Environmental problems were not among the core issues for the United Nations at its creation in 1945. In the 1970s, however, they created a crescendo of public concern as the threats posed by toxic chemicals, large-scale destruction of natural ecosystems, and the loss of species became visible and were obviously linked to human activity. Pollution, it was clear, did not stop at national borders and solutions required common effort. As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay explores how, as the only institution equipped to identify global problems and generate collective action toward their resolution, the UN became the platform for creating multilateral environmental agreements, convening global conferences, and mobilizing national and international effort through a progressively larger number of institutions at the national and international level to guide decisions and influence behavior. We have moved the environmental needle in terms of information, institutions, and awareness. Yet, many environmental problems persist, some are getting worse, and new challenges and, indeed, crises are emerging.

Studies of language disorders have shaped our understanding of brain–language relationships over the last two centuries. This article provides a review of this research and how our thinking has changed over the years regarding how the brain processes language. In the 19th century, a series of famous case studies linked distinct speech and language functions to specific portions of the left hemisphere of the brain, regions that later came to be known as Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas. One hundred years later, the emergence of new brain imaging tools allowed for the visualization of brain injuries in vivo that ushered in a new era of brain-behavior research and greatly expanded our understanding of the neural processes of language. Toward the end of the 20th century, sophisticated neuroimaging approaches allowed for the visualization of both structural and functional brain activity associated with language processing in both healthy individuals and in those with language disturbance. More recently, language is thought to be mediated by a much broader expanse of neural networks that covers a large number of cortical and subcortical regions and their interconnecting fiber pathways. Injury to both grey and white matter has been seen to affect the complexities of language in unique ways that have altered how we think about brain–language relationships. The findings that support this paradigm shift are described here along with the methodologies that helped to discover them, with some final thoughts on future directions, techniques, and treatment interventions for those with communication impairments. (JINS, 2017, 23, 741–754)

The most well-known practitioner of dissimulation among early modern Christians of the Eastern Rite is Meletii Smotryts'kyi (ca. 1577–1633), the Orthodox archbishop of Polatsk (in modern-day Belarus), who was suspected of being a Uniate for several years before he was openly charged with apostasy during a council of the Orthodox hierarchy of Poland-Lithuania in August of 1628. For the previous year Smotryts'kyi had lived a double life, outwardly an Orthodox archbishop but secretly a Uniate, having formally accepted the Union with Rome on July 6, 1627. In this period of clandestine Uniatism and the years leading up to it, during which he flirted with conversion, Smotryts'kyi fulfilled his official duties, playing a leading role in Orthodox synods and risking exposure that would bring public disgrace and even physical harm. Smotryts'kyi had a positive reason for keeping his conversion secret: he argued that the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition should allow him to remain in office as an Orthodox bishop so that he might convene a council of the Orthodox hierarchy and elite and, “received as a schismatic [an Orthodox], would be able to set forth and to explain the twofold causes of the present discord of the Church & and to cause doubt for them in the schismatic faith (through the reasons that had taught him himself that there was no contradiction in thing [essence], only in words, between the holy Greek and Latin fathers).” Smotryts'kyi concluded his request for secrecy by comparing his situation with that of Jesuits engaged in mission work with non-Christians: “Wherefore, indeed, if the fathers of the Society of Jesus and the other priests in India can live with the heathens in secular habit, this should cause no one scandal, especially since, with God’s help, we will hope for the much greater fruit of holy Union from his hidden Catholicism & than if he were now known by all.”

Micropaleontological studies of the Black Sea, including ostracod records, have suggested that early Holocene salinity values were between ~5 and 10 practical salinity units (psu), contrasting with present values of 18–22 psu. However, more precise paleoenvironmental reconstructions based on ostracod assemblages require additional information related to their modern ecological affinities. This study uses modern species information collected from samples with living fauna to interpret the fossil Holocene assemblages of two sediment cores, Ak-2575 and Ak-521, collected from the northeastern outer shelf of the Black Sea. A total of 37 ostracod species are recorded in the fossil assemblages, with 2 related to freshwater/oligohaline environments, 23 from Caspian-type environments, and 12 from environments similar to the Mediterranean. Three distinct assemblage zones are identified from the Caspian type dominating in the early Holocene up to 7.4 cal ka BP, a mixed assemblage of Caspian type and Mediterranean type from 7.4 to 6.8 cal ka BP, and a progressive dominance of Mediterranean species from 6.8 cal ka BP. It is very likely that the dominant control of ostracod species occurrence during the period up to ~6.8 cal ka BP is salinity. A range of factors including temperature, biotope, and sedimentation rates influenced the species distribution over the last 6.8 cal ka BP.

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and cathodoluminescence (CL) method have been employed to study the chemical composition and the oxygen vacancy concentration of HfO2, Sc2 O3 and (HfO2)1−x(Sc2O3)x films. It was found that the increase of Sc content led to monotonic decreasing the Hf4f7/2 and Sc2p3/2 binding energies indicating to form solid solution (HfO2)1−x(Sc2O3)x. All the samples characterized by the intensive CL spectra with maximum around 3 eV which originated due to some radiative recombination emission caused by oxygen deficiency. The concentration of oxygen vacancy in the Sc-doped HfO2 is sensitive to the Sc content and as a result the intensity of CL spectra of (HfO2)1−x(Sc2O3)x is lower that those of pure HfO2 and Sc2O3.