How to use this Page

In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis put on understanding the international relations of the post-Arab uprising in the Middle East. An unprecedented combination of widespread state failure, competitive interference, and instrumentalization of sectarianism by three rival would-be regional hegemons (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran) in failing states has produced a spiral of sectarianism at the grassroots level.

The post Identity, foreign policy, and the post-Arab uprising struggle for power in the Middle East appeared first on OUPblog.

A hypnotist tells a subject that their outstretched arm will begin to rise upward as though tied to an invisible balloon. To their astonishment, the subject’s arm rises just as suggested, and seemingly without their intention. While it may appear as though the subject is being controlled by the hypnotist, it is well established that nobody can be hypnotised against their will. Hypnosis therefore seems to present a paradox

The post Hypnosis and the conscious awareness of intentions appeared first on OUPblog.

Poverty can be defined by 'the condition of having little or no wealth or few material possessions; indigence, destitution' and is a growing area within development studies. In time for The Development Studies Association annual conference taking place in Oxford this year in September, we have put together this reading list of key books on poverty, including a variety of online and journal resources on topics ranging from poverty reduction and inequality, to economic development and policy.

The post Poverty: a reading list appeared first on OUPblog.

The recently published ‘guidelines’ on police undercover operations prove to be just ‘business as usual’. The guidelines consist of 80 pages in which a new ‘alphabet soup’ of abbreviations describes each of a set of roles to be fulfilled by officers of given ranks.

The post Is undercover policing worth the risk? appeared first on OUPblog.

Tailgating is a very popular activity associated with American college football games. Tailgating typically involves food and alcoholic beverages served from the backs of parked vehicles or associated equipment at or near athletic events. At large universities with Division I football programs, the football stadiums may hold upwards of 100,000 fans, sometimes with thousands of additional fans

The post Alcohol and tailgating at football games appeared first on OUPblog.

Most would agree with the idea that music can have a powerful hold over us—our thoughts, feelings, and movements. Given this, how might music help measure thoughts, feelings, and movements in a way that allows professionals in healthcare improve client treatment? The music therapy profession seems to be experiencing a surge in developing data-measuring tools that incorporate music in the client assessment.

The post A new (musical) direction for healthcare? appeared first on OUPblog.

Scenarios are often mistaken for forecasts, expert predictions, or simulations. They are none of these. Instead, scenarios depict possible future states of the world by combining theory and story-telling in rigorous and resonant ways to facilitate creative thinking. The Geneva experience is not important because the financial crisis scenario happened to be prescient. Rather, it serves to illustrate how hemmed in our thinking about the future can be.

The post Scenario analysis and political science appeared first on OUPblog.

The last several years have seen increased visibility of transgender individuals in the media in United States. While this has served to increase attention on some issues related to the transgender population, what often gets overlooked is that the transgender population remains one of the most underserved groups in the country.

The post Obstacles in transgender healthcare appeared first on OUPblog.

The results of our recent experiments show that displaying healthy food to the left of an unhealthy option can influence the selection and consumption volume of the healthier choice. Since managers typically have considerable flexibility in terms of how they display food items in retail outlets and restaurant menus, they can use the findings of our research to design optimal menu formats to suit their sales objectives.

The post Can we encourage healthier choices by the way we display food options? appeared first on OUPblog.

Attaining a higher level of education is considered to be important in order to keep up good cognitive functioning in old age. Moreover, higher education also seems to decrease the risk to develop dementia. This is of high relevance in so far that dementia is a terminal disease characterized by a long degenerative progression with severe impairments in daily functioning. Despite a great amount of research emphasizing the relevance of education, it is not entirely clear how education protects cognitive functioning in old age and how much education is possibly ‘enough’.

The post Years of education may protect against dementia appeared first on OUPblog.

Zika virus (ZIKV), an arbovirus transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, was first isolated in 1947 in the Zika forest of Uganda from a sentinel monkey. It has always been considered a minor pathogen. From its discovery until 2007 only 14 sporadic cases – all from Africa and Southeast Asia – had been detected. In 2007, however, a major outbreak occurred in Yap Island, Micronesia, with 73% of residents being infected.

The post 2016: the year of Zika appeared first on OUPblog.

Virtually every American over 35 who had access to a television set in the waning years of the Reagan Administration is familiar with the PDFA’s handiwork. The frying pan with a sizzling egg stand-in for “your brain on drugs.” The stern, middle-aged father confronting his son over the boy’s pot stash, only to be told, “I learned it by watching you!”

The post A curve in the road to a “Drug-Free America” appeared first on OUPblog.

Depression, substance abuse, and suicide have long been associated with homosexuality. In the decades preceding the gay liberation movement, the most common explanation for this association was that homosexuality itself is a mental illness. Much of the work of gay liberation consisted of dismantling the pathological understanding of homosexuality among mental health professionals.

The post Mental health inequalities among gay and bisexual men appeared first on OUPblog.

The Big Bang theory predicts that there was a powerful repulsive force at the beginning of the expanding of the Universe. A common hypothesis of the cause of the Big Bang is a short-term repulsive field, the so-called “inflanton”. Observations of supernovas have shown that the Universe is still expanding with acceleration.

The post A possible cause of the Big Bang and current acceleration of the Universe appeared first on OUPblog.

In an effort to address misconceptions about gender and location in relation to academic publishing in Africa, the editors of African Affairs reached out to Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers to discuss the findings from their recent research in more detail.

The post Gender and location in African politics scholarship: Q&A with Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers appeared first on OUPblog.

Since this is an oral historian origin story, I feel I need to begin this post with a bit of a confession. Even though I earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Baylor University, it was not until the summer of 2011, the term before I was to begin my graduate work at Baylor in the Museum Studies program

The post A technophile embraces oral history in the digital age appeared first on OUPblog.

Since this is an oral historian origin story, I feel I need to begin this post with a bit of a confession. Even though I earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Baylor University, it was not until the summer of 2011, the term before I was to begin my graduate work at Baylor in the Museum Studies program

The post A technophile embraces oral history in the digital age appeared first on OUPblog.

Black women in the United States have about a 41% higher chance of dying from breast cancer than white women. Some of that disparity can be linked to genetics, but the environment, lingering mistrust toward the health care system, and suspicion over prescribed breast cancer treatment also play roles, according to a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The post Solutions to reduce racial mistrust in medicine appeared first on OUPblog.

In 2007, I published an article that sought to show in detail how the Iraqi economy had been opened up to allow the transformation of the economy and the routine corruption that enabled a range of private profit-making companies to exploit the post-invasion economy. The article argued that the illegal war of aggression waged by a ‘coalition’ headed by George Bush and Tony Blair was tied to a series of subsequent crimes of pillage and occupation.

The post How the Iraq Inquiry failed to follow the money appeared first on OUPblog.

Performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) are drugs that improve active performance in humans, known colloquially in sports as 'doping'. Perhaps the most famous abuser of PEDs to date is Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion, who in 2013 confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career, and was stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won from 1999 to 2005.

The post How do performance-enhancing drugs affect athletes? appeared first on OUPblog.

As students in Columbia University’s OHMA program we are often urged to consider Oral History projects that not only serve to archive interviews for future use, but that “do something.”

The post Oral history for youth in the age of #BlackLivesMatter appeared first on OUPblog.

The importance of a healthy diet for proper functioning of the brain is increasingly being recognized. Week in, week out studies appear recommending a high intake of certain foods in order to achieve optimal brain function and prevent brain diseases. Although it is definitely no punishment for the most of us to increase our chocolate consumption to boost brain function, the most important period during which nutrition affects our brain may already be behind us.

The post The lifelong importance of nutrition in pregnancy for brain development appeared first on OUPblog.

French is the language of diplomacy, German the language of science, and English the language of trade. Whereas German has been displaced by English in science, French continues to occupy a privileged position in international diplomacy. Its use is protected by its designation as one of the two working languages of the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and ad hoc UN-backed tribunals.

The post French language in International Law appeared first on OUPblog.

For Manissa Maharawal, the struggle for housing justice is personal. When her own father got displaced from his apartment in Prospect Heights—his home since moving from India to the States some thirty years before, in which he raised his family—she was struck by his unstoppable urge to tell the story over and over again.

The post Not just dots on a map: life histories alleviate spatial amnesia in San Francisco appeared first on OUPblog.

Zika continues its romp around the world. In its wake, controversy erupted over the Olympic Games in Brazil, with some calling to move or postpone the Games – but is that really justified? Zika has already moved outside of Brazil in a big way. To be clear, the Zika epidemic is dramatic and awful. Mosquito-borne transmission of this previously obscure and seemingly wimpy virus is ongoing in 60 countries

The post Zika, sex, and mosquitoes: Olympic mix appeared first on OUPblog.