Nice Examples Research Articles

Global challenges for developmental psychology: fostering future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts

ABSTRACT This introduction of the special issue on ‘Global Challenges for Developmental Psychology’ argues that although developmental science is international, a European perspective is important, for at least three reasons: developmental psychology stems from Europe, there are specific themes and issues within Europe that ask for evidence-based solutions, and research in Europe with its many languages and fault-lines can be exemplary for global research. Global challenges are asking for future-oriented, cooperative, and collective efforts. Future-orientation can be found within the papers of this special issue on two levels: (1) when future developments guide the choice of research topics, and (2) when children need to be prepared for the future. The first level describes to which future challenges researchers aim to contribute knowledge, e.g., when investigating climate change, social inequalities, or digital technologies. On the second-level researchers aim to develop means to prepare children for a positive future, e.g., by fostering democratic and political competencies, by understanding children’s rights, by offering interventions to prevent bullying, or by stimulating school engagement. Tackling global challenges also asks for cooperative and collective efforts. This implies that research should be considered as teamwork. The papers in this issue offer very nice examples of precisely that.

A Case Study of Holomorphic Semigroups

In this paper, we investigate some characteristic features of holomorphic semigroups. In particular, we investigate nice examples of holomorphic semigroups whose every left or right ideal includes minimal ideal. These examples are compact topological holomorphic semigroups.

Coexistence of plastic and partially diffusive phases in a helium-methane compound.

Helium and methane are major components of giant icy planets and are abundant in the universe. However, helium is the most inert element in the periodic table and methane is one of the most hydrophobic molecules, thus whether they can react with each other is of fundamental importance. Here, our crystal structure searches and first-principles calculations predict that a He3CH4 compound is stable over a wide range of pressures from 55 to 155 GPa and a HeCH4 compound becomes stable around 105 GPa. As nice examples of pure van der Waals crystals, the insertion of helium atoms changes the original packing of pure methane molecules and also largely hinders the polymerization of methane at higher pressures. After analyzing the diffusive properties during the melting of He3CH4 at high pressure and high temperature, in addition to a plastic methane phase, we have discovered an unusual phase which exhibits coexistence of diffusive helium and plastic methane. In addition, the range of the diffusive behavior within the helium-methane phase diagram is found to be much narrower compared to that of previously predicted helium-water compounds. This may be due to the weaker van der Waals interactions between methane molecules compared to those in helium-water compounds, and that the helium-methane compound melts more easily.

Editorial: Cross-disciplinary research of board of directors practices

The articles of this issue are nice examples of studies that intend to broaden our understanding of the role of the board of directors as a key driver of corporate governance and performance.

Chemical evolution of ore-forming brines – Basement leaching, metal provenance, and the redox link between barren and ore-bearing hydrothermal veins. A case study from the Schwarzwald mining district in SW-Germany

Six mineralogically exemplary barren and mineralized hydrothermal veins (with Pb and Zn ores) of Jurassic-Cretaceous and Cenozoic age in the Schwarzwald mining district, SW Germany were chosen to shed light on the origin of their mineralogical diversity. The selection of the veins was guided by the fact that they represent the largest number of veins in the region, are very well known mineralogically and geochemically, and they provide nice examples of barren and mineralized veins of similar age. Fluid inclusion data from the individual veins overlap implying their diverse mineralogy is not caused by different fluid compositions participating during fluid mixing. LA-ICPMS data of single fluid inclusions indicate no systematic variations in major elements, but significant changes in fluid mixing ratios which caused variable trace element concentrations of different fluid inclusion assemblages in one sample. We suggest that different ore-gangue-assemblages can be produced by mixing of identical fluid endmembers, but variable mixing ratios. LA-ICPMS analyses of single fluid inclusions in barren and mineralized veins record similar base metal and sulfur concentrations. Hence, sulfide mineralization in the veins appears not to be controlled by metal solubility. Thermodynamic modeling based on the fluid data indicates that the presence of a reducing phase during fluid mixing is required for sulfide mineralization to precipitate.LA-ICPMS trace element analyses of feldspars, biotites, chlorites and clay minerals in granites and paragneisses which are the source of the metal content in the ore-forming fluids demonstrate that the dominant provenance for Pb, Zn, As, Sb, Ba, Tl, Mo, Fe and Mn are probably paragneisses, while Co, Cu and Ni are probably sourced from S-type granite. A rough quantification indicates that <1 m3 paragneiss or granite has to be altered (10% alteration) to supply sufficient Zn to 1 l of hydrothermal fluid reaching a concentration of 2 g/l Zn. Hence, this study confirms that ore fluids can be produced from any lithology in the upper crust that contains at least some trace metals (μg/g level is sufficient).

Editorial: Expanding the borders of corporate board research

The articles of this issue are nice examples of studies that intend to broaden our understanding of the role of the board of directors as a key driver of corporate governance and performance.

Localizations and sheaves of glider representations

The notion of a glider representation of a chain of normal subgroups of a group is defined by a new structure, i.e. a fragment for a suitable filtration on the group ring. This is a special case of general glider representations defined for a positively filtered ring R with filtration FR and subring S=F0R. Nice examples appear for chains of groups, chains of Lie algebras, rings of differential operators on some variety or V-gliders for W for algebraic varieties V and W. This paper aims to develop a scheme theory for glider representations via the localizations of filtered modules. With an eye to non-commutative geometry we allow schemes over non-commutative rings with particular attention to so called almost commutative rings. We consider particular cases of Proj R (e.g. for some P.I. ring R) in terms of prime ideals, R-tors in terms of torsion theories and W_(R) in terms of a non-commutative Grothendieck topology based on words of Ore set localizations.

On Some Applications of Sakai's Geometric Theory of Discrete Painlevé Equations

Although the theory of discrete Painlev\'e (dP) equations is rather young, more and more examples of such equations appear in interesting and important applications. Thus, it is essential to be able to recognize these equations, to be able to identify their type, and to see where they belong in the classification scheme. The definite classification scheme for dP equations was proposed by H. Sakai, who used geometric ideas to identify 22 different classes of these equations. However, in a major contrast with the theory of ordinary differential Painlev\'e equations, there are infinitely many non-equivalent discrete equations in each class. Thus, there is no general form for a dP equation in each class, although some nice canonical examples in each equation class are known. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that, in addition to providing the classification scheme, the geometric ideas of Sakai give us a powerful tool to study dP equations. We consider a very complicated example of a dP equation that describes a simple Schlesinger transformation of a Fuchsian system and we show how this equation can be identified with a much simpler canonical example of the dP equation of the same type and moreover, we give an explicit change of coordinates transforming one equation into the other. Among our main tools are the birational representation of the affine Weyl symmetry group of the equation and the period map. Even though we focus on a concrete example, the techniques that we use are general and can be easily adapted to other examples.

Digital Technology: The Future Is Bright

Digital Technology: The Future Is Bright

Characterizations of three homogeneous real hypersurfaces in a complex projective space

In an $n$-dimensional complex hyperbolic space $\mathbb{C}H^n(c)$ of constant holomorphic sectional curvature $c (\lt 0)$, the horosphere HS, which is defined by ${\rm HS} = \lim_{r\to\infty}G(r)$, is one of nice examples in the class of real hypersurfaces. Here, $G(r)$ is a geodesic sphere of radius $r$ $(0 \lt r \lt \infty)$ in $\mathbb{C}H^n(c)$. The second author ([14]) gave a geometric characterization of HS. In this paper, motivated by this result, we study real hypersurfaces $M^{2n-1}$ isometrically immersed into an $n$-dimensional complex projective space $\mathbb{C}P^n(c)$ of constant holomorphic sectional curvature $c(\gt 0)$.

Reaction: Conventional Polymers—New Tricks Emerging

Vinícius Galhard Grassi is the leader of polymer research at Braskem SA, a leading global chemical and petrochemical company and currently the largest producer of thermoplastic resins in the Americas. He holds a master’s degree in materials science and a doctorate in chemistry from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and completed a short assignment at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. Having held different positions at petrochemical companies, he has over 18 years of experience in the research and development of polyolefins and styrene-based polymers, from conception and lab tests to industrial scale-up, processing, advanced characterization, introduction, and market consolidation. Vinícius Galhard Grassi is the leader of polymer research at Braskem SA, a leading global chemical and petrochemical company and currently the largest producer of thermoplastic resins in the Americas. He holds a master’s degree in materials science and a doctorate in chemistry from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and completed a short assignment at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research. Having held different positions at petrochemical companies, he has over 18 years of experience in the research and development of polyolefins and styrene-based polymers, from conception and lab tests to industrial scale-up, processing, advanced characterization, introduction, and market consolidation. Polymer scientists have been successfully keeping conventional polymers such as polyolefins and styrene-based polymers at the frontier of science by constantly stretching the performance boundaries. For this purpose, scientists have used a combination of tools, including new polymerization methods, new catalysts and co-monomers (from fossil and renewable sources), peroxides and reactor designs, new architectures, polymer modification during processing or by reactive extrusion, and new advanced characterization techniques. In addition to efforts focused on stretching the performance of these conventional polymers, the development of tools such as high-throughput experimentation, multiscale simulation, and machine-learning techniques aims to accelerate the research and development (R&D) of conventional polymers. Although scientists have been playing with the same monomers over the last few decades, the approach is always evolving. The technology has successfully transitioned from lab to market, establishing a clear reference for technology scale-up from grams to thousands of tons while also delivering new grades to fulfill specific customer needs. It is because of this constantly evolving combination of methods and approaches, especially for polyolefins, that these conventional polymers are truly old dogs with new tricks. All these technical efforts have been driven by a consistent commercial demand, wherein intellectual property plays a key role in supporting business strategies. It’s an almost perfect combination of technology push and market pull. Although in-reactor approaches are the preferred route for polymer R&D, post-reactor modification is an exciting alternative for adding special attributes to conventional polymers. This route can overcome some in-reactor restrictions such as catalyst poisoning by chemicals or a lack of economic feasibility due to low production volume. For polyolefins in particular, some nice examples of industrial success are the grafting of polar molecules onto polyethylene and polypropylene with the use of peroxide to increase adhesion or compatibility with polar polymers and high-melt-strength polypropylene for foam applications. Post-reactor modification, like reactive extrusion, is still underutilized as a route for obtaining conventional polymers with improved properties and specific characteristics. This approach has the potential to decrease the translation time from the lab to the market, thus decreasing the R&D expenses. The primary challenge in reactive extrusion technology is controlling the reaction within the very short processing time and complex fluid environment. An additional complication results from the difficulty in accurately characterizing the degree and location of modification when we consider the different mobility of short and long polymer chains. After decades of research on conventional polymers, many combinations of methods and approaches still require exploration, and new variables are constantly evolving. Areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and 3D printing present exciting new technical opportunities; indeed, new tricks are emerging. Catalyst: Advancing Polymer Science by Revisiting Known PlasticsOlsen et al.ChemMay 10, 2018In BriefBradley Olsen earned his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and is an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Since December 2009, he has led a research group in the area of polymer and biopolymer science. Bryan Boudouris earned his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota and is the Robert and Sally Weist Associate Professor in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering and Department of Chemistry at Purdue. His team focuses on the polymer chemistry, polymer physics, and end-use application of macromolecules for energy and clean-water applications. Full-Text PDF Open Archive

Broadening the Impact of Developmental Neuroscience on the Study of Adolescence.

Having been a significance source of the renewed interested in the adolescent period, developmental neuroscience now needs to build upon its achievements to date and expand in several areas in order to broaden its impact upon the field. Addressing both typical and atypical development, examining the interaction between brain development and the social environment, studying change over time, and including attention to population diversity can help to produce a truly integrative science of adolescent development. The papers in the special section provide nice examples of how developmental neuroscience can make such expansions and continue to contribute to the field in the years to come.

PP148 Your Money Or Your Life? Are Price Negotiations Health Technology Assessment Best Practice?

Introduction:Many countries use Health Technology Assessment (HTA) organizations to evaluate the clinical and economic impact of new therapeutic interventions. In some markets, HTA outcomes directly link to reimbursement decision-making based on the manufacturer's submitted price (e.g. NICE and SMC [UK]). In others, the HTA outcome leads to price negotiations with manufacturers by a separate body (e.g. HAS/CEPS [France] and G-BA/GKV [Germany]). This research compares major examples of each approach to inform a discussion on whether such price negotiations align with HTA best practice.Methods:Publically-available technology assessment outcomes for G-BA/GKV, NICE and SMC (01/01/2011-31/12/2015) were extracted and compared.Results:Of 112 G-BA benefit assessments, 45 percent offered no additional benefit with automatic reference pricing; 55 percent offered additional benefit, qualifying for price negotiations; 77 percent had prices negotiated, 14 percent had price fixed by court, and eight percent withdrew from market. Of 156 NICE Single Technology Appraisals, 51 percent were recommended, 17 percent restricted, 20 percent not recommended, and 12 percent non-submissions. Of 497 SMC appraisals, 35 percent were accepted, 28 percent restricted, 17 percent not recommended and 19 percent non-submissions. Forty-eight percent and 24 percent of NICE and SMC positive appraisals were associated with a Patient Access Scheme (PAS), with 86 percent and 88 percent being simple discounts schemes, respectively.Conclusions:Making reimbursement decisions for new medicines based on a clear set of criteria may be the most objectively fair and transparent method of HTA; however, as the NICE and SMC examples show, although strong downward price pressure is exerted (high frequency of PASs), this may come at the cost of many therapies (~33 percent) being denied access. By contrast, the flexibility enabled by a distinct price negotiation phase may enable more therapies access, as shown by the G-BA/GKV example (&lt;10% medicines withdrawn). Nevertheless, the relative effectiveness of the downward price pressures, a key determinant of HTA process effectiveness, cannot be compared due to the confidential nature of UK PAS discounts.

Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words by Lynda Mugglestone

Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words by Lynda Mugglestone John Considine (bio) Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 290. $40.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-967990-4. Participants in a dictionary conference co-organized by Lynda Mugglestone in the year in which this book was published found a keepsake in their conference packages: a little square mat of the sort on which one puts a cup or glass, inscribed COASTER (n.s.) He that sails timorously near the shore. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755).1 Those coasters anticipated this book in two ways: they encouraged their readers to think about Johnson's sense of his own work and about the connectedness of the words which he handled. Johnson's sense of his own work is revealed by the surprising word in his definition of coaster, which is "timorously": there were obvious ordinary reasons for many seagoing vessels in the eighteenth century to stay within sight of the coast. To be sure, the definition is motivated by the sole quotation which follows, from Dryden: "In our small skiff we must not launch too far; | We here but coasters, not discov'rers are." But the second of the two quotations in the previous entry, for the transitive verb coast, in which Addison writes of the pleasures of coasting the shore of Italy, had just told Johnson that not all coasting is timorous. He had his own reasons to see coasting as a metaphor for a poor, timorous activity, and to see himself as a discoverer on the wide seas. Those reasons give Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words its opening, which introduces some of Johnson's imagery of himself as traveler and discoverer, and some of the imagery which precedes it in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries of English, in a sequence which runs backwards from Edward Phillips's New World of English Words of 1658 to the text by Thomas Blount in which Phillips found the image, and thence to John Florio's Worlde of Wordes of 1598. Mugglestone reflects here that the English language is, for Johnson, "variously a territory [End Page 123] to be conquered, and a terrain to be laboriously traversed" (16). The second chapter has the Plan of a Dictionary of 1747 at its center, and attends in particular to the shaping of the Plan in two preliminary manuscripts by Johnson and in the annotations on them by the Earl of Chesterfield, Johnson's old friend John Taylor of Ashbourne, and others. Images of the lexicographer's conquest of a language and his authority over it are again relevant here. The third chapter turns to Johnson's reading for the Dictionary, with an eye to his images of travel, and the fourth to questions of the exercise of prescriptive authority in the dictionary, with some excellent material on Johnson's acceptance of variation, particularly in spelling. The fifth turns to Johnson's definitions, describing the subtle interplay of description and prescription in the Dictionary, and arguing against the not-yet-extinct view of his procedure as basically dogmatic and prescriptive. (Mugglestone does not, of course, deny that Johnson sometimes condemned usage rather than reporting it neutrally, and gives some nice examples, such as his objection to Gay's image of turnips which "hide their swelling heads" in the ground: the head, Johnson felt, must be the highest part of an entity.) The sixth addresses Johnson's treatment of loanwords at different stages of naturalization, again showing his readiness to be flexible, and suggesting his own inconsistency in the treatment of a subject in which it is so hard to be consistent. A seventh chapter turns to Johnson's vision in the Dictionary of the history, and hence the unstable quality, of the English language, as opposed to the ideal of stability which appears in the Plan, pointing out, for instance, the appearance of the early Middle English chronicler Robert of Gloucester in a couple of dictionary entries as well as in the preliminary history of the language (173–74). It would have been possible to say more about...

Highlights from the Literature

Tumors with high glycolytic or hypoxic properties must produce sufficient levels of acetyl-CoA to maintain cellular survival and proliferation under adverse nutrient conditions. Acetyl-CoA can be generated by oxidation of glucose, glutamine, or fatty acids. There are principal differences between the metabolism of normal, well-fed cells and tumor cells, especially under nutrientdeprived conditions. Whereas the former consume glucose/ pyruvate/acetyl-CoA-derived citrate to synthesize acetyl-CoA, which is then used for fatty acid and cholesterol synthesis, generation of nucleotides and amino acids, and histone acetylation, the latter divert the main metabolite of glucose into aerobic glycolysis from pyruvate-derived mitochondrial acetylCoA to lactate. The “bioenergetic substrate gap” develops when under oxygen-limiting conditions the ability of a cell to make acetyl-CoA is impaired, and the question arises how sufficient amounts of citrate via ATP citrate lyase are produced. In the brain, glial cells are capable of oxidizing acetate. In an extremely elegant study, integrating observations from clinical experiments, ex vivo data, and preclinical mouse and cell culture studies, Mashimo and Pichumani et al from the Bachoo and Maher laboratories showed that primary and metastatic tumors growing in the brain have the capacity to oxidize acetate while simultaneously oxidizing glucose, providing an explanation for the yet unknown carbon source for the generation of the critical metabolite acetyl-CoA. Previously, C-nuclear magnetic resonance analysis showed that upon infusion of C-glucose during surgery for primary or metastatic brain tumors, ,50% of carbon in the acetyl-CoA pool was derived from glucose. The principal hypothesis by Mashimo and Pichumani et al is that glioma cells retain the acetatemetabolizing ability of the “healthy” glial cells. For metastases, it had been speculated that the microenvironment provokes a change in cells from non-acetate-metabolizing organs, like lung and breast, to allow them to metabolize acetate. In their work, relevant human orthotopic tumor mouse models of glioblastoma and brain metastases with remarkable preservation of the hallmark histopathological and molecular features (ER-/PR-negative/Her2-positive breast cancer, EGFR/ALK/KRAS wild-type non-small cell lung cancer, VHL-nil clear cell renal carcinoma, or BRAF melanoma) were used in C-NMR tissue examinations with very clear co-infusion experiments of C-glucose and C-acetate. Each of the metastatic cell lines oxidized glucose but showed a relevant bioenergetics carbon substrate gap. In co-infusion experiments with C-glucose and C-acetate, which produce distinct labeling patterns in the citric acid cycle intermediates, in six glioblastoma human orthotopic lines derived from patients prior to treatment and one line derived from the progression of one initial line a considerable, tumor-specific and variable consumption of acetate was demonstrated. The finding that the human tumors oxidize acetate was validated in the clinical setting by infusing C-acetate during glioblastoma and brain metastases operations. In contrast, glutamine is taken up by primary and metastatic brain tumors but not metabolized in the citric acid cycle in vivo. In a study published back-to-back with the Mashimo and Pichumani et al paper, Comerford and colleagues demonstrate that the nucleocytosolic acetyl-CoA synthetase enzyme (ACSS2) is expressed and has a critical role in hepatocellular carcinoma, gliomas, and breast and lung cancer for acetate utilization. Immunoreactivity to ACSS2 is correlated with glioma WHO grade (II-IV) and reduced survival in grade II/III gliomas. ACSS2 expression was also correlated with accumulation of mutation in diverse genetic mouse glioma models. Reintroduction of ACSS2 in ACSS2-knockout mouse embryonic fibroblasts enabled these cells to increase acetate incorporation into glutamate. The authors conclude that despite extensive molecular alterations in glioblastoma the ability to oxidize acetate, which is typical for glial cells, is at least maintained. The unexpected finding that metastases to the CNS can metabolize acetate may be discussed as an adaptation to the brain microenvironment or rather a more general property of tumor cells. ACSS2 upregulation is a prerequisite for the tumor cell to convert actetate to acetyl-CoA. Therefore, ACSS2 might be a vulnerability specific to the tumor metabolism. Further, the studies summarized provide nice examples of the relevance of in vivo models for research in cancer metabolism and also the strength of clinical cross-validation.

The Mathematics of Love

On the face of it, affairs of the human heart are far removed from the world of mathematics. On the one hand, the mathematicians amongst us might see the lack of precision in the former as reason enough to dismiss it from the proper domain of mathematical analysis. On the other hand, the romantics amongst us might see the cold, calculating nature of mathematics as an inappropriate tool for the study of love. The Mathematics of Love goes some way toward dispelling both these lines of thought and shows how mathematics can, indeed, shed light on love, sex, and romance. The book is not written for a mathematical audience; it’s written for a lay audience and presupposes very little by way of mathematical training. The few technical details presented are introduced with such care and patience that even those averse to mathematics should not be put off—such people may even warm to mathematics once some of what it can do is better appreciated. Indeed, this is a large part of Hannah Fry’s mission in this book: “my great hope is that a little bit of insight into the mathematics of love might just inspire you to have a little bit more love for mathematics” (p. xii). The fact that the book is not written for a mathematical audience does not mean, however, that there is no interest here for mathematicians. The book is engaging, humorous, and full of nice examples of applications of various branches of mathematics to human relationships. It would make a good supplementary text for teaching purposes at both high school and undergraduate level. I would imagine that one could build an interesting, if somewhat idiosyncratic, undergraduate course around this book, if the

Editorial: Protein Solubility and Aggregation in Bacteria.

Editorial: Protein Solubility and Aggregation in Bacteria.

Presence of vetches (Vicia spp.) in agricultural and wild floras of ancient Europe

Vetches (Vicia spp.) were part of the everyday diet of the modern human Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers at the end of the last Ice Age. Among the major criteria to determine the domestication in vetches and other ancient grain legumes are non-dehiscent pods, larger seed size and smooth seed coat. The seeds of bitter vetch [V. ervilia (L.) Willd.] were found among both the earliest findings of wild collected plants from Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic, from 12th millennium BC cal and the storages of domesticated crops of the Near East Neolithic. Vetches entered Europe in its south-east regions and progressed into its interior via Danube. Archaeological findings offer nice examples that confirm the importance vetches had in the primeval agriculture in Europe and its adjacent regions. Apart from the samples of cultivated vetches used either for food or feed or both, there is rich archaobotanical evidence on the wild and weedy vetch species in diverse European ecosystems. Recently the first known success has been obtained in the extraction of ancient DNA from charred bitter vetch seeds. The future research on this subject certainly must make a more detailed map of the paths of the vetch distribution over Europe and, especially, its long-term and essentially important ties with their domestication and distribution in Asia Minor, Near East and North Africa. The initiated research on the vetch ancient DNA should bring more light onto the individual steps of the earliest days of vetch crops. The preliminary historical linguistic analysis assessed two Proto-Indo-European roots associated with vetches, *erəg w (h)— denoting pea, and *weik— meaning to avoid, initially gave the Latin vincīre, meaning to bind, and then vicia, denoting vetches in general. This multidisciplinary approach will hopefully be a useful reminder how widespread and important vetches used to be, as well as a tool for their re-introduction as presently neglected crops into the contemporary European agriculture.

The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters by James McPherson

Reviewed by: The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters by James McPherson J. Matthew Gallman The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters, James McPherson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-01-9932-5776, 232pp., cloth, $27.95. In 1989 James McPherson’s grand narrative, Battle Cry of Freedom, won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to be a best-seller, shaping how a generation understood the Civil War. Before he became the “Pulitzer Prize–winning historian of the American Civil War,” McPherson had written three important volumes on abolitionism and African American history. In the last quarter century, McPherson has published— among other things—books on soldiers’ motivations, Abraham Lincoln, the battle of Antietam, Jefferson Davis, and naval warfare during the Civil War. I mention these volumes because despite their collective weight a case can be made that McPherson has been as skilled an essayist as he has been an author of big books. The short form, if done well, calls for concise prose, clear arguments, and the willingness to make a big statement in few words. The essayist must also understand his audience. Different readers require different levels of detail and different sorts of arguments. James McPherson writing a short essay is like Willie Mays closing in on a long fly ball: it does not look that hard at all. At least until you try it yourself. The War That Forged a Nation collects a dozen essays, only one of which is new for this volume. Half are reprinted from various journals or collections. The remaining five are reworked review essays that originally appeared in the New York Review of Books. Taken together, the collection demonstrates McPherson’s skills as a versatile author and it illustrates many of the big arguments that he has made about the Civil War era throughout his career. Even the most engaged Civil War historian will find unfamiliar essays here, although perhaps no surprising new discoveries. General readers will learn a huge amount. Budding authors should read for the art of writing. Ten of the essays focus on the war years. One—among the strongest pieces in the volume—considers antebellum politics and the War with Mexico; the final essay looks beyond the Civil War, arguing that the violence of the Civil War continued well into the postwar years. The review essays are nice examples of short essays written for one occasion and then reworked for a new purpose. In some cases, the books become the context [End Page 329] for an interpretive piece that no longer “reviews” the books at all. In a few cases, McPherson takes on an author and interpretation head on. One of the best essays wrestles with the notion of “just war” and includes some harsh criticism of the work of religious historian Harry Stout. Another returns to the popular debate about “Who Freed the Slaves?” laying out a moderate position that insists on the primacy of the Union army while acknowledging the important agency of individual slaves. In an excellent essay on Total War and the conflict’s essential destructiveness, McPherson argues that historian Mark Neely overstated the extent of restraint exercised by the warring armies, but he also dissents from those scholars who see the conflict’s overwhelming death and destruction as its key legacy. Two essays build on McPherson’s recent excursion into naval history. One compares the careers of David Farragut and Samuel DuPont. McPherson finds that DuPont’s cautious, self-involved nature resonates with the unfortunate history of George McClellan; while the aggressive Farragut reminds him of the military mind of Ulysses S. Grant. The other naval essay turns to diplomatic history, exploring how a series of naval conflicts opened up the possibility—never realized—that foreign powers might enter the War between the States. These essays illustrate a fundamental truth: as a scholar of the Civil War era, James McPherson has highly informed opinions about a wealth of seemingly distinct subdisciplines, including religious history and ethics, military history at all levels, political history, diplomatic history, and African American history. He is equally comfortable discussing causality and morality, in examining short-term...

Asia Rising: Growth and Resilience in an Uncertain Global Economy

Asia Rising: Growth and Resilience in an Uncertain Global Economy. Edited by Hal Hill and Maria Socorro Gochoco-Bautista. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar and Asian Development Bank, 2013. Pp. xvi + 424. Asia Rising takes stock of Asian economies in the aftermath of the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and evaluates challenges and opportunities for continued growth. It opens with an editorial overview; continues with thematic chapters on a variety of topics linked by a common concern with investment; and concludes with country studies of Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China, Thailand and the Philippines. The seventeen contributing authors are economists either in regional academic institutions or at the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. The book's central concern is, in the editors' words, developing middle-income Asian countries maintain their economic dynamism and navigate through deep economic crises against the backdrop of continuing global uncertainty and instability (p. 3). The focus is on macroeconomic dimensions, notably in managing the inevitable slowdown from earlier decades of rapid growth and dealing with the effects of external economic challenges, like the GFC, that threaten to push domestic savings, investment and financial development off their desired paths. The primary contribution is to help us understand better how investment, the wellspring of economic growth, is affected by global shocks in a set of economies with imperfect markets, policies and institutions. Authors of the thematic chapters deploy a wide variety of methods and data. Chapter 2 by Emmanuel De Dios and Geoffrey Ducanes, entitled Institutions and Governance, deploys a linear regression model with a 164-country data set to investigate the influence of institutions on change in investment/GDP ratios from 1991-95 until 2002-06. They conclude that and institutional factors do exert an influence on investment in Asia and that they form part of the explanation of the observed investment behaviour in the region. Similarly, Chapter 3, by Douglas Brooks and Eugenia Go, sets up a Solow-type aggregate growth model and then proposes a large array of infrastructure investment proxies to be included as additional explanatory variables, in estimates based on a panel of 123 countries over the period 1971-2005. They report (among other things) that investments in telecomms, road and air transport systems and energy consumption all support economic growth. However, this chapter reports neither data nor econometric results, so it is impossible to evaluate the authors' claims. More generally, the use of global data sets and generic models in both these chapters makes it a priori difficult to identify phenomena specific to developing Asia. In other thematic chapters, Kyoji Fukao (Chapter 4) sets up a dynamic macro growth model and uses it to evaluate the likely impacts of an exogenous drop in productivity growth on capital accumulation and other indicators of economic structure and performance. Charles Horioka and Akiko Terada-Hagiwara (Chapter 5) and Shin-ichi Fukuda (Chapter 6) present careful examinations of Asian (rather than global) cross-country data to explore, respectively, the role of demographic trends as drivers of household savings rates, and the contribution of financial development to investment growth. Diane Desierto (Chapter 7) presents a textual analysis of ASEAN investment treaties. The six country chapters document responses to the 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) and GFC, taking a more narrative approach. Chapters on China (by Siow Yue Chia) and Thailand (Bhanupong Nhidiprabha) are both very nice examples of near-term macroeconomic history. As with the earlier chapters, a concern with investment (or, in some cases, the lack of it) is common to nearly all the country chapters. Several make the point that domestic investment rates were quick to decline, yet slow to recover during the 2000s for reasons that went well beyond the AFC itself to deeper weaknesses, notably the lack of complementary infrastructure or governance institutions. …