Earlier studies of maturation effects and ultimate achievement – UA, eventual knowledge of a second language (L2) – mainly involved immigrants to English-speaking countries tested on the native-likeness (how much they sounded like native speakers) of their L2 phonology or morphosyntax. In these classic studies, a consistent finding was that perceived native-likeness inversely correlated with increasing age of onset of acquisition (AoA), a finding linked to an optimal period for SLA. The past decade has developed new perspectives on these issues, eschewing the notion of native-likeness as a gold standard, incorporating numerous factors in addition to AoA and looking at the interaction of the two languages of the bilingual. Factors include environment of acquisition, input and individual learner characteristics. This chapter outlines the classic studies of AoA and the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) before turning to UA in phonology, morphosyntax and processing. It then reevaluates the term native speaker, a label that has received criticism for perpetuating Eurocentric models; it finally recapitulates several components that can be taken into account to explain the range of ultimate achievement in child and adult L2.

This chapter analyses the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as a case study for global experimentalist governance in ocean acidification. Shipping significantly contributes to OA through CO2, NOx, and SOx emissions, along with scrubber discharge that releases acidic water directly into the oceans. The IMO regulates shipping but scarcely acknowledges OA, instead promoting scrubbers despite their harmful effects. The chapter assesses the IMO’s climate change response against experimentalist governance elements: (1) A shared problem exists – stakeholders agree climate change needs addressing; (2) Open-ended goals are present – the Revised GHG Strategy sets framework objectives like ‘reducing emissions as soon as possible’ with specific metrics; (3) Delegation occurs through National Action Plans (NAPs), where member states experiment with solutions; (4) Feedback and peer review are limited – only 9 of 175 countries submitted NAPs, with minimal systematic comparison or best practice identification; (5) Goal adjustment is possible through strategy reviews. A key limitation is that weak peer review and feedback mechanisms undermine recursive learning essential to experimentalist governance. While some experimentalist features exist, the IMO’s response only partially resembles this governance model, suggesting limited potential for addressing OA directly through experimentalist approaches.

This chapter examines the discourse of religious belief in Latin epic of the first century CE. The first section advances a methodological case for the value of high-register poetry as evidence for Roman thinking about religious belief. Building on the model of Charles King, the argument highlights the implications of the literary evidence for key theoretical debates about belief. The second section consists of a series of case studies demonstrating Roman imperial epic’s interest in the role of empiricism in shaping beliefs about the divine. Human testing of the gods features especially prominently in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Statius’ Thebaid: how to recognise a deity, whether a mortal can perform the same acts as a god, what qualities distinguish the human from the divine. Using Ovid’s Lycaon and Niobe and Statius’ Capaneus as paradigms of a broader phenomenon, the chapter shows how Latin epic develops both a vocabulary and behavioural code of theological scrutiny, which subjects divinity to rigorous examination by mortals as a method of grounding belief. The motivations for this poetic line of inquiry can be traced not only to philosophical discourse but also to contemporary practices of emperor cult and deification.

In this chapter, we will introduce the main acceleration methods. We will explain each method in more detail in the following chapters. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of acceleration methods.

How do you become a creative, successful, and hopefully, happy psychologist? We have studied psychological scientists who have become eminent in their field (Sternberg, 2016). We draw upon what we have learned in this chapter. In particular, the chapter draws from the list of characteristics that typify psychological scientists who make it to the top. Most of these characteristics apply to practicing psychologists as well. We have supplemented the list with characteristics especially important for practicing psychologists. We hope you find the list useful to you in developing your career, whatever that career may be!

Chapter 7 builds on, while in some ways reversing, the analysis in Chapter 6. It examines the thirty-nine surviving letters from Keats to Fanny Brawne from the perspective of their distancing function. Keats’s often distinctly fraught and sometimes emotionally coercive letters and notes to Fanny mostly date from the summer and early autumn of 1819, when he was away from London on a writing retreat, and from February to March 1820, when he was living right next door to the Brawne family at Wentworth Place in Hampstead but was often too unwell to see her. The chapter considers Keats’s love letters as informed and even instructed by the writers he happens to be reading (especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Philip Massinger), arguing that what he is reading can itself distance the writer from his recipient as much as bring the two together: Keats’s epistolary intertextuality itself distances him from the object of his desire.

This chapter continues the discussion of eighteenth-century representations of Lady Macbeth as a monstrous wife and mother, examining how this was depicted in a series of paintings that portray Lady Macbeth as dominating and exerting control over her timid spouse. After the French Revolution, British caricaturists cast Jacobin sympathizers as the witches in Macbeth, and visual artists such as Johan Zoffany, Henry Fuseli and William Blake invoked the figure of the witch to fuel fears regarding dangerous female sexuality and the horrific consequences of giving women social and political power. Mary Wollstonecraft, who embodied these fears for Fuseli and Blake, along with Germaine de Staël and Sarah Siddons, responded by emphasizing the psychological elements of Macbeth and representing Lady Macbeth as a sympathetic character.

Bieral’s enlistment in the US Navy during the Panic of 1837 marked his transition from urban rowdy to global adventurer. Serving aboard the U.S.S. Columbia, he participated in a diplomatic and punitive expedition across Asia and the Pacific, including a retaliatory assault on Sumatran villages. The chapter details the brutal discipline aboard naval vessels, highlighting the normalization of corporal punishment and racial integration among sailors. Bieral’s promotion and survival amid disease and violence underscore his resilience. The voyage exemplifies the intersection of nationalism, violence, and racial fluidity.

This chapter analyses the concept of jurisdiction, a central feature of territorial sovereignty. The principle of domestic jurisdiction is explained, followed by an examination of the various bases upon which criminal jurisdiction may be exercised by states under international law. The primary basis is the territorial principle, which clearly reflects the key principle of territorial sovereignty. However, jurisdiction may also be exercised on the grounds of nationality, a concept which is domestically defined but which may require international acceptance. Other grounds include the passive personality principle, the protective principle and the universality principle. In terms of the latter, examples may include war crimes and crimes against humanity. In addition, treaties may provide for jurisdiction beyond the accepted principles with regard to drug trafficking and slavery, the taking of hostages and hijacking. The chapter also discusses the effect of the US Alien Tort Statute in the framework of universal jurisdiction. The question of extraterritorial jurisdiction is also noted.

Chapter 1 explores the discourse of ‘superstition’ (mixin) from the New Culture Movement (1915–20s) to the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), focusing on the intersection of the categories of ‘superstition’, ‘religion’, and ‘science’. Nationalist intellectuals and Guomindang leaders counterposed superstition to modern religion, seeing the former as an impediment to China’s becoming a modern nation-state. A strong theme in the discourse of the CCP was to counterpose superstition to science, and the chapter discusses briefly efforts to propagate scientific knowledge of the natural world. It examines the efforts of the CCP to rethink what religious policy might mean in a country where ‘religion’ did not conform to the implicitly European conception of religion that underpinned the Marxist–Leninist tradition.

The CCP rejected an ‘anti-religious’ policy such as the Soviet Union had developed in favour of one that reflected its commitment to a ‘united front’ with loyal and progressive religious leaders. It involved the setting up of five state-regulated national associations for each of the five religions the regime recognized – Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism. With the move to the phase of ’socialist construction’, the united front policy came under attack from leftists. Despite efforts by the United Front Work Department to maintain the policy from the Socialist Education Movement (1963–6), the policy mutated into an anti-religious policy that reached its apogee with the Cultural Revolution. The chapter explores how the Chinese Buddhist Association and the Chinese Daoist Association, set up in 1953 and 1957, were affected by the changing policy.