ERISA regulates most benefit plans offered by private employers, both pension plans and welfare plans. Pension plans systematically defer compensation until termination of employment (or longer), and welfare plans provide other types of benefits designated by statute, of which health insurance is the most costly by far. Because of the importance of ensuring retirement income, health care, and other socially valuable welfare benefits (such as disability income and life insurance), the Code permits plans with certain features to “qualify” for favorable tax treatment, on the theory that such a subsidy encourages provision of benefits that would not otherwise be available. ERISA’s chief policy aims are to promote informed decision making by workers; to prevent mismanagement and abuse of plan assets by administrators; to protect worker reliance on the benefit promises made; and to preserve employer choice with regard to offering benefits and, provided that minimum standards are met, in tailoring benefit programs to serve the needs of the business.

This chapter begins with the concepts of colonialism and imperialism, their ideological content and their association with power and control, domination and subordination as well as with a ‘civilizing process’. It goes on to examine early (European) colonizing activities in Oceania, all of which have shaped the region in one way or another, and then the quest to establish a ‘British Oceania’, pursued largely by colonists in Australia and New Zealand. This is followed by discussion of the Western Pacific High Commission, established initially as a means of controlling the behaviour of British subjects in the region. The last section highlights the fact that although the idea of a ‘Pacific World’ arose in the later colonial period, the persistence of imperial rivalries in the region until well into the twentieth century ensured that it remained a rather incoherent one.

The amyloid hypothesis has been the dominant theory for the cause of Alzheimer’s disease for over 20 years. In brief, the theory holds that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by the accumulation of beta-amyloid that damages nerve cells in the brain. Beta-amyloid is cleaved from the large amyloid precursor protein (APP) into two main peptides that are released outside the cell, beta-amyloid 40 and beta-amyloid 42, containing respectively 40 and 42 amino acids. According to the amyloid hypothesis, in normal people, these peptides are rapidly removed, but in people with Alzheimer’s disease the metabolic ability to degrade them is decreased, the peptides accumulate, form fibrils, and ultimately solid amyloid plaques that in turn damage neurons and trigger the formation of abnormal tau pathology causing neuronal death.

When Ilf and Petrov visited the recently completed Boulder Dam, they took surprisingly little notice of the workers or their working conditions. What troubled them was the fact that no one in America knew the names of those who constructed the “biggest dam in the world.” Chapter 21 argues that this failure to accord the builders their due provided Ilf and Petrov with a means of at once praising American technology and criticizing American capitalism. They contrasted Boulder Dam with an imagined Soviet Boulder Dam that would generate both electricity and heroes of socialist labor. Their tour guide at the dam, GE engineer Charles John Thomson, was well positioned to help them draw such comparisons. In charge of installing the generating turbines at Boulder Dam, he had received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for doing the same job at Dneprostroi.

Chapter 9 details the backstopping of the shadow banking system during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020, when central banks around the globe, in particular the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, engaged in massive asset purchases to stabilize the financial system. Within a few weeks, these central banks purchased more than a trillion dollars of assets in order to stem an incipient run on the shadow banking system. Seeing themselves forced to backstop the short-term money markets in this manner in order to contain financial instability, central banks subsequently engaged in attempts to remove the run risks inherent in that part of the shadow banking sector, yet, as the research shows, to little or no avail. Having contained financial instability in a way that largely escaped public attention and hence without arousing political salience, central banks were incapable of overcoming the resistance by powerful financial actors to any further regulation. That is to say, central banks containing financial instability find themselves incapable of removing the underlying structural frailties that make their intervention necessary in the first place.

Depression and loneliness are common among people with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, and a recent paper in Neurology suggests that loneliness may actually increase the chance of getting dementia.

Kom Abou Bellou is located halfway between Cairo and Alexandria, two kilometres west of the current Rosetta branch of the Nile. Despite early interest in the site and its good general state of conservation, it has remained largely ignored. Work undertaken in 2013 at Kom Abou Bellou reassesses our knowledge of the territory. The space, which includes the city, is considered over the long-term chronology to facilitate an analysis of the city and its space from the point of view of its internal organisation, its functions and its relation with its natural, political and socio-economic environment. The site has been occupied from the Old Kingdom until at least the tenth century CE. Diachronic study makes it possible to highlight the phenomena of creation, modification and appropriation of this space, notably the displacement of the settlement according to the periods and the reuse of previously occupied spaces. These transitions provide many examples that allow us to observe changes in the urban system and, more broadly, data on the land use patterns and the perception of space. This chapter aims to present the first reflections on this matter, which will be expanded as the archaeological site and its documentation are studied.

Ecphrasis, as we saw in Chapter 4, is a characteristic feature of the enargeia of epic, but there is one case in which an expected ecphrasis is conspicuous for its absence. The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes tells the myth of Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts, already encountered in Chapter 2. The Golden Fleece, one of the most famous supernatural objects in all mythology, calls for a detailed description, but Apollonius does not provide one. Films that retell the myth must, however, show it. Hence the concept of neo-mythologism, a useful term coined by director Vittorio Cottafavi: an original work based on myth must be changed for its visual adaptation. The chapter reviews and interprets the different appearances of the Golden Fleece in romantic adventure films (Hercules, The Giants of Thessaly, Jason and the Argonauts), art-house cinema (Medea, The Golden Thing), Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation, and computer-generated images.

The four chapters in Part V reconstruct Ilf and Petrov’s California adventures. By the time the writers arrived in San Francisco in early December, they were exhausted and homesick. However, because they had work to do, Ilf and Petrov remained in California for nearly a month. In the Golden State, the writers became active participants in American life as both Soviet cultural emissaries and minor Hollywood players. Part V examine how and to what degree their direct engagement with Americans transformed or reinforced everyone’s presuppositions.

Chapter 10 concludes our book, outlining the benefits of a case-oriented approach to regression. We review key substantive findings from the analyses presented in previous chapters and highlight directions for future research.