Non-specialist Reader Research Articles

Foliations-Webs-Hessian Geometry-Information Geometry-Entropy and Cohomology

IN MEMORIAM OF ALEXANDER GROTHENDIECK. THE MAN.

Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present

Review of Gustav Heldt, "The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters

Gustav Heldt, The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 312 pages. Hardcover $90.oo/£67.oo; paperback $29.00-22.00, Kindle $28.99/£22.00. isbn 978-0231163880 (hardcover); 9780231163897 (paperback); 9780231538121 (e-book).GUSTAV HELDT'S translation of the Kojiki provides the English-speaking reader with the easiest access to Japan's oldest extant book. Two previous English-language versions of the eighth century Japanese work were intended for a scholarly audience. To be precise, Chamberlain's venerable 1882 rendition was not even a complete English one, the erotic passages of the book being considered by Victorian academics to require a disguise in Latin. Philippi's impeccable translation was published in 1968. Japan at the time was still in many aspects the cultural Other par excellence. In search of a balance between universalism and particularism, today's thinking on Japan follows a less culture-specific perspective. Heldt's translation assimilates the Kojiki in unprecedented way, mainly through the novelty of translating virtually all the names of sacred beings, humans, places, and so on. Chamberlain had adopted a similar translation attitude, but rather inconsistently, as he admitted-he translated the names of human and divine characters which appear in the first volume, but rarely translated them in the succeeding two, and never translated toponyms (Chamberlain 1982, xxiv-xxvi). As for the other translations in European languages, only in the French edition are names partly translated.Heldt's translating strategy echoes Ongian opinions about the power of naming and the homonymy of word and event in oral cultures. Among the reasons for his choice of onomastic translation the author also mentions the intimate intertwining of proper names and narratives in the Kojiki. From the very incipit, the book attests the seminal role of onomastic words: heaven and earth first appeared, the names of the spirits who came about in the high plains of heaven are these [...] (7).Translations of individual names which allude to defining moments in their life are of course the most pertinent ones. For instance, the triplets born just after their mother sets fire to the parturition hall, whose Japanese names are Hoderi, Hosuseri, and Howori, are called Bright Flame, Bold Flame, and Flickering Flame (53). This makes a striking contrast with Chamberlain's unembellished translation: FireShine, Fire-Climax, and Fire-Subside. The onomastic choice may elsewhere look affected but I, for one, am grateful to Heldt for his daring decision, which results, to use his words, in an opportunity for introducing nonspecialist readers to significant aspects of early Japan's material culture, religion, and natural environment (xiv). The panoply of the Kojiki's often very long proper nouns has always been embarrassing problem for translators. The transcription of Japanese pronunciation interrupts the flow of the translated text. Countless genealogies are particularly unfriendly to non-Japanese-speaking readers. Heldt is aware that his choice of translating proper names is in many cases a speculative exercise. One has to consider, however, that long before its versions in foreign languages, it was the Japanese early eighth-century reading of the Kojiki's Chinese-looking prose that required conjectural efforts. It would not be too bizarre to assert that the Kojiki's translations were begun by the Japanese philologists of the Edo period. Motoori Norinaga's Kojikiden (A commentary on Kojiki, 1798) contains the first complete reading of the almost entirely reticent original text. The eighteenth-century scholar established spellings of the Kojiki that many critical editions still accept. In this sense, the Kojiki is a sort of quintessential source text.As Kamei Takeshi pointed out (1957), nobody knows how to read the Kojiki. When Yasumaro recorded the recitation of previous writings performed by the court attendant Are, the literati were ill at ease trying to adapt the Chinese script to the features of the Japanese language. …

Enforcing the equal protection clause: congressional power, judicial doctrine, and constitutional law

For over a century, Congress's power to Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of laws has presented judges and scholars with a puzzle. What does it mean for Congress to enforce such a wide-ranging, open-ended provision when Supreme Court has insisted on its own superiority in interpreting Fourteenth Amendment? In Enforcing Equal Protection Clause, William D. Araiza offers a unique understanding of Congress's enforcement power and its relationship to Court's claim to supremacy when interpreting Constitution. Drawing on history of American thinking about equality in decades before and after Civil War, Araiza argues that congressional enforcement and judicial supremacy can co-exist, but only if Court limits its role to ensuring that enforcement legislation reasonably promotes core meaning of Equal Protection Clause. Much of Court's equal protection jurisprudence stops short of stating such core meaning, thus leaving Congress free (subject to appropriate judicial checks) to full scope of constitutional guarantee. Araiza's thesis reconciles Supreme Court's ultimate role in interpreting Constitution with Congress's superior capacity to transform Fourteenth Amendment's majestic principles into living reality. The Fourteenth Amendment's Enforcement Clause raises difficult issues of separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional rights. Araiza illuminates each of these in this scholarly, timely work that is both intellectually rigorous but also accessible to non-specialist readers.

Energetic formulation for rate-independent processes: remarks on discontinuous evolutions with a simple example

This work aims to discuss, in the simplest way, some open issues concerning the energetic formulation for the modeling of rate-independent processes by means of a simple one-dimensional example. Early and unphysical jumps are avoided taking advantage of a time reparametrization and enforcing an energy imbalance during time-discontinuous transitions. A new energetic selective criterion is then proposed, able to predict the final state after a jump and to represent intrinsically the energy contribution of rate-dependent phenomena as inertia and viscosity that may arise during fast discontinuous transitions. An improved version of the energetic formulation is finally proposed, preserving completely the rate-independent setting. All concepts and results are accompanied by explicative pictures which, hopefully, will help the non-specialist reader, to whom this paper is addressed, in the understanding of the discussion.

Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xix+555.

<i>Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works</i>. Edited by Victoria Kirkham, Michael Sherberg, and Janet Levarie Smarr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xix+555.

Zen Koans by Steven Heine (review)

No! We have Buddha Nature.” In addition, there are cross-references between the historical material of kōan texts and contemporary Western literature and poetry (e.g.: “The significance of the Mu Kōan might also be examined in light of other instances of Western cultural expressions of nothingness or the de-centeredness of the universe in the schools of thought of American Transcendentalism, Dadaism, and Existentialism,” p. 71), and ranging to “Whitehead’s holistic metaphysics” and “Einstein’s quantum physics.” Whereas cross-references to more contemporary discourses might be useful for addressing a Western readership, these references remain too fragmentary and blurry, and do not really add anything substantial to the understanding of the topic discussed. As a consequence, when reading the book, at times it was difficult for me to figure out for what audience the book was written: although providing a wealth of interesting material, the treatment of it is often too unfocused and “jumpy” for a specialized reader. On the other hand, a more general audience might have difficulties in dealing with the overload of methodological reflections and—occasionally—very detailed discussions of kōan features . As such, I regard the publication as a brave attempt of “performative scholarship” by a very accomplished scholar who got a bit too much carried away by the subject he was dealing with (sometimes even adopting the rhetorical features of the kōan texts discussed), and occasionally overloading it with too ambitious methodological endeavors. Based on my subjective reading of the publication, this approach was not quite convincing for me. CHRISTOPH ANDERL Ghent University STEVEN HEINE, Zen Koans. Dimensions of Asian Spirituality. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014. ix, 195 pp. US $17 (pb). ISBN 978-0-8248-3974-1 Even though Steven Heine’s Zen Koans seems not to be written for specialist readers with a background in Chinese religions—it provides no diacritical marks for Japanese words like kōan (gong’an 公案) and no Sinitic logographs, for example—this short monograph is an important book that ought to be read by anyone with an interest in the literary and philosophical history of Zen Buddhism. But let me make one point very clear: Steven Heine knows Zen. By Zen, I mean the Zen traditions in Japan (Sōtōshū 曹洞宗, Rinzaishū 臨濟宗, and Ō bakushū 黄檗宗), the thriving discourse of Zen studies in Japan (at universities such as Komazawa 駒澤 大學 and Hanazono 花園大學), and Zen literature—especially collections of kōans, or public cases. In Zen Koans, Heine uses more than 26 of the 48 cases of the seminal Gateless Gate (Wumen guan, Mumonkan 無門關) collection from China—in addition to thirty-two references to other normative Zen texts (see pp. 189-192)—to provide the target audience of non-specialist readers with a condensed overview of the philosophical, historical, intellectual, and institutional contexts of a kōan tradition in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea). Heine accomplishes this feat in two chapters and in only 70 pages. The remainder of this short monograph is where Heine seems to distill decades of prolific study of Zen, chiefly focused on either Sōtōshū Zen in Japan or Dōgen 道元 (1200-1253), into another 90 pages and three chapters. Heine can do this with relative ease because he has published 82 BOOK REVIEWS (or coedited, with Dale S. Wright) more than a dozen books on the topic of kōans, and another seven on Dōgen studies. The last chapter of Zen Koans, chapter 6 (“Whither Koans, or Wither? Current Trends and Possible New Directions,” pp. 160-188), is perhaps the most thought provoking of this densely packed monograph , because Heine addresses at least three rousing issues intimately connected to Zen (and kōans) in the 21st century. First, what are we to make of the fact that Japan remains the stimulus for academic research on Zen while South Korean Sŏn and Chinese Chan communities, respectively, grow by leaps and bounds in rapidly changing societies where corruption, both within and beyond the monastic grounds (e.g., gambling in Korea, p. 171), is as much of an issue as practice-based matters related to reading kōans? Second, how are kōans read today by East...

Metaphorical concepts in molecular biology students’ texts – a way to improve subject-matter understanding

Earlier research brings evidence that metaphors facilitate our understanding of the world. In this study we explore Bachelor students’ popular science articles on molecular biology with the aim to determine the frequency and nature of metaphorical concepts used in the articles. For this purpose, a comparative metaphor analysis of students’ texts was conducted. The results show that only few students (5 out of 47) use metaphorical concepts when writing about complex molecular biological mechanisms to non-specialist readers. We discuss that the use of metaphors not only reflect, but may also support, the writer’s subject understanding, especially when metaphorical concepts are created by the writer herself. We suggest that the invention of metaphorical concepts when explaining subject-matter to a layman could be a way for students to improve their subject understanding.

Book Review: Asian American Religious Cultures

Asian American Religious Cultures (AARC) is an encyclopedic collection of essays and entries aimed at high school students, college undergraduates, and nonspecialist readers. This collection, written by a variety of experts, touches upon specific elements of Asian American religious cultures.

New Trends in Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Post-National Literatures and the Canon ed. by Timothy R. Robbins and José Eduardo González

Reviewed by: New Trends in Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Post-National Literatures and the Canon ed. by Timothy R. Robbins and José Eduardo González Vinodh Venkatesh Robbins, Timothy R., and José Eduardo González, eds. New Trends in Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Post-National Literatures and the Canon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 252 pp. New Trends in Contemporary Latin American Narrative: Post-National Literatures and the Canon is a well-conceived examination of recent Latin American narrative that furthers two parallel yet connected lines of inquiry: first, the collection of essays establishes the groundwork for discussing several contemporary movements or “generations,” working through their poetics and roughly tracing their aesthetics; second, it situates these works in relation to the greater body of Latin American narrative, more specifically the Boom and its immediate aftermath. Make no mistake about it—this is an ambitious project, and one that Timothy R. Robbins and José Eduardo González hone and craft to produce a finished product that is useful not only as a reference guide to non-specialist readers, but to researchers interested in locating authors and texts within the wide spectrum that New Trends outlines. The volume is not, however, an encyclopedic reference—like the recent The Contemporary Spanish-American Novel: Bolaño and After—but an orientative text that includes a few essays that will be essential reading for the topic at hand. [End Page 782] New Trends opens with a quote by Ángel Rama on the enduring presence of modernismo. This citation sets the tone for not only the introduction but several of the chapters in the anthology, as there is a genuine attempt to seek a balance between thinkers from different geo-academic circles. There is, thus, a balance between Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters and theories forwarded by the likes of Beatriz Sarlo, Donald Shaw, and Néstor García Canclini on the genesis of a literature after the Boom. Robbins and González mobilize Rama’s musings on Darío to further a concise but illuminative discussion of the rough swaths or trajectories that have been planted in recent Latin American narrative, discussing albeit overtly the very designator of “Latin American” to these at times disparate works and authors. The editors outline the work and manifestos of McOndo and Crack writers, to then segue into a discussion of what they term posnacionalista fiction (6), echoing works by others such as Aníbal González who have discussed writers “after the nation.” For the editors of New Trends, these new works are characterized by “the erosion of the nation-state and the fragile production of locality” (6). There is no effort to clearly define this periodization of Latin American literature (something that will later be argued to be intrinsic to the reception of the Boom)—instead, the editors focus on “four aspects of contemporary life in Latin America that . . . are strongly shaping the way cultural producers relate to their social formation and their national spaces” (6). Namely, they examine “the emergence of a global popular culture,” “the rise of the internet,” “a disinterest in politics,” and “the effects of the dissolution of the nation-state discourse” (12). Several of these factors have been mulled over, reconfigured, and deconstructed in other places, but Robbins and González adhere to them as founding principles to contemporary Latin American narrative. The introduction, then, proves useful for critics attempting to situate many new(er) writers who clearly conform to these rough characteristics that the editors trace. The individual essays of New Trends covers work from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico, focusing at times on wider movements such as the Crack (as is the case of Regalado López’s excellent piece) or on individual authors, and, at times, a specific work. The breadth of the texts and writers analyzed is not exhaustive—and the editors make it clear early on that it is not their intention to be so—but well-represented and useful for both generalists and specialists. The lack, however, of any mention of Central American fiction is almost criminal, given the importance of writers such as Horacio Castellanos Moya, Rodrigo Rey...

Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth by Stephen Knight

Reviewed by: Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth by Stephen Knight John Marshall stephen knight, Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015. Pp. x, 285. isbn: 978–0–7190–9526–9. $100. In somer when the shawes be sheynAnd leves be large and longHit is full mery in feyre foresteTo here the foulys song. [End Page 141] The early ballads and poems of Robin Hood invariably open with a setting that is both localizing and figurative of a forest through which sunlight streams; an energy that both illuminates and casts long shadows. This image of simultaneous revelation and concealment has caught the imagination of many film-makers seeking a defining ‘establishment shot.’ It is, then, neither a surprise nor a coincidence that the choice of cover for Stephen Knight’s latest book on Robin Hood should be a version of this powerful image taken from an illustration by N.C. Wyeth. Knight has probably done more than anyone to shine the light of serious critical understanding on the Robin Hood material for scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike. His first book on Robin Hood was, by his own admission, a descriptive account of the cultural history of the outlaw (Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw [Oxford: Blackwell, 1994]). His second traced the transformation in production and reception of the myth as it responded to historical shifts in social and political pressures (Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003]). This new book ventures much deeper into the forest. It traverses three ambitious and rarely trodden routes: to ‘treat the Robin Hood material with the scholarship and the measured, even plodding, tread of analysis that has long been natural to more prestigious literature’ (7); to see the Robin Hood myth formation in the rhizomatic or linear structure advanced by Deleuze and Guattari; and to deal extensively with some unfinished business. The third of these concerns highlights a publishing problem that unwittingly constrains the dissemination of Robin Hood studies. As Knight observes early on in the book, the ‘small-scale, incoherent ways’ (2) in which the material that has been preserved fit uneasily in a curriculum that privileges periodization and canonical specialization—a problem exacerbated by an academic conservatism that is too often subject orientated and media limited. A knock-on effect is the editorial fashion for collections of individual essays drawn from conference proceedings, with word length limits of about 7,500 words, rather than single-authored books. Knight has taken the opportunity, offered by the publication of this book, to explore in greater depth those areas of conference papers that have outgrown their original parameters. To non-specialist readers, this might give the book a somewhat ad-hoc appearance. Although, obviously, each chapter relates to Robin Hood and is essentially in chronological order, the chapters are, for reasons that become clear in the final essay, largely self-contained. The self-imposed collection embraces the relationship between orality and literacy in the early poems and ballads, the cross fertilization between English and Scottish versions of the outlaw myth, the ways in which the formulation of the Gest may—or may not—have responded to the story of Fulk Fitz Warren, a much needed re-examination of the broadside ballads, the Robin Hood of the Romantic poems and novels and of nineteenth-century fiction (which Knight knows better than anyone), and the invention and transformations of Maid Marian. While the preceding chapters explore in meticulous detail aspects of the Robin Hood material, both known and obscure, the final chapter is in many ways the most radical. It is exemplary in being reflective and provocative. In pursuing the rhizomatic Robin Hood, Knight distances his hero from the pattern and ideological implications of other myths and the framework of canonical literature. He demonstrates that [End Page 142] Robin Hood lacks the kind of structural inheritance and authority that validate and confer approved status on figures such as King Arthur. In some respects the chapter on ‘Rhizomatic Robin Hood’ would be as welcome at the beginning of the book...

Intolerant Bodies: A Short History of Autoimmunity by Warwick Anderson and Ian R. Mackay

Health & History, 2016. 18/1 159 Book Reviews Warwick Anderson and Ian R. Mackay, Intolerant Bodies: A Short History of Autoimmunity (Baltimore, US: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). ISBN 978-1-4214-1533-8 (PB). xii + 250pp. It’s easy to understand why Intolerant Bodies by medical historian Warwick Anderson and distinguished immunologist Ian Mackay was the winner of the General History Prize in the 2015 NSW Premier’s History Awards. With clarity, depth, and subtle provocation, Intolerant Bodies covers significant historical, biomedical, and philosophical ground to investigate and explain the aetiological paradox of autoimmune disease. The idea of a person’s body turning against its own healthy tissues, cells, and organs raises psychosocial, philosophical, and medical questions. Anderson and Mackay treat the breadth of their topic with compassion, perspicacity, and rigorous attention to social theory, history, and complex biomedical research. Delightful turn of phrase and an engaging literary style make this book highly readable, though the challenging subject matter will stretch the non-specialist reader. Anderson and Mackay take a chronological and thematic approach to charting the confluence of laboratory, clinical, and theoretical knowledge that were brought together for the concept of autoimmunity to be thought of in the 1940s and to begin to be accepted in the 1960s. Looking to the future, Anderson and Mackay hint at the limitations of research paradigms structured around the question of the biological self. Part of the Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease series edited by Charles Rosenberg, Intolerant Bodies traces how the concept of ‘autoimmunity became thinkable’ (p. 4). Anderson and Mackay focus on four illustrative autoimmune disorders: rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, childhood (type I) diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. Autoimmunity is a unique entry point into the history of immunology. Anderson and Mackay demonstrate that no theory of the immune system will be complete without accounting fully for autoimmune conditions. They acknowledge that the biography of autoimmunity may seem to be written quite early. In some ways, this book charts a prenatal history of the autoimmunity concept; the way in which certain diagnostic tools, experimental techniques, and theoretical ideas had to come together before this new model of pathogenesis could be conceived. Weaving illness 160 BOOK REVIEWS narratives beautifully into the mix,Anderson and Mackay also explore the cultural and philosophical life that metaphors of autoimmunity have had outside immunology. Anderson and Mackay cover considerable ground in their book, from the nineteenth-century foundations of immunology and modern medicine to the contemporary literary, scientific, philosophical, anthropological, and even theological reflections on autoimmunity. The first chapter shows how nineteenth-century theories of fever anticipated the idea of a body that could betray itself. Turning to the history of immunology as a discipline, the second chapter contextualises the themes of individual variation, organic identity, and human distinction. Anderson and Mackay then map the institutional matrix that made autoimmunity imaginable and provable in the third chapter. Chapter four is about the development of clonal selection theory and features the work of Australian microbiologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet from the 1940s to the 1960s. An autoimmune schema began to gain traction, but one that embodied ColdWar themes of command, communication, control, surveillance, recognition, conformity, tolerance, and regulation. Drawing upon scant patient accounts from the 1950s to 1970s, chapter five looks at the illness narratives of people living with an autoimmune disease during a time when the concept of autoimmunity was just becoming accepted. Chapter six recounts experimental insights into the breakdown of self-tolerance, how the normal could ‘shade into overt pathology’ (p. 126), and how a preoccupation for questions surrounding self and non-self ‘obscured the crucial question of what criteria the immune system uses in deciding to attack’ (p. 135). The afterword critically analyses how disease specialists have increasingly divorced medical theory from the illness experience, and how social and biological scientists have mixed models and metaphors between biology, philosophy, and local culture. Intolerant Bodies leaves the reader rethinking Canguilhem, wanting to revisit Derrida, and convinced of the fruitfulness of cross-disciplinary collaborations. Intolerant Bodies valuably contributes to the history and philosophy of medicine. A book for specialist audiences, Intolerant Bodies will hopefully leave immunologists inspired to engage more deeply with the philosophical tenets...

Aging: Facts and theories

Due to demographic transition and its impact on economics and quality of life, ageing has assumed center stage for research in the scientific community. In the last five decades there has been an extensive conceptualization and experimentation to unravel the mysteries of ageing. This book is a part of an ongoing series, “Interdisciplinary Topics in Gerontology” and an attempt to critically appraise various mechanisms proposed as cause of ageing in light of scientific evidence and reasoning. The book has 12 chapters dealing with ageing process, authored by different experts in the subject. Each chapter dwells upon theoretical aspects in the particular field and experimental or observational facts supporting or refuting the theories or concepts. The book sojourns through oxidative stress and mitochondrial theory of ageing, commitment of cells to senescence, evolutionary theories of ageing, control of cell replication during ageing, cell senescence, ageing of cell communication, immunological theories of ageing, ageing as alteration, and longevity and its regulation. The chapter on the theories of ageing underlines the limitations of the popular Hayflick limit theory. It draws attention to the commitment theory of cellular ageing to fill in those lacunae in the experimental system due to which we are unable to explain the variability of different somatic cells (with division potential) with life span variability. Also, the limitation of extrapolation from experimental results could be countered. Evolutionary theory of ageing puts forth that ageing is a result of an accumulation of mutations: a negative effect of certain alleles in old age, originally selected for a positive effect at a younger age or a trade-off between reproduction and maintenance. Evolutionary theories explain some but not all aspects of ageing. The chapter on control of cell replication during ageing underlines the fallacious lead taken by researchers resulting in contradictions and paradoxes which need to be resolved to re-establish logic and understanding of cell replication control during ageing and its implications. Telomere shortening has shown variable results in different cell lines. The relationship between cell senescence and cancer has also not been justified. Experimental evidences for different theories of control of cell ageing, senescent phenotype, relation of senescence with cancer, etc. have been dealt with. Ageing of cell membrane and its biochemical consequences; the relationship between membrane hypothesis of ageing and genetic changes have also been explained along with anti-ageing experiments with centrophenoxine and growth hormone. The molecular basis of ageing mitochondrial dysfunction and role of oxidative stress have been well covered. A new perspective of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as signaling molecules in ageing has been mentioned in the chapter, “Oxidative stress, Mitochondrial Dysfunction and the Mitochondrial Theory of Ageing”. The concept put forward by the authors is that ROS may not be detrimental forces in ageing but simply the body's way of coping with ageing related cellular damage. However, a lot of work is still being done on ROS mediated cell damage in ageing. Antioxidants have been proven to be protective against such damage in animal models. A more balanced opinion comparing the two contrasting viewpoints could have been given instead of a casual mention of new concepts. Age dependent modifications in connective tissues in cellular and extracellular compartments are elaborated upon. Changes with ageing in macromolecular components of extracellular matrix, decline in receptor-mediated cell matrix interactions and implications of these changes in cardiovascular diseases and longevity are well covered. Changes in immunity with ageing predisposes to chronic diseases associated with inflammation affecting longevity. Age associated immune dysfunction partly explains ageing. Immune risk profile (IRP) as a predictor of longevity has been suggested but not substantiated. The relative fitness of the immune system in centenarians points to the role of the immune system in longevity; but there is increase in pro-inflammatory interleukin - 6 (IL-6) in centenarians rebuking this. The chapter on ageing of the brain and dementias discusses pathogenetic aspects of dementia syndromes. However, too much emphasis has been given on certain pathogenetic mechanisms such as protein misfolding. Oxidative stress, epigenetic mechanisms, age related gene up/ downregulation have not been accorded just place. Drosophila has been taken up as a model of human neurodegeneration. Other models and comparative benefits of each could also have been mentioned. The chapter, “Aging as Alteration” could have been clarified further for the non-specialist reader as certain concepts and sentences are confusing. Overall, this book is a good attempt to highlight new insights in this explosive area of research. In such an ever changing field, it is difficult to touch upon every aspect but barring a few shortcomings mentioned above, the authors have produced a comprehensive piece of work.

Ramón Menéndez Pidal: The Practice and Politics of Philology in Twentieth-Century Spain by Steven Hess

Reviewed by: Ramón Menéndez Pidal: The Practice and Politics of Philology in Twentieth-Century Spain by Steven Hess Omar Velázquez-Mendoza Hess, Steven. Ramón Menéndez Pidal: The Practice and Politics of Philology in Twentieth-Century Spain. Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2014. 385 pp. ISBN: 978-1-58871-252-3 Hess’ Ramón Menéndez Pidal: The Practice and Politics of Philology in Twentieth-Century Spain (hereafter Practice and Politics) captures the many facets of the scholarly trajectory of one of Hispanism’s most influential figures: Ramón Menéndez Pidal. By relating political moves in Spain’s academic spheres to larger political phenomena, this book situates Menéndez Pidal’s scholarship within the context of a changing political environment, from the Spanish-American war to the Franco regime. From Hess’ latest research on Don Ramón an interesting (and previously unknown) fact emerges: from 1940-1944 the Tribunal de Responsabilidades Políticas excluded the aging scholar from all Spanish institutions except the Royal Academy. This thought-provoking and well-organized monograph provides a comprehensive biography of Don Ramón (Chapter 1), as well as a detailed synopsis of the many contributions made by the maestro’s scholarship to the fields of Romance linguistics (Chapter 2) and medieval literature (Chapter 3). His particular, Castilian-centered way of interpreting Spanish history during his productive career is also addressed (Chapter 4), as well as his role in the Generation of 1898 (Chapter 5) and his founding of the so-called “Madrid School” of philology (Chapter 6). The private correspondence between Don Ramón and his disciples and other towering scholars of ninetieth- and twentieth-century philology (Lapesa, Corominas, Armistead, etc.) allows us to get up close and personal with the Madrid School and its direct and indirect ramifications in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. These documents were made public, in part, due to the generosity of the Fundación Menéndez Pidal, but also thanks to Hess’ own archival research. The intimate look at Don Ramón and his scholarly circle that this monograph provides is complemented by a close examination of many fragments of several of his speeches, his public lectures, and, to some degree, their reception as well. Cited fragments receive a close English translation, making this book highly accessible to the non-specialized reader. [End Page 139] The contributions of Menéndez Pidal to Hispanic linguistics and to medieval literature and culture cannot be overlooked, as Hispanic studies since the Generation of 1898, even to this day, have set out either to prove or to disprove many of the scholar’s theories and assertions. Amongst these one can cite the existence (in linguistic terms, above all) of the latent state (estado latente) of a given phenomenon before it can surface in the written norm, authorship issues surrounding the Cantar de mio Cid, the origins of the romancero as an offspring of medieval epic, the preponderance of the Castilian dialect in the formation of the Spanish language, etc. Hess’ evaluation of Menéndez Pidal’s assertions are fair insofar as he stresses that, even if the maestro’s conclusions are, for the most part, valid (the latent sate of Mozarabic lyric in the medieval Iberian tradition before the jarchas were discovered, to name but one example), he correctly notes that not every conclusion at which Don Ramón arrived should be taken as undisputable dogma. Some of the examples of Menéndez Pidal’s debatable proposals cited by Hess are: equating the Spanish language, both historically and linguistically, with the Castilian dialect; his “corrections” to the manuscript of the Cantar de mio Cid; the alleged abundance of epic poetry during the High Middle Ages; the nature of Spanish epic as a reliable mirror of historical events; and a Hispano-Celtic etymon attributed to the word Madrid, which neither Malkiel nor Corominas endorsed; among others. Surprisingly, however, the most debatable of all of Menéndez Pidal’s debatable postulates, the issue of the triglossic coexistence of Latin, Castilian Romance, and Leonese Vulgar Latin during the High Middle Ages, is not mentioned in the chapter devoted to Romance Linguistics of this work. Hess’ Practice and...

Mechanics from Aristotle to Einstein

In a remarkably concise compass, Crowe presents, through actual examples, the fascinating story of how philosophers and scientists through the ages have tried to understand how things move. Included are substantial selections from the writings of Aristotle, Oresme, Descartes, Galileo, Huygens, Newton, and Einstein. The selections are furnished with extensive notes aimed at guiding nonspecialist readers through the texts. Introductory sections provide historical information that helps us understand and appreciate each chapter in the story, which Crowe aptly characterizes as the most remarkable story in all secular history. At the same time, Mechanics from Aristotle to Einstein is itself an introduction to the foundations of mechanics. Examples and problems are provided to give a true hands on experience of these ideas and discoveries, which are fundamental to an understanding of both our physical universe and our civilization itself. This title is the winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Title award, 2009.

Restoration Plays and Players: An Introduction

Introducing readers to the key texts, theatrical practice and context of late seventeenth-century drama, David Roberts combines literary and theatrical approaches to show how Restoration plays were written, performed, received and printed. Structured according to the 'life cycle' of the dramatic text, this book reproduces extracts from twenty-four of the most influential Restoration plays to provide readers with a comprehensive and colourful introduction to the period's drama. Roberts encourages readers to look beyond a limited canon of established plays and practice, and to see how Restoration Drama has been revived and adapted on the modern stage. Restoration Plays and Players is of great interest to undergraduate and non-specialist readers of seventeenth-century drama, Restoration literature and theatre studies. © David Roberts, 2014. All rights reserved.

Language, terminology and the readability of online cancer information

Medical terms are a recognised problem in doctor–patient consultations. By contrast, the language difficulties of online healthcare documents are underestimated, even though patients are often encouraged to go to the...

Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi by Joseph A. Adler (review)

BOOK REVIEWS JOSEPH A. ADLER, Reconstructing the Confucian Dao: Zhu Xi’s Appropriation of Zhou Dunyi. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014. x, 331 pp. US$95 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4384-5157-2 Joseph A. Adler’s contribution to Confucian studies aims to clarify the problematic relationship that unites Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) with Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017– 1073). Indeed, why did Zhu Xi choose a minor figure with Daoist connections as the founder of “Neo-Confucianism”? In order to clarify this “appropriation” from one thinker to another, Adler proposes an answer in two parts (argumentation and translations ), divided into eight chapters. The introduction, especially useful to non-specialist readers, recounts the emergence of Song Confucianism and its masters. Unsatisfied with the conventional philosophical explanation for Zhu Xi’s choice of Zhou Dunyi, Adler argues that one must inquire into Zhu Xi’s life and religious practice to understand his thought. Through a well-justified explanation of Confucianism as a religious tradition, Adler asserts that Zhu Xi’s articulation of the difference between belief and action is fundamental to explain “the peculiar shape taken by the Cheng-Zhu school” (p. 7) and, therefore, to analyze the issue of the succession of the Way or daotong 道統. Through the exposition of biographical, historical, and political elements (chapter 1), Adler shows that Zhu Xi’s vision of the Dao 道 is grounded in the differentiation between Buddhist (Chan) and Confucian metaphysical interpretations, as well as in their concrete applications within society. Zhu Xi aims to find the way to cultivate oneself and to practice the Confucian Dao at a governmental level. Regarding the transmission of the Dao, Adler examines its discontinuous structure through the figures of Confucius, Mencius, Han Yu 韓愈, and the Cheng brothers 二程. He then turns to Zhou Dunyi’s life, and to Hu Hong’s 胡宏 (1105–1155) first assertion that Zhou was the one who carried on the Confucian lineage (see Zhu Xi’s Preface to Master Zhou’s Tongshu, translated by Adler on pp. 32–34). For his part, Zhu Xi discovered Zhou Dunyi’s writings in 1152, but only developed a true interest for his thought under the leadership of his teacher, Li Tong 李侗 (1093–1163), beginning in the 1160s. In chapter 2, Adler pertinently considers Zhu Xi’s discursive strategy and campaign with Zhang Shi 張栻 (1133–1180), through pilgrimages and commemorations (some of which are translated by Adler), to establish Zhou Dunyi’s legitimacy. For Zhu Xi, the parallels between the figures of Fuxi 伏羲 and Zhou Dunyi as well as their expressive styles (trigrams and diagram) prove that Confucianism is the sole authentic Dao, and that only these two sages received it directly from Heaven. Thanks to Zhu Xi’s disciples, the idea of Zhou Dunyi being the first sage of the Song dynasty had become orthodox by the Yuan dynasty (1259–1368). Journal of Chinese Religions, 43. 2, 194–219, November 2015© Society for the Study of Chinese Religions 2015 DOI 10.1179/0737769X15Z.00000000024 But Adler points out that this “scenario” has weaknesses, since Zhu Xi’s 1190 prefaces to the Daxue 大學 and to the Zhongyong 中庸 clearly omit Zhou Dunyi in the transmission of the Way to the benefit of Cheng Hao 程顥 (1032–1085). To solve this contradiction, Adler argues that, in this case, Zhu Xi does not consider the transmission of the Way in general, but only the transmission of these two texts in particular that are further linked to the Cheng brothers’ concerns. One may reply that the issue of authenticity or cheng 誠 is nevertheless fundamental to these two texts and to Zhou Dunyi’s Penetrating the Scripture of Change (Tongshu 通書). For Adler, Zhu Xi’s choice in favor of Zhou Dunyi is a reevaluation of his opinion, and he detects three types of issues—sectarian, philosophical, and historical —that would explain the difficulty of including Zhou Dunyi within the Learning of the Way or daoxue 道學. In chapter 3, Adler considers a central issue of Zhu Xi’s thought, that of unexpressed (weifa 未發) and expressed (yifa 已發) heart-mind (xin 心). He shows that Zhou Dunyi’s concept of “interpenetration of activity and stillness” (jing 靜 dong 動) is the key to the...

Carr, D.Worried Sick: How Stress Hurts Us and How to Bounce Back. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2014116pp £12.99 (pbk) ISBN 978‐0813565378

Worried Sick is an odd little book. I was intrigued by it, and having read it, I confess to being unsure how to begin my review, apart from to assert that it is an odd book. This slim volume comes from the Rutgers University Press ‘PinPoints’ series on ‘Complex Topics, Concise Explanations’. This may explain its unconventional approach and form. The four other texts in the series include a book on Black icons and others on the economy of New Jersey, environmental crisis and water shortage, and dark matter. Set against these titles Worried Sick looks unusual, but not incongruous. The PinPoints brief is to deliver material for ‘a wide circle of scholars, students and non-specialist general readers’ in 100 pages and Carr sticks to these page limits. And as to content, well, it was interesting to read a book on stress not written by a health psychologist or from a psychotherapeutic stance. Deborah Carr is a Professor of Sociology at Rutgers where she teaches and conducts research on family life and the effects of stressors such as bereavement, so I wondered if a sociologist's fresh examination of the topic would contradict biomedical explanations of stress and our responses to it. In as much as this is possible in such a short book, Carr does this. In essence, the book presents a biopsychosocial (BPS) model that highlights the interconnectedness of biology, psychological, economic and social factors that create and may protect against stress. As a side note, David Pilgrim (2015) has written about the popularity of BPS amongst health researchers that provides a fuller account and critique of this model. Carr's book straddles the popular science, self-help and introductory sociology genres such that it is not always clear who the actual audience will be. Worried Sick might find its way to the mind/body section of the book store, where the sub-title promise of ‘bounce back’ solutions might not be misplaced, but I was not sure quite how comfortably it would fit in the sociology or health sections. Questions of product placement aside, the book is a good summary of the topic and an interesting, quick read. The book ‘feels’ very American, in part because of Carr's attempts to personalise the message with vignettes and stories about ‘Dawn’, ‘Naomi’, ‘Marisol’ and ‘Rob’ in the manner of populist therapy books. This is reinforced by evidence drawn from US sources, learning that ‘16% of Americans have ever suffered from a major depressive disorder’ (p. 25) and 18% of them have experienced anxiety in the past year (p. 27). It was not until half way through that a study of ‘ninety thousand adults in the United Kingdom’ – linking mental state and mortality – was mentioned (p. 50), but this was not referenced, making the book a slightly frustrating academic resource. Carr provides an outline of the historical definitions of stress, going back to Hans Selye's endocrinological research in the 1950s, and reviewing contemporary measures and scales, but also noting ideas about stress contagion in social networks. She reviews, albeit briefly, various theories about the links between stress and health - covering role strain, cumulative disadvantage, stress process and discrepancy theories - and contrasts these with bio-genetic explanations for the complex relationship between mind and body. Carr mentions survey and laboratory experimental research methods before examining ‘social science explanations’ for the connection between stress and health. There are a couple of pages each on (damaging) heath behaviours, nudges to alter these, and the impact of sleep on mental wellbeing. This precedes a section on ‘Social Class: The Fundamental Cause Behind the Stress-Health Link’ which briefly takes in fundamental cause theory and the impact of social inequality, before the book returns to Seyle's physiological work. The fourth and penultimate chapter examines ideas about risk and resilience, and the conclusion explores ‘Paths to Healing’. This notes the benefits of social support for behaviour change, alongside cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness. There is a relatively short section on medications, which – given their ubiquity and cost, and interest to social scientists – might have warranted a longer and more critical appraisal. That said, Carr concludes that ‘most of the stressors discussed in this book have their roots in major social inequalities based on one's social class, race, gender, age or even body size’ (p. 108) and argues that public and social policy can support these stressors, or address them to improve population wellbeing. That seems to be a message worth repeating.

Old and New New Englanders: Immigration and Regional Identity in the Gilded Age

In Old and New New Englanders, Bluford Adams provides a re-envisioning of New England's history and regional identity by exploring the ways the arrival of waves of immigrants from Europe and Canada transformed what it meant to be a New Englander during the Gilded Age. Adams's intervention challenges a number of long-standing conceptions of New England, offering a detailed and complex portrayal of the relations between New England's Yankees and immigrants that goes beyond nativism and assimilation. In focusing on immigration in this period, Adams provides a fresh view on New England's regional identity, moving forward from Pilgrims, Puritans, and their descendants and emphasising the role immigrants played in shaping the region's various meanings. Furthermore, many researchers have overlooked the newcomers' relationship to the regional identities they found here. Adams argues immigrants took their ties to New England seriously. Although they often disagreed about the nature of those ties, many immigrant leaders believed identification with New England would benefit their peoples in their struggles both in the United States and back in their ancestral lands. Drawing on and contributing to work in immigration history, as well as American, gender, ethnic, and New England studies, this book is broadly concerned with the history of identity construction in the United States while its primary focus is the relationship between regional categories of identity and those based on race and ethnicity. With its interdisciplinary methodology, original research, and diverse chapter topics, the book targets both specialist and nonspecialist readers.