Late 1980s Research Articles

Relationships between the Exiled Ukrainian and Polish Governments in the Realities of the Yalta-Potsdam System of International Relations in the Late 1940s and Early 1990s

Relationships between the Exiled Ukrainian and Polish Governments in the Realities of the Yalta-Potsdam System of International Relations in the Late 1940s and Early 1990s

Examining the effect of permit-less carry laws on violent crime rates in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wyoming

In recent years, many states have loosened regulations regarding carrying a concealed firearm. Permit-less carry laws allow citizens who are legally allowed to own firearms to carry a concealed firearm in public without obtaining a permit. This trend is an evolution of right-to-carry legislation that swept the United States beginning in the late 1980s. Research tends to find that right-to-carry laws increase violent crime. This study examines the effect of permit-less carry laws, independent of right-to-carry laws, on violent crime rates in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, and Wyoming, the first states to adopt permit-less carry legislation, using a 50 state panel data set from years 1995 to 2019. The synthetic control method was employed to find that permit-less carry laws were associated with an increase in aggravated assault in Alaska but generally not associated with variations in violent crime rates in the other states. In sum, moving from right-to-carry to permit-less carry was not found to cause an additional increase in violence on top of existing right-to-carry laws.

Questioning evidence-based practice in physiotherapy: a philosophical reflection. The example of physiotherapy with musicians.

In the late 1990s, evidence-based medicine (EBM) emerged, emphasizing the conscientious use of current best evidence in medicine and ensuring the best care for each individual. Thus, applying evidence-based practice (EBP) in physiotherapy is complex due to sparse research, distinct challenges, and unsuitable tools. This is particularly relevant considering musicians' health since the literature is very limited. The first part advocates for EBP and explain how it ensures both the best care and adherence to ethical principles (beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice), for both caregivers and patients. The second part discusses the common pitfalls often encountered by healthcare professionals, and especially as physiotherapists for musicians, when applying evidence at the patient's bedside, again from both perspectives, healthcare professionals and patients. Finally, this third part aims to open the discussion by considering various perspectives, such as values-based practice or the importance of qualitative research, to reshape EBP in physiotherapy. This work highlights the prevalent existence of grey zones encountered by healthcare practitioners with musicians. While conducting more research to help understand them, physiotherapists must learn to navigate these waters.

Gilles Kepel: Impish Like Voltaire

ABSTRACT Highlighting the two most recent books of French political scientist and philologist Gilles Kepel, this article follows the author’s four-decades-long intellectual journey, from his days as a doctoral student excavating Egypt’s Muslim Brothers in the late 1970s, to his early retirement from Paris’s École Normale Supérieure as a seasoned “elder statesman” of Arab and Islamic Studies in the aftermath of October 7, 2023. A gifted Arabist and prolific polyglot, Kepel is a rarity among public intellectuals, able to intelligibly articulate the complexities of our times’ Islam and Islamism with both Voltairean witty erudition,1 and epistemic modesty. As with the bulk of Kepel’s work, the books under consideration in this article probe contemporary Islam, and the challenges it poses to modern Western and Middle Eastern societies, with deliberation and discernment, bringing to bear a world of historical, theological, and philological knowledge, away from our times internet clicks, soundbites, and memes.

The positive Mozart effect on people with epilepsy: Is there some truth in this claim?

The positive treatment effect of Mozart's melody on patients with epilepsy, which was propagated in the late 1990s, was investigated in 29 papers. Commonly, the first movement of the sonata for two pianos KV 448 was played with many repetitions. At least a fifth of the patients achieved a reduction of seizure frequency of more than 50%. Patients with epileptic discharges from the occipital lobe responded very rarely. The mechanism of the effect is not clear, but the melodic aspects seem to have a significant role in this context.

Russian School Journal in History of Educational Journalism of Russian Diaspora in 1920s and 1930s

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the Russian School journal within the context of the development of émigré periodicals during the 1920s and 1930s. It presents the history and significance of the journal within the system of educational publications of the Russian diaspora. The study specifically investigates the role of Andrei Pavlov in the establishment and publication of the journal, particularly focusing on the financial support from various organizations in Subcarpathian Rus’. Utilizing archival sources, previously lesser-known facts from his biography are reconstructed. The mission of the journal, its structure, and thematic concerns are examined. It is emphasized that the editor perceived the primary objectives of the journal as combating the European spiritual crisis, discussing pressing issues in education and upbringing, providing methodological support for teachers and Russian schools in general, and objectively reporting on the state of Soviet education. Special attention is given to the authorship of the journal, which featured prominent representatives of émigré psychological and pedagogical science such as S. I. Hessen, V. V. Zenkovsky, G. Ya. Troshin, theorists and practitioners from the Czech school, as well as philosophers N. O. Lossky, I. I. Lapshin, and F. Pelikan. The conclusion drawn is that the Russian School journal continued the traditions of Russian pedagogical journals from the late 19th to early 20th centuries and served as a center for coordinating educational efforts among émigrés in the late 1930s.

‘You never get a livelihood out of going to school’: the crisis of urban modernity and the education-employment nexus in Harare, Zimbabwe

The economic crisis and informalisation in Zimbabwe from the late 1990s had many consequences, including the unattainability of the early postcolonial modernist lifestyle and the collapse of the robust education-employment nexus and steady transition pathway from school to work for graduates in urban areas. Education in Zimbabwe played social mobility and social transformation and reproduction functions from colonial times and continued to have an inherent value to Zimbabweans in the postcolonial period. However, with the collapse of the education-employment nexus and structural changes in the opposition movement which offered a transition path from university into party politics until the late 2000s, many school and university graduates did not get to experience social mobility. Accompanied by the wider frustrating conditions, such as bad governance, corruption and economic decline, this resulted in young people reconsidering the social mobility function of education and challenging modernist premises about education. These premises had been reproduced at different levels from family to wider society, and young people started rethinking and challenging them through their narratives, considering curriculum changes to include entrepreneurship education, participation in the informal economy and protest movements, all of which challenge the postcolonial modernity framework.

Artistic Peculiarities of Mikhail Volkov’s Collection “Tales of Antrop from Fox Hills”

This article analyzes the Mikhail Volkov’s collection “Tales of Antrop from Fox Hills”, which was repeatedly republished in the late 1920s. It notes the characteristic trend of cyclicality in the first decade after the October Revolution: uniting novellas into books and collections. The study is based on the 1926 editions and the reprints of 1927, reflecting a change in the author’s concept: a semantic and thematic reorientation. The research aims to identify the artistic specificity of M. Volkov’s book, with tasks including understanding the functional role of the title and preface of the collection as parts of the header-final complex, characterizing the image of the fictional author-narrator, and exploring the genre features of the book. It is established, firstly, that while in the first edition, the narrator’s figure, his narrative style, and storytelling method were significant, in reprints, the narrated world becomes more important. Secondly, the fictional author-narrator, Grandpa Antrop, describes the humorous world of the village slowly changing and restructuring in the first post-revolutionary decade through a storytelling manner in a series of “tales.” Thirdly, in terms of genre, the novellas in the collection tend towards anecdote. It is shown that at the core of the paradoxically developing, comedic plot is the storyteller himself, presenting all stories as a life “fact” presented in a playful form.

Close to Home: Suburbanization, Residential Segregation, and Jewish-Black Relations in St. Louis Park and North Minneapolis, MN

This study examines the suburbanization of Minneapolis’ Jewish community during the postwar period, focusing on the ethnic enclave of North Minneapolis and the Jewish ethnoburb of St. Louis Park. It argues that as part of this process, Jewish leaders adopted a strategy of self-discipline, in which they would go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that instances of Jewish racism and other actions that threatened the community’s White, middle-class, and liberal image did not become public knowledge. Minneapolis Jews’ liberal ideology and self-disciplinary practices clashed with the increasingly public and confrontational tactics of the city’s Black liberation movement, facilitating a series of conflicts between Blacks and Jews in the neighborhood during the late 1960s. Jews, conditioned by postwar liberalism not to see how institutional racism affected their Black neighbors, interpreted these conflicts through the same lens they had applied to their experiences with prewar anti-semitism.

Russian internet news sites, 2008–2018: Fostering an informed citizenry?

Since Perestroika, Russian journalism has gone through a liberalization. However, the short lived apex of journalistic freedom that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s was followed by a setback in particular since Putin’s accession to power in 2000. The situation for the freedom of the daily press has stagnated. Despite this, the findings based on qualitative text analysis of news articles in some of the most important Russian news sites, strongly indicate that during 2008–2018 readers of news sites were being addressed as active and knowledgeable citizens. The methods focussing on perspectivation and the use of sources, exploring what voices that are used to get messages through and how they are represented, are applied to four case studies casting light on the period. The findings imply that a number of Russian Internet outlets had strengthened their role as advocates of the Fourth Estate. The results further indicate a sharp distinction between news sites that are utilizing traditional Western journalistic devices, and news sites employing a traditional Russian/Soviet journalistic approach. Thus, the roles of the audiences as active citizens were to a certain extent strengthened.

Eviscerated to Revolutionary: Rethinking International Aid and Civil Society in Cambodia and Myanmar

International aid actors and their role in supporting civil society, particularly non-government organisations (NGOs), in Asia has attracted extensive debate. Some view donors’ New Policy Agenda to have de-politicised and “NGOised” civil society, undermining broader emancipatory movements. Such analyses, however, often take limited account of historical and political factors that are deeply influential. Cambodia and Myanmar offer unique insights into these debates; following decades of international isolation, both countries experienced vast influxes of aid, from the early 1990s and late 2000s respectively. Yet in 2024, civil society activism is eviscerated in Cambodia, while a broad alliance is pursing revolution in Myanmar against the 2021 military coup. Through a comparative analysis, this article examines how aid and civil society interact over an extended time, and what the radically different trajectories mean regarding the dynamics between international aid and civil society actors. The article concludes that although international aid had a distortionary impact, historical and political factors were far more consequential in shaping civil society in both countries, particularly the scale of informal, non-NGO activism, which has ultimately proven far more resilient and transformative.

Early polar-orbiting satellite-based fire remote sensing during the 1960s

ABSTRACT Satellite-based sensors such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) now routinely provide a detailed picture of global fire activity on a daily basis. These systems explicitly included biomass burning as a phenomenon of interest, and their design was heavily influenced by experience gained with the comparatively primitive Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) first deployed on the TIROS-N satellite in the late 1970s. The AVHRR is generally recognized as the earliest spaceborne sensor to provide a middle infrared (MWIR) channel sensitive to actively burning vegetation fires and other high-temperature, sub-pixel thermal anomalies, forming the basis of countless fire studies before higher quality MODIS data became available. Here, we consider in the context of active fire monitoring a sensor much older than the AVHRR, namely the High Resolution Infrared Radiometer (HRIR) on board NASA’s Nimbus-I, -II, and -III satellites, launched in 1964, 1966, and 1969, respectively. This early imaging sensor had a single MWIR channel primarily intended for night-time meteorological observations (a complementary daytime near-infrared channel was added for Nimbus-III) that could potentially serve as a source of pre-AVHRR active fire data. To this end, we inspected night-time HRIR imagery acquired over the western United States and found unambiguous evidence of multiple confirmed wildfires in 1966. In addition, we found strong evidence of actively burning fires in Africa, specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo, western Zambia, and northern Namibia, and in northern Australia, commensurate with their fire seasons. Our findings indicate that it was actually the HRIR that acquired the earliest MWIR imagery that could be used for identifying biomass burning from space, well over a decade before the first AVHRR was deployed. We found in addition that the retrieval of fire radiative power (FRP) from higher dynamic-range HRIR observations was potentially possible pending refined calibration.

Functoriality in categorical symplectic geometry

Categorical symplectic geometry is the study of a rich collection of invariants of symplectic manifolds, including the Fukaya A ∞ A_\infty -category, Floer cohomology, and symplectic cohomology. Beginning with work of Wehrheim and Woodward in the late 2000s, several authors have developed techniques for functorial manipulation of these invariants. We survey these functorial structures, including Wehrheim and Woodward’s quilted Floer cohomology and functors associated to Lagrangian correspondences, Fukaya’s alternate approach to defining functors between Fukaya A ∞ A_\infty -categories, and the second author’s ongoing construction of the symplectic ( A ∞ , 2 ) (A_\infty ,2) -category. In the last section, we describe a number of direct and indirect applications of this circle of ideas, and propose a conjectural version of the Barr–Beck monadicity criterion in the context of the Fukaya A ∞ A_\infty -category.

Reconstruction of invasion pathways of East Asian crab species of the genus Hemigrapsus (Decapoda, Brachyura, Varunidae) based on a comparative phylogeographic approach

Abstract Three intertidal varunid crab species of the genus Hemigrapsus, viz. H. penicillatus, H. sanguineus, and H. takanoi, are widely distributed along the East Asian coastline. The first two became globally well-known after their introduction into Atlantic waters of North America and Europe. Since the first record in the late 1980s, they established breeding populations and now live in sympatry with native and other invasive crab species. The aim of this study was to determine the correct species identity and geographic origin of these invasive populations and, if possible, estimate the number of independent invasion events. For that purpose, specimens from the three species were obtained from native populations in Taiwan, Japan, Russia, Korea, and China, and genetically compared to invasive populations from Europe and the U.S.A. Sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene were generated and used for haplotype network and AMOVA analyses, thus providing insights into the potential invasion pathways, gene flow, and phylogeography of the two invasive species. Pronounced geographic structure for all three species is revealed in their native ranges, with a marked differentiation among northern and southern populations. We furthermore provide evidence that all invasions into North America and Europe originated from northern Asian populations, which is in line with similar climatic conditions in Europe, northeastern America and northern Asia. Our results also confirm the recent finding that all European populations previously thought to consist of H. penicillatus should be reclassified as H. takanoi.

To the Journal, the American Sociologist

AbstractSociology is a field that examines the social construction of various aspects of human life, including gender and sexuality, and explores how these are produced and perceived by individuals, groups, and institutions. In Italy, despite resistance to institutionalization, Gender Studies have significantly enriched sociology by identifying new research areas and generating innovative analytical categories. Initially linked to second-wave feminism, Gender Studies gained momentum in the Western world from the mid-1970s, exploring the nature-culture-society relationship and its impact on bodies, sexuality, and identity within specific cultural contexts. The Gender Studies section within the Italian Sociology Association was established in 2012 after a prolonged accreditation process. While gender issues entered Italian social sciences in the late 1970s, their integration varied across research areas. Sociology, with its broad analytical frameworks, has played a crucial role in understanding and addressing gender disparities in a country marked by a discriminatory welfare system. The integration of gender perspectives into sociological research has fostered a deeper understanding of Italian social reality and reshaped scientific paradigms. Moreover, sociology’s comprehensive approach to studying social inequalities has been instrumental in highlighting the importance of gender studies within academia. Recent years have witnessed increased attention to Gender Studies in Italian universities, reflecting legislative mandates and evolving cultural attitudes. More scholars, including men, are engaging with gender issues, expanding research beyond women’s status to encompass diverse sexual and gender identities. Approaches like intersectionality promise to broaden the scope of Gender Studies within Italian sociology, offering new avenues for exploration and analysis. The collaboration between sociology and gender studies continues to enhance the academic environment and contributes significantly to the evolution of Italian society.

ASEAN Four’s middle income trap dilemma: evidence of the middle technology trap

In Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines are defined by the World Bank as countries that failed to overcome the "middle income trap". The four Southeast Asian countries (hereinafter referred to as the "ASEAN Four") entered the ranks of middle-income economies in the late 1970s and early 1980s and achieved rapid economic development throughout the 1980s and 1990s. However, since the early 2000s, the competitive advantages of these countries’ labor-intensive industries have started to decline, while the process of industrial transformation and technological improvement has been stagnated due to the lack of innovation resources. With limited R&D input and insufficient indigenous tech innovation, these countries’ manufacturing industry show a trend of "deindustrialization" and the "middle technology trap" phenomenon emerged. As the manufacturing sector failed to generate value-added that promotes economic growth and national income increase, ASEAN Four have so far yet to enter the high-income ranks. Drawing from the cases of ASEAN Four, this paper argues that the "middle technology trap" is a key contributing factor to the “middle income trap,” and countries fallen into the “middle income trap” often experience the "middle technology trap" as a concomitant phenomenon. The paper first introduces the industrialization process of ASEAN Four while analyzes the challenges they faced in industrial structural transformation and technology advancement. It then discusses major reasons that these countries failed to step over both the "middle technology trap" and the “middle income trap”, including limited technology spillovers from FDI, R&D investment shortages and insufficient industrial policies, low-quality education system, deficient intellectual property protection and underdeveloped regional capital markets. The paper concludes with some implications for China and discussion on potential future research on distinctions of the “middle technology trap” phenomenon between upper middle-income and lower middle-income countries.

Attitudes to Crime and Punishment in England and Wales, 1964–2023: A Reinterpretation of the 1980s and a Model of Interactions Between Concern, Punitiveness and Prioritization

Abstract This paper assembles the largest set of British survey questions about criminal justice to date (1,190 question-year pairs) and uses it to measure crime concern, punitiveness, support for the death penalty and the prioritization of crime as a social issue from the 1960s to today. Results lend some support to existing narratives of public opinion, showing that concern and prioritization grew steadily through the 1970s before declining from the mid-2000s, and that support for the death penalty has been falling since at least the 1960s. But they contradict orthodox accounts of the 1980s as a period of rising punitiveness, showing instead that support for tougher policing and sentencing was highly volatile and subject to significant demographic variation until the late 1990s. I also show that crime concern is particularly responsive to the true rate of crime and propose a model for the interaction between these different strands of public opinion.

Forest disturbance regimes and trends in continental Spain (1985–2023) using dense landsat time series

Forest disturbance regimes across biomes are being altered by interactive effects of global change. Establishing baselines for assessing change requires detailed quantitative data on past disturbance events, but such data are scarce and difficult to obtain over large spatial and temporal scales. The integration of remote sensing with dense time series analysis and cloud computing platforms is enhancing the ability to monitor historical disturbances, and especially non-stand replacing events along climatic gradients. Since the integration of such tools is still scarce in Mediterranean regions, here, we combine dense Landsat time series and the Continuous Change Detection and Classification - Spectral Mixture Analysis (CCDC-SMA) method to monitor forest disturbance in continental Spain from 1985 to 2023. We adapted the CCDC-SMA method for improved disturbance detection creating new spectral libraries representative of the study region, and quantified the year, month, severity, return interval, and type of disturbance (stand replacing, non-stand replacing) at a 30 m resolution. In addition, we characterised forest disturbance regimes and trends (patch size and severity, and frequency of events) of events larger than 0.5 ha at the national scale by biome (Mediterranean and temperate) and forest type (broadleaf, needleleaf and mixed). We quantified more than 2.9 million patches of disturbed forest, covering 4.6 Mha over the region and period studied. Forest disturbances were on average larger but less severe in the Mediterranean than in the temperate biome, and significantly larger and more severe in needleleaf than in mixed and broadleaf forests. Since the late 1980s, forest disturbances have decreased in size and severity while increasing in frequency across all biomes and forest types. These results have important implications as they confirm that disturbance regimes in continental Spain are changing and should therefore be considered in forest strategic planning for policy development and implementation.

On the association of Pacific Decadal Oscillation with the interdecadal variability in Asian-Pacific Oscillation

The Asian-Pacific Oscillation (APO), featuring a seesaw pattern in the upper-tropospheric temperatures between Asia and the North Pacific, plays profound roles in the Northern Hemispheric climate anomalies. So, its variability and associated physical mechanisms are of great interest. Although progress has been achieved for the APO variability at the interannual time scale, the understanding of its interdecadal variability remains relatively poor. Based on the twentieth-century reanalysis and the simulations of the preindustrial control, Pacific pacemaker, and large ensemble experiments, this study reports a salient contribution of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) to the interdecadal variability of the APO during summer, featured as a warm (cold) PDO phase accompanying a negative (positive) APO polarity. During the warm PDO phase, the sea surface temperature (SST) warming over the eastern Pacific is conducive to local ascending anomalies, which teleconnect with descending anomalies over the Tibetan Plateau through zonal vertical circulations. The anomalous ascent (descent) over the eastern Pacific (Tibetan Plateau) tends to strengthen (weaken) the atmospheric heating, beneficial for a warming (cooling) of the troposphere in situ. In addition, the PDO-related meridional SST gradient anomalies favor a southward shift of the subtropical jet stream, weakening the South Asian high and the North Pacific trough in the upper troposphere, which corresponds to the atmospheric situation of a negative APO phase. Quantitative analysis from the large ensemble simulations indicates that the PDO may contribute to approximately 48% of recent APO interdecadal variation from the negative phase to the positive phase in the late 1990s.

Modern Diplomacy and the Changing Nature of International Politics in the 21st Century

International politics have become more complex since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, and consequently, it confuses traditional diplomats.[i] This intricacy is because the post-Cold War international era requires diplomacy to move from being foremost about high politics such as security, military and geopolitical issues to incorporating a wider and growing scope of issues outside of a state’s national borders like migration, gender, global warming, desertification and diseases. Not only are these novel policy themes an indication of how diplomacy’s agenda is growing, but they also indicate that an increasing number of participating stakeholders must be included in contemporary diplomatic practice.[ii] To further scrutinise the phenomena driving change and influencing modern diplomacy, the research utilises specific and relevant international political issues such as post-Cold War international politics, the hegemonic decline of the US, the rise of China, the problems in the Middle East, nuclear disarmament, climate change, Globalisation, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the COVID-19 pandemic and diplomatic inflation. 1) Haynes 2011, 5-6, 8; Stern 2015; Spies 2019a, 42-43. [ii]) Haynes 2011, 8; Sharp 1999, 33; Spies 2019a, 42-43.