Convincing Argument Research Articles

John Donne and Baroque Allegory: The Aesthetics of Fragmentation. Hugh Grady. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2017. Pp. viii+228.

<i>John Donne and Baroque Allegory: The Aesthetics of Fragmentation</i>. Hugh Grady. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2017. Pp. viii+228.

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

Women in the Qur’an: An Emancipatory Reading

The Replication Argument for Incompatibilism

In this paper, I articulate an argument for incompatibilism about moral responsibility and determinism. My argument comes in the form of an extended story, modeled loosely on Peter van Inwagen’s “rollback argument” scenario. I thus call it “the replication argument.” As I aim to bring out, though the argument is inspired by so-called “manipulation” and “original design” arguments, the argument is not a version of either such argument—and plausibly has advantages over both. The result, I believe, is a more convincing incompatibilist argument than those we have considered previously.

Importance of peripheral basins: Implications for the conservation of fish assemblages

Abstract The upper Dniester River basin (Black Sea basin) contains unique fish assemblages. Although data on the fish of the basin are scarce, evidence indicates that these assemblages have declined. It was assumed that the peripheral basins (i.e. small basins on the edge of the larger basin) of the upper Dniester River basin could maintain good ecological status. To fill the knowledge gaps and assess the role of peripheral basins on fish species and assemblage conservation, research was conducted in the Strwiąż River basin. Data from the Strwiąż basin and the adjacent but unconnected upper Wiar basin (the Vistula basin; Baltic Sea basin) were compared in order to examine the influence of historical factors, and to confirm the unique characteristics of the fish assemblages of the peripheral area of the upper Dniester basin. A detailed analysis of the fish assemblages was performed, the primary morphological characteristics of sites that corresponded to the requirements of the fish assemblages were defined, and the human impacts were identified. The Strwiąż River basin is likely to be the only fragment of the upper Dniester basin with a well‐preserved fish assemblage. It features high species richness and numerous native Ponto–Caspian species that function near the edge of their ranges. The extant fish fauna of the Strwiąż River basin can provide a point of reference for other tributaries of the upper Dniester River that are degraded. We draw attention to the fact that peripheral basins, which are not usually considered in conservation biogeography, can be important for the protection of fish species and entire fish assemblages. This study provides one of the most convincing arguments for a more detailed investigation of peripheral populations.

Semmelweis - a contemplating human. Scientific historical lessons

In this article we examine why Semmelweis's seemingly simple, logical and practical discovery was categorically dismissed by the majority of his contemporaries, and why even many years after his death it was accepted with such reservation. We invoke wherever possible Semmelweis's own words citing from the series of articles appearing in the 'Orvosi Hetilap' [Hungarian Medical Weekly Journal] published in 1858 in Hungary, and also from the German language summary of the Journal published in 1860. We came to the conclusion that although Semmelweis did everything in his power to show the causal relationship between the development of puerperal fever (childbed fever) and some infectious substance on the hands of examining doctors and medical students, this was not convincing enough. The predominant theory at the time held that infection was caused by miasma transmitted in the air and therefore stubbornly precluded any notion of infectious matter physically transmitted on unclean hands. We also concluded that the causal sequence observed by Semmelweis was missing an essential empirical element: visual proof of the infectious agent he correctly postulated as physically transmitted. Visually demonstrating the presence of the infectious agent by means of a microscope would have made his case. This finally did occur but only two years after Semmelweis's death. Had the renowned Hungarian obstetrician realized the significance of taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by Dávid Gruby who was conducting experiments in the same town, a more convincing argument could have been made for his theory. In the 1840s and 1850s, Dávid Gruby was experimenting with various microscopic techniques and their application with success in Vienna before continuing his work in France. Gruby's work, especially that of microscopic observations of tissues, received international acceptance. Therefore, the involvement of Gruby and his work with microscopes to support Semmelweis's observations would most probably have forestalled much of the criticism and rejection his theory was initially awarded (among which perhaps Virchow's rejection proved the most damaging). Had Semmelweis utilized microscopic techniques, he would have been celebrated among the first to discover bacterial pathogens, contributing to the development of the currently predominant germ theory. Failure to utilize the microscope was the root cause leading to the tragedy of Semmelweis's rejection by the medical establishment of the time. Despite the increasing numbers of scientists utilizing the microscope at the University of Pest, offered to corroborate his daims with microscopic observations. Efforts have been made have since been to rehabilitate him as the key figure who not only discovered the method of transmission of infectious disease, but also implemented measures of prevention. Elevating him among the ranks of the ten greatest doctors who ever lived is certainly recognition due, but sadly denied to him in his lifetime. Orv Hetil. 2018; 159(26): 1055-1064.

Pressure on Historical Science in Dnipropetrovsk Region during the Totalitarian Era (the 1920—30s)

The article analyzes the oppression of historical science in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the late 1920s–1930s. The description of the historiography of the problem has established that the works of the Soviet period showed repressions as necessary, forced means, rooting this concept in the national science for all subsequent years of the Soviet power. The late 1980s – early 1990s initiated the active search and disclosure of new facts, estimations, axiological vectors, methodological paradigms as for political repressions during the Soviet era. Repressive actions of totalitarian regime, treatment of the historians by the authorities are shown. The article analyzes directions, forms, and methods of ideological work in forming the public opinion about conducting political terror against the humanities scholars (preparation of ordered reviews and critical publications; conclusions of political editors; removal of works by the General Directorate for Literature and Publications; visa-permission for print; ideological labeling; reprimands; exclusion from the party; execution in camps, etc.). Political terror became the most convincing argument of power against the scientific intelligentsia. The “academic affair”, which was initiated by the arrest of renowned historians in October 1929, was part of the systemic re-education of the “old professors”. It was established that the peak of political repression in this region fell on the 1920s–30s. Historians were subjected to pressure and coercion by authorities and officials; various public, financial, political organizations; the media and the system of public education. Political regimes did not require true historians, but historians-performers. Therefore, those who did not change their views in accordance with the current political system, did not adapt to its ideology, stood against Marxism, were fired, condemned and sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, or physically destroyed. This happened in the years of the struggle with dissident movement. Examples of repressions are presented among the leaders of higher educational institutions, prominent historians, intellectuals of Dnipropetrovsk region (M. Kuis, V. Parkhomenko, V. Bilyi, D. Yavornitskyi, etc.).

Vanda v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals: Good News for the Patent Eligibility of Diagnostics and Personalized Medicine, with Some Important Caveats

In Mayo v. Prometheus, decided in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated patent claims directed towards diagnostic methods useful in the optimization of drug dosage for the needs of an individual patient, i.e., an example of personalized medicine, based on the Court’s determination that the claims were directed towards a patent ineligible law of nature. Notably, the claims in Mayo did not recite a step of applying the information generated by the test, e.g., a step of administering the drug to a patient at the optimized dosage. Some, including this author, have speculated that inclusion of such a step might have saved Prometheus’ claims. In 2018 the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit issued a decision in Vanda Pharmaceuticals v. West-Ward Pharmaceuticals International Limited wherein a divided panel held that inclusion of a step requiring action based on the result of a diagnostic test rendered the claims patent eligible. This is good news for innovators in diagnostics and personalized medicine, but there are some important caveats. While the Vanda majority makes a compelling argument that the claims at issue are patent eligible under Mayo, a well-reasoned dissent comes to the opposite conclusion. So it is not clear whether Vanda represents the last word on the subject, given that other judges on the Federal Circuit might agree with the dissent. Another important caveat is that the inclusion of an action step likely renders the claim difficult, if not impossible, to enforce, depending upon the nature of the alleged infringement. In Vanda, the court’s finding of infringement hinged upon the fact that the infringer, a generic drug company seeking FDA approval to market a generic version of the patent owner’s branded drug, was required by FDA law to include directions on the product label essentially advising doctors to perform the claimed method. Absent this fairly direct linkage between a mandated drug label and the claimed method, the issue of divided infringement will in many cases limit the enforce-ability of diagnostic method claims that recite an action step. In particular, if Prometheus had positively recited an action step in its claims the company would not have been able to establish infringement by a competing diagnostic testing company like Mayo.

New oral anticoagulants and cardiac safety: do we have a problem?

This analytic review provides the information about frequency of myocardial infarction in patients, treated with direct oral anticoagulants in randomized clinical trials and retrospective cohort studies. It is indicated that direct thrombin inhibitor dabigatran has higher incidence of myocardial infarctions than warfarin. Direct factor Xa inhibitor rivaroxaban has the most convincing arguments of coronary safety.

Gallus Anonymous / Monk of Lido (fl. ca. 1101–1117): Writer for Hire in Twelfth-Century Europe

Recent work in computational philology has made a convincing argument that Gallus Anonymous and the Monk of Lido, authors of the Polish Gesta principum Polonorum and Venetian Translatio s. Nicolai, respectively, were one and the same author. This article reconstructs the life and career of this mobile figure and shows how his mastery of writing and rhetoric led him to pursue a career that bridged the interconnected regions and cultures of twelfth-century Europe.

A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders

Reviewed by: A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child by Joe Sutliff Sanders Gretchen Papazian (bio) A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child. By Joe Sutliff Sanders. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. I have been waiting for a book like Joe Sutliff Sanders's A Literature of Questions for a long time. A deeply layered, complex scholarly study of literary nonfiction for children and young adults (aka trade nonfiction), it fills a gap in the study of the genres of literature for children and young adults by creating a structure for understanding nonfiction that parallels the deep and complex discussions of fiction and poetry. It identifies salient features and delimits tools and techniques for analysis, while it also models ways of working with them. Perhaps even more importantly, it makes a highly convincing argument for reconceptualizing how we think about nonfiction and its purposes. Over the course of an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion, Sanders examines a broad range of American nonfiction texts for children, from the colonial-era to the contemporary, to determine the generic features that invite or deter reflective engagement with facts. Broadly oriented through Paolo Freire's notion of critical engagement and its role in democratizing educational structures, as well as Mikhail Bakhtin's description of textual dialogism and Roland Barthes's poststructural understanding of textual exegesis, Sanders argues that looking to how and when children's nonfiction invites or refuses questions reveals what ways of thinking, feeling, and knowing a text [End Page 493] is willing to make vulnerable—that is, which ideologies it opens to critical inquiry and which ones it avoids. In then identifying and working with a portfolio of devices, or what Sanders calls "a set of hallmarks," A Literature of Questions creates a methodology for revealing where and how nonfiction for children and young adults makes efforts to share and humbly humanize (or hold on to and arrogantly objectify) epistemological authority. In the book's introduction, Sanders gracefully weaves together a massive amount of scholarship, contextualizing his project within discussions of children's nonfiction, children's literature more broadly, genre theory, notions of ideology, the possibilities for and histories of radicalism in literature, and theories of learning, all the while delineating his own approach, justifying his textual selection and analysis methods, and clarifying and defining terms both established ("critical," "engagement," "critical engagement") and novel ("punctuated plurality"). Chapter 1 begins developing the book's perspective by engaging with one of the most basic assumptions about what nonfiction is and what it should do—that is, to provide information and answers. In demonstrating that disciplines of facts never see themselves as having the final answers but are instead engaged in "fact cycles" that circuit through question sequences, while emphasizing that nonfiction is a genre with great potential to engage children and young adults in this very activity, Sanders asks that children's literature scholars, teachers, and writers reorient our most basic sense of this genre: from being a literature of authority to one of inquiry, from being "a literature of answers" to "a literature of questions." In the remaining chapters, Sanders pinpoints and investigates specific aspects of nonfiction for children and young adults that consistently mark where texts actively invite or, depending on how they are used, purposely discourage critical engagement. Chapter 2 looks at the devices of voice, tone, and narrative—specifically, the use of "hedges" to break textual authority, visible narrators to humanize the text's mindset, and what scholar Samuel Wineburg calls "necromancers" to generate a sense of plurality and/or an unfinished conversation. Chapter 3 fixes attention on the textual construction of character (broadly defined) in nonfiction for children, arguing that texts that represent their central figures as imperfect, "touched by vulnerability," prone to mistakes, and "in the light of becoming," while dwelling on the long process of discovery and unfinished inquiry, are more likely to invite critical engagement. Chapters 4 and 5 shift attention from narrative aspects to textual apparatus, with the former attending to peritextual features and the latter fixing attention on the genre's deployment of photographs. Chapters 6 and 7 turn the spotlight on the epistemological operations of the...

How expensive is an energy transition? A lesson from the German Energiewende

The Paris climate agreement of December 2015 is generally considered a breakthrough on the way to a sustainable future for mankind. In particular, the agreement calls for fundamental transitions in the energy systems worldwide, since more than 80% of CO2 emissions stem from the use of fossil fuels in the energy supply. Considering such energy transitions, in any country there will certainly be technical issues, there will be debates as to which political instruments are most suitable, and others; but there is no doubt that the question of cost is one of the most crucial issues in the course of such a long-term project. After all, the expected financial burden on the national economy and its stakeholders is the most convincing argument for putting in energy transition off or for slowing it down.There is also no doubt that the German Energiewende, at first sight, does not serve as an encouraging example in this respect: The cost bill - in the sense of the direct, perceptible financial effects - has already run up to almost € 500 billion, and the German private households as well as many businesses pay significantly more for electricity than in most other OECD-countries. As a consequence, in Germany there is a growing opposition against going forward with the Energiewende as planned, and also in the international media, the initially positive image of the German project has suffered.A closer look at the costs of the German energy transition, however, reveals that around 75% of them are due to two particularities of the Energiewende that do not hold true for other energy transitions: the politically enforced nuclear phase-out and the fact that Germany massively expanded renewable energies at a time when they were still very expensive.Therefore, the real lesson of the German example is the opposite of what it may seem: The transition to renewable energies in the electricity sector in a highly industrialized country can be quite affordable.

Solutions to Improve Person Transport System in the Pitesti City by Analyzing Public Transport vs. Private Transport

One of the major problems facing the Pitesti city is the road congestion that occurs in the central area of the city during the peak hours. With all the measures taken in recent years - the widening of road arteries, increasing the number of parking spaces, the creation of overground road passages - it is obvious that the problem can only be solved by a new philosophy regarding urban mobility: it is no longer possible to continue through solutions to increase the accessibility of the central area of the city, but it is necessary, on the contrary, to promote a policy of discouraging the penetration of vehicles in the city center, coupled with a policy of improving the connection between urban public transport and county public transport. This new approach is also proposed in the new Urban Mobility Plan of Pitesti city, under development. The most convincing argument for the necessity of this new orientation in the Pitesti city mobility plan is based on the analysis of the current situation of passenger transport on the territory of Pitesti city: the analysis of “public transport versus private transport” reveals a very low occupancy rate for cars and the fact that the road surface required for a passenger (the dynamic area) is much higher in the case of private transport than in the case of public transport. Measurements of passenger flows and vehicle flows on the 6 penetration ways in the city have been made and the calculations clearly demonstrate the benefits of an urban public transport system connected by “transshipment buses” to be made at the edge of the city, to the county public transport system. In terms of inter-county transport, it will continue to be connected to the urban public transport system by existing bus Station, within the city: South Bus Station and North Bus Station. The usefulness of the paper is that it identifies the solutions for sustainable mobility in Pitesti city and proposes concrete solutions for the development of the integrated passenger transport system.

Additional Approaches to Experimental Validation of the Phenomenon of Electrochemical Phase Formation in Metals Via a Supercooled Liquid State Stage

A previously unknown phenomenon of electrochemical phase formation in metals via a supercooled liquid state stage was recently established by synthesis of experimental and theoretical findings. Essentially, this phenomenon is to be understood as follows: during metal electrodeposition onto a solid cathode in an aqueous environment, a deeply supercooled metal liquid evolves in the form of multiple liquid atomic clusters avalanching at various sites near the cathode or the growing deposit and solidifies ultra rapidly at the deposition temperature to appear in a crystalline, amorphous or quasi-crystalline phase. The unconventional nature of this phenomenon requires additional approaches to experimental validation of its existence. In this context, the intention of the investigation at hand was to perform experimental verification of the existence of the discovered phenomenon by analysis of electrodeposited metals' structural features as resulting from ultra-rapid solidification of highly supercooled liquid metal phase. The hypothesis of this study was that the structure in metals that were ultra-rapidly solidified under high supercooling has certain typical traits that distinguish it from the metals' structure evolved under ordinary conditions. Besides, the degree of supercooling in metal electrodeposition must be a major factor that may affect characteristics of the structure. Idea One and Its Realization. It is well-known that metal solidification at a minor degree of melt supercooling follows a dendritic pattern due to morphological instability at solid-melt interface. At high supercooling, however, dendritic solidification gives way to spherulitic one. In this case the spherulites generally occur at the metal-crucible interface. Additionally, quasicrystals occur in ultra-rapid quenching of highly supercooled melts. Therefore, if metals indeed pass a supercooled liquid state stage during electrochemical phase formation and are rapidly solidified at the deposition temperature, then their layers adjacent to the cathode should contain spherulites and quasicrystals. To verify this idea, cathode-adjacent layers in electrodeposited copper, lead and cobalt were investigated. It has been established that spherulites and pentagonal quasicrystals occur in cathode-adjacent metal layers, which is typical of metals produced by ultra-rapid solidification of a highly supercooled liquid metal phase (Fig. 1). Idea Two and Its Realization. It is well-known that as the deposited layer grows in thickness, the spherulites disappear and the deposit then develops in druse form. For a more convincing argument in favor of the existence of an intermediate liquid phase in metal being electrodeposited, one should completely prevent transition from the spherulitic growth process to the drusy one with increasing thickness of deposit and thus produce a purely spherulitic deposit. The above idea was realized in complex alloying of iron with nickel and chromium during electrodeposition. It has been shown that electrodeposited metals appear solely in spherulitic form if transition from spherulitic to drusy growth form with increasing deposit thickness is prevented completely. Idea Three and Its Realization. Based on the concept of electrochemical phase formation in metals via a supercooled liquid state stage, it may be expected that the enrichment of crystalline defects will increase with higher supercooling in electrodeposition. This is because the high nucleation rate at greater supercooling values dominates over the linear crystal growth rate. Accordingly, increasing supercooling must lead to higher vacancy concentrations, greater dislocation densities and smaller grain sizes in metals being electrodeposited. The above idea was verified in experiments on a number of metals (cobalt, chromium, copper, iron and nickel) which were deposited under ordinary conditions from ordinary electrolytes with no organic additions. Consistent change has been found in characteristics of point, linear and planar crystalline defects as degree of supercooling is increased in electrodeposition. The obtained experimental results prove the existence of the phenomenon of electrochemical phase formation in metals via a supercooled liquid state stage. Fig 1. SEM image of pentagonal quasicrystal in the cathode-adjacent layers of the electrodeposited copper Figure 1

Sperm DNA fragmentation testing: proceed with care.

The authors should be commended for their thorough review of DNA fragmentation and the clinical indications for testing. The basic science review of DNA fragmentation, oxidative stress, and its association with male infertility is detailed yet concise. The authors also present clinical scenarios to better illustrate the current role of evaluating sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF) in the infertility specialist’s armamentarium, and describe very convincing theoretical arguments for the potential importance of SDF. However, the clinical role of SDF in the evaluation of men with male factor infertility remains unclear, and several recommendations made in this article do not yet have sufficient clinical data to support its routine use

Experiencing the Word of God: Reading as Wrestling

Analytic philosophers are generally advised to steer clear of the substantive use of literary tropes whose ‘semantic content outstrips their propositional content’ (Rea, 2009: 6). But this poses a problem for analytic theologians whose primary texts are beset by such literary devices. Can such material be usefully marshalled, or should it be left to one side, to remain unemployed by analytic theologians? In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture Yoram Hazony offers what I take to be the most convincing argument to date that the entire biblical narrative (literary tropes and all) ought both to be read as philosophy and that the philosophical content contained in the biblical narrative can be marshalled into non-narrative propositional arguments. In this paper I will address three areas of concern for his project, and by extension, what I take to be concerns for other analytic theologians who might follow his lead.

The Frisian Substrate beneath the Groningen Dialect

Historical linguists agree in assuming that the Low Saxon dialect of the Dutch province of Groningen is underlain by a Frisian substrate. The aim of this contribution is to scrutinise the linguistic arguments for this assumption. The most convincing arguments concern toponymy, but the formation of diminutives and words denoting small plants or animals, children’s games and agricultural or toponymic referents, including emotional adjectives or adverbs, also point in the direction of the supposed substrate. This does not hold for syntax, even though this is a rather stable domain. Many syntactic phenomena of the Groningen dialect have a wide geographical spread and encompass a large part of Germany.

Striation effect in induction heating: myths and reality

PurposeEffect of unstable “wavy” temperature distribution on the part surface during the process of induction heating of ferromagnetic materials was observed and reported by two Russian scientists in 1940 (Babat and Lozinskii, 1940). They reported that under certain conditions, one can observe periodical or quasi-periodical bright stripes on the part surface when its temperature passes through the Curie point. In time, these stripes expand and merge, forming a normal temperature pattern. They called this phenomenon “polosatiy nagrev” (striation heating). Let us call it the “zebra effect” for simplicity. It can exist for a relatively long time, from several seconds to several tens of seconds. Several explanations of the zebra effect were proposed with not very convincing arguments. The purpose of this study is to improve the understanding of this effect.Design/methodology/approachWider spreading of induction technology and use of computer simulation of induction processes create a demand and open new possibilities for study of the zebra effect. This study provides an overview of the available information about the zebra effect and gives new explanation of this phenomenon based on existing experimental data and new results of simulation. Conditions for zebra occurrence and its technological importance or limitations are discussed.FindingsComputer simulation using the Flux 2D program allows to demonstrate the striation (zebra) effect that can appear in the process of heating magnetic materials and reproduce main experimental findings related to this effect. Simulation provides a great opportunity to investigate the zebra phenomenon in virtual reality, providing qualitatively correct results. Results of simulation show that the zebra effect can appear in a relatively narrow range of material properties and operating conditions. The main factor is a big enough gradient of permeability near the Curie point. At present, it is difficult to expect high quantitative accuracy of simulation due to multiple assumptions in simulation algorithms and insufficient or inaccurate information about the material properties near the Curie point.Originality/valueSeveral explanations of the zebra effect were proposed with not very convincing arguments. There were concerns that the zebra effect could set significant limits on the use of induction heating for surface hardening due to non-uniform temperature distribution along the part (Babat and Lozinskii, 1940; Babat, 1965; Lozinskii, 1949, 1969). However, it did not happen. There were no complaints from scientists or practitioners regarding any negative effect of the zebra phenomenon. Moreover, the authors of this paper did not find any original publications on this issue for more than half a century. Only few old induction experts confirm that they observed the zebra effect or something similar, whereas a great majority of induction community members never heard about it.

The Material Culture of German Texans by Kenneth Hafertepe

Reviewed by: The Material Culture of German Texans by Kenneth Hafertepe Carter L. Hudgins The Material Culture of German Texans. By Kenneth Hafertepe. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 516. $50.00, ISBN 978-1-62349-382-0.) A book, even a small one, that explores the houses, or furniture, or churches, or cemeteries fashioned by any immigrant group in the South would make a welcome contribution to southern material culture studies. Kenneth Hafertepe has accomplished the decidedly more difficult task of writing a big book about the material culture expressions of nineteenth-century German immigrants scattered across a very large state. If Hafertepe had found that, after arriving, German immigrants in Texas attempted to replicate old-world ways only to eschew traditional practices for American ones, this book would be unremarkable. German immigrants in Texas, Hafertepe finds, did initially rely on traditional practices that they slowly relinquished, standing apart for a time from America's beguiling popular culture while they became a part of it. The cultural trajectory German immigrants followed in Texas was, however, much more complicated than that, the pace and character of cultural adaptation and change too lumpy to be explained quite so neatly. Hafertepe invites us to trace through house plans, cabinetmakers, grave markers, and turnvereins how German immigrants, themselves culturally and politically diverse, adapted to each other while they participated in intercultural borrowing among themselves and with Hispanic, Anglo American, and Creole Texans to lay the foundation for what he calls a "blended" material culture (p. 1). The Material Culture of German Texans is notable for its ambition, for the attention it draws to the role material things can play in the historical study of immigrant groups, and for its fresh investigation of a complicated cultural process. Cultural change in Texas reflected national trends—one reason this book is significant beyond what it reveals about Texas towns and farmsteads. In Texas, the decades between 1870 and 1890 were, according to Hafertepe, a period of experimentation in architectural forms and styles. A wider range of architectural expression reflected the penetration of industrially produced architectural elements as well as the influence of national architectural styles and the pattern books and catalogs that made them widely available. Choices made one at a time through this period, Hafertepe reminds us, were influenced not only by the dynamics of national fashions but also by cultural revivalism that followed the end of the Franco-Prussian War, by nostalgia, and by the dynamics of elastic connections between urban centers and the state's rural hinterlands. In an analysis that leans heavily on things, it is interesting that the sample of houses and places the author investigated is relatively small (the house sample appears to be 108) and that more than a few of the houses have been moved from their original locations. Much of the material culture evidence is housed in local [End Page 675] museum collections and heritage centers. While the curation of this evidence is a testament to the interests and energies of local historical organizations in retaining physical links to their pasts, these collections may play a disproportionate role in our understanding of this chapter of Texas history. That said, Hafertepe has assembled a convincing argument built from his own impressive field research and earlier scholarship. The primary audience for this book is surely history-minded Texans, but its wider audience may come to it with less familiarity with Texas places and geography. For these readers, maps of the counties, towns, and cities whose German residents figured in the cultural shifts that Hafertepe traces would help explain the role distance between urban centers and hinterlands played in whether old customs remained vibrant or declined. This book is important for the way it considers overlapping and coincident material culture expressions, house plans, building systems, grave markers, social halls, and furniture principal among them. Combined, this material evidence provides a powerful description of the German Texas landscape. Hafertepe builds along the way a convincing argument that the advent of antiGerman sentiment during World War I, and individual, community, and corporate adjustments to it, came as German distinctiveness was already waning in the Lone Star State's...

Is Chocolate Good for You—or, Is the Cloud Secure?

In assessing the validity of security claims, assurance cases are an effective approach to help refine the claims, collect detailed evidence, narrow options, and structure a convincing and valid argument to justify the resulting decision.