bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Beast From the Abyss
Authors: Foster Paul Urban 
Published: August 2007

The role of Germany is written in the clearest print upon the map of Europe. In the centre of the European land mass it is, apart from Russia, the greatest homogeneous unit within that mass. With some seventy-eight million inhabitants, largely self-sufficient in food, with great industrial resources of every kind, its inhabitants have spilled over its natural limits and can be found beyond the Vistula, the Bohemian Mountains, the Alps, the Danube and the Rhine. Racially, linguistically, and self-consciously distinct, this nation has vast dynamic energies which it is supremely capable of organising and a strong historic consciousness of its geographical-historical position. That position has two aspects. As the Germanic tribes silted into their present territories, they had the Roman Empire on their Western flank, a static and friable organisation inviting aggression; on their Eastern flank the tribal and barbaric wave beat up against them. The attitude bred by that situation still remains, a feeling of predatory virility towards the Western and settled nations, the lands of the evening; an attitude of cultural defensiveness towards the vast, level, amorphous frontiers to the East. There is no doubt what is Germany’s natural role; it is to be the mistress of Europe.
Divine Providence has apparently ordained that she should be a mistress too tyrannical to be tolerated. For this enormous and extremely able nation has certain obvious psychological defects which make the unrestricted use of its natural supremacy intolerable. It is a very selfconscious nation; it is a politically immature nation; it is an arrogant nation; a warlike one; cruel, unscrupulous, emotional. There is a dark strain of tribalism and totemism in its make-up, despite enormous civilised achievements.
A Sort of Fiction?
Authors: Gregor Ian 
Published: August 2007

What are the motives which make a man wish to write his autobiography? Notoriety, fame, money—these are end products They don’t dictate the decision to write, the impulse to construct an artistic form which will be the shape of one’s own life. We might, perhaps, start by saying that to write an autobiography is a form of self-discovery through the necessity of having to shape and frame one’s life. This affords a measure of control which is also a liberation; we can write the past out of our system by re-living it. But perhaps it is more our sense of the present or an ever diminishing future which hastens our pen. From this vantage we must feel that our life has a kind of totality about it which makes it more than just ‘our life’. It makes a representative gesture, giving our memories and reflections more than a confessional interest. We must have a deep conviction that our constantly repeated first person singular is on easy terms with the first person plural. Looking at these suggested motives for autobiography—-the ordering of experience, the self-discovery, the liberation, the belief that your impressions will hold good for others —we see how little they differ from the motives behind any piece of imaginative writing. There are reasons for thinking that writing an autobiography is closer to writing fiction than to writing history. And if it is a novelist himself who should write his autobiography, a man whose life has already furnished a whole house of fiction—then I think rather odd things begin to happen, particularly if that novelist is Graham Greene.When it was announced some while ago that Greene was engaged in writing his autobiography, it seemed entirely fitting. Here was a novelist whose life seemed hardly less eventful than his works. The table of contents came readily to the mind’s eye.
Missionaries Go Home—?
Authors: Boivin Marcel 
Published: August 2007

Some time ago I met here in England a missionary priest with whom I had worked while in Tanzania. I knew him for an excellent missionary, a man who had adapted himself well to Africa and had put himself entirely at the service of his people. Yet, when I met him, he stated his firm intention of never returning to Tanzania.Why had he so radically altered the course of his life? Was it for personal reasons—failing health—or a compelling desire to marry ? No. He had come back because he could not see why he should stay in Tanzania any longer. For one thing, the ‘new theology’ had considerably weakened the motives for which he had gone to the missions in the first place: if pagans already know God, why bother to cross sea and land in order to announce God ? If men can be saved without being baptized into the Church, why go on instructing catechumens and making converts? Besides, after twenty years of experience, he had reached the conclusion that conversion to the Church did not appreciably affect people’s lives—Christians seemed no better than pagans. Then, thirdly, there are enough Tanzanian priests to cater for the flock, and in the sectors of education and health, the country is sufficiently developed to look after its own people. Better leave now than wait to be expelled in five years’ time . . . our time is limited, anyway.Obviously, the majority of missionaries working in Africa or elsewhere are remaining at their posts, and of those who come home, not all come for the reasons given by the missionary I have quoted. I have, nevertheless, chosen to begin with this example because it so well illustrates the kind of questions missionaries are asking, questions as to whether or not they still have a role to play in the Church, and if they have, how they should be playing it.
Schools, De‐Schooling and Education for a Future
Authors: Haughton Rosemary 
Published: August 2007

All over the ‘developed’ world, children left their homes this morning and went to school. All over the undeveloped world, parents were wishing their children could do so.All over the developed world, millions of children are accepting school as an unavoidable bore, or actively hating it. Some weep, some play truant, some produce psychosomatic symptoms to avoid going to school. Most just put up with it and long for the holidays. A lucky few enjoy school, at least until the age when the shadow of public examinations falls over their lives. Yet all over the undeveloped world, angry or wistful teenagers see schooling as the means to a good life—a means withheld from most of them.The greater part of the world’s children long for what those who have it dislike. And even those who loathe it grow up to assume it has an absolute value, and should be imposed on every human child. No wonder the whole notion of schooling as a method of education is coming under fire. But too often the question of schooling or not schooling is treated in isolation from its social and economic setting. What follows is an attempt to consider a few of the problems involved, and possible solutions, for there have been changes recently, in the way people think about the schooling situation. For one thing, an uncomfortable realization is spreading that the schooling systems of the prosperous nations are not working too well. Violence in schools is frequently in the news, and organized as well as spontaneous protest by school children is not uncommon.
The Function of Criticism and Tragedy
Authors: Beisly Phil 
Published: August 2007

When Walter Stein, in his book Criticism as Dialogue, proposes his version of criticism and takes it into the area of tragedy, we are challenged to reconsider some essential notions. It is when faced with tragedy, perhaps, that criticism meets its most exacting responsibilities; what it makes of tragedy reveals its inner nature most clearly. What, then, are we to make of Stein’s argument that the demands which criticism faces are nothing less than metaphysical? What do we say to the various stages of his argument ?Do we agree, for example, that in Arnold we have a key-figure who fails to meet these demands and whose work can be characterized by such words as ‘reductio’ and ‘surrender’ ?‘His religious strengths (like his insistence that God is “a term thrown out, so to speak, at a not fully grasped object”—not a “fixed and rigid idea”) as well as his complacent, wholesale surrender of dogmatic tradition and metaphysical concepts points directly to present ferments.’Again, how shall we formulate our uneasiness at the following suggestion ?‘Dr Leavis may have been led into an undue disregard for conceptual thought as such, including the conceptual presuppositions of his own critical practice.’
Alice and Anarchy
Authors: Eagleton Terry 
Published: August 2007

There are two fairly commonplace facts about games which seem relevant to a discussion of Alice in Wonderland. First, games are rule-governed, and so orderly; but playing a game involves a creative application of the rules, as Wittgenstein reminds us in Philosophical Investigations, and thus allows for freedom: rules are fixed, but moves are to some extent unpredictable. Seen in this way, a game might appear as a paradigmatic fusion of order and liberty—one, perhaps, of some relevance to society. Second, games involve a means/ends rationality, but aren’t in themselves functional: they are played as ends in themselves and in that sense transcend considerations of sheer utility. From this viewpoint, games raise interesting questions about the relations between rational and ‘irrational’ for msof activity, and indeed this issue is touched on at the very beginning of Alice: the White Rabbit appears just as Alice is wondering ‘whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies’, pondering the relations between utilitarian effort and creative play. This, too, has a wider social application which the book brings out.Alice in Wonderland abounds in games; indeed, most of the central scenes—the Caucus Race, the tea-party, the croquet match, the lobster quadrille, even the trial—are games of a more or less direct kind. But, of course, these games are, by normal standards, very peculiar. The croquet game, for instance, is completely chaotic, since the players ignore the rules and the equipment won’t stay in place. Alice has to hit a rolled-up hedgehog through the arch of a doubled-up soldier with a flamingo, but the hedgehog keeps unfurling, the flamingo won’t keep still and the soldiers continually get up and stroll away at the crucial moment.
By Law Established: The Beginnings of the English Nation and Church
Authors: Brown J. P. 
Published: August 2007

When I was a youth in England, a favourite anti-Protestant argument ran: ‘We were here first.’ ‘We’ meant St Augustine of Canterbury. When I came to Wales, this would not do, for as Bede tells us, there were Christians here before St Augustine, and, when he met them, they rejected his authority. To the argument that these Christians were obviously not Roman Catholics, we used to reply: ‘Yes, they were, but cut off by barbarian Saxon invaders of England, they were unaware of Roman liturgical changes and were so attached to old Roman ways that they quarrelled with Augustine.’I began to study the validity of this reply and hence, twenty years later, this article. My amateur thesis is based on the work of the late Rev. A. W. Wade-Evans, complemented by that of three Blackfriars contributors: Mr Donald Nicholl, Professor Finberg and, especially, Mr Eric John.That barbarian Saxon invaders cut off Wales from the Continent rests entirely on the story of the Loss of Britain, which forms part of a work ascribed to the Welshman Gildas. Bede made important changes in this story and also wove into it independent traditions of a Saxon advent in Kent. He interpreted the whole in the light of his knowledge that the Saxons were of Germanic stock.
Does Simenon write a Metaphysical Novel?
Authors: Luff S. G. A. 
Published: August 2007

Georges Simenon writes detective stories, many featuring the amiable Inspecteur Maigret, almost too human to fit the traditional image of the sleuth. Simenon may be read more for atmosphere than for thrills, for Maigret's Paris, or the provincial towns of many non-Maigret stories; the weather mostly wintry with long evenings, the interest in trains, back streets, canals, bars, the small homes of small people in small worlds. And among these I find even more intriguing those with a Belgian scene, the Meuse, the industrial zone around Liege where young Simenon began as a reporter on the local press. Here are his native tow-paths and backyards, alleys and impasses, and a certain quality of mud, of earth and water and the two compounded.Simenon does not normally set out to retail experiences that demand a transcendental world, least of all that purveyed by the Church. Where religious detail slips in it is seldom more than part of the narrative, handy description—as far as the author is concerned echoes from childhood, and usually no more than that for the characters too. Churchgoing is something children do and it is good for them; subsequently a minority elects to remain in this church sub-culture and becomes a characteristic feature of Sunday mornings.Yet Simenon stands for something good. I have not combed his works to draw out loose hairs of self-sacrifice or the pursuit of values, but they are there. Monsieur Maigret is good with a comfortable home-loving Gallican middle-class goodness that stands while the world of crime revolves. This goodness has its temporal reward—the adequate recompense of an apartment managed by a faithful helpmate. Mme Maigret is a patient wife who cooks meals and keeps them warm and bears with her husband’s professional irregularities.
Molecular changes in the progression of Barrett's oesophagus
Authors: Zagorowicz Edyta , Jankowski Janusz 
Published: August 2007

Abstract
Barrett's oesophagus is a frequent complication of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease predicting oesophageal adenocarcinoma. The majority of Barrett's patients will not develop cancer, so that specific methods of identification of those at risk are required. Recent molecular studies have identified a selection of candidate biomarkers that need validation in prospective studies. They reflect various changes in cell behaviour during neoplastic progression. The ASPECT trial in the UK aims to establish whether chemoprevention with aspirin and a proton pump inhibitor will reduce adenocarcinoma development and mortality in patients with Barrett's oesophagus. It will also validate biomarkers for progression and clinical response and further study disease pathogenesis.
Personal development plans and self-directed learning for healthcare professionals: are they evidence based?
Authors: Jennings Stephen F 
Published: August 2007

Abstract
The UK chief medical officer's recommendations for the re-licensing and performance management of doctors will mean a move from a formative towards a summative role for appraisal and its adjunct, the personal development plan. Where does this leave medical educators trying to promote reflective learning? It is taken for granted that self-directed learning is the sine qua non of all adult learning. But is it? This review re-evaluates self-directed learning and its corollary, the personal development plan, in the light of the chief medical officer's report, seeking the evidence behind today's accepted educational practice. It discovers a reality which challenges assumptions long enshrined in medical education.
Comparison of classical and non-classical cardiovascular risk factors influencing the patency of native arteriovenous fistulas after percutaneous transluminal angioplasty therapy among haemodialysis patients
Authors: Liu Jiung-Hsiun , Lin Po-Wen , Liu Yao-Lung , Lin Hsin-Hung , Huang Chiu-Ching 
Published: August 2007

Abstract

Objective
To evaluate the classical and non-classical cardiovascular risk factors that effect patency of native arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) in end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients who are undergoing regular haemodialysis treatment and have a percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) procedure.

Methods
All PTAs performed between 1 October 2002 and 30 September 2004 were identified from case notes and the computerised database and follow up to 31 March 2005. The definition of patency of AVF after PTA was including primary or secondary patencies. Risks were analysed to assess the influence on survival following PTAs of age, sex, serum cholesterol, serum triglyceride, diabetes, use of aspirin, current smoking and hypertension, serum albumin, serum calcium–phosphate product, intact parathyroid hormone (I-PTH), and urea reduction ratio (URR).

Results
The patency rate of AVFs of all interventions was 65% at 6 months. Factors with poor patencies of AVFs after PTA procedures were higher serum calcium–phosphate product (p = 0.033), higher URR (p&lt;0.001), lower serum albumin (p&lt;0.001), non-hypertension (p = 0.010) and “non-smoker + ex-smoker group” (p = 0.033). The hypertensive patients and current smokers had lower patency failure after PTAs (p&lt;0.01 and p&lt;0.05, respectively).

Conclusions
Unfavourable cumulative patency rates are observed in haemodialysis patients with higher URR, higher serum calcium–phosphate product and hypoalbuminaemia (lower serum albumin before the PTA procedure). Hypertension and current smoking were associated with better patency rates of AVF after PTA.
Community-acquired pneumonia: doctors do not follow national guidelines
Authors: Collini Paul , Beadsworth Mike , Anson Jim , Neal Tim , Burnham Peter , Deegan Paul , Beeching Nick , Miller Alastair 
Published: August 2007

Abstract

Objectives
Appropriate assessment of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) allows accurate severity scoring and hence optimal management, leading to reduced morbidity and mortality. British Thoracic Society (BTS) guidelines provide an appropriate score. Adherence to BTS guidelines was assessed in our medical assessment unit (MAU) in 2001/2 and again in 2005/6, 3 years after introducing an educational programme.

Methods
A retrospective case-note study, comparing diagnosis, documentation of severity, management and outcome of CAP during admission to MAU during 3 months of each winter in 2001/2 and 2005/6.

Results
In 2001/2, 65/165 patients were wrongly coded as CAP and 100 were included in the study. In 2005/6 43/130 were excluded and 87 enrolled. In 2005/6, 87% did not receive a severity score, a significant increase from 48% in 2001/2 (p&lt;0.0001). Parenteral antibiotics were given to 79% of patients in 2001/2 and 77% in 2005/6, and third generation cephalosporins were given to 63% in 2001/2 and 54% in 2005/6 (p = NS). In 2001, 15 different antibiotic regimens were prescribed, increasing to 19 in 2005/6.

Conclusions
Coding remains poor. Adherence to CAP management guidelines was poor and has significantly worsened. Educational programmes, alone, do not improve adherence. Restriction of antibiotic prescribing should be considered.
Bone hydatid disease
Authors: Song X H , Ding L W , Wen H 
Published: August 2007

Abstract
Bone hydatid disease lacks a typical clinical appearance and image characteristics on x ray or CT are similar to those of tuberculosis, metastases and giant cell tumour or bone cysts. However, MRI does show distinctive diagnostic features of bone hydatid disease, especially in the spine. Until recently, treatment of osseous hydatid disease has been entirely surgical. Effective chemotherapy using benzimidazoles, particularly mebendazole, albendazole and combination treatments, has now been achieved in experimental studies and clinical practice. However, most of these drugs are still in the experimental stage or are in the early stages of clinical use.
Kamdhenu Dairy
Authors: Pradhan Debasis , Kalra Shabad , Srinivas Sangeeta 
Published: August 2007

Kamdhenu Dairy was one of the biggest dairy unions in India that came into being in 1969. Kamdhenu dairy, with an annual sales turnover of Rs.5250 million, was procuring its milk from the regular suppliers residing in the villages using its own procurement network. The same network was being used to market other dairy products and essential items like fodder and medicine for the cattle to the milk suppliers. The company had recently chosen to sell tea using the same procurement network. The entry of Kamdhenu Dairy into tea marketing was justified as tea was a high margin product and did not require additional resource allocation for marketing in the local rural market. As the marketing of Kamdhenu Dan (cattle feed) and Kamdhenu Ghee had been quite successful, Mr. Samal, the CEO of Kamdhenu, thought the same network could be used to market Kamdhenu tea as well. However, Mr. Samal was worried over the stagnation of tea sales in recent times though initial sales were encouraging. There were already many national and local players who were quite entrenched in the regional tea markets of India. Kamdhenu dairy was neither a national player nor was it a leader in the local market. This forced Mr. Samal to think about the marketing strategy for Kamdhenu tea to achieve success in market penetration in India. Mr. Samal was carefully pondering over possible alternatives to decide how best he can deal with the situation. This case is useful for examining the issues related to market penetration strategy.
DAUBECHIES COMPLEX WAVELET TRANSFORM BASED TECHNIQUE FOR DENOISING OF MEDICAL IMAGES
Authors: KHARE ASHISH , TIWARY UMA SHANKER 
Published: August 2007

Wavelet based denoising is an effective way to improve the quality of images. Various methods have been proposed for denoising using real-valued wavelet transform. Complex valued wavelets exist but are rarely used. The complex wavelet transform provides phase information and it is shift invariant in nature. In medical image denoising, both removal of phase incoherency as well as maintaining the phase coherency are needed. This paper is an attempt to explore and apply the complex Daubechies wavelet transform for medical image denoising. We have proposed a method to compute a complex threshold, which does not depend on any assumed model of noise. In this sense this is a "universal" method. The proposed complex-domain shrinkage function depends on mean, variance and median of wavelet coefficients. To test the effectiveness of the proposed method, we have computed the input and output SNR and PSNR of various types of medical images. The method gives an improvement for Gaussian additive, Speckle and Salt-&-Pepper noise as well as for the mixture of these noise types for a range of noisy images with 15 db to 30 db noise levels and outperforms other real-valued wavelet transform based methods. The application of the proposed method to Ultrasound, X-ray and MRI images is demonstrated in the experiments.