bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Anti-mutant efficacy of antibiotic combinations: in vitro model studies with linezolid and daptomycin
Authors: Zinner Stephen H , Alieva Kamilla N , Golikova Maria V , Strukova Elena N , Portnoy Yury A , Firsov Alexander A
Published: March 2021

Objectives

To explore whether linezolid/daptomycin combinations can restrict Staphylococcus aureus resistance and if this restriction is associated with changes in the mutant prevention concentrations (MPCs) of the antibiotics in combination, the enrichment of resistant mutants was studied in an in vitro dynamic model.

Methods

Two MRSA strains, vancomycin-intermediate resistant ATCC 700699 and vancomycin-susceptible 2061 (both susceptible to linezolid and daptomycin), and their linezolid-resistant mutants selected by passaging on antibiotic-containing medium were used in the study. MPCs of antibiotics in combination were determined at a linezolid-to-daptomycin concentration ratio (1:2) that corresponds to the ratio of 24 h AUCs (AUC24s) actually used in the pharmacokinetic simulations. Each S. aureus strain was supplemented with respective linezolid-resistant mutants (mutation frequency 10−8) and treated with twice-daily linezolid and once-daily daptomycin, alone and in combination, simulated at therapeutic and sub-therapeutic AUC24s.

Results

Numbers of linezolid-resistant mutants increased at therapeutic and sub-therapeutic AUC24s, whereas daptomycin-resistant mutants were enriched only at sub-therapeutic AUC24 in single drug treatments. Linezolid/daptomycin combinations prevented the enrichment of linezolid-resistant S. aureus and restricted the enrichment of daptomycin-resistant mutants. The pronounced anti-mutant effects of the combinations were attributed to lengthening the time above MPC of both linezolid and daptomycin as their MPCs were lowered.

Conclusions

The present study suggests that (i) the inhibition of S. aureus resistant mutants using linezolid/daptomycin combinations can be predicted by MPCs determined at pharmacokinetically derived antibiotic concentration ratios and (ii) T>MPC is a reliable predictor of the anti-mutant efficacy of antibiotic combinations as studied using in vitro dynamic models.
Validation of the Applied Food Diagnostics, Inc. Molecular Environmental Monitoring Program (MEMP) Listeria Assay for Detection of Listeria Spp. in Environmental Surface Samples: AOAC Performance Tested MethodSM 052003
Authors: Lonczynski Thomas , Cowin Laura
Published: March 2021

Background

The Molecular Environmental Monitoring Program (MEMP) Listeria Assay is a quick, reliable method for detecting Listeria species in environmental samples. The assay incorporates a real-time PCR approach to identifying Listeria cells expressed from the swab sample. The assay does not require an enrichment step, leading to much faster time to a negative result.

Objective

This report details the method validation study to validate the MEMP using environmental surface swabs for stainless steel, plastic, rubber, ceramic tile, and sealed concrete.

Method

Matrix studies, inclusivity/exclusivity, product consistency and stability, and robustness testing were conducted to assess the method’s performance. In the matrix studies, this method was compared to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Bacteriological Analytical Manual (BAM) Chapter 10 for environmental surface sponges and swabs.

Results

Inclusivity and exclusivity testing showed that the MEMP Listeria Assay was able to detect all 75 Listeria strains tested while excluding the 30 non-Listeria species. There were no statistically significant differences found between the candidate and reference methods. Small variations in critical test parameters (volume of extraction reagent and volume of extracted DNA sample) did not adversely affect the assay’s performance, and stability testing indicated consistent results for at least 1 year.

Conclusions

The data presented in this report show that the candidate method performed as well as the reference method and can therefore be used in place of the reference method for detecting Listeria species.

Highlights

The MEMP Listeria Assay requires no enrichment for detecting Listeria on environmental surfaces.
The influence of extended supplementation of quebracho extract to beef steers consuming a hay diet on digestion, ruminal, and blood parameters
Authors: Dias Batista Luiz Fernando , Rivera Madeline E , Norris Aaron B , Muir James P , Fonseca Mozart A , Tedeschi Luis O
Published: March 2021

The addition of natural plant secondary compounds to ruminant feed has been extensively studied because of their ability to modify digestive and metabolic functions, resulting in a potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, among other benefits. Condensed tannin (CT) supplementation may alter ruminal fermentation and mitigate methane (CH4) emissions. This study’s objective was to determine the effect of quebracho CT extract [QT; Schinopsis quebracho-colorado (Schltdl.) F.A. Barkley & T. Meyer] within a roughage-based diet on ruminal digestibility and kinetic parameters by using the in situ and in vitro gas production techniques, in addition to blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and ruminal (volatile fatty acid [VFA], NH3-N, and protozoa count) parameters. Twenty rumen-cannulated steers were randomly assigned to four dietary treatments: QT at 0%, 1%, 2%, and 3% of dry matter (DM; QT0: 0% CT, QT1: 0.70% CT, QT2: 1.41% CT, and QT3: 2.13% CT). The in situ DM digestibility increased linearly (P = 0.048) as QT inclusion increased, whereas in situ neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFD) was not altered among treatments (P = 0.980). Neither total VFA concentration nor acetate-to-propionate ratio differed among dietary treatments (P = 0.470 and P = 0.873, respectively). However, QT3 had lower isovalerate and isobutyrate concentrations compared with QT0 (P ≤ 0.025). Ruminal NH3 and BUN tended to decline (P ≤ 0.075) in a linear fashion as QT inclusion increased, suggesting decreased deamination of feed protein. Ruminal protozoa count was reduced in quadratic fashion (P = 0.005) as QT inclusion increased, where QT1 and QT2 were lower compared with QT0 and QT3. Urinary N excretion tended to reduce in a linear fashion (P = 0.080) as QT increased. There was a treatment (TRT) × Day interaction for in vitro total gas production and fractional rate of gas production (P = 0.013 and P = 0.007, respectively), and in vitro NDFD tended to be greater for QT treatments compared with no QT inclusion (P = 0.077). There was a TRT × Day interaction (P = 0.001) on CH4 production, with QT3 having less CH4 production relative to QT0 on day 0 and QT2 on days 7 and 28. Feeding QT up to 3% of the dietary DM in a roughage-based diet did not sacrifice the overall DM digestibility and ruminal parameters over time. Still, it is unclear why QT2 did not follow the same pattern as in vitro gas parameters. Detailed evaluations of amino acid degradation might be required to fully define CT influences on ruminal fermentation parameters and CH4 production.
Quadrilateral multiblock decomposition via auxiliary subdivision
Authors: Sun Liang , Armstrong Cecil G , Robinson Trevor T , Papadimitrakis Dimitrios
Published: March 2021

Automatic quadrilateral (quad) or hexahedral (hex) multiblock decomposition has been a topic of research for many years. The key challenges are to automatically determine where to place mesh singularities and how to generate a decomposition based on the mesh singularities to get the desired mesh orientation and distribution. In this work, a new idea of achieving these is proposed based on an auxiliary subdivision of the domain into smaller subdomains, followed by applying an equation, which calculates the net number of mesh singularities of a surface, to locate the quad mesh singularities. Under this idea, two different methods are presented based on the medial axis and the inward boundary offset. Both methods are conformal to the vertex classifications of the original domain, which guarantees a good mesh quality at the boundary. The mesh results are compared with a paving method and a cross-field method.
Emotionally Numb: Expertise Dulls Consumer Experience
Authors: Rocklage Matthew D , Rucker Derek D , Nordgren Loran F
Published: March 2021

Expertise provides numerous benefits. Experts process information more efficiently, remember information better, and often make better decisions. Consumers pursue expertise in domains they love and chase experiences that make them feel something. Yet, might becoming an expert carry a cost for these very feelings? Across more than 700,000 consumers and 6 million observations, developing expertise in a hedonic domain predicts consumers becoming more emotionally numb—that is, having less intense emotion in response to their experiences. This numbness occurs across a range of domains—movies, photography, wine, and beer—and across diverse measures of emotion and expertise. It occurs in cross-sectional real-world data with certified experts, and in longitudinal real-world data that follows consumers over time and traces their emotional trajectories as they accrue expertise. Furthermore, this numbness can be explained by the cognitive structure experts develop and apply within a domain. Experimentally inducing cognitive structure led novice consumers to experience greater numbness. However, shifting experts away from using their cognitive structure restored their experience of emotion. Thus, although consumers actively pursue expertise in domains that bring them pleasure, the present work is the first to show that this pursuit can come with a hedonic cost.
Warm millimetre dust in protoplanetary discs near massive stars
Authors: Haworth Thomas J
Published: March 2021

Dust plays a key role in the formation of planets and its emission also provides one of our most accessible views of protoplanetary discs. If set by radiative equilibrium with the central star, the temperature of dust in the disc plateaus at around 10–20 K in the outer regions. However, sufficiently nearby massive stars can heat the outer disc to substantially higher temperatures. In this paper, we study the radiative equilibrium temperature of discs in the presence of massive external sources and gauge the effect that it has on millimetre dust mass estimates. Since millimetre grains are not entrained in any wind, we focus on geometrically simple 2D axisymmetric disc models using radiative transfer calculations with both the host star and an external source. Recent surveys have searched for evidence of massive stars influencing disc evolution using disc properties as a function of projected separation. In assuming a disc temperature of 20 K for a disc a distance D from a strong radiation source, disc masses are overestimated by a factor that scales with D−1/2 interior to the separation that external heating becomes important. This could significantly alter dust mass estimates of discs in close proximity to θ1C in the Orion Nebular Cluster (ONC). We also make an initial assessment of the effect upon snow lines. Within a parsec of an O star like θ1C a CO snow line no longer exists, though the water snow line is virtually unaffected except for very close separations of $\le 0.01\,$pc.
The point spread function reconstruction – II. The smooth PCA
Authors: Nie Lin , Li Guoliang , Peterson John R , Wei Chengliang
Published: March 2021

Accurate shear measurement is a key topic in weak lensing community. Point spread function (PSF), which smears the observed galaxy image, plays one of the main roles in the systematic errors in shear measurement and must be treated carefully to avoid bias and errors in cosmological parameters. In this paper, we present new PSF measurement methods, Smooth-PCA (SPCA) and Improved-SPCA (iSPCA), which can reconstruct smooth PSFs with high efficiency. Our methods decompose the star images into smooth principal components by using the Expectation-Maximization-PCA (EMPCA) method, and the smooth principal components are composed by Moffatlets basis functions, which are derived from the Moffat function. We demonstrate our approaches based on simulated Moffat PSFs and phosim star images. The constructed smooth principal components show flexible and efficient as the same as EMPCA, and have more stable patterns than EMPCA under noises contamination. We then check the reconstruction accuracy on the shape of PSFs. We find that our methods are able to reconstruct the PSFs at the same precision as the EMPCA method that indicates and iSPCA are promising for weak lensing shear measurement.
Optical properties of elongated conducting grains
Authors: Huang X M , Li Qi , Li Aigen , Chen J H , Liu F Z , Xiao C Y
Published: March 2021

Extremely elongated, conducting dust particles (also known as metallic ‘needles’ or ‘whiskers’) are seen in carbonaceous chondrites and in samples brought back from the Itokawa asteroid. Their formation in protostellar nebulae and subsequent injection into the interstellar medium have been demonstrated, both experimentally and theoretically. Metallic needles have been suggested to explain a wide variety of astrophysical phenomena, ranging from the mid-infrared interstellar extinction at $\sim \,$3–8$\, {\rm \mu m}$ to the thermalization of starlight to generate the cosmic microwave background. To validate (or invalidate) these suggestions, an accurate knowledge of the optics (e.g. the amplitude and the wavelength dependence of the absorption cross sections) of metallic needles is crucial. Here we calculate the absorption cross sections of iron needles of various aspect ratios over a wide wavelength range, by exploiting the discrete dipole approximation, the most powerful technique for rigorously calculating the optics of irregular or nonspherical grains. Our calculations support the earlier findings that the antenna theory and the Rayleigh approximation, which are often taken to approximate the optical properties of metallic needles, are indeed inapplicable.
Searching for gravitational waves via Doppler tracking by future missions to Uranus and Neptune
Authors: Soyuer Deniz , Zwick Lorenz , D’Orazio Daniel J , Saha Prasenjit
Published: March 2021

The past year has seen numerous publications underlining the importance of a space mission to the ice giants in the upcoming decade. Proposed mission plans involve a ∼10 yr cruise time to the ice giants. This cruise time can be utilized to search for low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs) by observing the Doppler shift caused by them in the Earth–spacecraft radio link. We calculate the sensitivity of prospective ice giant missions to GWs. Then, adopting a steady-state black hole binary population, we derive a conservative estimate for the detection rate of extreme mass ratio inspirals (EMRIs), supermassive black hole (SMBH), and stellar mass binary black hole (sBBH) mergers. We link the SMBH population to the fraction of quasars fbin resulting from Galaxy mergers that pair SMBHs to a binary. For a total of 10 40-d observations during the cruise of a single spacecraft, $\mathcal {O}(f_\mathrm{bin})\sim 0.5$ detections of SMBH mergers are likely, if Allan deviation of Cassini-era noise is improved by ∼102 in the 10−5 − 10−3 Hz range. For EMRIs the number of detections lies between $\mathcal {O}(0.1) \ \mathrm{ and} \ \mathcal {O}(100)$. Furthermore, ice giant missions combined with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) would improve the localization by an order of magnitude compared to LISA by itself.
Androgen and glucocorticoid receptor direct distinct transcriptional programs by receptor-specific and shared DNA binding sites
Authors: Kulik Marina , Bothe Melissa , Kibar Gözde , Fuchs Alisa , Schöne Stefanie , Prekovic Stefan , Mayayo-Peralta Isabel , Chung Ho-Ryun , Zwart Wilbert , Helsen Christine , Claessens Frank , Meijsing Sebastiaan H
Published: March 2021

The glucocorticoid (GR) and androgen (AR) receptors execute unique functions in vivo, yet have nearly identical DNA binding specificities. To identify mechanisms that facilitate functional diversification among these transcription factor paralogs, we studied them in an equivalent cellular context. Analysis of chromatin and sequence suggest that divergent binding, and corresponding gene regulation, are driven by different abilities of AR and GR to interact with relatively inaccessible chromatin. Divergent genomic binding patterns can also be the result of subtle differences in DNA binding preference between AR and GR. Furthermore, the sequence composition of large regions (>10 kb) surrounding selectively occupied binding sites differs significantly, indicating a role for the sequence environment in guiding AR and GR to distinct binding sites. The comparison of binding sites that are shared shows that the specificity paradox can also be resolved by differences in the events that occur downstream of receptor binding. Specifically, shared binding sites display receptor-specific enhancer activity, cofactor recruitment and changes in histone modifications. Genomic deletion of shared binding sites demonstrates their contribution to directing receptor-specific gene regulation. Together, these data suggest that differences in genomic occupancy as well as divergence in the events that occur downstream of receptor binding direct functional diversification among transcription factor paralogs.
Effect of small molecule eRF3 degraders on premature termination codon readthrough
Authors: Baradaran-Heravi Alireza , Balgi Aruna D , Hosseini-Farahabadi Sara , Choi Kunho , Has Cristina , Roberge Michel
Published: March 2021

Premature termination codon (PTC) readthrough is considered a potential treatment for genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations. High concentrations of aminoglycosides induce low levels of PTC readthrough but also elicit severe toxicity. Identifying compounds that enhance PTC readthrough by aminoglycosides or reduce their toxicity is a continuing challenge. In humans, a binary complex of eukaryotic release factors 1 (eRF1) and 3 (eRF3a or eRF3b) mediates translation termination. They also participate in the SURF (SMG1-UPF1-eRF1-eRF3) complex assembly involved in nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). We show that PTC readthrough by aminoglycoside G418 is considerably enhanced by eRF3a and eRF3b siRNAs and cereblon E3 ligase modulators CC-885 and CC-90009, which induce proteasomal degradation of eRF3a and eRF3b. eRF3 degradation also reduces eRF1 levels and upregulates UPF1 and selectively stabilizes TP53 transcripts bearing a nonsense mutation over WT, indicating NMD suppression. CC-90009 is considerably less toxic than CC-885 and it enhances PTC readthrough in combination with aminoglycosides in mucopolysaccharidosis type I-Hurler, late infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and junctional epidermolysis bullosa patient-derived cells with nonsense mutations in the IDUA, TPP1, DMD and COL17A1 genes, respectively. Combination of CC-90009 with aminoglycosides such as gentamicin or ELX-02 may have potential for PTC readthrough therapy.
Local structure of DNA toroids reveals curvature-dependent intermolecular forces
Authors: Barberi Luca , Livolant Françoise , Leforestier Amélie , Lenz Martin
Published: March 2021

In viruses and cells, DNA is closely packed and tightly curved thanks to polyvalent cations inducing an effective attraction between its negatively charged filaments. Our understanding of this effective attraction remains very incomplete, partly because experimental data is limited to bulk measurements on large samples of mostly uncurved DNA helices. Here we use cryo electron microscopy to shed light on the interaction between highly curved helices. We find that the spacing between DNA helices in spermine-induced DNA toroidal condensates depends on their location within the torus, consistent with a mathematical model based on the competition between electrostatic interactions and the bending rigidity of DNA. We use our model to infer the characteristics of the interaction potential, and find that its equilibrium spacing strongly depends on the curvature of the filaments. In addition, the interaction is much softer than previously reported in bulk samples using different salt conditions. Beyond viruses and cells, our characterization of the interactions governing DNA-based dense structures could help develop robust designs in DNA nanotechnologies.
Choice of fluorophore affects dynamic DNA nanostructures
Authors: Jahnke Kevin , Grubmüller Helmut , Igaev Maxim , Göpfrich Kerstin
Published: March 2021

The ability to dynamically remodel DNA origami structures or functional nanodevices is highly desired in the field of DNA nanotechnology. Concomitantly, the use of fluorophores to track and validate the dynamics of such DNA-based architectures is commonplace and often unavoidable. It is therefore crucial to be aware of the side effects of popular fluorophores, which are often exchanged without considering the potential impact on the system. Here, we show that the choice of fluorophore can strongly affect the reconfiguration of DNA nanostructures. To this end, we encapsulate a triple-stranded DNA (tsDNA) into water-in-oil compartments and functionalize their periphery with a single-stranded DNA handle (ssDNA). Thus, the tsDNA can bind and unbind from the periphery by reversible opening of the triplex and subsequent strand displacement. Using a combination of experiments, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, and reaction-diffusion modelling, we demonstrate for 12 different fluorophore combinations that it is possible to alter or even inhibit the DNA nanostructure formation—without changing the DNA sequence. Besides its immediate importance for the design of pH-responsive switches and fluorophore labelling, our work presents a strategy to precisely tune the energy landscape of dynamic DNA nanodevices.
International Status and Japan
Authors: Leheny David
Published: March 2021

Beyond material power, states and people have shown themselves to be also interested in status, claiming and demonstrating their ostensibly rightful place atop (or near the top of) some kind of acknowledged hierarchy. Because status signaling is so pervasive, even ubiquitous, in global politics, it would be difficult to say that status matters especially to Japan. But it does seem to matter particularly to Japan, in the sense that there are particular motifs and themes that have been astonishingly consistent, not to mention widely exploitable and open-ended, in Japanese social debates about the country’s place as a potential global leader. This chapter traces debates about status, and argues that narrative is essential to understanding how status claims work and why they matter. It then sets three highly charged episodes—all of them involving arguments about Japan’s international position—against the backdrop of a widely shared postwar narrative about Japan.
Introduction to Research with Human Participants
Authors: Coleman Carl H.
Published: March 2021

Research with human participants is conducted for a variety of reasons, including developing drugs, medical devices, or other medical interventions; understanding human cognition and behavior; and evaluating the impact of public policy interventions. It can provide enormous social benefits, but it also raises significant ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas stem from a tension that is inherent in the nature of the activity: the goal is to generate knowledge for the potential benefit of persons in the future, but achieving this goal often requires exposing individuals in the present to the possibility of harm. This tension is particularly pronounced in clinical trials involving investigational drugs, devices, or other medical interventions, where the risks of participation may be particularly significant. The chapter presents a brief sketch of the legal framework surrounding research with human participants in two important centers of research: the United States and the European Union.
Hearing Film Music Topics outside the Movie Theatre
Authors: Bourne Janet
Published: March 2021

This chapter describes a cognitively informed framework based on analogy for theorizing cinematic listening; in this case, it tests the hypothesis that contemporary listeners might use associations learned from film music topics to make sense of western art music (WAM). Using the pastoral topic as a case study, a corpus of film scores from 1980–2014 determines common associations for this topic based on imagery, emotion, and narrative contexts. Then, the chapter outlines potential narratives a modern moviegoer might make by listening “cinematically” to a Sibelius movement. The hypothesis is empirically tested through an experiment where participants record their imagined narratives and images while listening to WAM and film music. The meaning extraction method, a statistical analysis for identifying associational themes, is used to analyze people’s responses.
“Deeds of Music” in Bourgeois Opera (What the Listener Sees…)
Authors: Franklin Peter
Published: March 2021

The internalized visualization of symphonic music was validated by “New German School” programmaticism. Wagner’s mature music-dramas, with their symphonic “underscores,” were even theorized by him as “deeds of music made visible.” By locating dramatic agency in his concealed orchestra, Wagner problematized in advance his later disparagement by critics for whom the cinema downgraded music to the role of redundant accompaniment. Recent work on music in popular melodrama further complicates our understanding of critical battles fought over music and meaning in mass-entertainment theatre, where its melodramatic use seems initially to have served to repress socially disruptive “meaning.” Implications for film music-study of discoveries about melodramatic music are traced here with reference to a 1989 film realization of Delius’s opera A Village Romeo and Juliet (1901), whose last orchestral interlude (“The Walk to the Paradise Garden”) is turned there into a fully realized, “silent” cinematic narrative.
Fist to Face
Authors: Coulthard Lisa
Published: March 2021

In his recent Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise, Michel Chion coins the term “corporeal covibrations” to describe the much discussed but imprecisely defined phenomena of sound’s corporeal impact. From low and high frequencies to intense loudness, sound has direct vibratory impact on the body, an association that aligns with the recent “sensory turn” in criticism. This chapter considers covibratory corporeal listening as crucial to the impact aesthetics of the cinematic punch in action cinema today. Tracing the sonic history of the cinematic punch, it interrogates the corporeal, haptic, and uncanny effects of this hyperreal sound object. With the cinematic punch, violence on screen is heard, never fully seen: and yet, in the digital era, the punch has taken on a meatier, louder, more complex role in audiovisual violence, a shift that transforms this sonic effect into a fleshy, material, and corporeally felt object.
The Erotics of Cinematic Listening
Authors: Kulezic-Wilson Danijela
Published: March 2021

This chapter explores cinematic listening by bringing together ideas from contemporary musical and sound studies, the concept of erotics in art championed in the 1970s feminist discourse, and ideas of “new materialism” in film studies. It emphasizes the sensuousness of film form as something distinct from sensory overload, and suggests that a sensuous mode of listening is inherently musical. Focusing on films including Arrival (2016), Under the Skin (2013), Elephant (2003), and Tree of Life (2011), the chapter shows that the erotics of cinematic listening is facilitated by the practice of foregrounding the materiality of music and an increasingly integrated approach to the soundtrack.
Hearing Secondary Explosions
Authors: Jordan Randolph
Published: March 2021

This chapter uses the shot of the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center, as captured in the Naudet brothers’ documentary film 9/11, as a point of entry to consider how conventions of asynchronous sound in the cinema are challenged by recent forms of media production and dissemination, and, by extension, to think about whether or not we should revise our understanding of what “cinematic” might mean in relation to listening. It situates the Naudets’ 9/11 within the discourse of “performativity” in documentary film, and assesses the implications of the Naudet footage proliferating in other media outside their own film. The notion of “secondary explosions” acts as a guiding metaphor for the concept of “asynchronization,” and it leads to the argument that the proliferation of Naudet sound elements outside of the film requires an expanded notion of the work of asynchronous sound in audiovisual media.
Projections of Image on Sound
Authors: Korsgaard Mathias Bonde
Published: March 2021

It has often been claimed that music video has exerted an aesthetic influence on cinema. This chapter establishes some of the common arguments surrounding this claim while simultaneously maintaining certain reservations as to the very legitimacy of tracing such influences. Focusing on three particular points of cross-fertilization between music video and cinema—narrative, musicalization, and “reduced images”—the chapter approaches the relation between music video and cinema from both sides: from music video into cinema and vice versa. More specifically, it analyses the work of two transmedia directors who have had opposite career trajectories: Michel Gondry (who started as a musician, then became a music video director, and finally a film director) and David Lynch (a film director who turned to making music videos, and then to creating music under his own name).
The Courtships of Ada and Len
Authors: Smith Jacob
Published: March 2021

Ada Jones and Len Spencer were the stars of many musical comedies released by a modern media industry during the first decade of the twentieth century. The reason you probably haven’t heard of these media texts is that they were not performed onstage or produced by the film industry. Jones and Spencer were stars of the phonograph industry, and their records are some of the earliest media texts to combine a narrative with musical numbers and to juxtapose dramatic dialogue and singing. The Jones and Spencer records are a missing link between the nineteenth-century stage and the cinema, and so they recast the history and theory of the modern musical. At the same time, they are an archive of sonic texts that allow us to hear the Hollywood musical in a new way and to listen to musical performance styles both beyond and before the cinema.
Cinematic Listening and the Early Talkie
Authors: Buhler James
Published: March 2021

During the transition to sound, the trade and news press noted frequent complaints against recorded sound, both from those inside the industry who were suspicious of the new technology disrupting their work habits and from the public, which was curious but uncertain about the conventions of sound film. These complaints ranged from dialogue that was too loud and too deliberate, to technical difficulties with reproducing sibilants, to overly intrusive and distracting sound effects. But special ire was reserved for recorded synchronized scores, although the ability to provide such music remained one of the chief early selling points of the technology. This chapter examines some of these early reactions to sound film and looks at strategies that filmmakers developed to convince filmgoers that recorded sound could be cinematic.
Introduction
Authors: Gluhovic Milija , Jestrovic Silvija , Rai Shirin , Saward Michael
Published: March 2021

Beginning with two vivid examples that illustrate the Handbook’s core arguments—that politics is performative, performance is political, and that both of these matter to understanding our worlds—the introduction provides a current, contextual account of the shared syntax of politics and performance. It defines key terms, such as politics, performance, theatricality, and performativity, that inform the Handbook contributions. Through accessible and provocative engagements with new ways of thinking about politics and performance in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary modes, the introduction shows that these categories are interwoven and entangled in complex and consequential ways. It outlines the states of the art in theater and performance studies and politics, respectively, capturing key points of interconnection between these discourses in order to build on, extend, and reshape interdisciplinary conversations. Finally, it reflects on key challenges and opportunities that attend bringing the two broad fields together for mutual enrichment and building a new, hybrid field of study. Underlining the co-constitutive nature of performance and politics, the introduction suggests that such a framework is critical to promoting an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex political world of the twenty-first century.
Island Impasse
Authors: Cox Emma
Published: March 2021

This chapter responds to the theme of borders with reference to the artistic and activist work of the Iranian refugee Behrouz Boochani, who was held for several years at Manus Island detention center, Papua New Guinea, at the behest of the Australian government. The discussion examines Boochani’s documentary film, Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017), created clandestinely on a mobile device within the detention center. The chapter considers new border formations, marked by prolonged encounters with prohibitory migration laws that transform borders from instruments of passing into tools of impasse. Describing an emergent condition of the border, the chapter works through a concept of “thickening” that results from punitive laws concerning forced migration and from the artistic interventions of people subjected to these laws.
Atmospheres of Protest
Authors: Wall Illan rua
Published: March 2021

Commentators often remark upon the “festive” or “tense” atmosphere of major protests. This seems to signify the general outlook of the protestors or the relations between them and the police. It signals the potential of the protests to unfold in a peaceful, joyous manner or with violence. While “festive” and “tense” are useful ways of thinking about protest atmospheres, they are often used in a highly reductive manner. The literature on atmosphere from social movement studies also tends to reproduce this reductive idea of atmosphere, whereby it can be understood through unidimensional metrics. This chapter discusses the social movement literature and opens the debate about atmospheres of protest more widely. Ultimately there is a much greater variety of atmospheric conditions in moments of protest. These nestle together, changing and interacting as the conditions shift. Atmospheres are the affective tone of space. They are produced by those gathered in that space, by the spatial dynamics and the affective social conditions. Atmospheres affect those present, changing their capacity to act. Thus it is important that we understand their potential.
Pedagogy
Authors: Strausz Erzsébet
Published: March 2021

This chapter engages the transformational potential of pedagogical practice in the classroom and beyond as both performance and misperformance. It focuses on the ways in which institutional scripts, the disciplinary expectations of the academic field of international relations, and the logic of the market shape and condition bodily movement, modes of expression, and structures of thinking, feeling, sensing as well as practices of self-making in the contemporary university and, more broadly, as everyday social performance. Through vignettes that give a personal, narrative account of learning about learning, it tells the story of an experimental course at Central European University, which specifically sought to draw attention to and creatively subvert the enactment of habitual academic performances in various registers. Embracing the risk of mistakes, discomfort, and awkwardness as intrinsic features of the experience of teaching and being taught, routinized and instrumental practices of sense-making opened up to new perceptual dimensions. In this effort, misperformances as ephemeral, unpredictable, improvised moments that are inevitable in the performance of institutional roles revealed their generative capacity to facilitate embodied, grounded, and socially sensitive understandings of selfhood and otherness as lived, actual realities of international relations. Inspired by Jacques Rancière’s figure of the ignorant schoolmaster, an iterated listening exercise foregrounded the work of attention and, as illustrated by focus group discussions, enabled participants to lessen performance pressure and develop alternative sensibilities of embodied presence, communication, and learning together.
Ceremony, Genealogy, Political Theology
Authors: Elden Stuart
Published: March 2021

This chapter begins the work of interrogating the concept and practice of ceremony historically and theoretically. There has been some important recent work that examines the question of ceremony and its contemporary political instantiations and that examines specific ceremonial practices in different historical periods. This chapter discusses this work, develops an argument about how to understand ceremony in relation to political theology, and shows how tracing the etymology and history of ceremony can be helpful in understanding it today. All ceremonies have at least the trace of a religious lineage, even if they appear to be for purely secular purposes. The chapter explores themes around bodies and materials—gesture, choreography, clothing, and objects; the texts or liturgy of ceremony; and the temporality and spatiality of ceremony. The ceremonial is an aspect of the performance of politics but also of the politics of performance. Through a brief discussion of Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the chapter explores this question of political theater.
Gender, Politics, Performance
Authors: Spary Carole
Published: March 2021

The chapter introduces the reader to selected frames that are valuable in work on gender and political representation: embodiment, authenticity, and performative labor of (especially symbolic) representation. The chapter illustrates the dominant scripts of political representation and appeals to situated knowledge during claim-making in the Indian national parliament; the policing of gendered and religious behavioral scripts for authentic representation of minority women in Indian politics; salient intersections of caste, gender, and embodiment in the performance of symbolic representation in the election of India’s first female Speaker in Parliament; and more localized scripts of performing gender in party political spaces. It discusses the performances of women legislators in institutional and noninstitutional spaces with the aim of illustrating the intellectual and practical merits of applying a performance-based approach to analyzing gender and politics.
Parfit and the Non-Identity Problem
Authors: Boonin David
Published: March 2021

In this chapter, the author explains what the non-identity problem is and why it matters, as well as Derek Parfit’s central role in the literature on the problem. The author explains the solution to the problem Parfit tentatively proposed in Reasons and Persons (1984) and the two reasons he gave for being dissatisfied with that solution. The author then explains the solution that Parfit later defended in his final (posthumous) publication (2017) and why he thought that solution overcame the two problems with his earlier solution. The author then identifies a third problem with Parfit’s earlier solution and shows that this third problem is also a problem with his later solution. The author concludes by suggesting that one lesson that might be drawn from the failure of Parfit’s last solution points in the direction of a very different kind of response to the problem, one defended in the author’s 2014 book, The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People. And in doing so, the author responds to some of the criticisms of that response that Parfit himself makes early in his final publication.
Patristic Biblical Interpretation in China
Authors: Tan Justin T. T.
Published: March 2021

This essay chronicles the study of patristic biblical interpretation in China, first, by tracing the development from the early days of the spread of Christianity; second, by introducing notable translations of patristic texts that have enshrined in them some biblical interpretations; and finally, by investigating selected modern Chinese scholars’ work, which sets the tone for further studies in this particular area. Some paradigmatic studies in recent times indicate the main direction of research in China, such as a distinct sense of wanting to let the early fathers speak again in their context and discarding the traditional bias in the West towards typology and allegory as hermeneutical tools. The widespread use of these tools was well accepted in China. Recently, academics with or without a Christian background have contributed to the appreciation of patristic study in general and biblical interpretation in particular, albeit from a cultural perspective.
Christian Biblical Tradition in the Jing Chinese Culture
Authors: Chen Yanrong
Published: March 2021

Most studies of the Bible in China focus on Protestant churches starting in the nineteenth century, as a Chinese Catholic Bible was absent during the first two-hundred-year history of Christianity in China until an official edition was published in the twentieth century. In fact, despite the absence of a full translation, the Bible was rendered into a wide variety of genres corresponding to the native Chinese culture of sacred texts called jing in Chinese. This essay provides a broadened view of the Bible reception in China by presenting a range of Chinese Christian sacred texts from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. These texts conveyed biblical words and messages to Chinese audiences of the time, and they creatively integrated genres from the European Church’s convention of Christian literature and the Chinese literary courses of classical studies and religious texts. This overview demonstrates major examples and organizes them according to their compositions. The diverse types form a spectrum of Chinese Christian sacred texts, in which most individual Chinese Christian works studied in this volume can find a proper place to fit.
The Bible and Missionary Novels In Chinese
Authors: Lai John T. P.
Published: March 2021

While foreign missionaries to China spared no effort in translating and disseminating the Bible, they recognized the fact that the Holy Scripture, with all its cultural and theological peculiarities, was too alien and difficult for most Chinese readers to comprehend during the early Qing and Republican periods. Some missionaries, Protestant and Catholic alike, were committed to the production of a sizable corpus of Christian novels in Chinese by making creative use of traditional Chinese literary forms to rewrite biblical stories. Fictional representations of the biblical narratives might provide greater leeway to indigenize the Christian thoughts by offering their intended Chinese audiences culture-specific commentaries and nuanced interpretations. The literary fruits of the missionaries not only had facilitated the reception of the Bible and the spread of the associated religious message but also had reshaped the literary and social landscapes of late imperial and early Republican China.
Jesuits’ Convenevolezza in Printed Illustrations of the Gospel
Authors: Yi Qu
Published: March 2021

This essay discusses the printed illustrations in two earliest Chinese Christian books in the Ming dynasty, namely Song nianzhu guicheng 誦念珠規程 (Rules for Reciting the Rosary, henceforth: Guicheng) and Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie 天主降生出像經解 (Explanation of the Canonical Book about the Lord of Heaven’s Incarnation with Selected Images, henceforth: Jingjie), which have a similar foreign model, the Evangelicae historiae imagines (EHI). Differentiating from the engravings in the EHI, many objects represented in the Chinese woodblock prints refer to Confucian lifestyle, symbols, and philosophies. Focusing on these two books and comparing their illustrations with those in the foreign original, this essay examines the application of convenevolezza to Chinese woodblock prints, illustrating the Jesuits’ policy of accommodating Christianity to Confucianism in this artistic practice.
Localization of Bible Printing in China
Authors: Zi Wang
Published: March 2021

This essay gives a historical survey of Bible printing in China not only to show the development of Chinese Christianity in its missions of printing and publishing but also to demonstrate that the works of printing and publishing are windows of dialogue between Chinese and foreign cultures. The essay traces Bible printing in China with different mission strategies, such as Catholics in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties and Protestants in the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China. Since the Republic of China, Bible printing has begun to develop in the direction of localization with numerous presses established. In New China, with its focus on streamlining and unity in printing and publishing, Amity Printing Company becomes the only Chinese modern enterprise authorized to print the Bible; it has served China and also more than 110 countries around the world.
Why, When, and How the Global South Became Relevant
Authors: Cooper Adam
Published: March 2021

The idea of the Global South gained traction in the second half of the twentieth century, as certain real and discursive changes occurred to the geopolitical, economic, and epistemological processes established under modernity. Three interconnected global processes—colonialism/postcolonialism, capitalism/industrial development and knowledge flows—processes which collectively forged modernity, underwent significant changes. Previously colonized territories became independent and new technologies and connectivity enabled ideas and people from the former colonies to speak and indeed move back to the Global North. These changes formed part of global transformations to economic modes of production and corporate governance. Industrial and economic processes have therefore intersected with geopolitical changes and epistemological flows to enable slivers of the Global South to emerge in the interstices of powerful political, industrial, and epistemological forces. The Global South creates portals of opportunity for a more democratic, inclusive, and collaborative world, but it could also simply produce new inequalities and divisions reinforced along familiar lines.
A Southern Charter for a Global Youth Studies to Benefit the World
Authors: Swartz Sharlene
Published: March 2021

This essay reflects on the process of developing a handbook that foregrounds Southern perspectives on youth life-worlds, and does so by realigning theory, praxis, and justice. It applies the principles of self-reliance, solidarity, self-knowledge and a move from subordination to interdependence as described in the 1990 report of The South Commission, led by Julius Nyerere, to youth studies scholars from the Global South. Taking seriously the South Commission’s injunction that responsibility for change rests with those from the South who need to recreate their relationship with the North in order to make a global rather than parochial contribution, it describes the aims of the handbook and the many challenges experienced in producing it. Among these challenges are the difficulty Southern scholars have in producing theory, the precarity of their lives, the invisibility of much existing Southern scholarship, and the importance of communities of practice within the South and between the South and North. It concludes by offering a charter for remaking youth studies from one that universalizes Northern perspectives into a truly global youth studies, one that is enriched by, and welcomes the contribution of Global South scholars on their own terms.