After Collapse Schwartz, Glenn M; Nichols, John J
08/2010
eBook
From the Euphrates Valley to the southern Peruvian Andes, early complex societies have risen and fallen, but in some cases they have also been reborn. Prior archaeological investigation of these ...societies has focused primarily on emergence and collapse. This is the first book-length work to examine the question of how and why early complex urban societies have reappeared after periods of decentralization and collapse.Ranging widely across the Near East, the Aegean, East Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, these cross-cultural studies expand our understanding of social evolution by examining how societies were transformed during the period of radical change now termed "collapse." They seek to discover how societal complexity reemerged, how second-generation states formed, and how these re-emergent states resembled or differed from the complex societies that preceded them.The contributors draw on material culture as well as textual and ethnohistoric data to consider such factors as preexistent institutions, structures, and ideologies that are influential in regeneration; economic and political resilience; the role of social mobility, marginal groups, and peripheries; and ethnic change. In addition to presenting a number of theoretical viewpoints, the contributors also propose reasons why regeneration sometimes does not occur after collapse. A concluding contribution by Norman Yoffee provides a critical exegesis of "collapse" and highlights important patterns found in the case histories related to peripheral regions and secondary elites, and to the ideology of statecraft.After Collapseblazes new research trails in both archaeology and the study of social change, demonstrating that the archaeological record often offers more clues to the "dark ages" that precede regeneration than do text-based studies. It opens up a new window on the past by shifting the focus away from the rise and fall of ancient civilizations to their often more telling fall and rise.CONTRIBUTORSBennet Bronson, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Christina A. Conlee, Lisa Cooper, Timothy S. Hare, Alan L. Kolata, Marilyn A. Masson, Gordon F. McEwan, Ellen Morris, Ian Morris, Carlos Peraza Lope, Kenny Sims, Miriam T. Stark, Jill A. Weber, Norman Yoffee
This collection of essays offers a fresh look into Christian-Jewish cultural interactions during the Renaissance and beyond. Christian scholars, it is shown, were deeply immersed in a variety of ...Hebrew sources, while their Jewish counterparts imbibed the culture of Humanism.
Early Modern Medievalisms Montoya, Alicia C; van Romburgh, Sophie; van Anrooij, Wim
2010, Letnik:
15
eBook
Although modernity historically defined itself by relation to the medieval, the ways in which early moderns invoked and conceptualized the medieval are still insufficiently understood. This volume's ...seventeen essays present some preliminary explorations into the field of early modern medievalisms.
A Walk in the Garden Morris, Paul; Sawyer, Deborah
1992, 1992-05-01, Letnik:
136
eBook
This collection of essays by notable scholars offers a unique, multi-faceted approach to the understanding of the Garden story. Starting with the motifs, context, structure and language of the ...biblical text itself, the chapters trace the Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions, and developments in literature and iconography. This is an invaluable book for students and scholars of biblical studies, theology, literature, art history and the psychology of religion.
The use of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention guidelines based on absolute risk assessment is poor around the world, including Australia. Behavioural barriers amongst GPs and patients include ...capability (e.g. difficulty communicating/understanding risk) and motivation (e.g. attitudes towards guidelines/medication). This paper outlines the theory-based development of a website for GP guidelines, and piloting of a new risk calculator/decision aid.
Stage 1 involved identifying evidence-based solutions using the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) framework, informed by previous research involving 400 GPs and 600 patients/consumers. Stage 2 co-developed website content with GPs. Stage 3 piloted a prototype website at a national GP conference. Stage 4 iteratively improved the website based on "think aloud" interviews with GPs and patients. Stage 5 was a feasibility study to evaluate potential efficacy (guidelines-based recommendations for each risk category), acceptability (intended use) and demand (actual use over 1 month) amongst GPs (n = 98).
Stage 1 identified GPs as the target for behaviour change; the need for a new risk calculator/decision aid linked to existing audit and feedback training; and online guidelines as a delivery format. Stage 2-4 iteratively improved content and format based on qualitative feedback from GP and patient user testing over three rounds of website development. Stage 5 suggested potential efficacy with improved identification of hypothetical high risk patients (from 26 to 76%) and recommended medication (from 57 to 86%) after viewing the website (n = 42), but prescribing to low risk patients remained similar (from 19 to 22%; n = 37). Most GPs (89%) indicated they would use the website in the next month, and 72% reported using it again after one month (n = 98). Open feedback identified implementation barriers including a need for integration with medical software, low health literacy resources and pre-consultation assessment.
Following a theory-based development process and user co-design, the resulting intervention was acceptable to GPs with high intentions for use, improved identification of patient risk categories and more guidelines-based prescribing intentions for high risk but not low risk patients. The effectiveness of linking the intervention to clinical practice more closely to address implementation barriers will be evaluated in future research.
Altmetrics indices are increasingly applied to measure scholarly influence in recent years because they can reflect the influence of research outputs more timely comparing with traditional ...measurements. Simultaneously, artificial intelligence (AI), as an emerging interdiscipline, has a rapid development in these years. Traditional indices can’t reflect the influence of the AI research outputs quickly, thus more timely altmetrics indices are needed. In this paper, we conduct four studies about altmetrics indices and AI research outputs based on the datasets collected from Altmetric.com and Scopus database. First, we provide a review of the research status in the AI field. Second, we show the AI researches that attracted the most attention. Third, we demonstrate the general effectiveness of altmetrics indices in the AI field. Last, we examine the effectiveness of altmetrics indices for different levels of AI journal papers and AI conference papers. Our results indicate that there is a rapid increase of AI publications and the public has paid more attention to AI research outputs since 2011. It is found that altmetrics indices are effective to discriminate highly cited publications and publications whose citation counts increase quickly. Among all Altmetric sub-indicators, Number of Mendeley readers is the most effective. Moreover, the results indicate that altmetrics indices are more effective in high levels of AI journal papers and AI conference papers. The main contribution of this paper is investigating the effectiveness of altmetrics indices from the perspective of different levels of publications. This study lays the foundation for further investigations about effectiveness of altmetrics indices from new perspectives, and it has important implication for the studies about the impact of social media on the scientific community.
Using intraday EUR–USD and JPY–USD data in both electronic futures and spot markets, we examine the important role played by order flow in price discovery and in intermediating the exchange‐rate ...reactions to macroeconomic news. We find that, after considering the order flows of futures and spot markets, the futures market dominates price discovery when compared with the spot market, confirming that order flows have a permanent impact on prices, even more so in futures markets. Furthermore, announcement surprises in gross domestic product, jobless claims, and nonfarm payroll affect both order flows and exchange‐rate changes.
No, the Fed does not appear to play politics with respect to setting the federal funds rate. We examine the federal funds spot and futures rates to infer the Fed's response to political pressure from ...partisan politics during election and nonelection years. We find little evidence that political variables influence either market, suggesting that spot and futures traders act as if the Fed's behaviour is similar across election and nonelection years. Our evidence suggests that federal funds traders believe the Fed generally behaves in a politically neutral fashion.
Introduction
The effect of
N
-acetylcysteine (NAC) treatment for patients with chronic bronchitis (CB) is controversial. To better understand the role of NAC in CB treatment, we performed a ...meta-analysis to provide a more accurate estimation of the importance of NAC treatment.
Methods
PubMed, Embase, and CNKI were systematically searched. The pooled relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using either fixed-effect model or random-effect model based on heterogeneity examination. Statistical analyses were performed using the STATA 12.0 and RevMan 5.2.
Results
A total of 11 publications with 775 patients who were taking NAC and 789 controls who were taking placebo were judged eligible regarding inclusion criteria. The pooled analysis demonstrated significant evidence that NAC reduced the frequency of CB exacerbations (RR = 0.81, 95% CI 0.69–0.93,
P
= 0.004). Patients treated with NAC had significant symptom improvement compared with controls (RR = 1.68, 95% CI 1.13–2.52,
P
= 0.01). NAC did not significantly increase the risk of adverse effects compared with placebo (RR 0.86, 95% CI 0.67–1.09,
P
= 0.22). Subgroup analysis was carried out to assess the stability of results. No publication bias was detected during analyses.
Conclusion
There is a role for NAC treatment in the management of CB by reducing symptoms and exacerbations compared with placebo, without increasing the risk of adverse effects. A regular treatment of low dosage (< 1200 mg per day) and a duration of at least 3 months seems to be effective.
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