bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Forager Cosmologies in Northernmost Europe
Authors: Damm Charlotte 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Interpretations of hunter-gatherer cosmologies have, for the last few decades, focused on shamanism and animism. The discussion has been inspired by ethnographic accounts from recent foraging groups, but should to greater extent consider variation between and within shamanistic and animistic cosmologies. Similarly, it is crucial to investigate the prehistoric material for indications of past cosmologies, to avoid replicating beliefs and practices from more recent societies. The evidence from northern European foragers suggests narratives focused on a selected range of animals, notably elk, bear, and waterbirds, as well as the possibility of the presence of a range of environmental forces. A tiered world populated by a range of beings and forces, with the possibility for some beings to move between worlds is likely. In addition, fluidity of appearance and abilities is indicated by the material.
Orwell and Socialism
Authors: Woloch Alex 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Orwell is well known for an insistent heterodoxy, even while he suggests, in “Why I Write,” that “every line of [his] serious work [ … ] has been written [ … ] for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” This chapter stages a dialogue between paradox and socialism in Orwell’s writing, looking at different ways in which ironic, and even self-contradictory, expression might be recruited into the service of political thought. It focuses, first, on Orwell’s searing political experience in wartime Spain, as offering the strongest biographical rationale for such a conjunction of commitment and uncertainty. It then turns to The Road to Wigan Pier, a book written before Orwell departs for Spain but that already combines his programmatic political urgency and paradoxical irony.
Orwell, Race, and Empire
Authors: Satia Priya 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter examines the evolution of Orwell’s thinking and writing about imperialism and race. It traces Orwell’s struggle to identify and divest himself of inherited prejudices against other peoples and to atone for his early employment in the Indian Imperial Police. These efforts remained in tension with his sociological outlook and strong identification as an Englishman of a particular class writing for Englishmen of a certain class. The result was a kind of “doublethink” about race and empire. The chapter homes in on the future-oriented nature of Orwell’s political thought, his disabling conviction that the value of liberatory struggles lies in their prospective success. His lingering commitment to the liberal notions of progress that underwrote British imperialism limited his capacity for consistent or committed anti-colonialism.
Orwell and Justice
Authors: Williams Kristian 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter examines Orwell’s conflicting ideas of justice—accepting the authority of the law while refusing to idealize it, admitting the necessity of coercion even while decrying its cruelty, recognizing that both lawlessness and legal order tend to favor the powerful. Particular attention is paid to his efforts to distinguish in principle between justice and vengeance, while noting that in practice the one is often merely an excuse for the other. It is argued that Orwell had no theory of justice, but instead developed a set of mental associations, relating justice to freedom and equality, to democracy and socialism, to honesty and decency. In his thinking, justice both depends on and guards the individual conscience. Its approximate opposite is tyranny.
Orwell and the Body
Authors: Fifield Peter 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Orwell uses the body both as the means of experience and knowledge, and as an object in its own right. In both cases, though, bodies are more often negatively than positively charged: they are vulnerable, subject to trauma, and often placed in states of suffering and pain. Despite the evocative and argumentative potency of bodily experience for functions ranging from plot, to image, to mood, to politics, Orwell does not imagine the body as a pre-cultural site, but one rich with meaning from the start. The body is structured by expectations, cultural norms, and social values. The body may be the foundation for human experience, but this function is inscribed by a process of ongoing education about what feels good, what hurts, what pleases the senses, and what disgusts.
Orwell’s Jewish Problem
Authors: Carlston Erin G. 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter explores Orwell’s complicated views on Jewishness, suggesting that his progressive, anti-totalitarian politics are articulated in terms of a discourse of populism that could have lethal consequences for Jews, as well as other marginalized groups. Looking beyond Orwell’s occasional recourse to antisemitic slurs and stereotypes, already well-documented, I propose that these eruptions of antisemitism were not a perplexing departure from his liberalism but a predictable consequence of the equation he draws between ‘decency’ on the one hand, and the ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ on the other. I contrast Orwell’s populist stance with James Joyce’s suspicion of moral majorities and focus on social outliers, including Jews.
Orwell and Sexuality
Authors: Stanley Rachael 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter discusses how Orwell positions sex within a political dimension, a social dimension, and even a literary dimension, in order to avoid giving it an erotic quality. By matter-of-factly presenting sex as a biological urge to be satisfied, Orwell deliberately side-steps having to discuss what the nature of desire might be, because the conclusion he eventually comes to in Nineteen Eighty-Four is too unpalatable for him—namely, that even our deepest, most private desires are always socially constructed and not personal at all. This leads Orwell to reflect that our only true desires would be for that which we have been led to believe we do not want, and that it is therefore only through perversion that any real freedom of expression might be possible.
Orwell and Jack Common
Authors: Haywood Ian 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter takes a fresh look at the professional relationship between Orwell and his friend Jack Common, a working-class writer from the north-east of England. The chapter focuses on the world of 1930s literary journalism to show how both writers interrogated the links between writing, social mobility, class conflict, and masculinity. Close readings of Common’s essays for The Adelphi magazine shed new light on Orwell’s attempts to renounce his upper-class, imperialist origins and to identify with the ‘common’ person. The Road to Wigan Pier and Keep the Aspidistra Flying are reinterpreted as quests for cultural classlessness and meaningful literary labour.
Orwell and Katharine Burdekin
Authors: English Elizabeth 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Critics have commented on the resemblance between Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Is it possible that Orwell’s dystopian novel, published twelve years after Burdekin imagined the consequences of a Nazi victory, was influenced by Swastika Night’s plot and themes? This chapter does not attempt to prove a direct link, but it does bring the novels face to face, to examine their meeting points and divergences and to position Burdekin and Orwell as worthy contemporaries. The chapter considers how each text treats gender, how they interrogate or normalize sexual violence, their attitudes to reproduction and the body, the worship of heteronormative desire and the family, the taint of homophobia, and the defence of individual freedom. It argues that while Swastika Night may be the lesser-known novel, it deserves to be remembered as a compelling response to contemporary politics, exploring the same questions as Nineteen Eighty-Four but with a decidedly feminist and gender-conscious voice.
Orwell and Wyndham Lewis
Authors: Munton Alan 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter explores the unexpected relationship between Wyndham Lewis and Orwell, who recognized in 1939 that Lewis had moved politically to the left. Strangely, during the Second World War he writes as though Lewis had not done this. Orwell first wrote about Lewis in the early 1930s, whilst Lewis first discussed Orwell in 1941 and went on to write about him often, though they never met. In 1953 he published an admiring critique of Orwell in The Writer and the Absolute. Orwell suggested that Lewis should read the Italian radical Ignazio Silone to increase his political understanding, and this chapter discusses Silone’s The School for Dictators (trans. 1939), and the wartime Orwell-Silone relationship and friendship, which have not been previously examined. Also discussed is their mutual interest in Henry Miller.
Orwell, Una Marson, and Mulk Raj Anand
Authors: Dinsman Melissa 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This biographical and theoretical chapter focuses on two Orwell collaborators at the BBC: Una Marson and Mulk Raj Anand. Through a discussion of Orwell’s work and friendships with Marson and Anand, this chapter closely examines what Susheila Nasta has called their “substantial two-way intellectual interactions” and illustrates that these interactions were not only built in the radio station, but were also anticipated by similarly held political positions on empire and race. Divided into two parts, this chapter first discusses each author’s politics and how these led them to the BBC before turning to their collaborative work on Voice and their continued contact in their radio afterlives. A close analysis of these authors’ radio careers and BBC partnerships shows that the aesthetics and politics of Marson and Anand were not transformed by working with Orwell, but instead were enhanced by their shared literary and political commitments.
Orwell and Feminism
Authors: Bluemel Kristin 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
The story of Orwell’s relationship with feminism reveals ties that are as strong, persistent, and productive as any he forged with other political movements and ideologies. This chapter maps out several of the most important critical consequences of the vexed, contradictory, more than century-long relationship between Orwell and feminism for twenty-first-century feminist and non-feminist readers by asking: What has Orwell done for feminism? What has feminism done and what might it do for Orwell? It finds its answers in literary, biographical, and cultural criticism by Beatrix Campbell, Daphne Patai, Janet Montefiore, Alison Light, Nick Hubble, Ben Clarke, and D. J. Taylor, among others, as well as in the fiction and letters of Orwell’s contemporaries Virginia Woolf, Naomi Mitchison, Jacintha Buddicom, and Walter Greenwood.
Societal Constitutionalism
Authors: Golia Angelo , Teubner Gunther 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
This chapter outlines the close but conflicted relationship between societal constitutionalism and digital constitutionalism. The main argument is that societal constitutionalism provides a perspective which complements state-centred and global perspectives on digital constitutionalism, notably when it comes to the constitutionalizing potential of norms that do not come from the formal law-making institutions centred on national and international politics. The first section outlines the critique of societal constitutionalism to liberal, state-centred constitutional theory, pointing at long-standing blind spots and broadening the normative goals of (digital) constitutionalism. The second section analyses the constructive contributions of societal constitutionalism to digital constitutionalism, through three key concepts of polycontexturality, conflict, and generalization/respecification. The third section of the chapter points to the persisting differences between the societal perspectives and other perspectives on digital constitutionalism as well as to the connections with other strands of literature concerned with the interface between law and digital technologies, notably so-called law and political economy.
A novel model for identifying infections in patients with acute-on-chronic liver disease (AoCLD): A nationwide, multicenter, prospective cohort study
Authors: Zhou Hui , Li Hai , Deng Guohong , Wang Xianbo , Zheng Xin , Chen Jinjun , Meng Zhongji , Zheng Yubao , Gao Yanhang , Qian Zhiping , Liu Feng , Lu Xiaobo , Shi Yu , Shang Jia , Huang Yan , Chen Ruochan 
Published: February 2025

Abstract

Background and aims
To establish an early and quick model for diagnosing infections in patients with acute-on-chronic liver disease (AoCLD).

Approach
This study analyzed 3,949 patients from two multicenter prospective cohorts of the Chinese Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure (CATCH-LIFE) study. The dataset was randomly divided into training and validation cohorts in a 7:3 ratio. In the training cohort, logistic regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression analyses were used to identify predictive risk factors for infection in patients with AoCLD, and a simple nomogram was established. Two different cutoff values were determined to stratify infection risk in AoCLD patients.

Results
The developed diagnostic model included six variables: cirrhosis, ascites, neutrophil count (N), and total bilirubin, C-reactive protein (CRP), and blood sodium levels. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for the training and validation cohorts were 0.818 and 0.809, respectively, significantly higher than using CRP, procalcitonin, or N alone. Additionally, in the training cohort, we set a low cutoff value of 0.2028, resulting in a sensitivity of 80.15%, specificity of 68.25%, and a negative predictive value of 92.7% for rule-out diagnosis. A high cutoff value of 0.4045 resulting in a specificity of 90.1%, sensitivity of 52.7%, and a positive predictive value of 64% for rule-in diagnosis. These cutoff values were validated in the validation cohort.

Conclusions
We established a nomogram model to assist clinicians in diagnosing infections in patients with AoCLD, effectively improving the accuracy and timeliness of diagnosis.
Combined Magnesium and Silicon Ions Siliconynergistically Promote Functional Regeneration of Skeletal Muscle by Regulating Satellite Cell Fate
Authors: Xia Hangbin , Yang Chen , Li Huili , Huang Lingwei , Zeng Zhen , Chi Runrun , Yang Ziwei , Wang Yuzen , Chang Jiang , Jiao Yiren , Li Wenzhong 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Muscle satellite cells (MuSCs) play a vital role in skeletal muscle regeneration. However, in intractable muscle diseases such as volumetric muscle loss (VML), the quantity and function of MuSCs are significantly reduced, severely limiting the body's inherent muscle regeneration capability. In this study, we propose a novel strategy to modulate the fate of MuSCs using a combination of bioactive magnesium (Mg) and silicon (Si) ions, sustainably delivered through magnesium silicate (MgSiO3, MS) bioceramic-based scaffolds. In vitro, Mg and Si ions synergistically promote the proliferation and differentiation of MuSCs. Similarly, Mg and Si ions derived from MS/poly (L-lactic acid) (MS/PLLA) composite scaffold also increases the proliferation and differentiation ability of MuSCs. Furthermore, MS/PLLA composite scaffolds facilitate the activation of MuSCs, regeneration of muscle fiber, and neovascularization, while inhibiting fibrosis, thereby effectively restoring muscle function and promoting tibialis anterior muscle functional regeneration in a VML mouse model. Mechanistically, the combination of Mg and Si ions promotes the activation and proliferation of MuSCs by activating the Notch1-Hes1 pathway. Besides, the combination of Mg and Si ions also improves the differentiation of MuSCs by up-regulating Myod and Myog, and enhances fusion by up-regulating Mymk and Mymx expression. The outcomes of our research introduce a promising approach to the treatment of skeletal muscle injuries and related diseases.
Andromache Among the Ambassadors: Ambrose Philips’s The Distrest Mother (1712)
Authors: Stanyon Miranda 
Published: February 2025

Abstract
Now a relatively obscure figure, the Trojan woman Andromache had a lively afterlife in the long eighteenth century. A central text for her English reception in this period was Ambrose Philips’s The Distrest Mother (1712). An adaptation of Jean Racine’s breakthrough success, Andromaque (1667), Philips’s play became a staple of the stage and helped to confirm Andromache’s status as a paradigmatic wife, widow and mother within emerging cultures of sensibility and bourgeois constrictions on motherhood. Yet ‘domestic virtue concerns all the world’, as Richard Steele wrote of Andromache, and there is far more of the world at stake in Philips’s play than a tale of purely private femininity would suggest. By examining Philips’s interventions in Racine, his friendship networks and early career, especially in diplomacy, this essay situates The Distrest Mother at the intersection of home affairs and international relations. Shaped by party politics in the late years of Queen Anne’s reign, and by the contested end to the War of the Spanish Succession, Philips’s Andromache emerges as a mixed figure, involved at once in discourses of ideal domesticity, patriotism, international intervention, asylum seeking, cosmopolitanism, and the law of nations.
Impact of Relapse in BDNF Receptors Expression in Patients With a First Episode of Schizophrenia
Authors: Bioque Miquel , Llorca-Bofí Vicent , MacDowell Karina S , Amoretti Sílvia , Mezquida Gisela , Cuesta Manuel J , Diaz-Caneja Covadonga M , Ibáñez Ángela , Segarra Rafael , González-Pinto Ana , Roldán Alexandra , Sáiz Pilar A , Mané Anna , Lobo Antonio , Martínez-Pinteño Albert , Cano-Escalera Guillermo , Berrocoso Esther , Bernardo Miquel ,   2EPs Group
Published: February 2025

Abstract

Background and Hypothesis
Relapsing after a first episode of schizophrenia (FES) is a main predictor of clinical and functional prognosis. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a critical role in neuronal development and plasticity, and its signaling may be altered by successive relapses.

Design
We assessed the impact of first relapse in the expression of the 2 isoforms of the BDNF tropomyosin-related kinase B (TrkB) receptor (active full-length TrkB-F and inactive truncated TrkB-T) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 53 FES patients in clinical remission followed up for 3 years.

Results
The group of participants that relapsed (n = 24) during the follow-up presented a significant decrease in the expression of the active TrkB-F receptor compared to baseline (M = 100 ± 28.13 vs. M = 83.42 ± 33.84, t = 2.5, P = .02), with no changes in the inactive TrkB-T receptor expression nor in BDNF plasma levels. This decrease also led to a significant decline in the F/T ratio (M = 1.13 ± 0.38 vs. 0.94 ± 0.36, t = 2.17, P = .041). No significant differences were found in the receptors’ expression nor in plasma levels in the group of cases that remained in remission (n = 29). These results were not associated with baseline differences between the groups in terms of the BDNF signaling pathway biomarkers, clinical or treatment variables.

Conclusions
These findings highlight the biological impact that a relapse produces over the systemic BDNF-TrkB signaling pathway, potentially undermining crucial neuronal functions. Identifying the actors involved can help design specific interventions for relapse prevention and improve the functional prognosis of people in the early stages of schizophrenia.
Posterior Ligamentous Augmentation is Associated with Reduced Rates of Proximal Junctional Kyphosis and Failure in Adult Spinal Deformity Surgery
Authors: Texakalidis Pavlos , Matsoukas Stavros , Krushelnytskyy Mykhaylo , Swong Kevin , El Tecle Najib , Koski Tyler R , Dahdaleh Nader S 
Published: February 2025

Study Design.
Systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective.
To evaluate the impact of posterior ligamentous augmentation (PLA) on proximal junctional kyphosis (PJK) and proximal junctional failure (PJF) in adult spinal deformity (ASD) surgery.

Summary of background data.
Adult spinal deformity (ASD) surgery is frequently complicated by PJK and PJF, with reported rates ranging from 17% to 61.7%. Techniques such as PLA, which involves spinous process or sublaminar tethering at the upper instrumented vertebra (UIV) +1 or +2, have been investigated as potential methods to mitigate these complications.

Methods.
A systematic literature review and meta-analysis was performed according to the PRISMA guidelines. Most studies defined PJK as an increase of ≥10° or ≥20° in the sagittal Cobb angle from UIV to UIV+2 compared to preoperative measurements. PJF was defined as PJK necessitating revision surgery.

Results.
Eight comparative studies comprising 1,333 patients (PLA: 579; no PLA: 754) were included. The mean age ranged from 55 to 68.6 years across studies, with a mean follow-up period of 17.6 to 31.2 months. There were no significant differences between the PLA and no PLA groups in terms of age (MD 2.53; 95% CI -0.28 to 5.34, I²: 64.8%), BMI (MD 1.03; 95%CI -0.87 to 2.93, I²:69%), or sagittal vertical axis (SVA) preoperatively (MD 3.92; 95% CI -1.90 to 9.75, I²:73.1%) and postoperatively (MD -1.54; 95%CI -4.10 to 1.01, I²: 56.2%). However, the PLA group demonstrated significantly lower odds of developing PJK compared to the no PLA group (PLA: 25.8%; no PLA: 28.8%; OR: 0.54; 95%CI 0.34 to 0.85, I²: 37.4%). Furthermore, PLA was associated with significantly lower odds of PJF (PLA: 3.3%; no PLA: 12.3%; OR: 0.23; 95%CI 0.12 to 0.47, I²: 17.9%).

Conclusions.
PLA in ASD surgery is associated with reduced odds of developing PJK and PJF over a follow-up period of 17.6 to 31.2 months.
Implementation of the Minimum Clinically Important Difference for the Neck Disability Index is Often Problematic
Authors: Evaniew Nathan , Malholtra Armaan K , Charest-Morin Raphaële , Soroceanu Alex , Jacobs W Bradley , Cadotte David W , McIntosh Greg , Dea Nicolas 
Published: February 2025

Study design.
Systematic Review

Objective.
To determine the incidence of inappropriate or uncertain implementation of the Minimally Important Clinical Difference (MCID) for the Neck Disability Index (NDI).

Summary of background data.
The NDI consists of 10 items that yield a total score out of 50, but some users double the scale to report total scores out of 100. The most used MCID for the NDI is 7.5 out of 50. Implementation of the MCID can be problematic if users are not attentive to the scale of the NDI.

Methods.
We performed a methodological review of studies that cited the MCID for the NDI. We defined appropriate implementation as congruent magnitude of the scales used for NDI data and the MCID. We evaluated study characteristics associated with appropriate implementation using multivariable logistic regression.

Results.
Among 163 included studies, twenty (12%) reported a 0-50 scale for the NDI, 66 (40%) reported a 0-100 scale, and the remaining 77 (47%) did not report which scale was used. Fifty-seven (35%) reported an MCID of 7.5, 37 (23%) reported an MCID of 15, and the remaining 69 (42%) did not report which value of the MCID used. Appropriate implementation of the MCID occurred in 39 studies (24%), while implementation was inappropriate in 16 (10%) and uncertain due to poor reporting in 108 (66%). Studies published more recently (OR 1.20 per year, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.40, P=0.03) and studies that were RCTs (OR 4.85, 95% CI 1.25 to 18.79, P=0.02) had greater odds of being associated with appropriate implementation.

Conclusions.
Inappropriate implementation of the MCID for the NDI is problematic and occurs often, and uncertain implementation due to poor reporting is also common. Evidence users should be cautious when interpreting studies that implement the NDI, and should consider whether the magnitude of the scales used for the NDI and the MCID are congruent.