missionaries and Hindu reformers, challenged this scientific delineation of religion as particular and “cultural,” asserting instead what I call “new universalisms” of religious belief. I contextualize Rudyard Kipling’s Kim (1901) within this historical moment. Kim, I argue, thematizes and works through these competing discourses. In particular, the novel suggests the enormous potency of the new discourses of religious belief in advancing forms of universalism that challenged and looked to transcend categories of identity as imposed by social scientific thinking. I conclude with an examination of Kim’s epigraphs, showing that their relationship to the main narrative formally enacts the agonistic relationship between the two modern universalisms of religious belief and social scientific thinking.