bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Bridging the gap between culture studies and computational linguistics
Authors: Van de Ven Inge , Van Zaanen Menno
Published: November 2024

Since 2015, the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences at Tilburg University has provided yearly funding for two student assistants in a Research Traineeship Program. The aim of this program is to provide the student assistants with practical research experience by allowing them to work together with two experienced researchers in a practical research project. The researchers who apply for funding in this program have to work at different departments within the school, effectively encouraging cross-departmental collaborations. Within this interdisciplinary research project, the student assistants build practical research experience by following the full research process from developing research questions to presenting and publishing results. Also, due to the interdisciplinary nature, the student assistants (as well as the supervising researchers) are confronted with different research methodologies and cross-disciplinary problems. Here, we describe one of the research traineeship projects, the problem tackled, approaches used, and results. The project proposal contained ideas on how to bridge the gap between close (focused on detail, small amounts of text) and distant reading (focused on the larger picture, large amounts of text). However, specific research questions still needed to be designed. Research questions and corresponding methodologies that combine the fields of culture studies and computational linguistics were selected after extensive discussions. As the discussions demonstrated points of terminological ambivalence, we decided to subdivide the project along disciplinary lines. This resulted in a culture studies and a computational linguistics sub-project; these were constantly aligned during the project. This led to new insights into both the culture studies and computational linguistics methodologies. Here, we focus on the problems that were encountered during the project, which can mostly be attributed to difficulties related to (discipline-specific) terminology. Based on these experiences, we also provide suggestions for future work and recommendations for similar interdisciplinary collaborations.
Towards improving OCR accuracy with Bulgarian Language Resources
Authors: Kratchanov Ivan , Laskova Laska , Simov Kiril
Published: November 2024

In 2017, the National Library “Ivan Vazov”–Plovdiv, embarked on a digitalization project whose ultimate purpose is to provide both learners and scholars with several types of content, including periodicals and books published during the late Bulgarian National Revival and afterwards, in the decades before the communist era (1870s-1940s). We focus on the technical aspects of the digitalization project that involves optical character recognition (OCR) and requires proper handling of Cyrillic texts. The paper provides insight into the library’s joint activities with its partners from the Institute of Information and Communication Technology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences to develop relevant tools and methodologies, by stressing the mutual benefits from the co-operations. The library’s participation in the project CLaDA-BG, integrated within the European CLARIN and DARIAH infrastructures, offered a chance to take advantage of the multidisciplinary expertise of the partnering organisations and to develop the best methodology for OCR and consequently to enhance the methods of using and handling the acquired machine-readable text.
What is Russian Elegy? Computational Study of a Nineteenth-Century Poetic Genre
Authors: Martynenko Antonina
Published: November 2024

This paper studies the change in formal features of Russian elegies in order to outline the evolution of the genre between 1815 and 1835. Using representative historical corpus study shows metrical and thematic homogenization in Russian elegy: genre’s identity shifted from various types of funeral and historical texts to a short love poem written in iambic tetrameter. Despite the previously claimed diffusion of an elegy as a genre, paper demonstrates it is possible to recognize an elegy from the general poetic language using SVM classification, which also highlights interpretable and distinctive lexical features of the genre.
ZipfExplorer
Authors: Coats Steven
Published: November 2024

Word frequency statistics and lexical diversity measures can provide insights into discourse differences between texts. The ZipfExplorer, a tool and online app for the interactive visualization and comparison of word frequencies in two texts, shows side-by-side rank-frequency profiles and interactive tables of shared lexis, enabling keyword analysis and shedding light on discourse differences. Four lexical diversity measures (type-token ratio, Gini coefficient, powerlaw alpha parameter, and Shannon entropy) are calculated for the shared word types. Word frequency information is provided for a selection of mainly literary texts, and users can upload their own files. This paper provides an overview of the visualization of word frequency distributions, describes the functionality of the ZipfExplorer tool and demonstrates some of its features, and briefly discusses the lexical diversity measures calculated by the tool.
Emotional Imprints
Authors: F. Baunvig Katrine , Jarvis Oliver , L. Nielbo Kristoffer
Published: November 2024

Undertaking a distant reading of exclamation marks in the digitized and annotated N.F.S. Grundtvig data, this paper targets a trait of an overall romanticist, emotionalizing trend in a corpus of 19th century literature: It proposes to analyze the use of exclamation marks as a deposition of heightened attention to emotional experience and intention in printed matter and typesetting in the writings of the Danish poet, priest and politician N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), who is widely regarded as the central figure in the 19th century Danish religious development and cultural nation building process. By way of Topic Modeling (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) this paper sketches the temporal as well as semantic contexts of the exclamation marks.
Comparing Live Sentiment Annotation of Movies via Arduino and a Slider with Textual Annotation of Subtitles
Authors: Schmidt Thomas , Engl Isabella , Halbhuber David , Wolff Christian
Published: November 2024

Movies in Digital Humanities are often enriched with information by annotating the text e.g. via subtitles. However, we hypothesize that the missing presentation of the multimedia content is disadvantageous for certain annotation types like sentiment annotation. We claim that performing the annotation live during the viewing of the movie is beneficial for the annotation process. We present and evaluate the first version of a novel approach and prototype to perform live sentiment annotation of movies while watching them. The prototype consists of an Arduino microcontroller and a potentiometer which is paired with a slider. We perform an annotation study for five movies receiving sentiment annotations from three annotators each, once via live annotation and once via traditional subtitle annotation to compare the approaches. While the agreement among annotators increases slightly by using live sentiment annotation, the overall experience and subjective effort measured by quantitative post questionnaires improves significantly. The qualitative analysis of post annotation interviews validates these findings.
Building and Testing a Comparative Interface on Northwest European Historical Parliamentary Debates
Authors: Ihalainen Pasi , Janssen Berit , Marjanen Jani , Vaara Ville
Published: November 2024

Tensions between the people and parliament over representation are a normal feature of representative democracies. In this paper, we emonstrate how digital humanities analysis tools help in answering questions about the timing of debates on popular representation, tensions over its realization, and representatives’ changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. Our long-term approach to the conceptual history of political representation is based on the analysis of digitized parliamentary debates as nexuses of multi-sited political discourse. We combine computer-assisted distant and context-sensitive close reading to consider diachronic trends and synchronic political struggles surrounding political representation. Collocation analyses and visualizations of relative term frequencies reveal long-term patterns and anomalies, lead to new research questions, and justify the selection of cases for qualitative analysis. Here we present the first steps in the construction of a comparative interface, People and Parliament, that will include debates from several Northwest European parliaments. The interface is built on I-Analyzer, a web-based text and data mining application developed by the Utrecht University Digital Humanities Lab. We illustrate its potential with an example from the British parliament since the 2000s to demonstrate how, under an unwritten constitution, various forms of participatory democracy ranging from e-democracy to referendums have gained ground against representative democracy. While the Brexit referendum first appeared as a response to calls for strengthening direct democracy, it revealed difficulties in reconciling representative and participatory democracy.
Debates on European Integration in the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) 1990-2020
Authors: Elo Kimmo
Published: November 2024

In this article I analyse parliamentary debates of the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) on European integration from 1990 to 2020. Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, but Finland’s integration history dates back to the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the turbulent years following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, European integration rose higher on the Finnish political agenda. The data used in this article consist of a machine-readable database of plenary protocols of the Finnish Parliament. The main database covers the whole lifespan of the modern Finnish Parliament since 1906. The dataset used for the analysis contains all plenary speeches with references to “Europe”, “European” and “Europeanism” (N=25,674), together with adequate metadata. The core analysis focuses on six time windows, each with a span of three years. These focus widows are linked to nationally important key European events. Methodologically, the article is rooted in Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) and applies different text mining tools to explore, analyse and visualise how members of the Finnish Eduskunta politicise and debate European issues. The analysis is carried out in three steps. First, I use traditional term-based text mining methods to explore the vocabulary used in the debate, both across time and by parliamentary faction. In the second step, I use tf-idf analysis to explore the vocabulary differentiating parliamentary factions. The analysis is rounded out in the third step by the application of Text Network Analysis (TNA). I apply TNA to explore and visualise topics in the collection of plenary speeches and, thus, to evidence the power and usefulness of this novel method as a complement to other topic modelling methods. Overall, the results presented in this article find strong support when critically reflected against findings from previous studies. The results also significantly improve our knowledge and understanding of national parliamentary debates on European integration. Further, the article is encouraging when it comes to the application of computational methods and tools on large corpora of unstructured political texts.
User-friendly Search Possibilities for Early Latvian Texts
Authors: Andronova Everita , Frīdenberga Anna , Pretkalniņa Lauma , Siliņa-Piņķe Renāte , Skrūzmane Elga , Trumpa Anta , Vanags Pēteris
Published: November 2024

This paper deals with the Corpus of early written Latvian and explains the methodology for normalising historical spellings found in texts from the 16th–18th cc. It describes the types of replacements which will make searching early texts more convenient.
The New Order of Criticism
Authors: Ingvarsson Jonas , Brodén Daniel , Samuelsson Lina , Wåhlstrand Skärström Victor , Zechner Niklas
Published: November 2024

The New Order of Criticism (2020–2024) is a mixed-methods project combining algorithmic and interpretative approaches to the study of literary criticism. The project expands on a prior study of Swedish book reviews from the years 1906, 1956 and 2006 (‘The Order of Criticism’, Samuelsson 2013), re-examining and re-evaluating the original results through the use of computational tools, language technology and big data. The aim of the present paper is to discuss early experiences and results from the interdisciplinary approach utilized by the current project, a collaborative process where interpreter and programmer are in dialogue, and where methodologies, and their instantiation in tools, are reflexively discussed from an epistemological point of view. In our analysis we ask: How can insights from working with digital methodologies and tools inform traditional scholarship on literary criticism? How can interpretative approaches and results inform digital methods?
Digital Humanities Solutions for pan-European Numismatic and Archaeological Heritage Based on Linked Open Data
Authors: Oksanen Eljas , Rantala Heikki , Tuominen Jouni , Lewis Michael , Wigg-Wolf David , Ehrnsten Frida , Hyvönen Eero
Published: November 2024

This paper discusses current challenges in archaeological cultural heritage data management and presents the interdisciplinary research project DigiNUMA. The project investigates solutions in data harmonisation and dissemination of pan-European cultural heritage through an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral project in Digital Humanities, semantic computing, participatory heritage, museum collections management and archaeological/numismatic studies. Using Finnish and English numismatic data as a test case, DigiNUMA creates ontological infrastructure and a proof-of-concept data model for finely-grained Linked Open Data (LOD) harmonisation across national and international databases for cultural heritage data, and tests it through a broad suite of Digital Humanities analyses.
Chieftains and shipbuilding
Authors: Sigurðsson Jón Viðar
Published: November 2024

This article was first published in  "Vol. 88 (2024)" of Norsk Arkeologisk Årbok in 2024. In 2025 it was re-published in the second issue of Viking Special Volumes.
Viking ships were fundamental to the activities of trade, raiding, exploration, and transportation, and their construction and maintenance required considerable resources and specialized knowledge. Chieftains played a central role in overseeing the production of ships, ensuring that these critical vessels were available to support Viking society’s needs. By around the year 1000, estimates suggest that Scandinavia’s fleet included approximately 1,000 warships, with a total of around 1,500 ships when including cargo vessels. Given that around 10% of the fleet was lost annually, it is estimated that about 150 new ships had to be constructed each year to sustain the fleet. The Viking economy and society were closely interconnected through complex trade routes, which were protected and managed by chieftains. These leaders, through their kinship and friendship ties, were pivotal in establishing and maintaining extensive trade networks that stretched across Scandinavia and into far-flung regions. Farms, particularly those controlled by chieftains, were key to the economic system, with large workforces, including slaves (thralls), engaged in shipbuilding, ironworking, and other essential industries to support these ventures.
Place names in and around Gjellestad
Authors: Gammeltoft Peder , Vasshus Krister S.K.
Published: November 2024

This article was first published in  "Vol. 88 (2024)" of Norsk Arkeologisk Årbok in 2024. In 2025 it was re-published in the second issue of Viking Special Volumes.
The article examines place-names around the Gjellestad boat burial site in Norway, analyzing eleven settlements including Gjellestad, Huseby, Vik, and others. Through linguistic analysis, tax records, and digital elevation models, the study reconstructs the ancient landscape and settlement patterns in the area. The research reveals that when the Gjellestad ship burial was established, the site was near the sea, similar to other Viking ship burials. The area experienced significant post-glacial land rise, with sea levels 10 meters higher around 600 AD. Vik appears to be the earliest settlement, with other farms like Gjellestad and Huseby likely emerging as subdivisions during the Viking Age. The settlements show exceptionally high percentages of arable land compared to the national average, indicating the area’s agricultural attractiveness. Taxation records from 1838 suggest these were wealthy and central settlements, with valuations 3-6 times higher than normal cadastral units.
The Complete Genome Sequences of 34 Brush-footed Butterflies (Nymphalidae, Lepidoptera)
Authors: El Ghoubali Douae , Pirro Stacy , Ghazal Hassan
Published: November 2024

We present complete genome sequences of 34 butterflies in the Nymphalidae family.
The Design of a Rotating Modular Upper Limb Prosthetic Wrist Unit
Authors: Gürler Aykut Ali , Konukseven Erhan İlhan
Published: November 2024

This design study investigates a Prosthetic Wrist Unit for upper limb amputations using the Design Thinking methodology. It covers Problem Definition, Information Gathering, Concept Generation and Evaluation, Product Architecture, Configuration Design, Parametric Design, Detail Design, and Production. The study aims to create a small prosthetic wrist unit (50 mm diameter, 50 mm length, less than 125 gr), provides 360° rotation, connects easily with prosthetic hands, enables electric and data transfer, and is controllable via EMG sensors. This research contributes to prosthetic product design, enhancing the quality of life for amputees.
POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS SOBRE DROGAS: ORIGENS E DESDOBRAMENTOS DO MODELO PUNITIVISTA BRASILEIRO
Authors: De Paula Danielle Galdino , De Queiroz Pedro Coelho , Ribeiro Raisa Duarte da Silva
Published: November 2024

This article presents a critical analysis of the evolution of drug policies in Brazil, from the colonial period to the present day. The research demonstrates how the prohibitionist model, present since the Philippine Ordinances, has been consolidated as the only strategy to combat drugs over the centuries, undergoing few changes only in the last three decades. Historical analysis reveals a tightening of laws, especially during the Civil-Military Dictatorship, with the criminalization of drug use and the strengthening of the logic of the "War on Drugs". With the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, there was a paradigm shift, with the recognition of health as a fundamental right and the creation of the Unified Health System. Despite this, the prohibitionist model persisted, although with some nuances. The article reflects on the ineffectiveness of the prohibitionist model in reducing consumption and organized crime, arguing for the need for a more humanitarian approach based on scientific evidence. Finally, the present work also proposed to critically analyze the current public policies, unraveling the characteristics of each one of them.
ROBÔS HUMANOIDES NO CONTEXTO EDUCACIONAL E TERAPÊUTICO DE CRIANÇAS COM AUTISMO
Authors: Santos George França dos , Luz Héllen Souza , Irigon Simone Lima de Arruda , Soares Ricardo Loureiro
Published: November 2024

Este artigo explora a aplicação de robôs humanoides em intervenções educacionais para crianças com autismo, um campo de estudo que tem ganhado atenção devido ao potencial dessas tecnologias em facilitar o aprendizado e a interação social. Através de uma revisão bibliográfica abrangente, realizada em diversas bases de dados entre os anos de 2015 e 2023, identificamos os principais robôs utilizados no atendimento a essa população específica. A seleção dos estudos focou em pesquisas que apresentaram estratégias concretas de utilização dos robôs, excluindo-se revisões sistemáticas, propostas teóricas sem intervenção prática e estudos que não envolveram robôs humanoides. No total, 35 estudos foram analisados, destacando-se as funcionalidades dos robôs, os comportamentos-alvo nas intervenções e os resultados obtidos. Este trabalho contribui para o campo da robótica educacional e terapêutica, oferecendo insights valiosos para pesquisadores, desenvolvedores e profissionais da educação especial, na escolha de robôs humanoides como ferramentas de apoio para crianças com autismo, visando uma integração social e educacional mais efetiva.
WEB DEVELOPMENT REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI)
Authors: Tiawan Tiawan , Retno Novarini  , M Fajrur Robi  , Rifky Kurniawan  , Elfina Maulid  , M Taufik Syastra  , Ahmad Karim Harahap  , M Soleh Fajari  , Mawarseh  , Yulia Irfayanti  , Sutrisno  , M Syaukani  , Elisabeth Kurnia Wijayanti
Published: November 2024

The design of a Web-Based Online Request for Information (RFI) System aims to analyze issues within the verification procedures in the country of origin or loading country during the Import Technical Verification Program (VPTI) by KSO SCISI. This research also intends to evaluate the potential implementation of a web-based online Request for Information (RFI) system as a solution to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the verification process in the country of origin or loading country, while facilitating expedited services within VPTI. The research methodology involves initial stages of problem identification and observation of ongoing processes at KSO SCISI, supplemented by literature review to comprehend aspects of information system design and development through web-based platforms. Additionally, interviews with relevant stakeholders were conducted. The research adopts the Linear Sequential (Waterfall) methodology for system development, which translates analysis into design, coding, and testing. The primary outcome of this study is the design of a web-based online RFI system that eliminates the need for lengthy and intricate steps by enabling direct communication of physical verification location requests from the headquarters to exporters, without the involvement of branch offices in the country of origin or loading country. Implications of this research encompass procedural simplification, service efficiency enhancement, and fostering strong customer relations. An innovative facet of this study lies in the utilization of the online RFI system to streamline and expedite complex verification procedures, while also fostering more efficient connectivity between the headquarters and exporters. In conclusion, the web-based RFI system is poised to facilitate, accelerate, and fortify high-quality VPTI services by KSO SCISI.
El impacto del covid-19 en las habilidades del lenguaje en los estudiantes
Authors: García García Omar Eduardo , Jasso Ruiz Leslie , Martínez Vázquez Diego Aarón , Morcillo Martínez Samuel , Olvera Cuevas Saraid , Ruiz Franco Brenda Vanessa
Published: November 2024

El confinamiento derivado de la pandemia de COVID-19 impactó en todos los ámbitos de la vida humana. En el ámbito escolar originó retos tanto para las instituciones educativas, como para los docentes y los estudiantes.  Por un lado, en la necesidad de transitar hacia la educación en línea y en la automatización de diversos procesos relacionados con el aprendizaje requirió el desarrollo de habilidades digitales para mantener el proceso educativo. Lo que representó nuevas realidades. El confinamiento limitó drásticamente las interacciones sociales y el desarrollo de las habilidades sociales y del lenguaje. La presente investigación busca realizar un mapeo sistemático para identificar a los países en donde se desarrollan las investigaciones relacionadas al impacto que tuvieron las habilidades del lenguaje en los estudiantes a raíz del confinamiento derivado del covid-19. Se realizó una búsqueda de información mediante la base de datos Scopus. Se analizaron 164 publicaciones. Se encontró que, aunque las investigaciones en relación al tema se han desarrollado en 30 países, solo participan dos de Latinoamérica: México y Perú. El 44% de las investigaciones se publicaron en 2021. Los autores de 13 países participan en redes de colaboración institucional y el 82% de las publicaciones son artículos. Se concluye que, aunque en la actualidad el confinamiento por covid-19 ha terminado, sus repercusiones aún se viven. Los estudiantes presentan dificultades para relacionarse con sus pares, les cuesta comunicarse y manejarse con un lenguaje apropiado al momento de expresar sus ideas y emociones fuera del entorno virtual.
Microphysical Analysis of Maritime and Continental Aerosols: Determination of Hygroscopic Growth Factors Using OPAC Data and Modeling Approaches
Authors: Sa'adu Bello , Abdulfatah S , Khalil A I
Published: November 2024

Study’s Excerpt/Novelty

This study presents an application of mass-based hygroscopicity models to analyze microphysical properties of atmospheric aerosols from continental and maritime sources using data from the Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds (OPAC).
By examining hygroscopic growth factors and effective radii at eight different relative humidities, the research highlights the significant variation in growth factors between maritime and continental aerosols, with maritime clean aerosols exhibiting a substantially higher growth factor at 99% RH.
The study's robust statistical analysis, confirmed by R² values greater than 90% and significance levels below 0.05, demonstrates the model's efficacy for atmospheric modeling and remote sensing applications.

Full Abstract
The interplay of marine and continental sources governed the atmospheric aerosols over coastal areas.  The transport of aerosols from continental sources into sea surfaces through deposition or diffusion is what causes the fast reduction of continental aerosols.  A mass based based hygroscopicity models were applied to the data extracted from the Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds (OPAC).  The microphysical properties obtained were radii, density, refractive index, mass, volume, and sphericity of the atmospheric aerosols of continental and maritime aerosols at eight different relative humidity of 0%, 50%, 70%, 80%, 90%, 95%, 98%, and 99%.  Using the microphysical properties, hygroscopic growth factors, and effective radii of the mixtures, mass growth factor Gm and diameter growth factor DG were determined, and also the parameter Km for mass based of the aerosols were determined using multiple regression analysis with SPSS 16.0 at each relative humidity.  The results show that Gm for maritime clean is higher than other aerosols, with a value of 34.46 at 99% RH, while the lowest value is for continental average, with a value of 5.03 at 99% RH.  Also, R2 for the model is greater than 90%.  The significance and P-values are less than 0.05; therefore, the model is good for atmospheric modeling and remote sensing.
Evaluating the Lethal Dose (LD50) and Mutagenic Effects of Sodium Azide on Germination and Quality Traits in Two Varieties of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)
Authors: Ibeh Adaugo Gift , Udechukwu Chidozie Dennis , Ofoegbu Jecinta Nneka Gozie
Published: November 2024

Study’s Excerpt

Lethal dose (LD50) of sodium azide for two distinct tomato varieties, Beefsteak and San Marzano was quantified.
The optimal mutagen doses that can be leveraged for enhancing quality traits in tomatoes is determined.
Sodium azide has potential to improve crop resistance and productivity in tomato breeding programs.

Full Abstract
Sodium azide is a chemical mutagen that has been used to produce resistance in various susceptible crops to improve their yield and quality traits against harmful pathogens.  The lethal dose and mutagenic effects of sodium azide on the germination percentage of two varieties of tomatoes (Beefsteak and San Marzano) were investigated with the aim of optimizing a suitable mutagen concentration with variability that could be exploited in the improvement of quality traits in Tomato plants.  This study was carried out in the Green House at the Department of Biotechnology, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ebonyi State (AE-FUNAI).  The two varieties of tomato seeds were collected locally as fresh seeds from the taxonomic department and were treated with sodium azide at different concentrations of 0.0%, 0.2%, 0.4%, and 0.6% w/v.  The seed was sown and monitored for 30 days with everyday documentation of germination percentage, survival percentage, and lethal dose.  Statistical analysis using significant difference (LSD) at 95% probability level was employed to analyze the effects.  The results obtained from this study show that there is a steady decrease in germination and survival percentage with increased concentration of sodium azide in both varieties of tomatoes when compared with the control.  The lethal dose (LD50) was determined upon germination and survival of the tomato varieties.  The highest LD50 was calculated by linear regression to be 0.950 for the beefsteak variety, which was significantly higher than 0.794 for the san marzano variety at 50% germination was recorded under treatment 0.6% NaN3.  These concentrations are therefore considered as the LD50 values.  Sodium azide via mutation at low concentrations improves some important quality traits of tomatoes.
Basal Expression Profile of Seven Glutathione-S-Transferases (GSTs) Genes in Six Tissues of Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) for Polymerase Chain Reaction Array
Authors: Lawal Isah , Abdulkarim Babangida
Published: November 2024

Study’s Excerpt

The differential expression patterns of Glutathione-S-transferase (GST) isoforms in six tissues of Nile tilapia are investigated.
Seven specific GST genes are examined across six tissues, and it is determined that the liver, spleen, and intestines are key sites of significant gene expression.
GST isoforms could be potentially used as biomarkers for assessing xenobiotic stress in aquatic environments.

Full Abstract
Because aquatic habitats are being destroyed and biodiversity is declining, xenobiotic pollution of water is a critical environmental problem that has garnered a lot of attention in the past few decades.  This study looked at the expression patterns of Glutathione-S-transferases isoforms (GSTMA, GSTO1LA, GSTA, GSTR1, GSTK, GSTT1, and MGST), which are genes involved in xenobiotic metabolism, in Nile tilapia.  From adult Nile tilapia, six tissues—liver, spleen, intestines, gills, heart, and muscle—were chosen, and seven genes that were optimised via quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) were used for validation.  Gene expressions were assessed using a PCR array that included duplicate tissues in 96-well qPCR plates, with each gene/plate being assayed six times.  Water is used in the remaining wells as no template control (NTC).  As reference genes, Pan Ribosomal Protein L3 (RPL3) and Pan 18S ribosomal RNA (18S RNA) were employed.  The genes’ basal tissue mRNA expression was measured in each tissue.  The muscle was utilised to renormalise the expression levels of all genes throughout the remaining tissues since, under assay’s circumstances the muscle showed very low signal for most of the genes.  Using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR), the result demonstrated widespread differential expression patterns of the seven GST mRNA in the liver, spleen, intestine, gills, heart, and muscle of an untreated fish.  However, it was clear that the highest significant expression level of most genes (different GST’s isoforms) was in the liver, followed by the spleen and gut, then the heart and gills compared to muscle (P<0.05).  The findings demonstrated widespread differential expression of the GST’s isoforms at basal level and highlighted their utility as biomarkers for xenobiotic stress in aquatic environments.
Corrosion Inhibition and Adsorption Behaviour of Centrosema pubescens Leaf Extract for Copper in HCl Solution
Authors: Ogueji Chikezie , Ugwumba Udochukwu Rita
Published: November 2024

Study’s Excerpt

In this study, Centrosema pubescens leaf extract (CPE) has been confirmed as eco-friendly and efficient green inhibitor for copper corrosion in hydrochloric acid.
Detailed thermodynamic analysis, revealed that CPE adsorption follows a Freundlich isotherm model.
SEM-EDX and FTIR characterizations confirmed the formation of a protective layer confirming the potentials of the plant extracts in sustainable corrosion prevention.

Full Abstract
The anti-corrosion behaviour of Centrosema pubescens leaf extract (CPE) on copper in 1.5 M hydrochloric acid was investigated using weight loss method at different temperatures, followed with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) surface characterization connected with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX).  The Fourier transform infrared spectrum of CPE was obtained.  CPE inhibition effectiveness depends on the temperature and its concentration.  CPE restrains the copper corrosion with 94.26 % inhibition efficiency at 1.0 g/L of CPE and at 303 K. For the CPE-inhibited system, a higher activation energy (Ea) value (range of 31.09 to 38.70 kJmol-1) compared to 20.34 kJmol-1 of the blank solution was obtained.  The reaction process is spontaneous and endo thermic, as indicated by the ΔH, ΔS and ΔG values calculated.  CPE adsorption behaviour fitted best into Freundlich isotherm.
How Video Games Impact Players
Authors: Rogers Ryan
Published: November 2024

How Video Games Impact Players provides a balanced and nuanced look at the complex role that video games play in society through an analysis of the positive and negative effects of game rules, feedback, and self-presentation. Rogers examines the positive aspects of video games like their use in education, encouragement of prosocial behaviors, and enablement of mood management, as well as the negative aspects like their association with violence and diversity issues, promotion of substance use behaviors, and their role as an outlet for harassment behaviors.
New Neoliberalism and the Other
Authors: Cocco Giuseppe , Cava Bruno
Published: November 2024

The exhaustion of neoliberal globalization is marked by three great tendencies or inflections: the first is the scornful failure of the South-American attempt to construct a neo-developmentalist exit; the second is the increasingly unavoidable Chinese-effect macro and micro dynamics within globalization; the third is the combination of austerity policies and monetary emissions (Quantitative Easing) that characterize, for instance, the financial conduct of the Central European Bank. The dramatic failure to renew traditional state interventionism in the sphere of Pink Tide in Latin American politics—in particular with the violent recession of the biggest economy on the Latin American continent, Brazil—shows and confirms that the escape from neoliberal regulation does not pass through the return of the traditional role of the state. At the same time, the Chinese economy came to play a double role. On one hand, it appears to represent the great and irreversible novelty of neoliberal globalization, particularly when our point of perspective is South America. While almost nothing remains of the legacy of the center-left-leaning regimes, the last South American decade appears to have genuinely been a Chinese decade. The Chinese advance is seen, especially by voices of the critical globalization studies, as a new “outside” of Empire, as something that stands for an alternative path, even if it is nothing more than an “old new” outside. Meanwhile, the role played by the financial sector continues to be regarded per se as the fundamental problem of contemporary capitalism. For some, this is a case of a deviation from an otherwise “good capitalism, the misleading result of a fictitious and unreal sphere (as opposed to the sphere of material economy, of good old bosses and hard workers), while for others, it is a case of one of the moral characteristics of Western civilization: infinite debt, and capitalism happens to be its modern drift.
Youth and the Cuban Revolution
Authors: Luke Anne
Published: November 2024

Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba is a new history of the first decade of the Cuban Revolution, exploring how youth came to play such an important role in the 1960s on this Caribbean island. Certainly, youth culture and politics worldwide were in the ascendant in that decade, but in this pioneering and thought-provoking work Anne Luke explains how the unique circumstances of the newly developing socialist revolution in Cuba created an ethos of youth which becomes one of the factors that explains how and why the Cuban Revolution survives to this day. By examining how youth was constructed and constituted within revolutionary discourse, policy, and the lived experience of young Cubans in the 1960s, Luke examines the conflicted (but ultimately successful) development of a revolutionary youth culture. She explores the fault lines along which the notion of youth was created—between the internal and the external, between discourse and the everyday, between politics and culture.

Luke looks at how in the first decade of the Cuban Revolution a young leadership—Fidel, Raúl and Che—were complemented by a group of new protagonists from Cuba’s young generation. These could be literacy teachers, party members, militia members, teachers, singers, poets… all aiming to define and shape the Cuban Revolution. Together young Cubans took part in defining what it meant to be young, socialist and Cuban in this effervescent decade. The picture that emerges is one in which neither youth politics nor youth culture can alone help to explain the first decade of the Revolution; rather through the sometimes conflicted intersection of both there emerged a generation constantly to be renewed—a youth in Revolution.
Dynamic Détente
Authors: Kieninger Stephan
Published: November 2024

This book examines the dynamic evolution of Western détente policies which sought to transform Europe and overcome its Cold War division through more communication and engagement. Kieninger challenges the traditional Cold War narrative that détente prolonged the division of Europe and precipitated America’s decline in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Rather, he argues that policymakers in the U.S. Department of State and in Western Europe envisaged the stability enabled by détente as a precondition for change, as Communist regimes saw a sense of security as a prerequisite for opening up their societies to Western influence over time. Kieninger identifies the Helsinki Accords, Lyndon Johnson’s bridge building, and Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik as efforts aimed at constructive changes in Eastern Europe through a multiplication of contacts, communication, and cooperation on all societal levels. This study also illuminates the longevity of America’s policy of peaceful change against the background of the nuclear stalemate and the military status quo.
Venezuelan Stick Fighting
Authors: Ryan Michael J.
Published: November 2024

In Venezuelan Stick Fighting: The Civilizing Process in Martial Arts, Michael J. Ryan examines the modern and historical role of the secretive tradition of stick fighting within rural Venezuela. Despite profound political and economic changes from the early twentieth century to the modern day, traditional values, practices, and imaginaries associated with older forms of masculinity and sociality are still valued. Stick, knife, and machete fighting are understood as key means of instilling the values of fortitude and cunning in younger generations. Recommended for scholars of anthropology, social science, gender studies, and Latin American studies.
Human Rights in Nigeria's External Relations
Authors: Aka Philip
Published: November 2024

This book is a broad-ranging argument for thorough reforms at home and abroad in Nigeria as the only antidote to the nation-building dilemmas Nigeria confronts in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Because of its enormous material and human endowments, Nigeria is dubbed the “Giant of Africa.” It is a moniker many of its leaders take seriously. Yet, Nigeria is a state rife with instability, some of it periodically erupting into violence. Given still-ongoing national security challenges in the land that notoriously includes a bloody religion-oriented terrorism, the Fourth Republic since 1999, the longest period of continuous democratic rule since independence—key to the timeline of this book—has not been insulated from the spell of instability.

The main argument of this work is that internationally agreed-upon ethical standards embedded in human rights can save Nigeria. This book is a methodologically and theoretically-grounded, seminal discourse on Nigerian foreign relations that spells out the human rights or lack thereof in those relations, including underlying and impinging domestic forces.

This work is set around six issues of application embedded in a temple of Nigeria’s human rights foreign policy, comprising two steps and four pillars: reconstructed national interest, increased human rights at home, redesigned peacekeeping, reshaped foreign policy machinery, increased bilateralism in foreign relations, and the use of ECOWAS as human rights tool. Although focused on the period since independence, for proper understanding of events from the past that shape the current patterns of politics in the land, this book also embodies a historical background chapter that overviews the pre-colonial and colonial eras.
Mythos and Voice
Authors: Underwood Charles
Published: November 2024

This book focuses on mythos and voice in the Odyssey, to illuminate its characters’ journeys from social displacement through discovery and recovery. Mythos and Voice approaches the Odyssey as a narrative of displacement – a narrative that maps the social displacement of its characters, explores the cognitive consequences of that displacement, and embodies the variable strategies by which those characters learn to resolve their displacement. It is a narrative that also employs and elaborates the characters’ own narratives of displacement as genres enabling them to resist externally imposed definitions of their situations and to redefine and ultimately reclaim their own place in the world, not as it was before their displacement, but as it must be, given the new post-heroic world in which they now live.

The focus on mythos and voice enables readers to approach the study of learning and the acquisition of personal agency in the context of a hazardous world – the cultural world that Odysseus navigates in Homer’s epic poem. With this focus, the author examines interactive processes of human learning in a specific cultural context – the epic universe of Homeric narrative. By ethnographically examining the learning contexts portrayed inHomer’s epic, Mythos and Voice elucidates an Archaic Greek view of human learning through examples that show how the author(s) of the Odyssey envisioned and dramatized displacement, learning and agency in the epic work. The book focuses on aspects of Homeric cognition as they cumulatively develop among key characters within the Odyssey’s inventive narrative structure. In this way, Mythos and Voice describes a culturally specific “theory” of learning and development – a perspective that proved compelling in the pre-classical and classical Greek world, even as it does to readers now.
Energy Policy in the Emerging Economies
Authors: Betz Joachim , Scholvin Sören
Published: November 2024

Energy has always been essential to economics and politics. While global energy consumption increases, fossil fuels are depleting. The countries that will be hit hardest by declining energy resources are the emerging economies of the Global South, where the relevance of the industrial sector is only slightly declining (or, indeed, still on the rise) and where governments have subsidised energy consumption for decades. Climate change – a direct outcome of the increasing consumption of fossil fuels – hits these emerging economies hard. Against this backdrop, Energy Policy inthe Emerging Economies: Climate Change Mitigation under the Constraints of Path Dependence analyses energy policy in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africaand South Korea with particular regard to these countries’ contributions to climatechange mitigation. Advancing a new approach that expands on energy transition studies and the concept of path dependence, Sören Scholvin and Joachim Betzshed light on material conditions, energy demand and expansion plans, politico-economicconstellations, energy-related know-how and climate policy.
Edward II and a Literature of Same-Sex Love
Authors: Cornelius Michael G.
Published: November 2024

The narrative re-tellings of the life, reign, and death of the English King Edward II (reigned 1307–1327) present a unique opportunity for scholars of sexuality in the early modern era. This is because the works of authors like Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, Sir Francis Hubert, Elizabeth Cary, and Richard Niccols were all inspired by the public, cultural memory fashioned from Edward’s same-sex love affair with Piers Gaveston. As such, each of them presents a particular representation of and a specific discourse about male-male sexual relations in the Renaissance. In other words, what these works present is a concentrated body of literature about same-sex love in the early modern era: works that openly and frankly explore the possible origins of the love, the reasons and causes for it; works that explore the ramifications of male-male romantic relationships; works that explore the sexual politics and sociocultural dynamics of same-sex romantic partnerships; and works that describe and denote same-sex love from an English Renaissance perspective. This study looks at each of the major Renaissance texts about Edward II and examines the means through which each text understands and analyzes the nature of male-male same-sex love. From Marlowe’s crafting of a lover-identity for Edward to Drayton’s obsession with Marlowe’s version of (gay) history; from Hubert’s Augustinian construction of Edward’s nature to Cary’s identification with the fallen king to Niccols’ inspired exemplum, what each of these works demonstrates is that the “love that dare not speak its name” would not be silenced, at least not in the case of Edward and Gaveston. When one sees the name Edward II, one also sees his same-sex loves. The correlation has become ingrained into our public recall of history. Thus, as far as the world is concerned, Edward II was—and ever will be—the gay king.
Linguistic Mysteries of Ethnonyms in Inner Asia
Authors: Wang Penglin
Published: November 2024

In Linguistic Mysteries of Ethnonyms in Inner Asia, Penglin Wang focuses on semantics as a central theme in onomastics and strives to unravel the origin and meaning of a series of influential ethnonyms such as Xianbei, Rouran, Tabγač, Tatar, Shiwei, Mongol, Merkid, Nüzhen, Jušen, and Nikan. Since much of modern research has dealt with issues of Inner Asian ethnonyms within a regional framework, Wang’s exploration of the early Indo-European and Altaic influence on the ethnonymic designations of Mongol-Tungusic and Turkic groups opens up a new horizon for transcontinental approaches, which represent an important thrust in Inner Asian and Eurasian studies. Wang has based this comprehensive study on textual, cross-linguistic, and patterned analysis of the ethnonyms found primarily in ancient Chinese sources.