This chapter charts the nature of political power from the earliest Merovingian kings to the unification of the kingdoms under Chlothar II in 613. The period witnessed conquest and civil war, as competition for power between kings, queens, and their families transformed late Roman political structures into more fluid and responsive modes of government. It covers the key reigns of Childeric I and Clovis for establishing the power of the Merovingian dynasty through a mixture of war, legend-building, and performance. It also examines how competition between kings in subsequent generations affected how the family was defined, especially under the influence of queens Brunhild and Fredegund.

Named after Japanese child neurologist Shunsuke Ohtahara, who first described its characteristics in 1976, Ohtahara syndrome (OS) is a rare form of early infantile developmental epileptic encephalopathy. A majority of cases of OS are associated with underlying structural brain abnormalities such as hemimegalencephaly, porencephaly, cortical dysplasias, and neuronal migration disorders. Several genetic mutations have also been associated with OS, most common being STXBP1, followed by KCNQ2. Many primary metabolic disorders are also associated with OS, such as nonketotic hyperglycinemia and other amino and organic acid disorders. Ohtahara syndrome affects males and females equally.

This chapter considers the ways in which the classical credal and conciliar formulae provide a framework for understanding who Jesus Christ is and how God saves through the Incarnate Word. These credal and conciliar formulae provide the foundation for theologies across the spectrum of Christian traditions. The chapter is broadly divided into two sections, one focusing on the fourth century Trinitarian controversies, the second focusing on the christological controversies of the fifth to the seventh centuries. For classical Christian theology, only when Jesus is known as the Word made flesh, and as one coequal to Father and Spirit in the divine life, can the work of redemption be understood.

Traub and Vygen used recursive dynamic programming to obtain a (3/2+ε)-approximation algorithm for Path TSP for any ε>0. This approach was then improved and simplified by Zenklusen, who obtained a 3/2-approximation for Path TSP. After discussing the dynamic programming approach in a simple context, we present Zenklusen’s algorithm.

Then we present a black-box reduction from Path TSP to Symmetric TSP, similar to the one proposed by Traub, Vygen, and Zenklusen. This shows that the former is not much harder to approximate than the latter. This implies the currently best-known approximation guarantees for Path TSP and the special case Graph Path TSP. Our new proof, again based on dynamic programming, actually yields the same result even for a more general problem, which we call Multi-Path TSP.

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is generally defined as the death of a patient with epilepsy determined not to be secondary to other known causes such as trauma, drowning, or status epilepticus with or without the evidence of recent seizure.

Despite its familiarity, the fourfold canonical gospel presents a challenge for interpreters, captured in the famous symbols of the evangelists. Mark’s Jesus embodies the paradox of the crucified king of Israel. Matthew adds to this a portrait of Jesus the Prophet-like-Moses and Davidic shepherd who renews Israel’s covenant. Luke presents Jesus as Lord and prophet who brings redemption and distinctively champions the poor. John’s Jesus is the Word from the beginning and glorified Son of the Father. These subsequently canonized gospels stand out as authoritative amidst proliferating Jesus books. An approach that respects the fourfold gospel’s catholicity as well as its holding together of tensions in the historical impact of Jesus of Nazareth on his followers may be a fruitful path toward perceiving the one Jesus in the canonical Four.

Tall, medium-sized to sometimes massive, monoecious evergreen trees, with a crown which is tapering at first, becoming more billowing with age. Their branch systems are numerous, slender, spreading, compressed and flattened, to form ultimate branchlets within a single plane, pendulous in some species (e.g. C. torulosa, C. funebris, C. cashmeriana) forming long whip-like tips, giving the trees a cascading appearance.

Climate change will intensify water scarcity, especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The European Union’s Green Deal ‘new growth strategy’ promotes a policy agenda that underscores the need to support regions at risk while moving forward with adaptation and mitigation measures. In MENA, transboundary water use and dispute is intrinsic to the region, exacerbating environmental risks of desertification, rising temperatures and increased rainfall variability. Water management is central to effective climate and adaptation policy, as water access is a key determinant of socioeconomic stability and development. This stability is central to intergovernmental cooperation on climate initiatives and has undermined progress on this front in the region since the 1950s. The water sector is a core aspect of climate adaptation and mitigation, particularly as the hydrological cycle will be severely impacted by climate change. Therefore, effective water policy and resource management is the critical node of effective climate mitigation and adaptation in MENA.

First described in 1904 in the case of an anterior spinal artery occlusion, spinal cord infarction is a devastating neurological condition constituting approximately only 1% of CNS infarctions. Though data on the frequency and etiology of spinal cord infarction is limited, most cases occur spontaneously in the setting of aortic arteriosclerosis or perioperatively and associated with aortic procedure.

Previously called tic douloureux, trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is the most common cause of neurogenic facial pain. Those with TN usually complain of sudden, superficial, sharp, stabbing, or burning unilateral facial pain over the V2 and/or V3 territories of the trigeminal nerve (maxilla and mandible). These attacks usually last seconds and can be triggered by touching or moving the affected area of the face. Unlike most other headache and facial pain syndromes, during TN attacks, the highest intensity of pain is experienced instantaneously at the onset of the attack, and resolves in seconds, with no symptoms between attacks, which are typically experienced daily for weeks to months prior to spontaneous remission for months to years.

Climate change is the most serious challenge of the Anthropocene, and so climate change communication needs to be taken suitably seriously, enriched with new ways of conceptualising, understanding and imaging the world and its transformations. The lack of understanding and seeing the gravity of the crisis has been increasingly identified as the ‘crisis of the imagination’. Over the centuries, telling stories was used to confront the unknown, encourage thinking about solutions, illuminate opportunities and give hope. Stories and storytelling allow space for interpretation and agency to think critically and, most importantly, act imaginatively. They encourage inter- and transdisciplinarity and thus novel perspectives, stressing the fact that, ultimately, discussions on climate change are discussions about who we are. In this sense, storytelling has a great potential to motivate individuals, communities and policy-makers to act on climate change.

Collingwood’s criticism of analytic philosophy is essentially an accusation of ahistoricality and implicit dogmatism. Russell and Moore, who are Collingwood’s primary targets, had a theory of analysis that would clarify sentences by situating them in the context of all possible expressive power. This strategy is what I call single-commitment tracking. Collingwood argues that there is no way of providing a non-dogmatic account of the constitutive features of a single-commitment tracking account. Instead, Collingwood adopts multi-commitment tracking, in which an expressed commitment set has its constitutive features, which Collingwood calls “absolute presuppositions,” made explicit by an expressing commitment set. This achieves the clarity desired by analytic philosophy, but also introduces something which itself is uninterpreted. So, there is no explicatable context of all possible expressive power, and Collingwood has shown that it is only by engaging in this method of explicating absolute presuppositions, which he calls metaphysics, that new expressive power is unlocked.

Decompression sickness (DCS), also known as caisson disease, divers’ disease, or the bends was first described by Irish alchemist Sir Robert Boyle in 1670 after seeing the effects of depressurizing a viper he had placed in a vacuum. Today, DCS is known as a multiorgan systemic condition in which nitrogen that is normally dissolved in tissues in a pressurized environment leaves the tissues in a gaseous state when the body enters a less pressurized environment. This is mostly seen in deep-sea divers experiencing high environmental pressures when diving, and then normal atmospheric pressure as they return to the water’s surface. This condition has also been seen in pilots and astronauts.

So far, all algorithms for Symmetric TSP began with a spanning tree and then added edges to make the graph Eulerian. In contrast, Mömke and Svensson suggested to begin with a 2-connected graph; then we may also delete some edges for making it Eulerian, and this may be cheaper overall. They introduced the notion of removable pairings, which allow to control that we maintain connectivity when deleting edges.

This idea led to a substantial improvement and is still used for the best algorithm for Graph TSP that we know today (cf. Chapter 12). It also yields the ratio 4/3 for the special case of subcubic graphs.

The most common form of muscular dystrophy in adults, myotonic dystrophy (MD) is an autosomal dominant neuromuscular disease caused by the trinucleotide expansion of CTG repeats. The location of these CTG repeats differs between types of MD with the chromosome 19 gene DMPK (dystrophia-myotonica protein kinase) being the culprit gene in myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM-1 aka Steinert’s disease), and the chromosome 3 gene ZnFP9 (zinc finger protein 9) being the culprit gene in myotonic dystrophy type 2 (DM-2). A greater number of CTG repeats predicts an earlier onset of disease.

Chapter 6 addresses the common strategy to appear unprejudiced: racial colorblindness. Are individuals in a color-salient society able to not see color? The chapter begins with empirical research on the question of whether people are able to ignore the race and ethnicity of others. As it turns out, people who attempt to ignore race cannot, and tend to have awkward interactions with people of color. Instead of colorblindness being a good strategy to avoid discrimination, colorblindness facilitates the ignoring of discrimination. The pros and cons of a multicultural perspective as an alternative to racial colorblindness is discussed. Implications of the cultural emphasis on colorblindness is interrogated, such as the implicit belief that white people are true Americans, whereas people of color are only provisionally American. Strategies for prejudice reduction end the chapter and include creating more complex social identities and coalition work – organizing across difference.