Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Martin J. Lubetsky, MD
Many parents and professionals are debating the American Psychiatric Association (APA) approved DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) revised diagnosis of autism. DSM-5 is expected to be available for purchase by the time of the APA Annual Meeting in May 2013.
In the last decade, 45% of all marriages in the United States were between people of different faiths. The rapidly growing number of mixed-faith families is a sign of openness and tolerance among religious communities in the United States, but what’s good for society as a whole often proves difficult for individual families. As Naomi Schaefer Riley shows in her provocative new book ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America, interfaith couples are actually less happy than others and certain combinations of religions are more likely to lead to divorce.
By Alice Hammel and Ryan Hourigan
(1) Be aware that people with autism can usually understand more than they can express.
Autism doesn’t change the fact that everyone understands more than they can express. When we learn a new language, we can understand what someone is saying long before we can create sentences that demonstrate the depth of our knowledge.
By Anna-Lise Santella
This is no April fool. The results of the contest to write the best spoof of a Grove Music article are really in! We received many excellent submissions and thank all contributors for providing us with entertainment, hysterical laughter, and frequent groans of recognition. Our choice was extremely difficult.
By Vincent Curcio
On 1 April 1913, Henry Ford symbolically pressed a lever that catapulted factory workers into the modern era. That lever was the assembly line, which was started at his Highland Park factory on that date. From then on the organized chaos and time-wasting labor of the typical factory floor were transformed into a process that was much quicker and economical, and far less strenuous.
While everyone is wondering which of the Elite Eight will make it to the Final Four, Mexico and Indonesia are battling it out for the title of “Country of the Year.” It’s time for the finals of March Madness: Atlas Edition! While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
Many Americans have seen the now-infamous Star Trek video made by the IRS with taxpayer funds. It is painful to watch. Captain Kirk (known in the 21st century as William Shatner) pronounced himself “appalled at the utter waste of U.S. tax dollars.” The video’s dialogue is depressingly sophomoric. The acting talents of the IRS employees are comparable to the acting talents of law professors, that is to say, nonexistent.
Feste is a fool for the Countess Olivia and seems to have been attached to the household for some time, as a “fool that the Lady Olivia’s father took much delight in”. Feste claims that he wears “not motley” in his brain, so even though he dresses the part of the fool, he is not an idiot, and can see through the other characters.
By Simon Horobin
As part of his agenda to improve primary school education, Michael Gove plans to invest more teaching time in driving up standards of spelling; his proposals include a list of 162 words which all eleven-year old children will be expected to spell correctly. As his critics were quick to point out, Gove’s belief in the importance of accurate spelling was somewhat undermined by a number of misspellings in the White Paper itself; Tristram Hunt gleefully suggested that Gove, “of all people,” should be able to spell bureaucracy.
The long-awaited third season of Game of Thrones premiers on HBO 31 March 2013 and Oxford University Press has everything you need to get ready, whether you’re looking to brush up on your dragon lore, forge your own Valyrian steel, or learn about some of the most dramatic real-life succession fights culled from our archives.
By Stuart Banner
As the baseball season opens and fans wonder how their favorite teams and players will do this year, a certain sort of fan will also wonder about a perennial question. Why is baseball the only sport exempt from antitrust law? The answer cannot be found in the text of the antitrust statutes, which do not distinguish between baseball and other forms of enterprise.
By Janet Gezari
Her death followed a debilitating illness and occurred almost exactly nine months after her marriage to her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. The death certificate states its cause as “Phthisis” or acute tuberculosis, the same disease that killed Emily and Anne.
By Jane McAdam
The ‘disappearing State’ or ‘sinking island’ phenomenon has become a litmus test for the dramatic impacts of climate change on human society. Atlantis-style predictions of whole countries disappearing beneath the waves raise fascinating legal issues that go to the heart of the rules on the creation and extinction of States.
By David Potter
Christians today owe a tremendous debt to the Roman emperor Constantine. He changed the place of the Church in the Roman World, moving it, through his own conversion, from the persecuted fringe of the empire’s religious landscape to the center of the empire’s system of belief. He also tackled huge problems with the way Christians understood their community.
By Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner
Why do some claim free will is an illusion? The easy answer: free will does not fit within a scientific worldview. Any choice you make is presumably determined by your brain’s electrochemistry at the time. That electrochemistry, a physical thing, was uniquely determined by your heredity, your previous experiences, and your present environment. Your choice was therefore predetermined by prior physical events. It was not “free.” Therefore no free will.
By Sydney Beveridge
This week, the Supreme Court heard two cases that could change same-sex marriage laws nationwide. If the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 are ruled illegal, same-sex couples around the nation could rush to the altar this summer. To help measure the impact of this ruling on the population, Social Explorer took a look at data on same-sex couples.