Oxford University Press's Blog, page 360

Of dogs, apes, and humans

It’s the late afternoon and you are in the kitchen, idly beginning to think about dinner, at the end of a long day at work. Suddenly the peace is shattered by the noisy entrance of your dog and your son. Your dog sits by his empty bowl and looks at you with beseeching eyes. If he thinks that you’re not reacting quickly enough, he may produce a single attention-grabbing bark. Your son says: “When do we eat?” On the face of it, your dog and your son have done the same thing: they both, each in his own way, have communicated the same content, that is, “Feed me, I’m hungry!” Admittedly, your son has done so in a rather more articulated way, but that could be a detail.

Now your son might go on: “And what do we eat?” This is something that, arguably, dogs can’t do. And, reacting to your answer, your son might say: “But I don’t like fish! Why can’t we have steak instead?” Again, this seems well out of the range of your dog’s communicative abilities. He may express his disapproval of your choice of pet food by leaving his bowl untouched, but he doesn’t seem able of any kind of more sophisticated communication. One might want to downplay the difference by saying that this is merely a case of dog-human communication (dogs being a domesticated species) that belies the sophistication of communication systems found in wild species.

Up to a point, this is right. Animal communication has been extensively investigated in the wild and a few interesting conclusions have emerged. One of the best studied instances, that of vervet monkeys (small Old-World monkeys living in Sub-Saharan Africa), counts about 30 different signals, including three different alarm calls signaling the presence of different predators. Additionally, another species (Dana monkeys) has been found to produce not only isolated signals, but, occasionally, combinations of two signals. Couldn’t one argue that this shows that human linguistic communication is just a development of such pre-existing animal communication systems that have been enriched throughout the millennia?

All animal communication systems of which we have knowledge seem to peak at around 30 different signals.

As a matter of fact, it’s not clear we can. All animal communication systems of which we have knowledge seem to peak at around 30 different signals. By contrast, when your son was three-year-old, he had around 300 words, by the time he was 6, he would have around 10,000 words, and by the time he finishes high school (at around 18), he will have between 60,000 and 80,000 words (your dog cannot compete with any of these achievements). And of course, linguistic signals are not isolated words, but syntactically structured sentences. This suggests that a first major difference between animal communication systems and language lies in the number of different signals that they encompass. A first question is why this should be so. There seems to be two possibilities: humans have developed richer communicative systems due to the fact that their social life necessitates the communication of a richer array of contents than is needed in other species; the richness of human vocabularies reflects the complexity of human intelligence. Arguably, both explanations are right, but the first depends, up to a point, on the second. The socially constrained need to communicate a rich array of contents depends on the existence of a rich array of contents to be communicated. So, the question of language evolution cannot be only why other species do not have the same communicative needs as humans. Rather, it is whether other species, despite having limited communication systems, have as rich a system of thought as do humans. If this is the case, one would expect that some animal species could be taught something like a human language.

Since the 70s, a range of animal species (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, parrots, and dolphins) have been taught simplified sign languages or symbol-based languages. The results converge on the fact that the animals engaged in such programs peak at 250–300 words and never attain complex syntax. This suggests that there are major cognitive differences between animals and humans. And, if this is the case, then the richness of human language cannot be said to be due to social constraints alone. Cognition has to play a major role. So the relevant question seems to be what it is that we, humans, have and that animals lack? Word learning seems to rest on the ability of associating a word with a meaning and it has been known for a long time that animals are quite good at associative learning. It might be, however, that their memories are less capacious than ours. But experiments have shown that dogs and monkeys can learn several thousands arbitrary associations between symbols and objects and images. Now obviously, there is more to word learning than associative memory. Consider nouns: they do not refer to specific things (your dog Buddy) but to categories (dogs). So having a rich vocabulary depends on the ability to conceptualize, and this ability seems more extensive in humans than in animals. Why this is so the central question.

In other words, the reason why human language is so different from animal communication systems is that human cognitive abilities are quite different from animal cognitive abilities as far as conceptualization is concerned. Social constraints only enter afterwards. There is a complicated (and fascinating) story behind the difference.

Featured image credit: “Woman, dog, pacsi” by YamaBSM. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay .

The post Of dogs, apes, and humans appeared first on OUPblog.

Celebrating LGBT Pride Month: a reading list for older LGBT adults

The month of June was chosen for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969. The riots were a tipping point in LGBT history and captured the long-standing feelings of anger and disenchantment among members of the gay community, who were frequently subjected to discriminatory, hateful, and even violent treatment.

Protesters at Stonewall were the genesis of the LGBT movement, and most are older adults today. Social gerontologists recognize the importance of identifying the distinctive experiences of these older gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender adults. In celebration of LGBT Pride Month, and in honor of the roughly 1.5 million older LGBT Americans, we have created a reading list of recent articles from Gerontological Society of America journals that reveal new scientific insights into the lives of LGBT older adults.

Instrumental- and Emotion-Focused Care Work During Physical Health Events: Comparing Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Marriages by Debra Umberson, Mieke Beth Thomeer, Rhiannon A. Kroeger, CorinneReczek, and Rachel Donnelly in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Research on opposite sex-couples reveals stark gender differences in the types of care spouses offer each other, yet relatively little is known about caregiving in same-sex marriages. Using data from 404 same- and opposite-sex unions, the authors explore how older couples exchange emotion and instrumental-focused care in the face of significant later-life health events. They find similar gender differences in same-and opposite-sex couples, where women report providing more emotion-focused care work than do men, and respondents report more health-related marital stress when the spouse receiving care is a woman. The authors suggest public policies and clinical strategies that may best support the health of men and women in same-and different-sex marriages.

Health Equity and Aging of Bisexual Older Adults: Pathways of Risk and Resilience by Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen, Chengshi Shiu, Amanda E. Bryan, Jayn Goldsen, and Hyun-Jun Kim in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Studies of health disparities have found that while lesbian and gay adults have poorer health than their straight counterparts, bisexual adults fare worse than those who identify as exclusively lesbian or gay. This study uses data from the Aging with Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study (NHAS), a national survey of LGBT older adults, and confirms that bisexual older adults report significantly poorer health compared with lesbian and gay older adults. Explanatory mechanisms include sexual identity factors and social resources. Having a large social network protected against health decrements among bisexuals, suggesting an important pathway for reducing health inequities.

Social Network Types and Mental Health among LGBT Older Adults by Hyun-Jun Kim, Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen, Amanda E. B. Bryan, and Anna Muraco in The Gerontologist.

This study examined the social network ties of LGBT older adults, and the implications of these networks for mental health. Using data from the NHAS, the researchers developed five distinctive social network clusters, based on 11 indicators of ties with family, friends, and other non-family network ties. The five profiles were diverse/no children, immediate family-focused, friend-centered/restricted, and fully restricted. Individuals with fully restricted social networks were at particular risk of poor mental health due to heightened health needs and limited social resources. The results can inform the development of tailored interventions to promote social connectedness and mental health in LGBT older adults.

Agency and Social Forces in the Life Course: The Case of Gender Transitions in Later Life by Vanessa D. Fabbre in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

How and under what conditions do older adults decide to make a gender transition? The author conducted in-depth interviews with 22 male-to-female identified persons ages 50 and older and conducted participant observation at three national transgender conferences. The study found that these persons had faced unrelenting social pressures to conform to normative gender expectations throughout their lives, which were often internalized and experienced as part of themselves. Confronting these internalized forces often took the form of a “dam bursting,” an intense emotional process through which the older adults asserted agency in the face of constraining social forces in order to pursue a gender transition in later life.

 Prior Military Service, Identity Stigma, and Mental Health among Transgender Older Adults by Charles P. Hoy-Ellis, Chengshi Shiu, Kathleen M. Sullivan, Hyun-Jun Kim, Allison M. Sturges, and Karen I. Fredriksen-Goldsen in The Gerontologist.

A considerable number of transgender older adults had served in the US military early in life, although little is known about the life course consequences of this experience. Using data from the NAS, the investigators examine associations among military service, identity stigma, and mental health among transgender older adults. They found that transgender persons with a history of prior military service had fewer depressive symptoms and a better psychological quality of life. Military service was protective by reducing identity stigma. The authors suggest that military experience may contribute to resilience and positive mental health, especially among those who later become transgender. Having a history of prior military service significantly predicted lower depressive symptomatology and higher psychological quality of life. Prior military service significantly attenuated the relationship between identity stigma and depressive symptomatology.

Featured image credit: Pride LGBT Rainbow Community by Nancy Dowd. Public domain via Pixabay .

The post Celebrating LGBT Pride Month: a reading list for older LGBT adults appeared first on OUPblog.

8 groovy facts about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The summer of 1967 was a turbulent time. In the middle of the hippie-filled “Summer of Love,” war broke out in the Middle East and the US escalated its bombing of Vietnam. That June also saw the most famous rock band in the world release their magnum opus and change music history and American pop culture forever. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was unlike anything that had come before it, and its experimentalism, psychedelic nature, and sheer bravado epitomized the transformations in Western society in the late 1960s.

To celebrate this pop culture milestone, we’ve gathered these groovy facts about Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles at the apex of their popularity and artistic expression.

1. After an August 1966 concert in San Francisco, the Beatles would never again perform a live concert. This was partly due to the backlash that erupted in Southern US states after John Lennon stated that the band was “more popular than Jesus.” Soon after this self-imposed exile, Sgt. Pepper was recorded over a period of 7 months.

2. Though fellow British rock band The Who’s 1969 album Tommy usually claims the distinction of the first rock opera, Sgt. Pepper was one of the first “concept albums”. In its lyrics, music, and cover artwork, it incorporated the concept of the Beatles’ whimsical alter ego: the made-up band of the album’s title.

3. Using the alter ego as a way to experiment, the Beatles incorporated a symphony orchestra, dance hall arrangements, rock music, and avant-garde compositional techniques in Sgt. Pepper. The San Francisco hippie scene had major bearings on the album, as well as the band’s experimental use of the drug LSD and its embracing of Indian mysticism and music.

4. The album’s final song, “A Day in the Life”, was banned from radio play in the UK due to what the BBC perceived to be references to drug use in its lyrics. Surprisingly, “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” passed the censors.

5. The iconic album cover by pop artist Peter Blake featured figures the Beatles considered to be influences, such as Karl Marx, Stu Sutcliffe, and Edgar Allen Poe. Its colorful montage and the band’s outlandish costumes, as well as its whimsical insert of a cutout mustache, picture of the mysterious “Sgt. Pepper” himself, and inclusion of the lyrics on the back cover encouraged analysis and study.

6. The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, died 2 months after the release of the album, and his death was the beginning of the end of the band, as creative differences and competing egos would ultimately result in the group disbanding in April of 1970.

Brian Epstein, October 1965. Koch, Eric/Anefo, Dutch National Archives. CC BY-SA 3.0 nl via Wikimedia Commons.

7. In 1968, the animated film Yellow Submarine, which featured fictionalized versions of the Beatles on a psychedelic rescue mission to save the imprisoned Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ended with a filmed sequence of the actual Beatles speaking to the audience directly, two years after their last public performance.

8. Roger Stigwood, producer of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, produced a rock opera film in 1978 called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band which was loosely based on a failed musical by Tom O’Horgan, itself loosely adapted from the lyrics and music of its namesake. A cast of rock stars such as Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, Aerosmith, and Alice Cooper could not save the film from disastrous reviews and it was an utter failure at the box office.

Featured Image credit: Press photo of The Beatles from their 1967 film, Magical Mystery Tour. Parlophone Music Sweden, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons .

The post 8 groovy facts about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band appeared first on OUPblog.

From the life of words, part 2

I am picking up where I left off last week. At first sight, nothing could be more straightforward than the adjective still. It has always meant “fixed, not moving.” We sit still, come to a standstill, and enjoy still lifes (that is, pictures of living things in a state of rest). The Germanic cognates of the English word mean the same. One short step separates still “motionless” from still “silent,” known from dialectal use and the idiom the small still voice (that is, the voice of consciousness; we’ll return to consciousness below).

Nature morte, or still life. We still enjoy Snyders and the works of his contemporaries.

Given such facts, the adverb still “without change of position” does not come as a surprise. Yet this is where the danger lurked. Phrases like still better appeared only in the sixteenth century, and before the eighteenth century, one could not say: “I still have the same address” or “I am still busy” (that is, “I was busy some time ago, and I am busy right now”). Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have taken the latter statement for “I am always busy.” In Elizabethan English, still means “constantly, forever.” It is easy to misinterpret Shakespeare’s still-vexed “constantly troubled” and heaven still (= forever!) move about her! His still in the plays and in the sonnets means only this.

The shorter the time distance between us and the texts written in the past, the greater the danger of misunderstanding them. While reading Beowulf, we dutifully look up every word in the glossary and the grammar, but we tend to take Shakespeare’s English for granted, the more so as half of his lines are familiar quotations. “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” Conscience? No, thought! On the other hand, Cassius, the man who, it will be remembered, had a lean and hungry look, aroused Caesar’s distrust: “He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.” What is wrong with thinking too much? Nothing whatsoever, except that in Shakespeare’s usage think also meant “brood.”

Things change because they may. Words also obey this law. Once we name something, we create a potential for ambiguity. Such a simple word as table can, in principle, designate anything table-like (a slab or a flat surface). People played backgammon and called the game tables (hence the idiom to turn the tables “to reverse the situation”). Who could predict this development? Even the sense of table “an arrangement of numbers, etc.” is far from trivial. Every word, once coined, tends to behave like an octopus. Consider our usage: “The Chair tabled the proposal.” Ridiculous but common.

Getting ready to turn the tables.

Especially puzzling are some gigantic leaps, such as can be seen while comparing cognates. After all, cognates are like children born to the same parents, and one expects at least a semblance of similarity between and among them. Yet the results are often truly amazing. Here are three words: Engl. dapper “neat, trim; elegant,” a borrowing from Dutch; German tapfer “bold, brave,” and Old Icelandic dapr “sad, dreary” (Modern Icelandic dapur is the same word). The English adjective can be disregarded, because it reproduces the sense of the word in Dutch. Thus, we have the evidence from three related languages—German, Dutch, and Icelandic—and three meanings: “brave,” “neat,” and “sad.” How is this possible?

First, we notice that in Middle Dutch, the word meant “heavy, weighty, firm” and that a very probable Slavic cognate (for instance, Russian debelyi, stress on the second syllable) also means “plump, heavy”; moreover, the root debel– reemerges in the noun doblest’ “military courage, etc.” (this is again Russian; initial stress; e and o alternate by ablaut). Etymologists reconstruct the root meaning “heavy.” The distance from “heavy” to “firm” is not long. Those who have read the post on sleeveless errand may remember that I ventured to derive this idiom (it means or rather meant, because it is hopelessly obsolete, “a useless, futile endeavor”) from the customs of medieval knighthood. A firm, brave man was, most likely, also a knight. Such a warrior with his full armor on, sword, lance and all, must have weighed close to half a ton. Since beauty is in the eye of the observer, it will cause no surprise that our knight was thought of as a trim, elegant person. But why was he sad? This is probably the other side of being heavy, for “heavy” can produce the idea expressed by the phrase “bowed down.”

One can also approach the problem from a different angle. Are “heavy” and “neat” related concepts? The answer is a matter of opinion. In some societies, a plump, “buxom” woman embodies the ideal of beauty (just look at Rubens’s goddesses), while in others the greatest virtue consisted in being slim. What is true of women is also true of men. Mr. Pickwick would have lost all his attraction if he had lost weight. Early on, Dickens says that his hero was not obese, for obese is an ignoble word (he could not predict the long life of this adjective!), but corpulent. If heaviness produces sadness, we have explained everything. To boost the argument, may remember that in the history of the English adjective sad, the following stages have been recorded: “sated, weary; steadfast, firm; grave, serious, sorrowful, solid, dense,” and even “dark-colored.” Satiety and satisfaction (both from Romance) shed an additional light on the situation. Incidentally, buxom, mentioned above, goes back to –būhsum (compare German biegsam) “pliant,” and at one time it meant “blithe, merry.” Dickens’s buxom matrons are usually nice.

This is Rubens. His women are brave, somewhat heavy, always neat, and never sad.

One wonders how reliable this legerdemain is. Can one prove anything, depending on “bricolage”? No, not anything, though some examples of semantic reconstruction are embarrassing. In the case discussed above, we have three meanings: “brave,” “neat,” and “sad.” They are an ill-assorted group; yet they seem to belong together. The alternative is uninviting. We can say that the phonetic affinity (especially when it comes to “brave” and “sad”), though striking, is fortuitous, and deny their “family ties.” This result is probably worse that the airy bridge constructed between such divergent senses. Ten years ago, I wrote a blog, partly devoted to the amazing etymology of the word mad (4 July 2007 “There Are More Ways than One of Being Mad”; July 4, I believe, is as good a day for going crazy as any other). The cognates of mad are even more astounding than those of dapper.

As noted above, a major source of semantic change is the ambiguity inherent in most concepts. For instance, gratuitous means “freely given; spontaneous.” Gratuitous medical assistance is good, but gratuitous cruelty is shocking. We welcome compromise, but people are seldom pleased when they are compromised. This is how the same word can acquire positive and negative connotations. Both manage to coexist and are disambiguated only by the context in which they occur. The history of the word sin, to which a recent series was devoted, gives ample evidence of this phenomenon. That is why words sometimes “turn around,” as it were. Restive meant “at rest; inactive, inert.” A restive horse refused to move or follow a course; hence restive “impatient, hard to control; unable to keep still.” The root of Engl. begin (-gin) may be related to kon-, the root of Russian konets “end” (final stress). And so it goes.

The hero of A room with a View says: “I have secret charms.” Words do too.

Image credits: (1) “Still life with small dead game and fruit” by Frans Snyders, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) “Backgammon” by Ptkfgs, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (3) “Erichthonius discovered by the daughters of Cecrops.” by Peter Paul Rubens, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post From the life of words, part 2 appeared first on OUPblog.

What is game theory?

Game theory is considered to be one of the most important theories not simply within the field of economics, but also mathematics, political science, biology, philosophy, and ecology, just to name a few. It has been developed over the many years since the term was first coined to what it is now: a theory used to “understand the strategic behaviour of decision makers who are aware that their decisions affect one another.” Game theory was initially developed by John von Neumann (1903–57) and Oskar Morgenstern (1902–77) in 1944 as a mathematical theory. Following on from this, in 1944 Neumann published The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior co-authored with Morgenstern. This is considered to be one of the main foundation texts of game theory.

Despite the theory’s origins dating back to Neumann and Morgenstern’s work, the economists John Nash, John Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994 for further developing game theory in relation to economics. Here are some interesting facts on the field; from its key influencers and terms, to how it applies in everyday life and examples.

Game theory can be thought of as an extension of decision theory. In standard decision theory, each agent has utilities associated with outcomes. However, in game theory each agent also has to consider the utilities of other agents and how they will affect the other agent’s decisions and the overall outcome.
The term ‘Tit for Tat’ is a concept used in the mathematical side of game theory. It is used to describe when a player responds with the same action or move used by an opponent in the previous action or move.


John von Neumann by LANL. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.


One of the most celebrated theorems of game theory is referred to as the minimax theorem. This theorem explains that there is always a solution to a conflict between two people with opposing interests.
“Common Knowledge” is widely used in game theory. This refers to the assumption in games that everyone knows a piece of information but does not essentially know if everyone else knows it too.
 Focal point or Schelling point is one of the many key terms used in game theory. It was developed by the American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict which was published in 1960. Thomas Schelling and Robert J. Aumann both were awarded a noble Prize in economics for developing game theory analysis in 2005.
 Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of the best known examples of games analysed in game theory. The name’s origin comes from a situation that involves two prisoners who would have to choose either ‘confess’ or ‘don’t confess’ without knowing what the other person will choose. This game aims to illustrate how people behave in tactical situations.
 Another widely used example is known as the Battle of the Sexes Game. For instance, two partners would like to share an evening together. However, they have two different ideas of what they would like to do but still would prefer to be together than attend two separate events. This game is used to demonstrate the pros and cons of coordination.
John Forbes Nash Jr was an American mathematician renowned for his contribution to game theory. The phrase Nash equilibrium used in game theory is named after him.

Featured image credit: checkmate chess by Stevepb. Public domain via Pixabay.

The post What is game theory? appeared first on OUPblog.

Law and order fundamentalism and the US-Mexico border

The history of violence is distinct from the history of crime. This is partly because violent acts are not typically classified as crimes when they are committed by the state, and because many individuals who are categorized as criminals have not committed violent acts. When we think about the US-Mexico border in light of these crucial distinctions, it becomes clear that the way policing agencies and politicians have portrayed the international divide—as a criminal zone—does not match the history of violence in the borderland. The majority of the bloodshed, incarceration, and forced expulsion has been triggered or perpetrated by the state itself, directed against some of the most politically weak, economically vulnerable, and historically excluded people on the continent.

Today, the United States is experiencing a surge of law and order fundamentalism in the US-Mexico borderland. As it pertains to the international divide, law and order fundamentalism as a political ideology has a long genealogy that stretches back to the late nineteenth century. It is grounded in anti-Mexicanism as well as the abiding conviction that the border is inherently dangerous and “needs” to be policed. In recent years, these ideas have been rapidly amplified. Law and order fundamentalism is rooted in the allure of security for all. Precisely because the fantasy of perfect safety has such a deep human appeal, it is easily captured and converted into a tool by the very few to dominate the many. The borderland is a particularly ripe target in this regard because it is tied up with notions of territorial sovereignty, nationalism, and patriotism, each of which is freighted with notions of purity, separatism, and exceptionalism. Law and order fundamentalism is uninterested in the broader social good or in any sort of social contract. To the contrary, it eliminates the very concept of unjust laws, and thereby forecloses upon a broader debate about equality and humanitarianism. It bestows the US code with an absolute authority, as if immigration laws and drug prohibition regimes had been on the books since time immemorial.

Original Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, from the Library of Congress; last page of Treaty, with signatures and seals by Nicholas Philip Trist Papers via the Hispanic Reading Room, Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Belief in such authority reflects a complete indifference to social and historical context. Immigration laws, for instance, have been radically overhauled many times since the US-Mexico War. During the first half of the twentieth century, there were no quotas on immigration from Mexico, yet immigration from China was almost completely banned. Similarly, anti-drug laws follow a meandering and inconsistent logic as is demonstrated by the fact that alcohol was once criminalized and cocaine was once legal. Nevertheless, law and order fundamentalists insist that there is a “right” way to immigrate and comport oneself within society, despite the fact that the legal landscape of the borderland has been remarkably unstable.

This inflexibility connects law and order fundamentalism to the most illiberal and undemocratic traditions in American history. It equates illegality and immorality, thereby eroding the rights of those accused of crimes and upending an “innocent until proven guilty” paradigm. It also casts aspersions on entire groups that are associated with crime, even as it disregards the extent to which some groups are policed far more heavily than others. It obsesses over the infractions of the poor, but ignores the crimes of the rich. And although it draws its authority from anecdotal acts of violence, it leads border police overwhelmingly to sweep up nonviolent offenders. More than any other law enforcement tradition in the United States, border policing is connected to profiteering. This is another way in which it is divorced from the public good. Especially since the end of the Cold War, weapons manufacturers have found lucrative markets in selling high-tech surveillance equipment to border policing agencies, and in recent years private prison corporations have reaped enormous profits from incarcerating non-citizens, including asylum seekers.

These phenomena are highly resistant to critique because failure is politically ambiguous in border policing. To law and order fundamentalists, increases in unauthorized border crossing or bigger seizures of drugs fail to indicate that criminal justice responses do not work, or that non-coercive solutions to social problems should be sought. Rather, border problems trigger greater funding and expansion of police, guided by no consistent metric of what constitutes success. This way of developing policy is uninterested in structural, root causes, but instead understands “crime” simplistically and intuitively as the result of lax enforcement.

The border is now the crown jewel of law and order fundamentalism in the United States. It is also the site where the liberal democratic traditions of transparency, government accountability, due process, equal protection, nondiscrimination, and the right to privacy are under the greatest threat. It remains to be seen whether the political ideology responsible for the massive police buildup in the borderland will seep inward and permeate other aspects of American life, or whether the police apparatus on the border will come to be understood as too extreme.

Featured image credit: US border patrol car on the US-Mexico border by Steve Hillebrand, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons .

The post Law and order fundamentalism and the US-Mexico border appeared first on OUPblog.

Fixed Term Parliaments Act

Was there ever a more hollow and impotent piece of legislation than the UK’s Fixed Term Parliaments Act? Trumpeted by the Conservative-led coalition as a way of stopping opportunist prime ministers ever again calling snap elections to capitalize on hefty poll leads – by complicating simple confidence votes in ways that prompted Labour to condemn it as a constitutional “stitch-up” – within six short years of receiving Royal Assent it has proved itself wholly incapable of doing any such thing. When it suited David Cameron to build a protective cordon around his unholy alliance with the Liberal Democrats, the Act was a useful confection: a road-block solid enough to stop either partner provoking an early return to the polls, by swerving out of the ministerial motorcade in a petulant huff. But the fact it could be so casually swept aside as soon as the Tories’ stars were back in the ascendancy – like a trifling traffic cone in the residents’ parking bay otherwise reserved for them outside Number 10 Downing Street – shows it wasn’t worth the statute-book it was written on. We should repeal this zombie law at the earliest opportunity.

To understand why the 2011 Act has proved so unfit for purpose requires us to unpick both the half-baked ‘rules’ it supposedly enshrines and the psycho-historical factors that make them so incompatible with the ingrained rhythms and routines of Westminster realpolitik. To begin with the nuts and bolts, section 1 (3) of the Act states that the polling day for each parliamentary election “is to be the first Thursday in May in the fifth calendar year following that in which the polling day for the previous parliamentary general election fell”. The Act stipulates that the only circumstances in which elections may be called prematurely are if either the House of Commons passes a motion in which the “number of members who vote in favour” of dissolving Parliament is “greater than two-thirds of the number of seats in the House” (s.2 [1]) or MPs back a vote of no confidence in the sitting government and 14 days elapse without any administration gaining – or regaining – that confidence (s.2 [3-5]).

So far, so watertight? To assume so is to naively underestimate just how intransigent our hallowed “mother of all parliaments” has become about the way it does business – and the delusional tribalism of the party system it engenders. As Richard Grossman rightly observed in a commendably understated OUP blog post on 3 May, given polls suggesting Labour could lose nearly one in four of its seats on 8 June, its “overwhelming support” for a snap election in the Commons vote authorizing Theresa May’s call to arms was (to put it mildly) “puzzling”. Yet in retrospect, and given past form, why should any of us be surprised? On the face of it, the robotic complicity with which Labour backbenchers – in large number, despairing about Jeremy Corbyn’s prospects of leading them to victory – trooped into the lobbies to rubber-stamp dissolution did look like an electoral suicide pact. Not so much turkeys voting for Christmas as sheep herding themselves off a cliff.

But to dismiss their actions as mere misguided folly is to misread the DNA of Westminster’s deeply embedded, centuries-old adversarial politics. Sure, there was plenty of open dissent from Corbyn’s critics when he and his then campaign chief, Jon Trickett, put Labour on an “election footing” after the 2016 Brexit referendum. At that time, with an incipient coup simmering, Labour backbenchers had every reason to hope that holding off to 2020 (or even 2017) might save their party – and, more to the point, their seats. Fast-forward nine months, though, and, for all the ongoing back-chat, tribal Labour had reverted to type.

With tails-up Tory strategists calling their leader’s bluff, the time for fratricidal power-games had passed: suddenly, the real enemy was back in sight, and hard-wired loyalty to (red) flag, fuelled by dewy-eyed dreams of conquest, trumped whatever doubts they might have held about the general heading their charge. For Corbyn himself, backing out was even less of an option: already mocked for his insipid leadership, how weak would he have seemed if he’d ducked the chance to bring a hated foe baying to its knees ahead of time? Ultimately – and no matter how forlorn the hope – two-party tribalism won out as the wistful warriors donned rusted armour to trudge back into battle. And, lest we dismiss either Corbyn’s or his MPs’ calculations as a distinctively Labour shade of masochism, do we really suppose that – faced with the same dilemma – the Tories would have acted any differently?

If truth be told, fixed-term parliaments never had the slightest chance of succeeding in Britain. Viewed in hindsight, the 2011 Act contains such gaping get-out clauses that it could only ever have been the product of a system in which a blinkered obsession with sword-to-sword parliamentary combat – and majoritarian rule – were entrenched. The sad, and rather shameful, truth is that so few pundits or political anoraks (this one included) saw this coming.

Featured image credit: The famous black door of Number 10 Downing Street, London by Number 10. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Fixed Term Parliaments Act appeared first on OUPblog.

Mathematics Masterclasses for young people

Modern “Mathematics Masterclasses” in the United Kingdom originated in 1981 on the initiative of George Porter, the then President of the National Association for Gifted Children. Talent in mathematics, as in music, can be recognised at an early age in children, and it is a public service to encourage it, as is now widely accepted.

In fact the idea really goes back to Michael Faraday, who gave Christmas lectures about science for young people at The Royal Institution of Great Britain in London in 1826. Sir Christopher Zeeman, following upon Porter’s initiative, gave the first series of six one-hour lectures (Mathematics Masterclasses) to young people at The Royal Institution in 1981, about “The Nature of Mathematics and The Mathematics of Nature”.

A consequence has been initiatives, widespread now throughout the United Kingdom, of Mathematics Masterclasses, in particular for age groups from 8 to 18 years of age, and with enthusiastic local organisers. I served for several years on the Committee at The Royal Institution whose role was to encourage those Masterclasses nationally.

A reasonable definition of a Masterclass might be that it is devised for “students” (of whatever age level) who have a ready curiosity about what goes on around them, and an interest in identifying an explanation of what they observe, even if that explanation is not immediately obvious but requires, perhaps, a two- or three-stage process to arrive at a solution. The “speaker” will have an intrinsic interest in drawing out an answer from such students, and also of devising problems from any circumstances that lie within the area just stated. In mathematics, the solution process will normally require the identification of appropriate “variables” to describe the problem, the formulation of suitable relations (equations) between those variables, and then the “solution” of those equations in a way which expresses an unknown quantity entirely in terms of known quantities. That is how mathematics “works”.

Every year in the 1990s in Berkshire, England, sixty 12-year-old pupils were gathered at Mathematics Masterclasses at the University of Reading. Attendees were nominated by their schools and showed an aptitude for maths. Two parallel sessions were held, each containing 30 pupils, a lecturer, and qualified helpers.

Pi Day 2009 by CCAC North Library. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

A typical Masterclass might last for up to three hours (with refreshment breaks, and tutorial sessions, interspersing the lecture material) and broken up into three sessions. Ideally there will be several volunteer teachers circulating to give advice during the tutorial sessions. Teachers from the participating schools were readily found to be enthusiastic to volunteer for this role.

Examples of topics treated in Masterclasses have been “Weather” (the atmosphere and forces therein) by Sir Brian Hoskins, “Water Waves” (in deep and shallow water, and in groups) by Winifred Wood, and the “Dynamics of Dinosaurs” (e.g. their weight and speed) by Michael Sewell. I also gave a Masterclass about “Balloons and Bubbles”, which used mathematics allied to classroom demonstrations to illustrate an associated sequence of topics: pressure, equilibrium of a spherical bubble, tension in a soap film, tension in rubber, pressure peaks and pits, and cylindrical balloons.

The long-term benefit of a Masterclass, and one of its objectives, is to encourage a lasting enthusiasm and curiosity about how to devise a “model” of a natural phenomenon by using mathematics, and thereby to develop the capacity for original thinking about an observed situation in nature, and which is still within the scope of schoolchildren.

An example of an everyday problem suitable for a Masterclass is the following “Coffee Shop Problem”, actually posed to me by my wife in that situation. Given eight points equally distributed around a circle, how many differently shaped triangles can be drawn using only three of those points as vertices? Now generalise the problem by introducing more equally spaced points, and looking for different polygons (not just triangles). This teaches one how to realise that any given problem may be the start of a much larger problem, which is an important part of any mathematical investigation, and which may not be at first apparent.

A further example of a Masterclass problem is the following. Draw a right-angled triangle with unequal shorter sides. Draw three circles, each using one of those sides as the diameter. The two external regions between the larger circle and (in turn) the two smaller circles are called lunes (because they each have the shape of a crescent Moon). Now, prove Hippocrates Theorem (c. 410 B.C.), that the sum of the areas of external lunes is equal to the area of the right-angled triangle.

Featured image: Calculator by 422737. Public domain via Pixabay . 

The post Mathematics Masterclasses for young people appeared first on OUPblog.

Building on the legacy of Andrew Jackson

This March, President Trump paid a visit to the Hermitage, the Tennessee home of his favorite predecessor, Andrew Jackson. Trump was uncharacteristically modest. He stood at the grave of Old Hickory, saluting for the cameras. Then he sent this beyond-the-grave message: “We thank you for your service. We honor your memory. We build on your legacy and we thank God for the USA!”

What to make of this? What legacy does Trump want to build on? What, exactly, does the forty-fifth President find so relevant about the seventh?

Many previous residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have shown an interest in presidential history. President Obama, for instance, clearly studied President Lincoln, crafting his messages and even choosing his advisors in the image of the Great Emancipator. By contrast, it is hard to imagine President Trump scrutinizing the Papers of Andrew Jackson, the superb project based at the University of Tennessee and directed by Daniel Feller.

But this illustrates how our most powerful legends operate. Much like gender norms and class proprieties, they are absorbed rather than studied, consumed rather than considered. They do not require formal transmission. They are the things we “just know,” the unspoken norms that colonize our sense of what has happened and, by extension, what can happen.

In American history, one of those narratives traces back to Andrew Jackson. His raucous inauguration in 1829 captures the decline of the Founders’ more elitist ideal of republican government, in which above-it-all statesmen ran things for the small-minded masses. Instead, Jackson swore to obey the people’s will, indeed to inflict it on those in the way. To this end he led a large, well-organized political party that proudly called itself the Democratic Party, or simply “the Democracy.” Until recently, the current party of that name recognized Jackson as one of their founders.

A long line of history books insists that Jackson deserves this reputation as the champion of the common (white) man. Did he not invite them to take a more active role in public life, indeed to rule the nation as they had not previously? Another list of books, now nearly as long, also establishes that Jackson was no friend to non-white people.

Portrait of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States by Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl (1785–1838). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In practice the pro- and anti-Jackson camps play off each other, with disastrous consequences. For by conceding that he was good for white people, critics of Old Hickory reluctantly suggest that democracy can grow for some at the expense of others. This gives away one of the key principles of any democratic society: that everyone who lives under its laws and shares its resources is equally a member, not just officially but also emotionally.

As for Jackson’s fans, they can make a gesture of sorrow for the sad fate of native peoples while insisting that he was still “a Helluva guy,” a real man of the real people. “Andrew Jackson was a military hero and a genius and a beloved president,” Trump declared during his March visit, “but he was also a flawed and imperfect man, a product of his time.”

Part of Trump’s appeal comes from the sense that (white) Americans have been saying sorry too long and too often. Others have made the argument—Mitt Romney published a book called No Apology—but Trump embodies it. He takes in the fury and resentment of his fans and makes it is own. Here, at least, he is entirely sincere, and more like Jackson than he knows.

Upon taking office, Trump swore that 20 January, 2017 would be remembered as the day “the people became the rulers of this nation again,” a replay of Jackson’s boisterous entry into the halls of power. He means every word of this—but only in a narrow sense of “the people” and an even narrower sense of “rulers” and “nation.” After all, the people in Donald Trump’s America are not allowed to enforce the national welfare over private interests. They are not permitted to secure good health care or clean drinking water for their fellow citizens. They have no right to protect themselves against businesses who pay them low wages or even from employers who sexually harass them. Instead they are “free” to act like those businesses and those employers.

This is the cruelest irony of them all: the people are named sovereign and powerful during fleeting moments of democratic spectacle, but when they go back to their lives they find themselves weaker and more isolated than ever. Here, too, the long shadow of Old Hickory hangs over us.

Featured image credit: President Trump speaks at the Hermitage, home of former president Andrew Jackson by Tennessee National Guard Public Affairs Office. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Building on the legacy of Andrew Jackson appeared first on OUPblog.

Plant vs predator

Spring is a wonderful time to be in the garden. New growth is everywhere, offering the prospect of colour and fragrance as the summer approaches. But we humans are not the only ones to love this. For our invertebrate neighbours all those fresh, juicy leaves present a magnificent feast. Before you know it, many young leaves are sporting irregularly-shaped holes, while others have been stripped bare. Glistening slime trails criss-crossing the soil bear witness to the fact that slugs and snails have been gorging themselves on our precious plants, particularly at night or in wet weather.

More than 40 species of slug can be found in Britain, most of which are harmless. Just four species cause any trouble in the garden. Of these, the garden slug (Arion hortensis group), dark in colour with whitish sides and an orange sole, is the smallest at just 3cm. In spite of its diminutive size it has a gargantuan appetite, munching its way through tender stems at ground level, moving higher up the plant to devour leaves and even burrowing into the soil to feast on root crops such as potato.

Probably the most damaging slug in your garden is the grey field slug (Derocereas reticulatum). At 4cm, it’s a little bit bigger than the garden slug and will work its way through most vegetation in the garden.

Slugs tend to operate at ground level, rasping their way through vegetation within reach, but snails are more adventurous: they can scale vertical surfaces gaining access to plants in tubs and hanging baskets. The species most likely to be a problem in the garden is the common garden snail (Cornu aspersum).

These slimy predators clearly have favourite prey. Hostas, Delphiniums and Dahlias are particular favourites, and seedlings are preferred over mature plants. But exactly how slugs and snails discriminate between plants has exercised researchers for many years. Some work suggests that the molluscs are attracted to preferred host plants by volatile chemicals, although seedlings might also use volatile compounds to signal their defensive capability. In fact, some workers have observed that snails have a remarkable ability to discriminate between seedlings of varying defensive capability even before their first mouthful.

Gardeners wage their own battle against the molluscan menace. Remarkably, so too do the plants; many have developed sophisticated defences of their own.

Deroceras reticulatum

The cruciferous plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, though not a popular garden plant, is much-used by plant scientists. In common with other crucifers, A. thaliana contains sulphur-rich chemicals known as glucosinolates. Besides imparting the pungent aroma and bitter taste to cabbage and Brussel sprouts, glucosinolates are toxic to many invertebrates, including slugs. Researchers in Germany, found that A. thaliana can detect slugs, probably via the presence of specific chemicals in the slugs’ mucus slime trails, whereupon levels of defensive glucosinolates are increased in an attempt to deter the attackers. Levels of these defensive chemicals were highest in the plant at night, correlating well with the nocturnal activity of slugs and snails.

Jacobaea species, which includes ragwort, use different chemicals to ward off molluscs. They contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids which are highly toxic to slugs. Reducing palatability is another option and in some plants the presence of silicon puts slugs and snails right off their meal.

When plants face attack from microbes or herbivores, they respond by sending out a signal to their distant tissues, getting them to place their defences on alert. For microbe attacks, the signal of choice is salicylic acid. When the onslaught is from an insect herbivore, jasmonic acid is the signal used. In A. thaliana, when a slug is detected, again jasmonic acid is the signal used.

When facing microbial attack, the salicylic acid produced suppresses jasmonic acid, giving priority to tackling the microbial onslaught. Unfortunately, this compromises defence against invertebrates and slugs, it would appear, take advantage of this. As the famous song says, ‘Anything you can do I can do better’. Researchers wondered whether slugs might be able to manipulate the defences of their hosts and with this in mind, studied the mucus slime trails of 13 slug species. The slime of one slug, D. reticulatum, contained salicylic acid, suggesting the possibility that this slug might be able to thwart defences in the plant by suppressing jasmonic acid formation.

Some plants are capable of warding off attack by slugs and snails, but many of our favourite garden flowers and vegetables seemingly cannot get their act together. Should we even attempt to grow Hostas, for example? The answer is yes, since some varieties are more resilient in the face of mollusc attack than others, particularly those with blue leaves or leaves which are thicker and puckered. The variety Sum and Substance, for example, has large, ridged and wrinkled leaves and lilac flowers, is less attractive to molluscs, and suffers less damage as a result.

A non-chemical method that is effective against slugs, but not snails, is the use of nematodes (microscopic eelworms), which are watered on to the soil. When they enter the slugs’ bodies, they pass on bacteria which kill the slugs. The only drawback here is that soil temperatures need to be above 5 °C and the nematodes work best on moist, well-drained soils.

And finally, don’t forget the classic slug defence: the jar part-filled with beer, sunk into the ground near to vulnerable plants. Slugs love a tipple, fall into the jars and drown. Or you could just go into the garden at night, with a torch, especially when it’s damp, and pick the slimy little blighters off your plants and get rid of them – but please don’t throw them into your neighbour’s garden.

Featured image credit: ‘Deroceras_reticulatum’, by AfroBrazilian. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

The post Plant vs predator appeared first on OUPblog.