Books on the topic 'Statistical size effect'

This chapter explores why effect size needs to be taken into account when designing and reporting research. It gives an effect size for each of the standard statistical tests which health and clinical psychologists employ, and looks at the need to consider statistical power when choosing a sample size for a study and how statistical power can help to guide the advice which can be given when discussing future research.

The model of West, Brown & Enquist (WBE) is built on the assumption that the metabolic rate of cells is determined by the architecture of the vascular network that supplies them with oxygen and nutrients. For a fractal-like network, and assuming that evolution has minimised cardiovascular costs, the WBE model predicts that s=metabolism should scale with mass with an exponent, b, of 0.75 at infinite size, and ~ 0.8 at realistic larger sizes. Scaling exponents ~ 0.75 for standard or resting metabolic rate are observed widely, but far from universally, including in some invertebrates with cardiovascular systems very different from that assumed in the WBE model. Data for field metabolic rate in vertebrates typically exhibit b ~ 0.8, which matches the WBE prediction. Addition of a simple Boltzmann factor to capture the effects of body temperature on metabolic rate yields the central equation of the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE). The MTE has become an important strand in ecology, and the WBE model is the most widely accepted physical explanation for the scaling of metabolic rate with body mass. Capturing the effect of temperature through a Boltzmann factor is a useful statistical description but too simple to qualify as a complete physical theory of thermal ecology.

Researchers often employ statistical techniques to test hypotheses and to express the relative certainty they have when making a claim about how statistics derived from their sample data might be representative of population parameters. This chapter illustrates the logic underlying inferential statistical tests. Inferential analyses involves a set of tools that music education researchers can use when posing scientific questions and seeking to refute their hypotheses. The chapter describes techniques that can be used for testing hypotheses and estimating population parameters on the basis of sample data. In doing so, the chapter emphasizes basic approaches to null hypothesis significance testing, interpreting effect sizes, and building confidence intervals. The chapter also provides a brief critique of null hypothesis significance testing as a tradition.

Chapter 5 is concerned with the conceptual foundations of meta-analysis. It deals with large-scale issues having to do with meta-analysis and the nature of science. Meta-analysis is an approach to data analysis that involves the quantitative, or statistical, analysis of data analyses from a number of existing primary studies in a common domain. At its simplest, meta-analysis involves computing the average effect size for a group of studies. The chapter begins by discussing Gene Glass’s rationale for meta-analysis. It then examines David Sohn’s argument that meta-analysis does not produce genuine scientific discoveries. The roles of meta-analysis in relation to the processes of phenomena detection and scientific explanation are also considered.

Over the last two decades, there has been a marked improvement in the quality of study design and statistical rigour of gastroenterology studies. However, the complexity of gastroenterological problems has limited the size of the studies. Biological therapy in inflammatory bowel disease has been a therapeutic landmark in therapeutics in gastroenterology, not only for increasing the sophistication in study design, but also for stimulating debate on fundamental goals of therapy. In hepatology, antiviral therapy has established large and robust multinational randomized controlled trials. Interventions in hepatology are now judged by their effect on hard clinical endpoints, including long-term survival. Clinical gastroenterology has matured into a specialty that challenges both the intellect and dexterity. This chapter highlights the evidence base for some of the most crucial developments in gastroenterology.

Composite scores are assessment tools that combine a number of separate evaluations into one score. The composite score generally has more statistical power than the individual items, is more responsive, and has a greater effect size. A composite score allows synthesis of several elements into one score which can then, if psychometrically appropriate, allow the determination of disease activity (both low and high) cut-offs, and response criteria. The topics discussed in this chapter are the development and use of composite scores to assess disease activity in psoriatic arthritis: their history and development, use in practice, psychometric characteristics, and relative merits. Although there is no overall consensus on which measure to use, either in clinical trials or in the clinic, there appears to be agreement that remission should be the ideal target of treatment, with minimal/low disease activity a feasible alternative.

An understanding of pharmacokinetics is vital for the practice of anaesthesia. Drugs are, after administration, distributed throughout the body to the effect site (mostly the brain) to exert their effects. This can be influenced by differences in protein binding, systemic blood flow, and concomitant medication. Elimination of drugs from the body is through two main routes: either unchanged through the kidneys or through metabolism by the liver (and consecutive excretion through the kidneys). This process depends on the amount of hepatic blood flow and the amount of hepatic extraction. This in turn depends on the amount of protein binding and the intrinsic hepatic clearance. The cytochrome P450 enzyme family also plays an important role in drug elimination. Individual differences in enzyme activity can lead to differences in drug effect and clearances. Changes in enzyme activity by enzyme induction and inhibition can also be of influence on drug clearance. Compartmental, non-compartmental, and physiologically based models, and various statistical approaches to estimate these models, may be used to analyze the distribution and elimination of anaesthetic agents.

Nanoscale devices are distinguishable from the larger microscale devices in their specific dependence on physical phenomena and effects that are central to their operation. The size change manifests itself through changes in importance of the phenomena and effects that become dominant and the changes in scale of underlying energetics and response. Examples of these include classical effects such as single electron effects, quantum effects such as the states accessible as well as their properties; ensemble effects ranging from consequences of the laws of numbers to changes in properties arising from different magnitudes of the inter-actions, and others. These interactions, with the limits placed on size, make not just electronic, but also magnetic, optical and mechanical behavior interesting, important and useful. Connecting these properties to the behavior of devices is the focus of this textbook. Description of the book series: This collection of four textbooks in the Electroscience series span the undergraduate-to-graduate education in electrosciences for engineering and science students. It culminates in a comprehensive under-standing of nanoscale devices—electronic, magnetic, mechanical and optical in the 4th volume, and builds to it through volumes devoted to underlying semiconductor and solid-state physics with an emphasis on phenomena at surfaces and interfaces, energy interaction, and fluctuations; a volume devoted to the understanding of the variety of devices through classical microelectronic approach, and an engineering-focused understanding of principles of quantum, statistical and information mechanics. The goal is provide, with rigor and comprehensiveness, an exposure to the breadth of knowledge and interconnections therein in this subject area that derives equally from sciences and engineering. By completing this through four integrated texts, it circumvents what is taught ad hoc and incompletely in a larger number of courses, or not taught at all. A four course set makes it possible for the teaching curriculum to be more comprehensive in this and related advancing areas of technology. It ends at a very modern point, where researchers in the subject area would also find the discussion and details an important reference source.

The choice of first-line antipsychotic treatment for patients with schizophrenia should balance considerations of differential efficacy of antipsychotics against the relative risk of different side effects. In terms of efficacy, recent meta-analyses have shown that antipsychotics are not equivalent in efficacy. Clozapine, amisulpride, olanzapine, and risperidone show small to moderate, but statistically significant, differences, indicating greater efficacy compared to a number of other antipsychotics on some primary efficacy outcome measures. Amisulpride and cariprazine have the strongest evidence for greater efficacy for treating negative symptoms relative to other antipsychotics. In terms of side effects, clozapine and olanzapine have among the highest weight gain potential and amisulpride has more effects on QTc prolongation and prolactin elevation than other commonly used antipsychotics. Adjunctive treatment with an antidepressant drug may improve response in patients with schizophrenia who also have severe depressive or negative symptoms. For a patient with an inadequate response to an adequate dose and duration of the initial antipsychotic choice, switching to another antipsychotic with a different receptor profile may improve response, although evidence is limited. There is little evidence to support using doses above the therapeutic range other than in exceptional circumstances.

The generally accepted explanation of the Hermann grid illusion is Baumgartner’s hypothesis that the illusory effect is generated by the response of retinal ganglion cells with concentric ON-OFF or OFF-ON receptive fields. To challenge this explanation, some simple distortions to the grid lines were introduced that make the illusion disappear totally, while all preconditions of Baumgartner’s hypothesis remained unchanged. Psychophysical experiments in which the distortion tolerance was measured showed the level of distortion at which the illusion disappears at a given type of distortion for a given subject. Statistical analysis shows that the distortion tolerance is independent of grid-line width within a wide range and of the type of distortion, except when one side of each line remains straight. The conclusion is the main cause of the Hermann grid illusion is the straightness of the edges of the grid lines. Similar results have been obtained in the scintillating grid.

This article discusses Bayesian approaches to aspects of the Vioxx trials study, with a focus on non-ignorable dropout and sequential meta-analysis. It first provides a background on Vioxx, a COX-2 selective, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) approved by the FDA in May 1999 for the relief of the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis, the management of acute pain in adults, and for the treatment of menstrual symptoms. However, Vioxx was found to cause an array of cardiovascular side-effects such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and unstable angina. As a result, Vioxx was withdrawn from the market. The article describes an approach to sequential meta-analysis in the context of Vioxx before considering dropouts in the key APPROVe study. It also presents a Bayesian approach to handling dropout and showcases the utility of Bayesian analysis in addressing multiple, challenging statistical issues and questions arising from clinical trials.

This book examines why partisan electoral interventions occur as well as their effects on the election results in countries in which the great powers intervened. A new dataset shows that the U.S. and the USSR/Russia have intervened in one out of every nine elections between 1946 and 2000 in other countries in order to help or hinder one of the candidates or parties; the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections is just the latest example. Nevertheless, electoral interventions receive scant scholarly attention. This book develops a new theoretical model to answer both questions. It argues that electoral interventions are usually “inside jobs,” occurring only if a significant domestic actor within the target wants it. Likewise, electoral interventions won’t happen unless the intervening country fears its interests are endangered by another significant party or candidate with very different and inflexible preferences. As for the effects it argues that such meddling usually gives a significant boost to the preferred side, with overt interventions being more effective than covert ones in this regard. However, unlike in later elections, electoral interventions in founding elections usually harm the aided side. A multi-method framework is used in order to study these questions, including in-depth archival research into six cases in which the U.S. seriously considered intervening, the statistical analysis of the aforementioned dataset (PEIG), and a micro-level analysis of election surveys from three intervention cases. It also includes a preliminary analysis of the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections and the cyber-future of such meddling in general.

This article outlines the literature on time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) methods. First, it addresses time-series properties including issues of nonstationarity. It moves to cross-sectional issues including heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation. The ways that TSCS methods deal with heterogeneous units through fixed effects and random coefficient models are shown. In addition, a discussion of binary variables and their relationship to event history models is provided. The best way to think about modeling single time series is to think about modeling the time-series component of TSCS data. On the cross-sectional side, the best approach is one based on thinking about cross-sectional issues like a spatial econometrician. In general, the critical insight is that TSCS and binary TSCS data present a series of interesting issues that must be carefully considered, and not a standard set of nuisances that can be dealt with by a command in some statistical package.

Population genetics is an inherently quantitative discipline. Because the focus of population genetics studies is usually on abstract concepts like the frequencies of genetic variants over time, it can at first glance be difficult to conceptualize and appropriately visualize. As more and more quantitative models and methods have become established in the discipline, it has become necessary for people just entering the field to quickly develop a good understanding of the many layers of complex approaches, so as to correctly interpret even basic results. An unfortunate side effect of the widespread implementation of ready-to-use quantitative software packages is that some facets of analysis can become rote, which at best might lead to implementation without the full understanding of the user and at worst, inappropriate application leading to misguided conclusions. In this book a “learning by doing” approach is employed to encourage readers to begin developing an intuitive understanding of population genetics concepts. The analytical software R, which has increasingly been the program of choice for early exposure to basic statistical programming, is freely available online, has cross-platform compatibility (Windows, Mac, and Linux all support distributions of R), and offers the potential for hands-on implementation by the students, in addition to using pre-packaged functions.

Exchange rate volatility is said to exemplify the economic health of a country. Exchange rate break points (known as structural breaks) have a momentous impact on the macroeconomy of a country. Nonetheless, this country study makes use of both unsupervised and supervised machine learning algorithms to classify structural changes as regime shifts in real exchange rates in South Africa. Weekly data for the period January 2003–June 2020 are used. To these data we apply both non-linear principal component analysis and Markov-switching generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity. The former approach is used to reduce the dimensionality of the data using an orthogonal linear transformation by preserving the statistical variance of the data, with the proviso that a new trait is non-linearly independent, and it identifies the number of regime switches that are to be used in the Markov-switching model. The latter is used to partition the variance in each regime by allowing an estimation of multiple break transitions. The transition breakpoints estimates derived from this machine learning approach produce results that are comparable to other methods on similar system sizes. Application of these methods shows that the machine learning approach can also be employed to identify structural changes as a regime-switching process. During times of financial crisis, the growing concern over exchange rate volatility, including its adverse effects on employment and growth, broadens the debates on exchange rate policies. Our results should help the South African monetary policy committee to anticipate when exchange rates will pick up and be prepared for the effects of periods of high exchange rates.

This handbook discusses various applications of modern Bayesian analysis in important and challenging problems. With contributions from leading researchers and practitioners in interdisciplinary Bayesian analysis, the book highlights current frontiers of research in each application. Each chapter involves a concise review of the application area, describes the problem contexts and goals, discusses aspects of the data and overall statistical issues, and offers detailed analysis with relevant Bayesian models and methods. The book is organised into five sections based on the field of application, namely: Biomedical and Health Sciences; Industry, Economics and Finance; Environment and Ecology; Policy, Political and Social Sciences; and Natural and Engineering Sciences. Topics range from an epidemiological study involving pregnancy outcomes, to matching and alignment of biomolecules; pharmaceutical testing from multiple clinical trials concerned with side-effects and adverse events; malaria mapping in the Amazon rain forest; risk assessment of contamination of farm-pasteurized milk with the bacterium Vero-cytotoxigenic E. coli (VTEC) O157; Bayesian analysis and decision making in the maintenance and reliability of nuclear power plants; risk modelling regarding speculative trading strategies in financial futures markets; the use of hierarchical models to characterize the uncertainty of climate change projections; and the use of multistate models for mental fatigue.

Knowledge of how to get useful information from data is essential in the life and environmental sciences. This book provides learners with knowledge, experience, and confidence about how to efficiently and reliably discover useful information from data. The content is developed from first- and second-year undergraduate-level courses taught by the authors. It charts the journey from question, to raw data, to clean and tidy data, to visualizations that provide insights. This journey is presented as a repeatable workflow fit for use with many types of question, study, and data. Readers discover how to use R and RStudio, and learn key concepts for drawing appropriate conclusions from patterns in data. The book focuses on providing learners with a solid foundation of skills for working with data, and for getting useful information from data summaries and visualizations. It focuses on the strength of patterns (i.e. effect sizes) and their meaning (e.g. correlation or causation). It purposefully stays away from statistical tests and p-values. Concepts covered include distribution, sample, population, mean, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, correlation, interactions, and non-independence. The journey from data to insight is illustrated by one workflow demonstration in the book, and three online. Each involves data collected in a real study. Readers can follow along by downloading the data, and learning from the descriptions of each step in the journey from the raw data to visualizations that show the answers to the questions posed in the original studies.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.