Early 1990s Research Articles

Decarceration in Southern Europe: Notes on Climate Change in the Penal Field

AbstractAgainst the backdrop of the economic and political crises affecting Europe in the late 2000s and early 2010s, incarceration rates began to shrink in many European countries, ushering in a decarceration period that continues to this day—albeit with cross-border divergences. In fact, Europe was the world region with the greatest decline in incarceration rates in the 2010s. Evidently, this unexpected shift stands in stark contrast to the penal populism policies characterising penality in global north regions in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as to the mass incarceration path still followed by many global south jurisdictions in the 2020s. Spain is a suitable national case to examine this recent turn, since Spanish incarceration rates increased almost eightfold in just three decades, before an intriguing and steady decline began that is almost unparalleled in western Europe. This paper focuses on the Spanish case, exploring the background and proximate causes that have enabled the current decarceration scenario. In addition, it scrutinises if and to what extent the changes witnessed in the Spanish case reverberate across wider European regions. In so doing, the paper attempts to grasp the climate change impacting the penal field in many global north jurisdictions.

Integrative Review of Riparian Buffers Benefits in Urbanized Watersheds

Riparian buffers or riparian corridors are areas of vegetation in the floodplains and areas surrounding a stream. By the early 2000s, numerous national reports and studies of riparian buffer benefits established that vegetation near streams is helpful in protecting the stream from increasing urban runoff, minimizing bank erosion, reducing flooding, and improving overall water quality. However, influential studies concluded that buffer benefits dwindle as urbanization increases, eventually becoming ineffective. This study evaluates more recent research that suggests riparian buffers are more effective at countering urbanization impacts than previously understood, and considers the extent to which we can quantify these benefits and identify the factors that maximize their effectiveness (i.e. greater efficiency based on buffer distance from the stream, extent of stream setbacks, and percentage of impervious cover in the area). Much of the research has been conducted in the Kansas City area in the Blue River Watershed, which begins in Kansas and flows into Missouri River east of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. About 800,000 residents live in the watershed, which includes some of the region’s fastest growing areas. It is critical to protect this major resource, and other regional rivers and streams, for residents of the Kansas City Metropolitan area and the ecosystems that depend on them. It is also critical to provide the latest and best information to the community-of-practice currently updating regional stormwater management planning and design guidance.

The Spread of Montessori Education in Mainland China

This paper is a historical account of the spread of Montessori education in mainland China. It surveys the general picture of early childhood education (ECE) in China and discusses the factors leading to the popularity of Montessori education in the 1990s. Although first introduced into China in the early 1900s, for reasons explained, Montessori education was unsuccessful in catching on as an education method in the early part of the 20th century. Following policy changes and growing interest in western education methods, Montessori education reemerged in the 1990s and has remained a sought-out education method since. In this paper, localization is also discussed as a prominent concern expressed in the Chinese research is ensuring Montessori education promotes and instills values consistent with Chinese society. As is shown, elements of the Montessori method are consistent with Chinese culture, creating a cooperative relationship between these two systems. Of equal importance, Montessori education emphasizes the cultivation of collective identity and societal relationships similar to Chinese culture, the slight difference between them being that Montessori also emphasized the construction of the individual as well.

The Ethiopian State, Foreign Policy and Participation in International Peacekeeping: Continuities and Changes

Abstract This article examines the continuities and changes in Ethiopian peacekeeping practices since its inception in the early 1950s to the present. It focuses on how international operations have interacted with historical, structural and ideational factors to shape Ethiopia’s involvement. Drawing on archival sources, policy papers, and media material as well as interviews with officials in Ethiopia, it singles out four distinct periods that have influenced Ethiopia’s participation in peacekeeping mission. It shows that all were characterised by the interplay between geopolitical factors, regional developments in Africa and domestic political changes. By identifying the major shifts in Ethiopia’s foreign policy orientation and involvement in peacekeeping, the article seeks to explains the rise of Ethiopia’s as a major actor in international peacekeeping since the early 2000s. It concludes by highlighting uncertainties facing Ethiopian peacekeeping due to regional complexities and political constraints resulting from internal conflicts.

The ROSMAP project: aging and neurodegenerative diseases through omic sciences.

The Religious Order Study and Memory and Aging Project (ROSMAP) is an initiative that integrates two longitudinal cohort studies, which have been collecting clinicopathological and molecular data since the early 1990s. This extensive dataset includes a wide array of omic data, revealing the complex interactions between molecular levels in neurodegenerative diseases (ND) and aging. Neurodegenerative diseases (ND) are frequently associated with morbidity and cognitive decline in older adults. Omics research, in conjunction with clinical variables, is crucial for advancing our understanding of the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. This summary reviews the extensive omics research-encompassing genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, and multiomics-conducted through the ROSMAP study. It highlights the significant advancements in understanding the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular focus on Alzheimer's disease.

Identifying Childhood Risk Factors for Hepatitis B with a Focus on Vertical Transmission

Background: Despite worldwide vaccination efforts, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains a significant global health burden, particularly in regions where vertical transmission is prevalent. Given Romania’s history as an endemic area for hepatitis B from the 1990s until the early 2000s and the previously high infection rates among children, it is crucial to continually evaluate HBV infection in this population to monitor current trends, assess the long-term impact of vaccination programs, and address any remaining gaps in prevention and treatment efforts. This study aims to identify childhood risk factors associated with HBV acquisition, examining the role of maternal HBV status in child HBV infection, focusing on vertical transmission among a cohort of 654 children, with maternal infection as the independent variable and child infection as the dependent variable. Methods: We assessed potential risk factors and vaccination coverage among these children. The cohort included 148 children who tested positive for chronic hepatitis B from those 654 tested for HBsAg. Anamnestic data and vaccination history were analyzed, with particular attention to birth type and surgical interventions. Results: Of the 148 HBV-positive children, 80.4% were delivered naturally. Among these, 130 had received hepatitis B vaccination, and 5 were also given hepatitis B immunoglobulin at birth, 4 of whom were born via cesarean section. In the control group, comprising 418 vaccinated children, a lesser proportion were unvaccinated (2.2%). Documented surgical interventions included general and dental surgeries, as well as a single blood transfusion. Conclusions: The study emphasizes the need for comprehensive vaccination strategies and illuminates potential correlations between birth type and vaccination status with childhood HBV infection. Crucially, it highlights the necessity of diligent monitoring and treatment of pregnant women with HBV to prevent vertical transmission as effectively as possible.

Family Farmers as Agents in the Struggle for Survival: A Case Study from Turkey☆

AbstractThis paper discusses the survival strategies of small family farms in a western Anatolian village in the context of ongoing debates in the current literature concerning the future of small or peasant family farms under the conditions of the neoliberal era. The main argument of the paper is that even though the neoliberal agrarian policies in Turkey put into effect since the early 1980s have divested farmers of much of the protective policies in force in earlier periods—thereby putting them under much severe market pressures—other pressure mechanisms in this case under investigation have a more central impact on their survival. These pressures are the patterns of social and cultural change that occur due to modernization, alongside regulations concerning access to land which the farmers seem to be able to counter by organizing and mobilizing their internal, material, and social resources, within cultural norms. The arguments presented are based on the analysis of empirical data collected through field work carried out in a village of farmers specializing and engaged in the production of dried figs. The study emphasizes the multi‐causal, multi‐layered, contingent, and hybrid nature of the question of survival for these villagers and argues that it should be evaluated as a process, rather than an outcome, with the villagers themselves as agents in this process.

Choosing a Vita Site Model: Traditional Face-To-Face versus Alternative Virtual Models

Since the early 1970s, the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Volunteer Income Tax Assistance/Tax Counseling for the Elderly (hereafter, VITA) programs have provided free income tax return preparation and filing assistance for eligible taxpayers in various underserved communities. In 2020, COVID-19 presented VITA Site Coordinators with the unique challenge of either shutting down completely or finding ways to remain open amid a global pandemic. Many of those that remained open found themselves forced to rely upon virtual methods to accomplish at least some of the steps in the return preparation process, prompting heightened concerns over taxpayer identity verification and securitization of taxpayers’ personal information. Post-COVID beginning in 2022, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to ensure consistent operation of all sites regardless of the site model being used, began requiring VITA Site Coordinators to document and receive approval for their planned methodologies by December 31 of the year preceding each filing season. The process is more burdensome for those sites using any remote methodologies and could partially explain why the number of VITA sites, VITA volunteers, and returns processed at VITA sites have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. This paper is intended to help VITA Site Coordinators better understand the different models they might use and make a sound choice based on that understanding to motivate greater participation in the VITA program.

Evolutionary and epidemiological insights from historical and modern genomes of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola, the causal agent of bacterial leaf streak of rice.

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola (Xoc) causes bacterial leaf streak (BLS) of rice. This disease represents a major constraint for rice production, a crop feeding more than half of the world's population. Xoc was first described in 1918 in the Philippines and is prevalent in Southeast Asia. Today, BLS is also omnipresent in both East and West Africa where the disease was first reported in the early 1980s. The appearance of Xoc in Africa decades after its first report in Asia suggests that the disease could have been introduced from Asia to Africa. Strict conservation of five Transcription Activator Like (TAL) effectors in whole-genome sequences of 10 strains of Xoc including 3 from West-Africa and 7 from Asia also support this hypothesis. East Africa, and especially Madagascar, where the disease was first described in 1985 is located at the interface between Asia and Africa, hence representing an interesting region to explore the link between strains from Asia and West-Africa. In this study, we i) reconstructed the genome of an historical Xoc strain from herbarium specimen of rice showing symptoms of BLS, sampled in Madagascar in 1931, 50 years before the first description of the disease, and ii) sequenced 9 new modern strains including 5 from Madagascar and East-Africa. The analysis of those new genomes along with previously published ones shed light within the evolutionary and epidemiological history of Xoc.

Women’s affective labor in the Red Army’s war propaganda in the early 1930s

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that women’s affective labor was widely and deeply appropriated in the Red Army’s war propaganda in the early 1930s. This appropriation allowed women to emerge as free humans, visible social producers, empowered political subjects, significant war participants, and active shapers of history on an unprecedented scale in Chinese history. The selected cases examined in this paper are drawn from the songs, plays, and posters employed in the Red Army’s war propaganda of the early 1930s. By highlighting the recurrent symbols of women’s affective labor in these rudimentary yet innovative examples of wartime propaganda, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the complex and dialogic messages regarding women’s contribution to social production and reproduction conveyed through the Red Army’s propaganda. Additionally, this paper explores the liberating potential of gendered affective labor as a non-capitalist concept.

Transnationalism and Populist Networks in a Digital Era: Canada and the Freedom Convoy

Abstracts The growth and success of right-wing populist movements globally has been remarkable since the early 2010s. Indeed, populist parties in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America have received tremendous electoral success, shaping a movement for the people and by the people within the political sphere. To what extent do populist movements influence other such programs across national borders? Research has suggested that globalization has facilitated the spread of populist ideology. Transnational populism emphasizes the “people” as a “horizontal, membership-based collective with membership premised on an in/out logic between nations, allowing populist national movements to engage and share a global ideological program. This paper seeks to understand and measure to what extent populism has become a transnational movement and identify how populism moves across national borders through online political participation. To explore this question, we collected over 6.7 million digital trace data on X/Twitter during Canada’s January–February 2022 Freedom Convoy movement. Receiving support from thousands of citizens, the Freedom Convoy revealed the ability of populist ideology to move aimlessly across international borders. We used a deep-learning model applied to text analysis to implement a classification task to measure populist narratives during the movement.

Tax Reforms and the Decline of the London Stock Market: The Untold Story

234 Various reasons have been put forward for the declining global relevance of the London equity market. Reform proposals and changes already implemented target some of the major problems identified as reasons for the stock market’s decline. Surprisingly, tax related explanations for the current state of the UK stock market are largely absent from the discourse. This paper argues that the preferential tax treatment of the dividend income of UK pension funds and insurance companies introduced in the early 1970s and repealed in the mid 1990s first contributed to the UK stock market’s growth by implicitly subsidising financing via equity and encouraging the flow of the funds of these investors into the market, and subsequently led to the market’s decline as a result of the outflow of the funds of the two major classes of institutional investors: UK pension funds and insurance companies. The key implication of this argument is that omitting tax as a major factor in the decline of the UK stock market risks ending up with reforms that can, at best, do little to change the current situation.

319 Reflections on the most cited paper in the ninety-nine-year history of Canadian Society of Animal Science

Abstract Measurement of nutrient digestibility is a key pillar in estimating the value of feeds for livestock. Conditions are not always amendable to estimating feed digestibility through total collection methods, and as a result digestibility markers are frequently employed. The first “Digestibility markers” were reported in the early 1900s where colored glass beads were used to estimate the flow of digesta through the digestive tract. Subsequently, a myriad of digestibility markers has been assessed with the internal markers; acid insoluble ash, acid detergent lignin, indigestible neutral detergent fiber and n-alkanes and the external markers titanium dioxide and chromic oxide being the most common. Chromic oxide (Cr2O3) was first proposed as a digestibility maker in 1918 and continues to be widely used in modern day metabolism, confined performance and grazing livestock experiments. It was the demand to use chromic acid as a digestibility marker that led Terry and Mira Fenton to publish the article “An improved procedure for the determination of chromic oxide in feed and feces” in the Canadian Journal of Animal Science in 1979. This became the most cited article in the history of the journal with over 800 citations. The procedure eliminated the use of nitric acid in a pre-digestion step and ashing reduced the organic matter content, making it less likely that perchloric acid would be converted to anhydrous perchloric acid which poses an explosive hazard. The procedure continues to be widely used to measure Cr2O3 as a digestibility marker and has made a significant contribution to our assessment of the value of a wide range of feeds for Canadian livestock.

RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉ LITERATURE AND THE “RUSSIAN HELP ACTION” OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK GOVERNMENT

The article is devoted to the features of the phenomenon that was formed in the early 1920s in Prague, the Russian émigré literary centre. It is emphasised that thanks to the government support provided within the framework of “The Russian Help Action” dozens of émigré institutions and organisations were founded, which considered their main task to satisfy the cultural, including literary, needs of the exiles. The exile work of writers, critics, historians and publicists was directly connected with Prague, as their heritage had made the important contribution not only to Russian but also to the world culture. Many writers settled there and the significant part of them remained in Czechoslovakia until the end of their lives. Among them were Arkady Averchenko, Alfred Bem, Valentin Bulgakov, Boris Yevreinov, Daniil Ratgauz, Pyotr Kozhevnikov, Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko, Marina Tsvetaeva, Evgeny Chirikov, Konstantin Chkheidze, Roman Jacobson. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, being an expert on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s creative activity, had no doubt that Soviet power would become a thing of the past, therefore in his opinion it was necessary to preserve Russian intelligentsia in exile, which he considered the main bearer and propagator of democratic ideas.

Genetic Re-assessment of Population Subdivision in Yellowstone National Park Bison.

Yellowstone National Park is home to the only plains bison population that has continually existed as wildlife, on the same landscape, through the population bottleneck of the late 19th century. Nevertheless, by the early 1900s, only 23 wild bison were known to have survived poaching. Salvation efforts included the addition of 18 females from Montana and 3 bulls from Texas to augment this population. A century later, nuclear microsatellite-based population level assessment revealed two genetically distinct bison sub-populations. However, in 2016 an analysis of mitochondrial haplotypes showed the two founding lineages were distributed throughout the park. This study is designed to delineate any current sub-structure in the Yellowstone bison population by strategically sampling the two major summer breeding herds and the two major winter ranges. Population level metrics were derived using the same microsatellite loci as the original study along with a newly developed set of highly informative bison specific Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). Our analyses reveal that the modern bison in Yellowstone National Park currently consist of one interbreeding population, comprised of two subunits.

COLLECTIVE MEMORY: KAZAKH EXODUS FROM ALTAY MOUNTAINS

This paper examines the collective memory and identity processes of Kazakhs in Istanbul, Turkey, who settled there in the early 1950s. Now numbering around 20,000, these Kazakhs fled their homeland in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region after failed uprisings against the Chinese government in the 1930s and 1940s. After a period in India, they were accepted into Turkey as migrants with Turkish ancestry. The study focuses on the Kazakh exodus during the 1930s and 1940s, emphasizing how this history shapes their present identity. The trauma of this migration remains deeply embedded in their collective memory, influencing not only their identity and political views but also decisions in areas such as voting, political alliances, and even naming their children. The paper mainly draws on the findings from the author’s PhD dissertation, which was defended in 2020.

How Did Stanford Continue to Foster Growth in Silicon Valley during the Early 2000s?

This research paper examines the symbiotic relationship between the Silicon Valley and Stanford University and how it has affected the startup scene during the early 2000s in San Francisco Bay. Furthermore, a historical analysis of Stanford and Silicon Valley focuses on the deepened relationship these two entities have set up. Additionally, many companies that started out of the Silicon Valley that changes the world will be named. Lastly, motivations and future directions of the Valley and Stanford will be explained. The rise of massive open course ware (MOOCs) by universities such as Harvard and MIT send knowledge at no cost and might change the Valley for the time to come.

Historical drivers of HCV Subtypes 1b and 3a in Thailand and 6f in Phetchabun, an HCV endemic area of the country.

The World Health Organization has set a target to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public threat by 2030. In pursuit of this goal, Thailand initiated a hepatitis C virus (HCV) microelimination project targeting Phetchabun province, a well-recognized high-burden HCV endemic area. However, the historical transmission dynamics of HCV in Phetchabun, and in Thailand in general, remain unclear. This study investigates the epidemic histories of HCV in Phetchabun, focusing on Subtypes 1b, 3a, and 6f, and their relationship with HCV in other regions of Thailand, using molecular phylogenetic analyses. Our results reveal nationwide the presence of Subtypes 1b and 3a, while Subtype 6f is mainly confined to Phetchabun. The initial spread of Subtype 1b was inferred to coincide with World War II and the period of suboptimal medical and hygienic standards in Thai blood transfusion services, suggesting a correlation between the two. The early expansion of Subtype 3a was, on the other hand, found to correlate with the epidemic of intravenous drug use in Thailand during the time of Vietnam War. The early expansion of Subtype 6f, in contrast, appears to coincide with the period of severe regional political conflict and social and economic instability. All these findings suggest the complex interplay between social determinants of health and HCV transmission. Post the mid-1990s/early 2000s, all subtypes showed significantly reduced population growth rates, aligning with improvements in blood transfusion safety standards, the nationwide "War on Drugs" policy, and enhanced accessibility to public healthcare and HCV treatments. These combined efforts likely have contributed to curbing the spread of HCV in Thailand. Nevertheless, our analyses reveal that the prevalence of HCV in Thailand remains high overall, emphasizing the need for further research and a nationwide approach to more effectively reduce the HCV burden in Thailand.

Municipal Politics and the PKK in the early 1970s: A citizenship perspective

This paper examines the Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) municipal politics in the late 1970s through the lens of citizenship politics. The article introduces two concepts—activist citizenship and fugitive citizenship to analyse the PKK’s mobilisation in this period, before the 1980 military coup in Turkey. Activist citizenship challenges the restrictive boundaries of state-sanctioned citizenship, while fugitive citizenship creates alternative political spaces for marginalized groups. Both concepts highlight how individuals and groups, such as the PKK, can assert their political agency in contexts where they are denied formal citizenship. The research questions linear understandings of the PKK’s emergence as a political movement inevitably destined to become an insurgent movement.

Mapping Transmission Dynamics and Drug Resistance Surveillance in the Cyprus HIV-1 Epidemic (2017-2021).

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) epidemic has been a major public health threat on a global scale since the early 1980s. Despite the introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), the incidence of new HIV-1 infections continues to rise in some regions around the world. Thus, with the continuous transmission of HIV-1 and the lack of a cure, it is imperative for molecular epidemiological studies to be performed, to monitor the infection and ultimately be able to control the spread of this virus. This work provides a comprehensive molecular epidemiological analysis of the HIV-1 infection in Cyprus, through examining 305 HIV-1 sequences collected between 9 March 2017 and 14 October 2021. Employing advanced statistical and bioinformatic techniques, the research delved deeply into understanding the transmission dynamics of the HIV-1 epidemic in Cyprus, as well as the monitoring of HIV-1's genetic diversity and the surveillance of transmitted drug resistance. The characterization of Cyprus's HIV-1 epidemic revealed a diverse landscape, comprising 21 HIV-1 group M pure subtypes and circulating recombinant forms (CRFs), alongside numerous uncharacterized recombinant strains. Subtypes A1 and B emerged as the most prevalent strains, followed by CRF02_AG. The findings of this study also revealed high levels of transmitted drug resistance (TDR) patterns, raising concerns for the efficacy of cART. The demographic profiles of individuals involved in HIV-1 transmission underscored the disproportionate burden borne by young to middle-aged Cypriot males, particularly those in the MSM community, who reported contracting the virus in Cyprus. An assessment of the spatiotemporal evolutionary dynamics illustrated the global interconnectedness of HIV-1 transmission networks, implicating five continents in the dissemination of strains within Cyprus: Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and Oceania. Overall, this study advances the comprehension of the HIV-1 epidemic in Cyprus and highlights the importance of understanding HIV-1's transmission dynamics through continuous surveillance efforts. Furthermore, this work emphasizes the critical role of state-of-the-art bioinformatics analyses in addressing the challenges posed by HIV-1 transmission globally, laying the groundwork for public health interventions aimed at curbing its spread and improving patient outcomes.