A million years is an extremely vast amount of time: The time spanning the oldest evidence of our genus, found in the modern northern Ethiopian badlands, presumably documenting its first steps at around 2.8 Ma (Villmoare et al., 2015), to the earliest presence of humans in Europe, currently dated to about 1.5 Ma (Parés et al., 2006; Lozano-Fernández et al., 2015). The oldest uncontroversial archaeological record, dated to 2.6 Ma in Ethiopia (Semaw et al., 1997), which preserves a small (but evolutionarily extraordinary) package of behavioral features comprising the earliest evidence of stone tool use, of animal carcass processing, and meat-eating and, potentially, the earliest traces of central-place foraging by a primate, contains also the oldest evidence of the socio-reproductive behavior of our earliest human ancestors. All of it was labeled for its technological innovation: the Oldowan; the sometimes curated, sometimes expedient transformation of cobbles into flakes and other flaked artifacts, transported and used across substantial parts of the ecosystems to which those hominins adapted.

A key challenge for the party since 1949 has been to forge a new Chinese nation within the boundaries of a vast, ethnically heterogeneous former empire. The party has experimented with a variety of policies and mechanisms for securing the loyalty and obedience of non-Han groups, shifting between accommodative and assimilative approaches depending on the broader political climate at any given time. Frustrated by continued ethnic unrest, which the party sees as a threat to social stability and its political legitimacy, the party has, in recent years, sought to fortify the unity of the nationalities via increasingly coercive administrative and technological measures. This chapter examines the coercive measures implemented by the CPC to guide and control China’s minority nationalities. These include controls over religion, language, traditional practices, minority nationality regions, and minority nationalities who ventured to other parts of China. The controls are designed to prevent ethnic protest and to forge a common Chinese ethnic identity that subsumes all other ethnic identities and which is united by loyalty to the party-state.

This chapter examines Augustine’s relationship to earlier biblical exegesis. It emphasizes three distinctive preoccupations of Augustine’s exegesis: “the constraints of language, the limits of the human mind’s capacity to know God or the author’s intention, and the habits of the flesh to follow the desires of its senses.” After elucidating Augustine’s approach to these issues – which in itself sets him somewhat apart from his predecessors and contemporaries – the chapter presents two informative case studies. The first concerns Genesis, the topic of Confessions 11–13. Augustine’s exegesis of Genesis is informed from the beginning by his determination to reject the Manichaean dismissal of that book as silly and anthropomorphic, but his engagement with Genesis matures over time: his earliest discussions are far more indebted to Ambrose than his later, more distinctive, exegesis. The second case study concerns the Song of Songs. Here Augustine insists upon the goodness, beauty, and order of the material world, redeeming the five senses as intimations of the divine.

The employer provided everything – wages, housing, post office, parks, canteens. Such a model of the “company town,” where a single corporation dominates in multiple capacities as employer, landlord, service provider, and quasi-regulator over a dwelling area, has endured across borders and time. The term can portray textile mills in eighteenth-century England or coal and steel towns in early twentieth-century America just as fittingly as it does today’s network of “supply chain cities” that span East and Southeast Asia and beyond. This chapter studies Inter-Asia’s supply chain cities – in particular, manufacturing sites in East and Southeast Asia. More than physical spaces, these sites represent a form of legal entrepôt, created by law and capable of shaping laws and norms through diverse pathways, including regulatory fragmentation and coordinated advocacy. In comparison with another gilded-age moment of industrial development – early twentieth-century United States – these modern company towns exemplify the uniqueness of Inter-Asia’s corporate forms, exercise of power, and regional integration.

The concerns and emphases of 'unsex'd' females do not mirror those of twentieth and twenty-first century feminism, nor even of the women's movements of the late nineteenth century. There is a widespread awareness that sexual character is at least to some extent artificial and variable, and the variations are explored in the novels of Smith and Burney. Political and civil rights are not ignored, but they are by no means central. Neither 'unsex'd' nor 'proper' females describe or propose a clear-cut separation of spheres, but at the same time they do not challenge the notion that the retired and the domestic is best for women. The author's view has been that women writers of the 1790s had at their disposal a range of genres, voices, discourses, theories and narratives on which they could draw as bricoleurs in order to advance the interests of women.

This chapter examines Darwin’s taxonomy of emotions. I show that nineteenth-century associationists were divided on whether emotion categories exist in nature or are conventional. Herbert Spencer argues that emotion categories exist in nature, anticipating modern basic emotions theory. Thomas Brown argues that emotion categories are conventional, anticipating modern psychological constructionism. I show that Darwin sides with Brown and regards emotion categories as conventional. This finding is surprising, since Darwin is often viewed as a precursor to modern basic emotions theory, which adopts the opposite view.

Critical illness is a life-altering experience for both patients and families. Although patients and families have shared priorities for recovery, they also have unique lived experiences that require individualized attention and validation after critical illness. Patient and family needs are dynamic and evolve over successive phases of critical illness recovery. In general, patients and families desire structured, proactive supports that address distinct informational, emotional, appraisal, instrumental, social, and spiritual needs. Timely, consistent, and clear communication across all phases of recovery is key to fostering trust and resilience. The “Timing-it-Right” framework is a useful model to guide recovery-oriented care programs from the hospital ward to community setting. Critical illness recovery programs should be holistic, coordinated, and prioritize functional goals and quality of life. Future research on critical illness recovery should engage diverse patient and family perspectives and incorporate quality of life outcomes that matter to patients and families. Common themes in patient and family experience may provide guidance for clinicians, researchers, and health systems looking to support critical illness recovery.

To carry out its action, the Israeli state must ensure the support of its Western allies and contain criticism from its adversaries or new partners in the Arab world, whose public opinion is highly critical of Israel. To achieve these political objectives, Tel Aviv implemented an unprecedented communication strategy to disseminate its narratives and content to the widest possible audience.

This chapter discusses an ethically challenging case involving a seventeen-year-old patient, Joseph, diagnosed with advanced osteosarcoma. His care was complicated by his mother Sheila’s refusal to adhere to recommended medical treatments, including chemotherapy and pain management. Despite Joseph’s severe pain and deteriorating condition, Sheila’s resistance to medical interventions caused significant ethical and medical dilemmas. The medical team, ethics consultants, and Child Protective Services (CPS) were repeatedly involved, but Sheila’s influence over Joseph, compounded by his love and loyalty to her, continued to hinder pain and symptom management.

As Joseph neared the end of his life, ethical consultations suggested involving him in decision-making due to his cognitive maturity and understanding of his medical needs. However, Sheila’s refusals persisted, leading to intense moral distress among the care team. Efforts to engage CPS and legal avenues to override parental authority were insufficient, and the care team struggled between their responsibility to ease Joseph’s suffering and respecting Sheila’s decisions.

This case highlights significant deficiencies in end-of-life protections for adolescents and raises crucial ethical questions about parental authority, adolescent patient autonomy, and the role of healthcare providers in safeguarding patient welfare. The chapter concludes by advocating for stronger legal and institutional guidelines to address these complex ethical issues, especially in pediatric care.

This chapter examines the interplay between the HIV/AIDS pandemic and political dynamics, affecting both ruling and opposition parties. The chapter argues that governments can exploit public health crises to their advantage, mainly through their control over healthcare access and the movement of citizens. The HIV pandemic disproportionately impacted urban areas, which are also opposition strongholds. Thus, the majority of those who became ill and or died from the disease were urbanites who would have been opposition voters. The prolonged nature of HIV/AIDS also had a debilitating effect on entire families, where caregivers faced significant exhaustion and burnout, reducing their capacity for political engagement, protests, or voting. The HIV/AIDS pandemic also changed the political and cultural landscape. The death of politicians resulted in multiple elections that favored the ruling party, which had better resources. The loss of cultural leaders, musicians, and others in the arts also diminished the voices of those willing and able to speak up against the regime. The chapter provides a calculation of the exit premium of 4 to 12 percent due to HIV/AIDS-related voter exit.

The context in which Robert and Clara carried out their respective musical experiences as performers, listeners, and organizers of chamber music was richly varied. This chapter illustrates how, at the time, playing together with other musicians was considered of primary importance. Sometimes the Schumanns directly initiated such events, such as the Quartettmorgen (quartet mornings) that Robert had organized starting in 1838 in his own home. From the early nineteenth century onwards, concert series dedicated to chamber music flourished throughout Europe, often founded and run by musicians with whom Robert and Clara were in close contact. Above all, the number of student-populated instrumental ensembles increased, even in schools not specifically dedicated to music (such as military and art academies). The number of orchestras in which amateurs often played alongside professionals grew as well. Sometimes Robert himself conducted such groups.