This chapter offers readers a transparent view into the research methodology used to investigate mathematics anxiety and assess the impact of a targeted pedagogical intervention on students’ reported anxiety and attitudes towards statistics and quantitative research methods. It provides a detailed account of the research participants, ethical considerations, and the multi-mixed methods approach employed. The chapter also critiques the validity, reliability, and trustworthiness of the research design and findings, ensuring methodological rigour. A candid discussion of the study’s limitations further strengthens its credibility. It is an essential reading for educators, researchers, and anyone committed to evidence-based improvements in mathematics education.

An assessment of the metal tools available for working wood and stonework contributes tangible evidence to overarching questions about Mycenaean construction and significantly augments previous publications on Mycenaean tools. Implement patterns raise questions about tool availability, artisan status and mobility, and the administrative oversight of stonework.

This chapter explores Bieral’s ascent in Boston’s sporting world, particularly in boxing and gambling. As a pugilist and promoter, he gained notoriety and respect among working-class men, leveraging his physical prowess and entrepreneurial acumen. The narrative situates prizefighting within a broader culture of honor and individualism, where violence served as both entertainment and social currency. Bieral’s transition from fighter to promoter and casino operator marks his evolution into a figure of influence. The chapter underscores the role of sport in legitimizing urban masculinity and the economic structures that sustained vice industries, revealing how athletic fame often overlapped with criminality.

Complex fluids can be found all around us, from molten plastics to mayonnaise, and understanding their highly nonlinear dynamics is the subject of much research.

This text introduces a common theoretical framework for understanding and predicting the flow behavior of complex fluids. This framework allows for results including a qualitative understanding of the relationship between a fluid’s behavior at the microscale of particles or macromolecules, and its macroscopic, viscoelastic properties. The author uses a microstructural approach to derive constitutive theories that remain simple enough to allow computational predictions of complicated macroscale flows.

Readers develop their intuition to learn how to approach the description of materials not covered in the book, as well as limits such as higher concentrations that require computational methods for microstructural analysis.

This monograph’s unique breadth and depth make it a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students in fluid mechanics.

Chapter 8 is the third of four chapters to consider one element of the Dominican liturgy, focussing here on the sources and unique characteristics of the Dominican divine office. Drawing on data from previous studies of the office, and in particular of office responsory chants, this chapter positions the Dominican office within a wider network of liturgical traditions. The Dominican office was clearly adopted by the Teutonic Knights, the Crosiers, and in certain Scandinavian dioceses. The source for the Dominican office is less [clear-cut]. Some traits of the Dominican office can also be observed in the advent responsories of the Cistercians and of British cathedrals, and in the responsory verses in office books from Provence; these may either have been sources for the Dominican office, or they may have shared a common source. The chapter concludes by noting distinctive features of the Dominican office and its books, for the purposes of facilitating identification of other Dominican office books.

Ocean acidification is a significant but under-recognised climate impact where oceans absorb CO2, leading to a 30–40 per cent decrease in pH since pre-industrial times. This poses a threat to marine ecosystems and food webs, as calcifying organisms such as oysters and corals struggle to build their shells, while non-calcifying species face behavioural changes. Despite an increasing amount of scientific literature, OA receives minimal attention from social sciences and lacks international governance. The book explores how OA should be governed, mapping the governance landscape as a regime complex involving multiple actors and instruments. It proposes global experimentalist governance as suitable for addressing the complexity of OA, examining case studies of the OA Alliance and the International Maritime Organization. The research finds that while OA is framed as a climate change effect needing holistic responses, including mitigation, adaptation, and resilience measures, current governance remains fragmented, with limited coordination among relevant international frameworks.

Referring to the medical model of frenzy sketched out in the first two chapters, Chapter 3 explores the metaphysical problems which it caused. The model’s insistence on the total dependence of the mind on the brain, it argues, placed pressure on a Christian cosmology in which ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ were supposed to be fully separable. Frenzy forced contemporaries to ask how it was possible for the human mind – made in the ‘image of God’ – to be impaired by organic disease. For most early modern Christians, the mind was a part of the soul, and this soul was immaterial, incorruptible, and immortal. Frenzy gave the impression that it invaded every part of the person, but this impression was false. The soul had to be immune to brain disease. This chapter examines the ancient roots of this problem, and examines how early modern England’s preachers, physicians, and philosophers attempted to solve it.

This chapter traces the early life of Louis Bieral, born in 1814 in Valparaíso, Chile, amid revolutionary upheaval. It explores his ambiguous racial and familial origins and the violent political culture of post-independence Chile, which shaped his understanding of masculinity and authority. Bieral’s exposure to maritime life and urban vice in Valparaíso foreshadowed his later immersion in New York’s underworld. His alleged kidnapping by a whaling captain and subsequent servitude in Brooklyn illustrate the porous boundaries between freedom and coercion in antebellum America. The chapter situates Bieral’s formative years within broader themes of race, labor, and violence, emphasizing the social structures that normalized physical domination and racial ambiguity.

Moving to California during the Gold Rush, Bieral found himself in a frontier society defined by lawlessness, racial tension, and economic ambition. The chapter examines his possible involvement in violent incidents and his association with notorious figures in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. Bieral’s return to Boston and legal name change reflected his desire for reinvention and racial reclassification amid rising nativism and the Fugitive Slave Act. His story illustrates the fluidity of identity and the strategic use of whiteness in navigating legal and social hierarchies. California’s chaotic environment provides an extreme example of a society run by bullies in antebellum America.