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2069 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 87 of 104

The Stratigraphic Paleobiology of Nonmarine Systems

The Stratigraphic Paleobiology of Nonmarine Systems
  • Steven Holland, Katharine M. Loughney
  • Published online:
    18 January 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
  • The principles of stratigraphic paleobiology can be readily applied to the nonmarine fossil record. Consistent spatial and temporal patterns of accommodation and sedimentation in sedimentary basins are an important control on stratigraphic architecture. Temperature and precipitation covary with elevation, causing significant variation in community composition, and changes in base level cause elevation to undergo predictable changes. These principles lead to eight sets of hypotheses about the nonmarine fossil record. Three relate to long-term and cyclical patterns in the preservation of major fossil groups and their taphonomy, as well as the occurrence of fossil concentrations. The remaining hypotheses relate to the widespread occurrence of elevation-correlated gradients in community composition, long-term and cyclical trends in these communities, and the stratigraphic position of abrupt changes in community composition. Testing of these hypotheses makes the stratigraphic paleobiology of nonmarine systems a promising area of investigation.
Unity of Science

Unity of Science
  • Tuomas E. Tahko
  • Published online:
    18 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
    • Element
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  • Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Reading Computer-Generated Texts

Reading Computer-Generated Texts
  • Leah Henrickson
  • Published online:
    18 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Natural language generation (NLG) is the process wherein computers produce output in readable human languages. Such output takes many forms, including news articles, sports reports, prose fiction, and poetry. These computer-generated texts are often indistinguishable from human-written texts, and they are increasingly prevalent. NLG is here, and it is everywhere. However, readers are often unaware that what they are reading has been computer-generated. This Element considers how NLG conforms to and confronts traditional understandings of authorship and what it means to be a reader. It argues that conventional conceptions of authorship, as well as of reader responsibility, change in instances of NLG. What is the social value of a computer-generated text? What does NLG mean for modern writing, publishing, and reading practices? Can an NLG system be considered an author? This Element explores such question, while presenting a theoretical basis for future studies.
The Method of Hypothesis and the Nature of Soul in Plato's <I>Phaedo</I>

The Method of Hypothesis and the Nature of Soul in Plato's Phaedo
  • John Palmer
  • Published online:
    15 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • This study of Plato's Phaedo promotes better understanding of its arguments for the soul's immortality by showing how Plato intended them, not as proofs, but as properly dialectical arguments functioning in accordance with the method of hypothesis. Unlike the argument for the soul's immortality in the Phaedrus, which does seem intended as a proof, the Phaedo arguments are proceeding toward the first principles that could serve as the basis for a proof - the most important being an account of the soul's own essential nature. This study attends to the substantial progress the Phaedo makes toward such an account. It also considers Socrates' epistemic situation in the dialogue and the problem of whether his confidence in the face of death is misplaced if his arguments have not been proofs before considering how the concluding myth draws together several of the dialogue's main themes.
The Empire at the Opéra

The Empire at the Opéra
  • Theatre, Power and Music in Second Empire Paris
  • Mark Everist
  • Published online:
    14 January 2021
    Print publication:
    21 January 2021
  • Although nineteenth-century legislation had tried to ensure a precise separation between genre and institution for Parisian music in the theatre, it had inadvertently laid out a field on which the politics of genre could be played out as agents and actors of all types deployed various forms of artistic power. During the Second Empire, from 1854 until 1870, the state took over day-to-day control of the Opéra in ways that were without precedent. Every element of the Opéra's activity was subjugated to the exigency of Empire; the selection or artists, works and more general questions of artistic policy were handed over to politicians. The Opéra effectively became a branch of government. The result was a stagnation of the Opéra's repertory, and beneficiaries were the composers of larger-scale works for competing organisations: the Opéra Comique and the Théâtre Lyrique.
Aboriginal Writers and Popular Fiction

Aboriginal Writers and Popular Fiction
  • The Literature of Anita Heiss
  • Fiannuala Morgan
  • Published online:
    14 January 2021
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Wiradjuri woman, Anita Heiss, is arguably one of the first Aboriginal Australian authors of popular fiction. A focus on the political characterises her chick lit; and her identity as an author is both supplemented and complemented by her roles as an academic, activist and public intellectual. Heiss has discussed genre as a means of targeting audiences that may be less engaged with Indigenous affairs, and positions her novels as educative but not didactic. Her readership is constituted by committed readers of romance and chick lit as well as politically engaged readers that are attracted to Heiss' dual authorial persona; and, both groups bring radically distinct expectations to bear on these texts. Through analysis of online reviews and surveys conducted with users of the book reviewing website Goodreads, I complicate the understanding of genre as a cogent interpretative frame, and deploy this discussion to explore the social significance of Heiss' literature.
The Economic Origin of Political Parties

The Economic Origin of Political Parties
  • Christopher Kam, Adlai Newson
  • Published online:
    08 January 2021
    Print publication:
    07 January 2021
  • This Element examines how the changing economic basis of parliamentary elections in nineteenth century England and Wales contributed to the development of modern parties and elections. Even after the 1832 Reform Act expanded the British electorate, elections in many constituencies went uncontested, party labels were nominal, and candidates spent large sums treating and bribing voters. By the end of the century, however, almost every constituency was contested, candidates stood as representatives of national parties, and campaigns were fought on the basis of policies. We show how industrialization, the spread of literacy, and the rise of cheap newspapers, encouraged candidates to enter and contest constituencies. The increased expense that came from fighting frequent elections in larger constituencies induced co-partisan candidates to form slates. This imparted a uniform partisan character to parliamentary elections that facilitated the emergence of programmatic political parties.
Cerium Anomalies and Paleoredox

Cerium Anomalies and Paleoredox
  • Rosalie Tostevin
  • Published online:
    02 January 2021
    Print publication:
    25 February 2021
  • Ce anomalies track changes in oxygen availability due to the anomalous redox-sensitivity of Ce compared with the other rare earth elements. The proxy systematics have been calibrated experimentally as well as in modern anoxic water bodies. Ce anomalies are unique because they track intermediate manganous conditions, rather than fully anoxic conditions. In addition, they are sensitive to local–regional redox conditions, and can be analysed in chemical sediments such as carbonate rocks. This makes them especially useful as a tool to track local oxygen distribution in shallow shelf environments, where biodiversity is highest. This review focusses on the systematics of the Ce anomaly proxy, the preservation and extraction of the signal in sedimentary rocks, and the potential applications of the proxy.
Reading Peer Review

Reading Peer Review
  • PLOS ONE and Institutional Change in Academia
  • Martin Paul Eve, Cameron Neylon, Daniel Paul O'Donnell, Samuel Moore, Robert Gadie, Victoria Odeniyi, Shahina Parvin
  • Published online:
    01 January 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
    • Element
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  • This Element describes for the first time the database of peer review reports at PLOS ONE, the largest scientific journal in the world, to which the authors had unique access. Specifically, this Element presents the background contexts and histories of peer review, the data-handling sensitivities of this type of research, the typical properties of reports in the journal to which the authors had access, a taxonomy of the reports, and their sentiment arcs. This unique work thereby yields a compelling and unprecedented set of insights into the evolving state of peer review in the twenty-first century, at a crucial political moment for the transformation of science. It also, though, presents a study in radicalism and the ways in which PLOS's vision for science can be said to have effected change in the ultra-conservative contemporary university. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Remaking Political Institutions: Climate Change and Beyond

Remaking Political Institutions: Climate Change and Beyond
  • James J. Patterson
  • Published online:
    31 December 2020
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
    • Element
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  • Institutions are failing in many areas of contemporary politics, not least of which concerns climate change. However, remedying such problems is not straightforward. Pursuing institutional improvement is an intensely political process, playing out over extended timeframes, and intricately tied to existing setups. Such activities are open-ended, and outcomes are often provisional and indeterminate. The question of institutional improvement, therefore, centers on understanding how institutions are (re)made within complex settings. This Element develops an original analytical foundation for studying institutional remaking and its political dynamics. It explains how institutional remaking can be observed and provides a typology comprising five areas of institutional production involved in institutional remaking (Novelty, Uptake, Dismantling, Stability, Interplay). This opens up a new research agenda on the politics of responding to institutional breakdown, and brings sustainability scholarship into closer dialogue with scholarship on processes of institutional change and development. Also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Corporate Governance

Corporate Governance
  • A Survey
  • Thomas Clarke
  • Published online:
    30 December 2020
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • The recognition of the profound impact of corporations on the economies and societies of all countries of the world has focused attention on the growing importance of corporate governance. There is an ongoing diversity of corporate governance systems, based on historical cultural and institutional differences that involve different approaches to the values and objectives of business activity. Sound corporate governance is universally recognised as essential to market integrity and efficiency, providing a vital underpinning for financial stability and economic growth. As the adequacy of the existing dominant paradigms of corporate governance are increasingly challenged, the search for coherent new paradigms is a vital task for corporate governance in the future.
A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America

A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America
  • Sebastián L. Mazzuca, Gerardo L. Munck
  • Published online:
    30 December 2020
    Print publication:
    11 February 2021
  • Latin America is currently caught in a middle-quality institutional trap, combining flawed democracies and low-to-medium capacity States. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sequence of development - Latin America has democratized before building capable States - does not explain the region's quandary. States can make democracy, but so too can democracy make States. Thus, the starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State-democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each other. However, the State-democracy interaction generates a virtuous cycle only under certain macroconditions. In Latin America, the State-democracy interaction has not generated a virtuous cycle: problems regarding the State prevent full democratization and problems of democracy prevent the development of state capacity. Moreover, multiple macroconditions provide a foundation for this distinctive pattern of State-democracy interaction. The suboptimal political equilibrium in contemporary Latin America is a robust one.
Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness

Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness
  • Reflecting on Violence and Religion with René Girard
  • Wolfgang Palaver
  • Published online:
    30 December 2020
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
  • Studies into religion and violence often put religion first. René Girard started with violence in his book Violence and the Sacred and used the Durkheimian term 'sacred' as its correlate in his study of early religions. During the unfolding of his theory, he more and more distinguished the sacred from saintliness to address the break that the biblical revelation represented in comparison to early religions. This distinction between the sacred and saintliness resembles Henri Bergson's complementing Emile Durkheim's identification of the sacred and society with a dynamic religion that relies on individual mystics. Girard's distinction also relates to the insights of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas. This element explores some of Girard's main features of saintliness. Girard pleaded for the transformation of the sacred into holy, not their separation.
Old Books and Digital Publishing: Eighteenth-Century Collections Online

Old Books and Digital Publishing: Eighteenth-Century Collections Online
  • Stephen H. Gregg
  • Published online:
    23 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
    • Element
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  • This is a history of Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, a database of over 180,000 titles. Published by Gale in 2003 it has had an enormous impact of the study of the eighteenth century. Like many commercial digital archives, ECCO's continuing development obscures its precedents. This Element examines its prehistory as, first, a computer catalogue of eighteenth-century print, and then as a commercial microfilm collection, before moving to the digitisation and development of the interfaces to ECCO, as well as Gale's various partnerships and licensing deals. An essential aspect of this Element is how it explores the socio-cultural and technological debates around the access to old books from the 1930s to the present day: Stephen Gregg demonstrates how these contexts powerfully shape the way ECCO works to this day. The Element's aim is to make us better users and better readers of digital archives. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Underdevelopment and African Literature

Underdevelopment and African Literature
  • Emerging Forms of Reading
  • Sarah Brouillette
  • Published online:
    23 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • People looking for works in cities are immersed in English as the lingua franca of the mobile phone and the urban hustle – more effective instigations to reading than decades of work by traditional publishers and development agencies. The legal publishing industry campaigns to convince people to scorn pirates and plagiarists as a criminal underclass, and to instead purchase copyrighted, barcoded works that have the look of legitimacy about them. They work with development industry officials to 'foster literacy' – meaning to grow the legal book trade as a contributor to national economic health, and police what and how the newly literate read. But harried cash-strapped audiences will read what and how they can, often outside of formal economies, and are increasingly turning to mobile phone platforms that sell texts at a fraction of the price of legally printed books.
Vanadium Isotopes

Vanadium Isotopes
  • A Proxy for Ocean Oxygen Variations
  • Sune G. Nielsen
  • Published online:
    23 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • Vanadium isotope ratios (51V/50V) have potential to provide information about changes in past ocean oxygen contents. In particular, V isotopes may find utility in tracing variations at non-zero oxygen concentrations because the redox couple that controls V elemental and isotopic abundances in seawater (vanadate-vanadyl) appears to operate around 10M O2. This characteristic sets V isotopes apart from many other metal isotope redox proxies that require more reducing conditions to register significant changes in their isotope budgets. The oxygen abundance sensitivity range of V isotopes suggests that this paleoproxy could be particularly useful in tracing marine oxygenation changes throughout the Phanerozoic and potentially beyond.
Pelagic Barite

Pelagic Barite
  • Tracer of Ocean Productivity and a Recorder of Isotopic Compositions of Seawater S, O, Sr, Ca and Ba
  • Weiqi Yao, Elizabeth Griffith, Adina Paytan
  • Published online:
    23 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • Reconstruction of ocean paleoproductivity and paleochemistry is paramount to understanding global biogeochemical cycles such as the carbon, oxygen and sulfur cycles and the responses of these cycles to changes in climate and tectonics. Paleo-reconstruction involves the application of various tracers that record seawater compositions, which in turn may be used to infer oceanic processes. Several important tracers are incorporated into pelagic barite, an authigenic mineral that forms in the water column. Here we summarize the utility of pelagic barite for the reconstruction of export production and as a recorder of seawater S, O, Sr, Ca and Ba.
Relativism in the Philosophy of Science

Relativism in the Philosophy of Science
  • Martin Kusch
  • Published online:
    19 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • 'Relativism versus absolutism' is one of the fundamental oppositions that have dominated reflections about science for much of its (modern) history. Often these reflections have been inseparable from wider social-political concerns regarding the position of science in society. Where does this debate stand in the philosophy and sociology of science today? And how does the 'relativism question' relate to current concerns with 'post truth' politics? In Relativism in the Philosophy of Science, Martin Kusch examines some of the most influential relativist proposals of the last fifty years, and the controversies they have triggered. He argues that defensible forms of relativism all deny that any sense can be made of a scientific result being absolutely true or justified, and that they all reject 'anything goes' – that is the thought that all scientific results are epistemically on a par. Kusch concludes by distinguishing between defensible forms of relativism and post-truth thinking.
Defining Policy Analysis: A Journey that Never Ends

Defining Policy Analysis: A Journey that Never Ends
  • Beryl A. Radin
  • Published online:
    19 December 2020
    Print publication:
    28 January 2021
  • For much of its life, the field of policy analysis has lived with a wide range of definitions of its goals, work and significance in the society. This Element seeks to sort out these differences by describing the issues, players and developments that have played a role over the life of this field. As a result of the relationships that have developed an environment has emerged where both academics and practitioners who self identify as 'policy analysts' are not always recognized as such by others who use that same label.This Element explores the reasons why this conflictual situation has developed and whether the current status is a major departure from the past. While these developments may not be new or found only in policy analysis, they do have an impact on the status of the academics as well as the practitioners in the field.
China's Finance in Africa

China's Finance in Africa
  • What and How Much?
  • Evelyn F. Wamboye
  • Published online:
    17 December 2020
    Print publication:
    04 March 2021
  • This Element provides a detailed analysis of official finances from China to Africa with special attention to the question of Africa's foreign finances policy. The findings reveal that Africa has an infrastructure gap and Chinese finances are largely used to fund infrastructure projects. However, the majority of the funds are loans, which are mortgaged on Africa's natural resources. In addition, Chinese firms are the ones implementing the projects, and much of the raw material and labor is imported from China. All these calls for Africa to institute a coherent foreign finances policy that ensures African countries fully benefit from these finances.

Page 87 of 104