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2069 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 86 of 104

Functional Micromorphology of the Echinoderm Skeleton

Functional Micromorphology of the Echinoderm Skeleton
  • Przemyslaw Gorzelak
  • Published online:
    02 February 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Echinoderms elaborate a calcite skeleton composed of numerous plates with a distinct microstructure (stereom) that can be modelled into different shapes thanks to the use of a transient amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) precursor phase and the incorporation of an intraorganic matrix during biomineralization. A variety of different types of stereom microarchitecture have been distinguished, each of them optimized for a specific function. For instance, a regular, galleried stereom typically houses collagenous ligaments, whereas an irregular, fine labyrinthic stereom commonly bears muscles. Epithelial tissues, in turn, are usually associated with coarse and dense stereom microfabrics. Stereom can be preserved in fossil echinoderms and a wide array of investigating methods are available. As many case studies have shown, a great deal of important paleobiological and paleoecological information can be decoded by studying the stereom microstructure of extinct echinoderms.
Robert Lepage's Intercultural Encounters

Robert Lepage's Intercultural Encounters
  • Christie Carson
  • Published online:
    02 February 2021
    Print publication:
    25 February 2021
  • This study returns to the origins of Robert Lepage's directorial work and his first cross-cultural interaction with a Shakespearean text to provide some background for his later work. This early work is situated within the political and social context of Quebec and Canada in the 1980s. Constitutional wrangling and government policies of bilingualism, biculturalism and multiculturalism all had a profound impact on this director, helping to forge his priorities and working methods. In 2018 two of Lepage's productions were cancelled due to concerns about cultural appropriation. Lepage responded by stating his view that the artist is as above the concerns of political correctness. While this approach was deemed acceptable in the 1980s, this study looks at the dangers posed by approaching cross-cultural creation from this standpoint in the 21st century.
Rational Choice Using Imprecise Probabilities and Utilities

Rational Choice Using Imprecise Probabilities and Utilities
  • Paul Weirich
  • Published online:
    02 February 2021
    Print publication:
    25 February 2021
  • An agent often does not have precise probabilities or utilities to guide resolution of a decision problem. I advance a principle of rationality for making decisions in such cases. To begin, I represent the doxastic and conative state of an agent with a set of pairs of a probability assignment and a utility assignment. Then I support a decision principle that allows any act that maximizes expected utility according to some pair of assignments in the set. Assuming that computation of an option's expected utility uses comprehensive possible outcomes that include the option's risk, no consideration supports a stricter requirement.
The Iron Speciation Paleoredox Proxy

The Iron Speciation Paleoredox Proxy
  • Simon W. Poulton
  • Published online:
    02 February 2021
    Print publication:
    04 March 2021
  • In one form or another, iron speciation has had a long history as a paleoredox proxy. The technique has been refined considerably over the years, and the most recent scheme is unique in its potential to distinguish three major oceanic redox states - oxygenated, ferruginous and euxinic. This Element covers the theory behind the proxy, methods involved in applying the technique, and potential complications in interpreting Fe speciation data. A series of case studies are also provided, which highlight how more advanced consideration of the data, often in concert with other techniques, can provide unprecedented insight into the redox state of ancient oceans.
Big Data

Big Data
  • Wolfgang Pietsch
  • Published online:
    29 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Big Data and methods for analyzing large data sets such as machine learning have in recent times deeply transformed scientific practice in many fields. However, an epistemological study of these novel tools is still largely lacking. After a conceptual analysis of the notion of data and a brief introduction into the methodological dichotomy between inductivism and hypothetico-deductivism, several controversial theses regarding big data approaches are discussed. These include, whether correlation replaces causation, whether the end of theory is in sight and whether big data approaches constitute entirely novel scientific methodology. In this Element, I defend an inductivist view of big data research and argue that the type of induction employed by the most successful big data algorithms is variational induction in the tradition of Mill's methods. Based on this insight, the before-mentioned epistemological issues can be systematically addressed.
Organizational Learning from Performance Feedback: A Behavioral Perspective on Multiple Goals

Organizational Learning from Performance Feedback: A Behavioral Perspective on Multiple Goals
  • A Multiple Goals Perspective
  • Pino G. Audia, Henrich R. Greve
  • Published online:
    28 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • This Element synthesizes the current state of research on organizational learning from performance feedback and develops a new perspective that deals with the influence of multiple goals. In keeping with the centrality of motives in Cyert & March's influential model, this new perspective rests on a foundation of individual level behaviors that are responsive to mechanisms at the organizational and environmental level of analysis. A key aim is to lay out an agenda for a new wave of empirical research on the interconnections of decision-makers, organizations, and the environment that influence organizational responses to performance.
The Chromium Isotope System as a Tracer of Ocean and Atmosphere Redox

The Chromium Isotope System as a Tracer of Ocean and Atmosphere Redox
  • Kohen W. Bauer, Noah J. Planavsky, Christopher T. Reinhard, Devon B. Cole
  • Published online:
    26 January 2021
    Print publication:
    25 February 2021
  • The stable chromium (Cr) isotope system has emerged over the past decade as a new tool to track changes in the amount of oxygen in earth's ocean-atmosphere system. Much of the initial foundation for using Cr isotopes (δ53Cr) as a paleoredox proxy has required recent revision. However, the basic idea behind using Cr isotopes as redox tracers is straightforward—the largest isotope fractionations are redox-dependent and occur during partial reduction of Cr(VI). As such, Cr isotopic signatures can provide novel insights into Cr redox cycling in both marine and terrestrial settings. Critically, the Cr isotope system—unlike many other trace metal proxies—can respond to short-term redox perturbations (e.g., on timescales characteristic of Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles). The Cr isotope system can also be used to probe the earth's long-term atmospheric oxygenation, pointing towards low but likely dynamic oxygen levels for the majority of Earth's history.
The Changing Dynamic of Government–Nonprofit Relationships

The Changing Dynamic of Government–Nonprofit Relationships
  • Advancing the Field(s)
  • Kirsten A. Grønbjerg, Steven Rathgeb Smith
  • Published online:
    23 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • We advance nonprofit scholarship by using the conceptual framework of policy fields to examine differences across nonprofit fields of activity. We focus on the structure of relationships among four sectors (government, nonprofit, market, informal) and how relationships differ across policy fields (here health, human services, education, arts and culture, and religion). The fields differ notably in the economic share that each sector holds and the functional division of labor among the sectors. Systemic differences also exist in how the nonprofit sector interacts with the government, market, and informal sectors. The policy fields themselves operate within national contexts of distinctive economic and political configurations. The framework explores how government-nonprofit relationships differ across policy fields, the factors responsible for this variation, and offers predictive capacity to generate hypotheses and research designs for additional research. We provide insights on how nonprofit organizations differ in key sub-fields with direct relevance for policy and practice.
Information Metamaterials

Information Metamaterials
  • Tie Jun Cui, Shuo Liu
  • Published online:
    23 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Metamaterials have attracted enormous interests from both physics and engineering communities in the past 20 years, owing to their powerful ability in manipulating electromagnetic waves. However, the functionalities of traditional metamaterials are fixed at the time of fabrication. To control the EM waves dynamically, active components are introduced to the meta-atoms, yielding active metamaterials. Recently, a special kind of active metamaterials, digital coding and programmable metamaterials, are proposed, which can achieve dynamically controllable functionalities using field programmable gate array (FPGA). Most importantly, the digital coding representations of metamaterials set up a bridge between the digital world and physical world, and allow metamaterials to process digital information directly, leading to information metamaterials. In this Element, we review the evolution of information metamaterials, mainly focusing on their basic concepts, design principles, fabrication techniques, experimental measurement and potential applications. Future developments of information metamaterials are also envisioned.
Ecosemiotic Landscape

Ecosemiotic Landscape
  • A Novel Perspective for the Toolbox of Environmental Humanities
  • Almo Farina
  • Published online:
    22 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • The distinction between humans and the natural world is an artefact and more a matter of linguistic communication than a conceptual separation. This Element proposes ecosemiotics as an epistemological tool to better understand the relationship between human and natural processes. Ecosemiotics with its affinity to the humanities, is presented here as the best disciplinary approach for interpreting complex environmental conditions for a broad audience, across a multitude of temporal and spatial scales. It is proposed as an intellectual bridge between divergent sciences to incorporate within a unique framework different paradigms. The ecosemiotic paradigm helps to explain how organisms interact with their external environments using mechanisms common to all living beings that capture external information and matter for internal usage. This paradigm can be applied in all the circumstances where a living being (man, animal, plant, fungi, etc.) performs processes to stay alive.
The Virus Paradigm

The Virus Paradigm
  • A Planetary Ecology of the Mind
  • Roberto Marchesini
  • Translated by Sarah De Sanctis
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • In recent years, the word 'virus' has lost its biological perimeter of reference to acquire a much broader – could say 'paradigmatic' – meaning. The term 'virus' can be seen as a key word or an explanatory model also for processes that go beyond the infectious sphere. Every event appears to have a viral character: from the way information is transmitted to the processes of cultural globalization, from the impact of human beings on the planet to the subversion of ecosystems, from pandemic risks to the demographic increase on the planet. This seems to be indeed the Age of the Virus. Its model can be applied to most of the phenomena that characterize the twenty-first. Its profile – its looming and invisible nature, its ability to use other people's resources to spread and to transform into a dangerous doppelganger – is perfect to represent the fears of the contemporary age.
The Political Economy of Gulf Defense Establishments

The Political Economy of Gulf Defense Establishments
  • Zoltan Barany
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • The six monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula have devoted enormous sums to defense in past decades. Nevertheless, the gap between their expensive armaments and their capacity to deter aggression and/or project military strength has narrowed but little in that time. This Element takes a political economy approach and argues that structural factors inherent in the Gulf states' political systems prohibit civilian oversight of the defense sector and are responsible for this outcome. Lax restraints on military outlays, in turn, enable widespread corruption, lead to large-scale waste, and account for the purchasing of unneeded, unsuitable, and incompatible weapons systems. The Element explores the challenges caused by plummeting oil prices and the resulting budget cuts and considers the development of domestic defense industries in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intended as a part of their economic diversification program. The setbacks of the Saudi-led coalition's on-going war in Yemen starkly illustrate the narrative.
Bluestockings and Travel Accounts

Bluestockings and Travel Accounts
  • Reading, Writing and Collecting
  • Nataliia Voloshkova
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    25 March 2021
  • This Element proposes to relate the eighteenth-century world of travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon. It locates eminent British travellers and explorers in the female-presided intellectual space and examines their multifaceted interaction with the bluestockings between 1760 and 1799. The study shows how the bluestockings acquired knowledge of the world through reading, discussing, writing and collecting travel accounts. It explores the 'social life' of manuscript and printed travel texts in the circle, their popularity and impact on the bluestockings. This Element builds upon the body of evidence provided by their published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and private library catalogues.
Child Welfare, Protection, and Justice

Child Welfare, Protection, and Justice
  • Murli Desai
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • This Element first reviews the limitations of the concepts of problems in childhood. It proposes a universal, comprehensive, and longitudinal conceptual framework of problems in childhood, their differential context, and their cyclical effects. Based on the linkages identified in the children's problems, they are divided into three levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary. The Element then reviews the concepts and the limitations of the prevalent service delivery approaches of child welfare, protection, and justice, because of which these services have not helped to break the cycle of problems in childhood. The Element identifies the rights-based comprehensive, preventive, and systemic approach for child welfare, at primary, secondary and tertiary prevention levels, in order to break this cycle of problems. Finally, the Element goes into details of the tertiary prevention level integrated service delivery for children facing socio-legal problems.
Nitrogen Isotopes in Deep Time

Nitrogen Isotopes in Deep Time
  • Colin Mettam, Aubrey L. Zerkle
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for life, and its sources and cycling have varied over earth history. Stable isotope ratios of nitrogen compounds (expressed as δ15N, in ‰) are preserved in the sedimentary record and track these changes, providing important insights into associated biogeochemical feedbacks. Here we review the use of nitrogen stable isotope geochemistry in unravelling the evolution of the global N cycle in deep time. We highlight difficulties with preservation, unambiguous interpretations, and local versus global effects. We end with several case studies illustrating how depositional and stratigraphic context is crucial in reliably interpreting δ15N records in ancient marine sediments, both in ancient anoxic (Archean) and more recent well oxygenated (Phanerozoic) environments.
Beckett's Intermedial Ecosystems

Beckett's Intermedial Ecosystems
  • Closed Space Environments across the Stage, Prose and Media Works
  • Anna McMullan
  • Published online:
    21 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • This Element draws on the concept of ecosystems to investigate selected Beckett works across different media which present worlds where the human does not occupy a privileged place in the order of creation: rather Beckett's human figures are trapped in a regulated system in which they have little agency. Readers, listeners or viewers are complicit in the operation of techniques of observation inherent to the system, but also reminded of the vulnerability of those subjected to it. Beckett's work offers new paradigms and practices which reposition the human in relation to space, time and species.
Comparative Thinking in Biology

Comparative Thinking in Biology
  • Adrian Currie
  • Published online:
    20 January 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their investigations, then, biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes, comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - 'comparative thinking' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly, comparative thinking is local: what we can do with knowledge of a lineage is limited by the evolutionary processes into which it fits. In light of this analysis, the Element examines the experimental study of animal cognition, and macroevolutionary investigation of the 'shape of life', demonstrating the importance of comparative thinking in understanding both the power and limitations of biological knowledge.
Echinoderm Morphological Disparity: Methods, Patterns, and Possibilities

Echinoderm Morphological Disparity: Methods, Patterns, and Possibilities
  • Bradley Deline
  • Published online:
    20 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • The quantification of morphology through time is a vital tool in elucidating macroevolutionary patterns. Studies of disparity require intense effort but can provide insights beyond those gained using other methodologies. Over the last several decades, studies of disparity have proliferated, often using echinoderms as a model organism. Echinoderms have been used to study the methodology of disparity analyses and potential biases as well as documenting the morphological patterns observed in clades through time. Combining morphological studies with phylogenetic analyses or other disparate data sets allows for the testing of detailed and far-reaching evolutionary hypotheses.
Backsliding

Backsliding
  • Democratic Regress in the Contemporary World
  • Stephan Haggard, Robert Kaufman
  • Published online:
    19 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Assaults on democracy are increasingly coming from the actions of duly elected governments, rather than coups. Backsliding examines the processes through which elected rulers weaken checks on executive power, curtail political and civil liberties, and undermine the integrity of the electoral system. Drawing on detailed case studies, including the United States and countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, the book focuses on three, inter-related causal mechanisms: the pernicious effects of polarization; realignments of party systems that enable elected autocrats to gain legislative power; and the incremental nature of derogations, which divides oppositions and keeps them off balance. A concluding chapter looks at the international context of backsliding and the role of new technologies in these processes. An online appendix provides detailed accounts of backsliding in 16 countries, which can be found at www.cambridge.org/backsliding.
Psychology at the Intersections of Gender, Feminism, History, and Culture

Psychology at the Intersections of Gender, Feminism, History, and Culture
  • Alexandra Rutherford
  • Published online:
    18 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Psychologies of women and gender have developed - both institutionally and intellectually - within distinct social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. In many cases, feminism has played an important role in catalyzing disciplinary engagements with gender and culture as categories of analysis and sites of theorizing rather than solely as variables defining groups to be compared. The intersections of gender, feminism, history, and culture are explored with reference to psychology, first in the United States, and then across three other national contexts. This exploration reveals the similarities and tensions between and among the approaches to studying culture and the approaches to studying gender, that psychologists have employed. It also reveals the historically - and culturally - contingent nature of psychologies of women and gender, and, by extension, of gender itself.

Page 86 of 104