Coherent Body Research Articles

Business models in tourism: a review and research agenda

PurposeBusiness models and the business model concept have become a fixture of scholarly and managerial attention. With a focus on how actors create, capture and disseminate value, business model research holds the promise to inform the tourism sector’s search for ways to innovate and change outdated business practices. Yet, the concept has inspired little research tackling the contingencies of the tourism context. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in this review and research agenda on business models in tourism.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the authors review and synthesize contributions from publications in EBSCO, Emerald Insight, ProQuest and Science Direct databases, that make explicit use of the business model concept in tourism (anytime up to September 2016). We conceptualize the identified articles as a coherent body of knowledge on business models in tourism with the objective of identifying common themes that characterize existing contributions.FindingsFrom the review of 28 qualified articles, the authors identify four emergent themes: sector-specific configurations, the role of different value types, design themes for consistency and regulatory contingencies. These themes inform three domains in which the authors present avenues for tourism-specific studies on business models, as well as their management and innovation that the authors position in relation to the general business model literature.Originality/valueThis review details how researchers across disciplines conceptualize the business model. Together with the identified directions for further research, this literature review thus establishes a common conceptual basis and stock of knowledge for the study of business models in tourism research.

Upper Silesian Mixed Commission

This entry addresses the Upper Silesian Mixed Commission, also known as the Mixed Commission for Upper Silesia. This quasi-judicial body was established for a transitional period of 15 years as part of the 1922 German–Polish Convention relating to the partition of Upper Silesia, an area that was both highly industrialized and ethnically diverse. Now largely forgotten, the Upper Silesian Mixed Commission—and in particular its president, Felix Calonder—provided what was arguably the most sophisticated mechanism for the protection of minority rights during the interwar period, even resulting in the temporary suspension of anti-Jewish legislation in German Upper Silesia between 1934 and the end of the transitional period in 1937. Moreover, the opinions of the president of the Mixed Commission, which were published in two volumes after the Commission’s cessation of activity, are very likely the most coherent body of international case law regarding the protection of individual and collective rights before the advent of present-day international human rights courts and treaty bodies.

Movements and body ownership: Evidence from the rubber hand illusion after mechanical limb immobilization

There is no consensus on whether, and to what extent, actions contribute to constructing awareness of one's own body. Here we investigated at both physiological and behavioral level whether a prolonged limb immobilization affects body ownership. We tested a group of healthy participants, whose left-hand movements were prevented by a cast for one week, and a control group without any movement restriction. In both groups, we measured the strength of the rubber hand illusion (i.e., proprioceptive shift and questionnaire on ownership) and the physiological parameters known to be modulated by short-term arm immobilization (i.e., resting motor threshold, motor evoked potentials and force parameters) before and after the week of immobilization. Our results showed stronger illusory effects on the immobilized hand on both behavioral indexes and weaker illusory effects on the non-immobilized hand on the questionnaire. Additionally, the increased proprioceptive shift was positively correlated to the motor threshold of the contralateral hemisphere. Our findings show at both behavioral and physiological level that altering those movement-related signals which constantly stem from our own body parts, modulates the experience of those body parts as mine. This, in turn, supports the view of a direct role of actions in the developing and maintaining a coherent body ownership.

A case-based methodology for investigating urban comfort through interpretive research and microclimate analysis in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand

This paper explores how an interpretive case-based research strategy can reveal new empirical and theoretical insights into microclimate design. Innovative fieldwork in Christchurch, New Zealand investigated the nature and social meanings of urban comfort in a city with a seasonal climate featuring microclimatic variability, and with a physical landscape undergoing rapid change following a series of major earthquakes. Ethnographic methods were combined with microclimate measurements in four Christchurch-based case study locations to identify ways in which people adjust their cultural and lifestyle values and expectations to the actual microclimatic conditions. The field investigation had to capture data relevant to the microclimatic variability and be suitable for rapidly changing urban settings. Results suggest this integrative methodology successfully adapts to challenging physical contexts, and is able to provide a coherent body of evidence. Important insights revealed through this methodology may not have become apparent if only conventional microclimate methods were used.

Feeling touch on the own hand restores the capacity to visually discriminate it from someone else' hand: Pathological embodiment receding in brain-damaged patients

The sense of body ownership, i.e., the belief that a specific body part belongs to us, can be selectively impaired in brain-damaged patients. Recently, a pathological form of embodiment has been described in patients who, when the examiner's hand is located in a body-congruent position, systematically claim that it is their own hand (E+ patients). This paradoxical behavior suggests that, in these patients, the altered sense of body ownership also affects their capacity of visually discriminating the body-identity details of the own and the alien hand, even when both hands are clearly visible on the table. Here, we investigated whether, in E+ patients with spared tactile sensibility, a coherent body ownership could be restored by introducing a multisensory conflict between what the patients feel on the own hand and what they see on the alien hand. To this aim, we asked the patients to rate their sense of body ownership over the alien hand, either after segregated tactile stimulations of the own hand (out of view) and of the alien hand (visible) or after synchronous and asynchronous tactile stimulations of both hands, as in the rubber hand illusion set-up. Our results show that, when the tactile sensation perceived on the patient's own hand was in conflict with visual stimuli observed on the examiner's hand, E+ patients noticed the conflict and spontaneously described visual details of the (visible) examiner's hand (e.g., the fingers length, the nails shape, the skin color…), to conclude that it was not their own hand. These data represent the first evidence that, in E+ patients, an incongruent visual-tactile stimulation of the own and of the alien hand reduces, at least transitorily, the delusional body ownership over the alien hand, by restoring the access to the perceptual self-identity system, where visual body identity details are stored.

Impact of the global burden of periodontal diseases on health, nutrition and wellbeing of mankind: A call for global action.

The global burden of periodontal diseases remains high. Population growth trends, changes in risk factors and improved tooth retention will increase the socio-economic burden of periodontitis that is responsible for 3.5million years lived with disability, 54billion USD/year in lost productivity and a major portion of the 442billion USD/year cost for oral diseases. In the context of the Milan World Exhibition 2015 "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life," a green paper was developed and offered for global consultation by the European Federation of Periodontology. The final draft was endorsed by professional organizations around the world and is presented to stakeholders as a call for global action. Specific actions for the public, policymakers, educators and professional organizations have been identified in the areas of prevention, detection and care. These actions align public interest and knowledge, need for self-care, professional intervention and policies to the best scientific evidence to proactively promote periodontal health and effectively manage the global burden of periodontal diseases, in accordance with WHO/UN priorities and strategies for tackling common non-communicable diseases via the Common Risk Factor Approach. A strong and coherent body of evidence allows identification of actionable preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to effectively promote periodontal health and general wellbeing, and better manage the socio-economic consequences. Action requires consideration of the specific national scenarios.

Sustainable Sport Tourism in Japan

ABSTRACTJapan is scheduled to host several major international sporting events in the next four years including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Its sport tourism sector is therefore well positioned for expansion but the issue of sustainability needs to be addressed. This research note sets out to clarify what is known about sustainable sport tourism in Japan as reflected in published research in Japanese and English. As such, it is an attempt to provide a foundation for future research. While several noteworthy publications about the nature of sport tourists and their impacts on destinations were found, continued effort is needed to build these studies into an integrated and coherent body of literature.

Sleep and theology: ‘An half adieu to the world’

The study of sleep has become a field of widespread interest. It engages many disciplines from neuroscience to sociology, philosophy to evolutionary biology. It features in the lifestyle sections of newspapers and websites often because of its connections with mental and physical wellbeing. Yet theology has, in the most part, remained silent on the subject, despite many Biblical references to sleep in both the Old and New Testaments. There is a theological story to be told about sleep − as a gift, and not an affliction − despite the unfortunate occasional conflation of sleep with sloth. It is a state of grace and not of sin. It refreshes and renews yet can never be earned; all we can do is to be in a posture of receptivity so that it falls upon us. Sleep is profoundly precarious and sometimes frustratingly elusive and is suggestive of the fragility and vulnerability of human existence. When it comes to us, sleep transforms our experience of waking life. The eschatological character of sleep points us to reflect on mortality and resurrection. This article argues that it is possible to speak of a ‘theology of sleep’, but that it is not to be found in a coherent body of teaching or theological exploration. Rather, a theology of sleep is found articulated in Christian practices such as the Office of Compline, the keeping of vigils and the Examen of Consciousness, and in evening hymnody and prayers before bed. The author will suggest that the word theosomnia encapsulates this understanding of sleep.

Structural and functional hyperconnectivity within the sensorimotor system in xenomelia.

IntroductionXenomelia is a rare condition characterized by the persistent and compulsive desire for the amputation of one or more physically healthy limbs. We highlight the neurological underpinnings of xenomelia by assessing structural and functional connectivity by means of whole‐brain connectome and network analyses of regions previously implicated in empirical research in this condition.MethodsWe compared structural and functional connectivity between 13 xenomelic men with matched controls using diffusion tensor imaging combined with fiber tractography and resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Altered connectivity in xenomelia within the sensorimotor system has been predicted.ResultsWe found subnetworks showing structural and functional hyperconnectivity in xenomelia compared with controls. These subnetworks were lateralized to the right hemisphere and mainly comprised by nodes belonging to the sensorimotor system. In the connectome analyses, the paracentral lobule, supplementary motor area, postcentral gyrus, basal ganglia, and the cerebellum were hyperconnected to each other, whereas in the xenomelia‐specific network analyses, hyperconnected nodes have been found in the superior parietal lobule, primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, and insula.ConclusionsOur study provides empirical evidence of structural and functional hyperconnectivity within the sensorimotor system including those regions that are core for the reconstruction of a coherent body image. Aberrant connectivity is a common response to focal neurological damage. As exemplified here, it may affect different brain regions differentially. Due to the small sample size, our findings must be interpreted cautiously and future studies are needed to elucidate potential associations between hyperconnectivity and limb disownership reported in xenomelia.

Bio-inspired computing tools and applications: position paper

The confluence of significant computational power and inexpensive sensors provides the opportunity to reliably collect large volumes of information from the world and extract humanly useful information resources. This paper reviews a coherent body of work over the last 20+ years focused on development of advanced bio-inspired computing techniques, and their applications primarily for human related data in behaviour and human centered computing. We close with a synthesis proposing an experiment analysis methodology combining these tools.

Experientially Learning and Teaching in a Student-Directed Classroom

There exists a relatively coherent body of research relevant to problem-based and transformational learning but too few studies that have empirically explored the many anecdotal claims of the attributes of experiential, student-directed pedagogy. The purpose of this present study was to explore students’ and professor experiences with/in a student-directed experiential education elective course. What successes and challenges do students and the professor experience and how? What surprises, new learnings, and pedagogical risks ensue? The primary results include (a) Student Responsibility and Accountability, (b) Structure, (3) Role of the Professor, (4) Experiences With Self-Study Participation, and 5) Informing and Transforming Practice. These results and the review of literature add to the body of knowledge relevant to “doing” student-directed experiential education and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in the postsecondary classroom.

Introduction: The Colonels' Dictatorship and Its Afterlives

Introduction:The Colonels' Dictatorship and Its Afterlives Dimitris Antoniou, Kostis Kornetis, Anna-Maria Sichani, and Katerina Stefatos A half century after the coup d'état of 21 April 1967, the art exhibition documenta 14 launched its public programs in Athens by revisiting the Colonels' dictatorship. The organizers chose the former headquarters of the infamous military police (EAT/ESA) to host the "exercises of freedom,"1 a series of walking tours, lectures, screenings, and performances that examined resistance, torture, trauma, and displacement in a comparative perspective. The initiative was met with mixed feelings, and its public discussion raised important questions about the past. Why is it urgent today to revisit the junta as a period of acute trauma? Can we trace the roots of Greece's current predicament to its non-democratic past? What remains unsaid and unsayable about the dictatorship and its enduring legacies?2 While the junta has been a favorite subject for public history (broadly understood here to include literature, film, personal testimonies, and so on), research on it has remained on the margins. Initially, it was marked by sporadic attempts to respond to the pressing public interest to understand the dictatorship as a contemporary phenomenon (Tsoucalas 1969; Clogg and Yannopoulos 1972; Poulantzas 1976; Mouzelis 1978) and, most importantly, to explain how the Colonels came to power and why they managed to govern Greece for seven years. Subsequently, while historians of Greece started focusing on World War II, the Axis Occupation, and the Greek Civil War, literature on the junta remained fragmented and introspective, never coalescing into a coherent body of work capable of building on collective insights and speaking to broader scholarly debates. Unlike the books of the previous decade, the few scholarly works of the 1980s and 1990s (for example, Alivizatos 1983; Diamandouros 1983; Charalambis 1985; Woodhouse 1985; Bermeo 1995; Meletopoulos 1996; Dafermos 1999; Regos, Athanasatou, and Sepheriades 1999) largely assumed a Greek audience that was both interested in macrohistorical narratives and indifferent to the possibility that the Greek 1960s and 1970s might constitute a [End Page 281] productive period from which to consider issues of global and theoretical significance. For the most part, oral history, archival research, and ethnography are largely absent—a telling void if we take into account the great availability of materials in municipalities and cultural and professional associations (not to mention flea markets!), as well as the opportunity that scholars had to engage the former dictators or even lesser junta officials in a comprehensive study of the military regime (Figure 1). Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. "From the Flea Market," newsletter published by an Anglophone news agency created by the junta's supporters to cover the protaitioi trials (left) and propaganda brochure depicting tourists "enjoying the Athenian sun" on the day of the coup d'état (right). Source: Dimitris Antoniou's personal collection. How long does it take for a period to be studied? How simple is it to inquire into the past of a living generation and to document accounts that may depart from canonized narratives? What happens when those who opposed the junta as students become narrators of history? Only recently have scholars begun to address these issues, reflect on the production of history and intergenerational tensions, and consider the period of the junta as a defining moment in recent Greek history and thus crucial to an understanding of the continuities and ruptures with postwar legacies and the entire period from the Metapolitefsi to the present (Van Dyck 1998; Rizas 2002; Papanikolaou 2007; Panourgiá 2009; Walden 2009; Karamanolakis 2010; Van Steen 2010; Stefatos 2012; Kornetis 2013; Nafpliotis 2013; Van Steen 2014; Avgeridis, Gazi, and Kornetis 2015; Papadogiannis 2015; Antoniou 2016; Kallivretakis 2017).3 This special section, "The Colonels' Dictatorship and Its Afterlives," builds on this momentum and presents an ongoing conversation among emerging scholars of the period. It draws on research initially presented at a workshop under the same title organized by Columbia University's Program in Hellenic Studies in April 2015. The workshop took as a point of departure the regime's emblem, the phoenix, the magical bird that sets itself on fire only to reemerge from its ashes, to ask how the regime...

Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan by Anna Andreeva

Reviewed by: Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan by Anna Andreeva Mark Teeuwen Assembling Shinto: Buddhist Approaches to Kami Worship in Medieval Japan. By Anna Andreeva. Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. 420 pages. Hardcover $49.95/ £36.95/ €45.00. This book's title may suggest that it focuses on such abstractions as Shinto and Buddhism and their interaction in medieval Japan. To this reviewer's relief, that proves not to be the case. Assembling Shinto offers a detailed and sophisticated case study of the development of a single thread of what modern scholars have called medieval Shinto: the so-called Miwa lineage. Perhaps the author (or the publisher) worried that flagging "Miwa" as the book's focus in the title would put readers off as being too specific. In this review I cannot play along with that ruse, but I can impress on those who are easily scared that both Miwa and this book are worth the time and effort one might dedicate to them, if one is interested in the early phases of Shinto's "assembly." [End Page 293] Medieval Shinto is best studied by focusing on a specific lineage. As Anna Andreeva puts it, medieval Shinto was not a coherent body of thought but rather a "multifaceted" and "dynamic" network shaped by "constant negotiation or 'power play' between different agents and institutions and different strands of religious thought and practice" (p. 15). Those strands were woven into transmission lineages, each with its own teachings, legends, and rituals, by practitioners who typically had their main base at a single site—but, as often as not, were also in frequent contact with other sites in the area. The result was a tangle of lineages feeding off each other, each applying mutually related ideas to the natural and social geography of its own location. The most promising, and perhaps the only, way to gain an understanding of the dynamics that energized this tangle is to select one site as a case study that, by extension, will point beyond that site to many others. Miwa presents itself as the ideal focus for such a case study. In retrospect, its Miwaryū lineage was arguably the most successful of all lineages of medieval Shinto: it not only survived the transition into Edo but even experienced a new heyday as late as the early nineteenth century, when "Miwa Shinto" practices spread around the country and found a broad audience. There is a relative abundance of materials connected to Miwa, ranging from medieval engi legends and hagiographies to ritual manuals, collections of initiation documents, and sources about the site's institutional history. From these materials, it is possible to reconstruct the ups and downs of the site as a whole, to pin down some of the institutions and individuals that contributed to Miwaryū's success, and to speculate, at least, about the reasons for this lineage's longevity. This is not to say that such an investigation is in any way a simple task. Miwa went through multiple cycles of destruction. Most of its early documents were lost in 1461, when a conflict between "meditation monks" and "scholar monks" at its main temple, Byōdōji, led the former to set fire to the hall where the latter kept their archive (pp. 274–75). Equally destructive were the early years of Meiji, when Miwa's temples were torn down to transform the site into a Shinto landscape cleansed of Buddhist blemishes. Early Miwa materials survived at sites in its wider network of ritual and doctrinal exchanges and also found their way into Edo-period collections compiled by a range of monks (Miwa insiders as well as outsiders) who sought to save or restore Miwa's legacy. Both these categories of sources are riddled with problems, however. Although medieval documents have survived in places such as Kanazawa Bunko and Ōsu Bunko, engi legends and hagiographies are not history, and lineage documents, too, served aims other than recording actual events in the past. It is seldom possible to determine the authors and dates of such documents, not least because surviving texts often have been "updated" and recalibrated by multiple authors with varying agendas...

The role of the cognitive model profile in knowledge representation and meaning construction: the case of the lexical item Europe

The paper addresses the role of the cognitive model profile, one of the fundamental constructs in LCCM Theory (a.k.a. access semantics), in meaning construction and knowledge representation with respect to the concept of Europe. The study is based on a corpus of news articles retrieved from the Guardian from May 2004 through December 2009 (approximately 930,000 words) and focuses on the lexical item Europe (over 4000 corpus occurrences). The study takes its theoretical underpinnings from LCCM Theory, a theory of lexical representation and semantic composition, which delineates the roles the linguistic and the conceptual systems play in meaning construction (e.g., Evans 2009, 2013).The paper documents the immense semantic potential of the lexical item Europe as manifest in the Guardian’s discourse under analysis. In terms of knowledge representation, to account for the coherent body of multimodal knowledge which the lexical item Europe affords access to, its cognitive model profiles relevant to its two lexical concepts are constructed. As far as the role of the cognitive model profile in meaning construction is concerned, the study demonstrates how the context, specifically the co-text, determines the activation of a respective portion of the cognitive model profile of the lexical item Europe.

Thoughts on autonomy, sound and artistic compromise: three experimental radio broadcasts of poetry with radiophonic sound by Delia Derbyshire (1965–1966)

This article explores three experimental radio programmes made for the BBC during the mid-1960s. Each one contains work by the electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire who worked as part of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop: a studio located in the national public broadcaster. Derbyshire is often presented as a pioneer in the history of electronic music but the lack of a coherent body of musical works positions her outside the canon. I argue that the apparent lack is an integral part of her history that could be affirmed to challenge assumptions surrounding the aesthetic value of autonomy.

Dimension proprioceptive et tactile de la conscience corporelle et action volontaire chez un enfant avec TSA : protocole à cas unique en rééducation psychomotrice

Bodily self-consciousness is based mainly on multisensory integration of physical stimuli, as well as sense of body ownership and sense of agency. It seems that voluntary action is an essential source for the development of the bodily self, to build a global and coherent body consciousness. We wanted to test the hypothesis that setting voluntary body movements would consolidate proprioceptive and tactile aspect of altered body awareness in an individual with autism spectrum disorder. It appears that autism is a disorder in which the body experience is impaired. Psychomotor therapy was then proposed to P., 11 years old with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and who seems to show an alteration of body consciousness, with a single case A-B-A-B experimental design. The protocol includes three types of measures: a measure of tactile discrimination, a measure of the kinesthesia of both upper limbs and a measure of kinesthetic acuity of upper limbs, proposed at the beginning of each session. We performed 3 sets of measurements without intervention to establish the baseline and then 10 therapy sessions based on setting voluntary body movements by the subject. We then analyzed the results in graphic form for the visual analysis of the curves. The results and clinical observations seem to point in the direction of a confirmation of the hypothesis; psychomotor therapy sessions around setting voluntary body movements would consolidate fragile bodily self-consciousness in children with ASD.

Muslim Democracy: Politics, Religion and Society in Indonesia, Turkey and the Islamic World By Edward Schneier

In the best tradition of Max Weber’s theses on the Protestant ethic and its role in the evolution of modern capitalism Edward Schneier’s book is a daring and inspiring attempt to assess another form of religion’s impact on society. The focus here is on Islam, or, more precisely on the broad range of Islamic political thought and ideals and their impact on democracy in not less than the Islamic world as a whole. Concerned by the heated debates on Islam, violence, and authoritarianism triggered by the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, the troubled history of the Middle East since the invasion in Iraq in 2003, and the Arab Spring in 2011, Schneier starts with the question what the resources of ‘Islamic ideals’ are that might provide a solid foundation for and sustain democracies. His implicit assumption thereby is that Islamic political thought—as far as such a coherent body has ever existed—has historically been embedded and thus translated into various cultural and political contexts. An endeavour to better understand the interdependencies between Islam on the one hand and governance, democratization, and secularization on the other, is therefore by definition a comparative undertaking that seeks to contrast the different experiences of Muslim-majority societies so far. The approach Schneier suggests to realize this is not to ask whether Islam as such is compatible with democracy, but to analyse ‘what features of democratic institutions and processes work’ (p. 7) in specific Islam-dominated countries. Schneier’s lens through which he discusses these complex developments is thus not theology, but these societies’ political, and to a certain extent also social and economic, history.

Eclogite varieties and petrotectonic evolution of the northern Guatemala Suture Complex

ABSTRACTField and petrologic characteristics of two new eclogite localities within the Guatemala Suture Complex (GSC) north of the Motagua Fault are presented. The Tuncaj Hill locality exposes a coherent body of retrogressed eclogite hundreds of metres long that is associated with serpentinite of the North Motagua Unit. The Tanilar River locality exposes numerous bands and lenses of eclogite hosted in sialic gneisses of the Chuacús Complex. The Tuncaj eclogite has a two-stage prograde evolution containing the peak assemblage Grt + Omp + Ttn + Czo + Zo ± Am, formed at temperatures <720°C. In contrast, eclogites of the Tanilar unit are characterized by the paragenesis Omp + Grt + Rt ± Phg ± Qtz ± Ep giving higher peak conditions of T = 720–830°C and P = 2.1–2.7 GPa, near the stability field of coesite. Previously obtained data and our thermobaric calculations suggest distinct petrotectonic evolutions for the various types of eclogites within the suture. The lawsonite eclogites south of the Motagua Fault were probably produced in a mature Farallon subduction zone during the Early Cretaceous. The northern high-pressure (HP) blocks in serpentinite mélange and coherent amphibolite bodies with eclogite relics were generated by the Early Cretaceous subduction of the proto-Caribbean lithosphere under the Great Caribbean Arc. A continental block, the North American passive margin, reached the arc’s trench in the Campanian and was subducted to ca. 80 km depth, producing the eclogites of the Chuacús Complex. As the slab was delaminated and partially exhumed, the continental Chuacús became tectonically juxtaposed with HP blocks of the proto-Caribbean that had been accreted to the Caribbean plate forming the North Motagua Unit. The juxtaposed group migrated to mid-crustal level and was contemporaneously retrogressed under epidote-amphibolite facies conditions.

'All the World's a Stage': The Seven Ages of Unjust Enrichment

This paper was delivered as a key-note address at the Society of Legal Scholars annual conference at the University of Oxford in September 2016. It reflects on the state of the law of unjust enrichment, with reference to recent decisions of the Supreme Court and the writings of commentators relating to the theoretical foundations of this body of law. Whilst aspects of the judicial interpretation of the law of unjust enrichment are a cause of significant concern, it is clear that the law of unjust enrichment is firmly embedded in English law. Further, despite some commentators arguing that this body of law has no sound theoretical basis and does not operate as a coherent body of law, the papers argues that it is both coherent and theoretically sound. But the paper identifies shortcomings in private law scholarship and in the interaction with the judiciary, and suggests a clearer analysis of what constitutes unjust enrichment. Further, whilst some have argued that this body of law is in its final age and ‘mere oblivion’ beckons, to quote Shakespeare, that body of law called unjust enrichment is mature and remains relevant.

The \u2018Alice in Wonderland\u2019 mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism

Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.