bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Globalization, Women, and Religion in the Middle East
Authors: Karam Azza M. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
This chapter begins with a discussion of the legacies of colonialism in the Middle East, and then turns to women and religion in the Middle East, feminisms in the Middle East, and Islamism in the Middle East. It argues that while religious discourse will always have an important role in the Middle East, it is seriously myopic to assume that the Muslim Brotherhood—and all other Islamists—are “anti-women” and “anti-democratic,” as previous nuancing holds. Even within the one organization itself, there are diverse perspectives on women's rights. There are extremely active, very well-educated, cultured, and articulate women members of the Brotherhood, for example, just as there will always be those who are uncomfortable with women's public roles. What must be appreciated is that, in tandem with regime change (and calls for it), are revolutions occurring within almost every group, party, and institution in the Middle East today.
Theological Perspective on Mutual Solidarity in the Context of Globalization: The Circle's Experience
Authors: Amoah Elizabeth 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Given the complexity of the West African sub-region and the fact that there are several theologies by African women, some of whom do not identify themselves as feminists, a contribution to the exploration of feminist theology from a West African perspective is not an easy and simple task. In order to deal with such a problem, this chapter focuses on the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (Circle). From an initial membership of about seventy women, the Circle's membership has increased to about four hundred women. A particular view of feminist theology from a West African perspective is presented. Basically, it is a theological reflection on the urgent need to seek ways of networking and working together as people of faith and hope. It is a search through our faith traditions for viable ways of working together for the common good as women from diverse religious, social, and ideological contexts in a world that has been affected by globalization. The underlying assumption here is that if we carefully search through such traditions, we realize that, depending on how we re-read and interpret information, there are still some good resources which we can tap for our search for viable networking, despite our inevitable commonalities and differences. This has been one of the goals of the Circle set in pluralistic contexts.
Woman Lost in the Global Maze: Women and Religion in East Africa Under Globalization
Authors: Mwaura Philomena Njeri 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
This chapter interrogates the interplay between globalization, religion, and women in the East African context, and seeks to respond to the following questions: What aspects of globalization affect the spaces where women operate? How has globalization affected gender and family relations? How can justice-seeking feminist theological discourse respond to the challenges of globalization? The chapter begins by defining East Africa; analysing the religio-cultural context that has been shaped by the indigenous African worldview, Western Christianity, colonialism, and the current globalizing forces; and examining how women and religion have been impacted by these complexities and changes. Thereafter, the experiences of women under globalization are discussed with reference to selected issues such as poverty, economy, employment, environment, health, and education; issues chosen because they are critical to women's well-being. As major victims of globalization, women struggle daily to surmount the challenges it poses. In conclusion, ways of responding to globalization from an African women's theological perspective are discussed.
Feminism, Inc.: Globalization and North American Feminist Theologies
Authors: Thandeka  
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Today, 58% of women executives voluntarily choose flexible work options or a variety of other nontraditional career paths that take them far afield from the traditional, male, linear ascent to corporate power and success, and 37% of these highly qualified women voluntarily leave their careers for some period of time. They leave to have babies, to take care of aging parents, or for other such gender-based roles, and one-fourth do not return to their previous jobs. The collective impact of these individual, gender-based decisions made by women has created a near panic among US corporations. The price tag for refilling a job slot is typically 150% of the former employee's salary, and for high-level executives, is almost three times the job's annual salary. Accordingly, as women executives leave the corporate world, their individual actions create a collective, leaderless social movement that looks, statistically and financially, like a contemporary women's revolt against big-time corporate American enterprise. To stop the disruptions to business interests brought about by this leaderless women's movement, global corporations have turned for advice to Women's Studies scholars and other advocates for women's gender-based interests and rights. As a result, corporate America now hires these advocates to develop gender-based company policies and procedures to keep women executives in the corporate fold. This new effort is referred to as Feminism, Inc., which is the for-profit hiring of women's advocates to facilitate a business process designed to economically exploit the women the advocates help. This chapter is organized as follows. Part I delineates the problem and shows how Women's Studies scholarship and professional advocacy for women's rights transformed into an antifeminist, market-driven, business agenda for corporate America; Part II proffers solutions.
Beyond Theology of Religions: The Epistemological and Ethical Challenges of Inter-religious Engagement
Authors: Welch Sharon D. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
For the past one hundred years, the primary form of scholarly inter-religious encounter has been inter-religious dialogue. While fruitful, such an approach is also severely limited, reflecting as it does Western assumptions about the nature of religious knowledge itself, about the bearer of religious knowledge, and about the nature of the self. The problem now being examined in the postcolonial comparative study of religion is quite straightforward: the categories for defining religion were taken from Western traditions and then applied to other traditions, a process in which the other traditions were often found wanting, or, even if seen as complex and worthy of appreciation, were still misunderstood by Western scholars. This chapter considers the following question: In a postcolonial world, how do we see and value differences, those that are forced, those that are self-generated, and those that are an ambiguous combination of both coercion and creativity? The impetus to postcolonial comparative work and postcolonial critique of religious traditions has been initiated by those who have borne the costs of colonization and domination, who criticize its legacy, and who call for new forms of critique and interaction. The impetus for new forms of interaction and fundamental critique is not primarily the West's deconstruction of its own forms of domination, but is a response to the work of those, who albeit colonized, resisted colonization from its beginning, and have continuously asserted their subjectivity and agency.
The Challenges of Globalization for Muslim Women
Authors: Kassam Zayn 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Globalization has brought with it many benefits “from above” with respect to opening up employment and trade opportunities on a massive scale, and has facilitated, in some cases, a generation of wealth that has trickled down to ordinary citizens, thereby enabling greater freedom of choice with respect to raising the standard of living. However, by and large, such small gains have come at a tremendous cost to those who do not constitute the elite, especially in developing countries (often termed countries at the periphery). At the same time, globalization has facilitated, “from below,” nativist resistance movements, often couched and presented in religious terms, which turn to identity politics and greater control over women's morality, comportment, and role in society, ostensibly to address broader social inequities, but which concomitantly exercise a restrictive effect on the attainment of gender justice. This chapter presents a brief discussion of Muslim hermeneutics on gender in order to understand how nativist resistance movements have been able to draw upon women's comportment and dress as symbols for the authenticity and integrity of the Islamic tradition in an attempt to withstand what they perceive as Western hegemonic practices. It then discusses Muslim feminist hermeneutics, economic privation and gender violence, and capitalist practices and women's bodies.
Globalization and Narrative
Authors: Kirk-Duggan Cheryl A. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
This chapter explores from a Womanist perspective the complexities of how commingled systems, texts, and violence shape lives, stories, and experiences of the sacred across the globe, beginning by presenting a methodology and exploring concepts of narrative, theology, and globalization. It then analyzes an assortment of texts, noting points of ambiguity, especially in the intersections between story, belief, and worldview. The selected texts represent a variety of narratives or modes of expression that convey tensions between inclusion and exclusion, and which pertain to community development, yet are not often used together in feminist or Womanist analysis. These texts include: (1) The Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9); (2) selected chapters from the 1948 United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which focus on what happens to human bodies—living bio-texts or embodied narratives in and of themselves); (3) the song, “We are the World” (1985); and (4) human bio-texts, such as bodies of victims of sex trafficking, sexual assault, and rape as an act of war.
Feminist Ritual Practice
Authors: Berger Teresa 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
This chapter discusses women and ritual practice in the Christian tradition, women's ritual practices in the twentieth century, the development of feminist rituals, the globalization of feminist rituals, international networks of Christian women, and feminist activism in the Church. It argues that women creating and celebrating feminist rituals are here to stay. At the same time, of the roughly one billion Christian women around the globe, those who participate in feminist ritual practices are a distinct minority. A multitude of Christian women, however, do practice their faith in symbol, ritual, celebration, and song, and they do so—whether self-consciously or not, in an established group or alone—in gender-specific ways. Whatever the future of distinctly feminist rituals might hold, this gender-specific meaning-making of the rituals of faith will remain, at least until gender loses its defining force as a marker of difference in our world.
The Tractatus and The Limits of Sense
Authors: Diamond Cora 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
So long as we have the idea that what we want goes beyond the limit, resignation is in place. If, instead, we were to recognise that the idea that we were trying to ask something, that there was something we wanted to find out, or wanted to say, was confused, and that there was nothing that we were asking or wanting to say, there would no longer be anything to be resigned about. Thus ‘complete satisfaction’ would be possible. This article looks at Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and demonstrates the connection between Wittgenstein's ideas about marking out the limits ‘from inside’ and his ideas about philosophical method, as well as the connection between those ideas about method and the contrast between the two ways of understanding the limits of language. It also discusses Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and what he thought it could accomplish. It is a mistake to argue that, of the various forms of philosophical solipsism, Wittgenstein is concerned only with solipsism of some particular type.
Wittgenstein on The Experience of Meaning and Secondary Use
Authors: Hark Michel ter 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Ludwig Wittgenstein returned to the experience of meaning time and time again in his later writings on the philosophy of psychology. In Part II of Philosophical Investigations, experiencing the meaning of a word, or as it is also called, ‘meaning-experience’, is introduced in the article, and it is dominated by the discussion of seeing aspects. The general moral of Wittgenstein's discussions in the first part of Investigations is that meaning and understanding do not refer to any simple item of experience at the moment of speaking. This article discusses the philosophical push to hypostasising experiences. A crucial role is played by Wittgenstein's discussion of ‘meaning-blindness’. The most important similarity between experiences of meaning and the seeing of aspects is that in both cases, a secondary use of language is involved. This article explains what secondary use is by relating it to the concepts of inclination and primitive reaction.
Wittgenstein and Moore
Authors: Baldwin Thomas 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Ludwig Wittgenstein first encountered G. E. Moore when he came to Cambridge in autumn 1911. Despite the fact that Moore was considerably older than Wittgenstein, they became friends and their relationship soon became one in which Wittgenstein was the teacher and Moore the pupil. But while they met regularly for philosophical discussion and Wittgenstein greatly valued Moore's presence at his lectures, he did not engage much with Moore's philosophical position, presumably because he still judged Moore's general approach to philosophy to be unprofitable. He did, however, think that Moore had had some important insights whose value he (Moore) had not been able to exploit properly, and On Certainty shows Wittgenstein separating out Moore's mistakes from his insights concerning knowledge and certainty and then developing the latter. It is Moore's proof and Moore's defence which provide the initial dialectical context for Wittgenstein's accounts of knowledge and certainty. It is worth mentioning some of the main themes of Moore's position, and then bringing in his debates with Norman Malcolm, before concentrating on Wittgenstein's discussion.
Wittgenstein and Ethics
Authors: Christensen Anne‐Marie S. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract
Ludwig Wittgenstein is very critical of philosophers' attempts at discussing ethics, especially all attempts at developing forms of ethical theory. In his critique of moral philosophy, Wittgenstein does not express reservations about the possibility of reflecting on ordinary ethical discussions or of elucidating ethically significant uses of words. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein's remarks on ethics are made in the very last part of the book, following sections on logic, mathematics, and natural science. Wittgenstein describes ethics in a way that is very similar to his description of logic. In addition, he thinks that ethics shows up as a condition of the world tied to the life of the subject, but does not provide us with any concrete description of the form of ethical normativity. The investigations of the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty provide us with a context in which to place Wittgenstein's specific descriptions of ethical language use, but they do not help us elucidate the defining characteristic of ethics in Wittgenstein's view.
Inhibitory effect of statins on inflammatory cytokine production from human bronchial epithelial cells
Authors: Iwata A , Shirai R , Ishii H , Kushima H , Otani S , Hashinaga K , Umeki K , Kishi K , Tokimatsu I , Hiramatsu K , Kadota J 
Published: January 2012

Summary
Statins are 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-co-enzyme A reductase inhibitors of cholesterol biosynthesis, and have been reported to exert pleiotropic effects on cellular signalling and cellular functions involved in inflammation. Recent reports have demonstrated that previous statin therapy reduced the risk of pneumonia or increased survival in patients with community-acquired pneumonia. However, the precise mechanisms responsible for these effects are unclear. In the present study, we examined the effects of statins on cytokine production from lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated human bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B). Interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-8 mRNA expression and protein secretion in LPS-stimulated cells were inhibited significantly by the lipophilic statin pitavastatin and the hydrophilic statin pravastatin. As these inhibitory effects of statin were negated by adding mevalonate, the anti-inflammatory effects of statins appear to be exerted via the mevalonic cascade. In addition, the activation levels of Ras homologue gene family A (RhoA) in BEAS-2B cells cultured with pitavastatin were significantly lower than those without the statin. These results suggest that statins have anti-inflammatory effects by reducing cytokine production through inhibition of the mevalonic cascade followed by RhoA activation in the lung.
The issues of prestack reverse time migration and solutions with Graphic Processing Unit implementation
Authors: Liu Hongwei , Li Bo , Liu Hong , Tong Xiaolong , Liu Qin , Wang Xiwen , Liu Wenqing 
Published: January 2012

ABSTRACTPrestack reverse time migration (RTM) is a very useful tool for seismic imaging but has mainly three bottlenecks: highly intensive computation cost, low‐frequency band imaging noise and massive memory demand. Traditionally, PC‐clusters with thousands of computation nodes are used to perform RTM but it is too expensive for small companies and oilfields. In this article, we use Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) architecture, which is cheaper and faster to implement RTM and we obtain an order of magnitude higher speedup ratio to solve the problem of intensive computation cost. Aiming at the massive memory demand, we adopt the pseudo random boundary condition that sacrifices the computation cost but reduces the memory demand. For rugged topography RTM, it is difficult to deal with the rugged free boundary condition with the finite difference method. We employ a simplified boundary condition that avoids the abundant logical judgment to make the GPU implementation possible and does not induce any sacrifice on efficiency. Besides, we have also done some tests on multi‐GPU implementation for wide azimuth geometries using the latest GPU cards and drivers. Finally, we discuss the challenges of anisotropy RTM and GPU solutions. All the jobs stated above are based on GPU and the synthetic data examples will show the efficiency of the algorithm and solutions.
Increased survival and reduced renal injury in MRL/lpr mice treated with a human Fcγ receptor II (CD32) peptide
Authors: Xi Jun , Zhang Gai P. , Qiao Song L. , Guo Jun Q. , Wang Xuan N. , Yang Yan Y. , Zhang Li N. , Miao Xian W. , Zhao Dong , Zhi Yu B. , Cai Shu J. , Luo Jun , Deng Rui G. 
Published: January 2012

SummarySystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem chronic inflammatory disease affecting many organs. The deposition in kidney tissue of immune complexes and their interaction with macrophages is thought to trigger the inflammatory response leading to glomerulonephritis. It has been demonstrated that inhibition of this interaction in murine models can alleviate the disease. Six synthetic peptides were derived from the membrane‐proximal extracellular domain (EC2) of human Fcγ receptor II (huFcγRII). Of these, one peptide, huRII6, was shown to be a potent competitive inhibitor of IgG binding to recombinant FcγRII in vitro. To examine the possible therapeutic impact of huRII6 in vivo, this peptide, or a control, was given by subcutaneous injection to female MRL/lpr mice from weeks 7 to 36, resulting in an enhanced survival rate compared with control‐treated animals and a reduction of proteinuria. Histopathological examination of the kidneys showed a reduction in deposition of immune complexes and preservation of structure. Such a functional peptide should prove useful for examining the role of IgG–FcγR interactions in experimental models of disease and may provide for the development of FcR‐targeting drugs to treat autoimmune disorders.
Mutations in LPL, APOC2, APOA5, GPIHBP1 and LMF1 in patients with severe hypertriglyceridaemia
Authors: Surendran R. P. , Visser M. E. , Heemelaar S. , Wang J. , Peter J. , Defesche J. C. , Kuivenhoven J. A. , Hosseini M. , Péterfy M. , Kastelein J. J. P. , Johansen C. T. , Hegele R. A. , Stroes E. S. G. , Dallinga‐Thie G. M. 
Published: January 2012

Abstract.  Surendran RP, Visser ME, Heemelaar S, Wang J, Peter J, Defesche JC, Kuivenhoven JA, Hosseini M, Péterfy M, Kastelein JJP, Johansen CT, Hegele RA, Stroes ESG, Dallinga‐Thie GM (Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Robarts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; UCLA, University of California; Medical Genetics Institute, Cedars‐Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA). Mutations in LPL, APOC2, APOA5, GPIHBP1 and LMF1 in patients with severe hypertriglyceridaemia. J Intern Med 2012; 272: 185–196.Objectives.  The severe forms of hypertriglyceridaemia (HTG) are caused by mutations in genes that lead to the loss of function of lipoprotein lipase (LPL). In most patients with severe HTG (TG > 10 mmol L−1), it is a challenge to define the underlying cause. We investigated the molecular basis of severe HTG in patients referred to the Lipid Clinic at the Academic Medical Center Amsterdam.Methods.  The coding regions of LPL, APOC2, APOA5 and two novel genes, lipase maturation factor 1 (LMF1) and GPI‐anchored high‐density lipoprotein (HDL)‐binding protein 1 (GPIHBP1), were sequenced in 86 patients with type 1 and type 5 HTG and 327 controls.Results.  In 46 patients (54%), rare DNA sequence variants were identified, comprising variants in LPL (n = 19), APOC2 (n = 1), APOA5 (n = 2), GPIHBP1 (n = 3) and LMF1 (n = 8). In 22 patients (26%), only common variants in LPL (p.Asp36Asn, p.Asn318Ser and p.Ser474Ter) and APOA5 (p.Ser19Trp) could be identified, whereas no mutations were found in 18 patients (21%). In vitro validation revealed that the mutations in LMF1 were not associated with compromised LPL function. Consistent with this, five of the eight LMF1 variants were also found in controls and therefore cannot account for the observed phenotype.Conclusions.  The prevalence of mutations in LPL was 34% and mostly restricted to patients with type 1 HTG. Mutations in GPIHBP1 (n = 3), APOC2 (n = 1) and APOA5 (n = 2) were rare but the associated clinical phenotype was severe. Routine sequencing of candidate genes in severe HTG has improved our understanding of the molecular basis of this phenotype associated with acute pancreatitis and may help to guide future individualized therapeutic strategies.