Between 1886 and 1889, the renowned mixed vocal ensemble, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, of Tennessee, USA, toured Australia and New Zealand. The Singers’ concerts featured polished arrangements of spirituals, a unique African American form of religious folk song. These performances sparked a conversation about the boundaries of race and the transformative potential of the spiritual for those who embraced the genre within the Australian context. Over the century that followed, often but not always with the support of white missionaries, Indigenous groups employed the songs in various ways: as anthems of emancipation; to stir sympathy among white audiences; as a means of securing space on Australian concert stages and over the air, and to call out the Australian government’s racist policies. Hence, the Fisk Singers’ tour of Australia set into play both performance practices and discourses about the power of Westernising non-European music that fit easily within Australian assimilationist social ideology. Yet tensions would noticeably arise around the mid twentieth century between those who championed spiritual singing as a pathway to assimilation and touring African American recitalists such as Paul Robeson who viewed the cultural value of the songs in starkly different terms.

Raynaud’s phenomenon is a vasospastic disorder with a reported prevalence of between 3% and 5% of the general population, is nine times more common in females and typically occurs between the ages of 15–40 years. It may be primary or occur in the setting of connective tissue disorders. Exaggerated vasoconstriction of the digital arteries in response to certain environmental triggers, typically cold temperatures, leads to pale, cold, numb and sometimes painful digits. In extreme cases, digital artery vasospasm leads to diminished blood supply to the fingertips, which causes pain, disuse and exposure of the distal phalanx, and may necessitate amputation.

Injection of botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) into the hand, typically at the base of the fingers, produces increased blood flow, oxygenation saturation, pain reduction and promotion of ulcer healing, with prolonged benefit over several months. This chapter details the use of BoNT for ischemic digits caused by Raynaud’s phenomenon, including injection technique, dosing and quantification of perfusion and oxygenation using laser Doppler.

A regional block, also known as a localized block, is a type of anesthetic that blocks nerve transmission to prevent or alleviate pain. Regional anesthesia is the process of injecting an anesthetic substance into a peripheral nerve and inhibiting transmission to avoid or treat pain. It is distinct from general anesthesia in that it does not alter the patient’s level of awareness to alleviate pain. There are numerous advantages of regional anesthesia over general anesthesia, including avoidance of airway manipulation, lower dosages, fewer systemic medication adverse effects, shorter recovery period, and considerably less discomfort following surgery.

The intercostal nerves are the continuations of the ventral ramus of the thoracic spinal nerves. To perform an effective ICB, the block should be performed proximal to the mid-axillary line, where the lateral cutaneous branch takes off. ICBs can be performed using landmarks, a nerve stimulator, or under ultrasound guidance. Evidence supports the effectiveness of ICBs for chest tube placement, rib fractures, and procedures of the breast and chest wall. Limitations of ICBs include the need to perform blocks at multiple levels (each level of fractured rib) and their association with a shorter duration of action, compared to other chest wall fascial plane blocks such as pectoralis (PECS) II block and serratus anterior plane block (SAP). This is mainly related to a high rate of absorption of local anesthetic within the intercostal space. These considerations make ICBs a less favorable option, as with each injection, there is a potential risk of complications, such as neurovascular injury and pneumothorax. The risk of local anesthetic systemic toxicity (LAST) may also be increased with multiple intercostal injections related to the highly vascularized bundle located underneath each rib, resulting in a high rate of absorption.

The ‘ethical turn’ in anthropology has charted alternatives to some prevailing philosophical, psychological, and anthropological approaches. This engagement forces anthropologists to reconsider old antinomies such as constraint and agency, relativism and universalism, individualism and collectivism. Like other anthropologists of ethics, we resist forms of determinism that would reduce ethical life to the putatively universal constraints of biology and psychology, the logic of rationality, or the workings of power and ideology. Instead, we consider the processes through which what seem to be constraints or universals serve as affordances that are ethicalized through historically contingent reflexive practices. Rather than being forced to choose between the individual and the collective in terms of who (or what) the ethical subject is, we demonstrate how social interaction is a critical site in which and through which such ethicalization occurs.

Cities are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use. Building and upgrading city infrastructure in developing countries could release 226 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, if these cities obtain levels of infrastructure in developed countries today. Urban GHG emissions vary across economies, geography, wealth and urban form. The largest direct and indirect GHG emission sources are buildings, industry and transport. Urban climate change impacts of heat, sea-level rise, extreme weather, and water scarcity will exacerbate extant stressors in developing countries. Mitigation and adaptation measures interact, sometimes with unintended consequences. Systems approaches, integrated planning and strategy that recognises synergies and conflicts, are crucial to optimal outcomes. The city scale is good for innovation, aligned with national governance, for effective climate action. Many cities are committed to 100% renewable energy and net zero emissions by 2030. Key enablers are: a shared city region vision; effective stakeholder engagement; relevant, credible, accessible knowledge for decision-making; and aligned institutional arrangements.

This chapter provides an insight into the role of systems science for sustainability assessment. In the first part, we present seven axioms that have been derived from system-theoretical perspectives and show their relevance for sustainability assessment. Following these axioms, we propose a way to structure and analyse systems following four system characteristics: (1) system boundary and interactions with the external environment; (2) purpose, goals, and associated decision-making drivers and criteria for the system; (3) system structure (subsystems, elements, and their interactions), dynamics, and emerging behaviour; and (4) system information, outcomes monitoring, and learning. These four characteristics were applied to study, first, the historical development of the energy system analysis and, second, an Australian urban systems-transformation initiative. The systems-analysis framework presented provides a good basis for putting the elements of a system analysis into their broader context, and designing purposeful interventions. Especially for more transformational change, the alignment of stakeholder values, institutional arrangements, and available knowledge become key leverage points.

The Byzantine Empire was, above all, the pars orientis of the Roman Empire and the cradle of Christianity and monasticism. Nevertheless, some interesting parallels can be drawn between the economic and political history of Eastern and Western monasticism throughout the Middle Ages. This Roman East was radically diminished by Arab expansion, which deprived the empire of its richest provinces from both monastic and economic points of view, and also by Slavic invasions. The empire reconquered the Balkans up to the Danube in the middle of the eleventh century, but in the east it barely managed to extend past Antioch in Syria and Edessa in Upper Mesopotamia, even as it expanded in this same period into the southern Caucasus region and up to areas that were never Roman. This expansion was short-lived, as the east was overwhelmed by the Turks in the second half of the eleventh century, which ended with the arrival of the crusaders. Although the crusaders recovered a portion of Asia Minor, they took what Byzantium held east of the Taurus.

The notion of the monastic economy evokes two main questions: how did communities of men and women who chose to fulfill the ideal of cenobitic life cope with their economic necessities, and how did these communities interact with their environment (in the microeconomic sense) and with the structure and general economic trends of their time (in the macroeconomic sense)? Many scholars believe that monasteries had vibrant economic exchanges with their surroundings and played a significant role in the resurgence of trade in northwest Europe during the seventh to ninth centuries. According to Henning, who argued against this commonly held opinion, however, the goal of total autarky (which relates back to the original ideal of Benedict of Nursia (d. c. 540) of self-sufficiency) during the Carolingian period had a consistently negative effect on the mercantile economy.