bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
International Accountability Assessed
Authors: Heiss Mary Ann
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews the process of decolonization on a variety of levels, focusing on the local independence movements that dominate the historiography and reveal that the institutional context of the United Nations was important. It cites that newly independent nations transformed the UN from a vehicle for preserving the status quo to an instrument of global change. It also emphasizes how a decolonization-fueled campaign for international accountability for dependent territories was part of the larger multipronged postwar drive for universal equality. The chapter describes the campaigns for international human rights and racial equality as part of the nonaligned platform. It describes movements that shifted the international gaze from the East–West Cold War to North–South issues.
Anticolonial Violence and the Palestinian Struggle to Exist
Authors: Sen Somdeep
Published: May 2021

This chapter focuses on Hamas's anticolonial resistance, not least as a means of emphasizing the colonized's existence and cultivating their liberated peoplehood. Drawing on interviews with members of the organization and Palestinians who have participated in, been witness to, or suffered the human and material consequences of Palestinian armed resistance, it argues that anticolonial violence finds relevance in light of its ability to both unmake and make. Hamas's armed resistance is assumed, by the colonized, to be capable of dismantling or unmaking the colonial condition. The chapter contends that its violence unmakes by nominally challenging Israel's settler colonial rule over the Palestinian territories and, in doing so, rendering it a difficult venture to maintain. The potential of violence to be a creative force, to make, emerges as a retort by the colonized to the colonial project's attempt to deny their inner being by imposing its own values on their identity. Hamas's armed resistance makes by allowing each act of resistance to be called an act of Palestinian resistance, thus enabling the subsequent suffering to be labeled instances of Palestinian suffering.
On Liberation
Authors: Sen Somdeep
Published: May 2021

This chapter takes the discussion of the long moment of liberation beyond Palestine. Using examples from India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tanzania, Cuba, and Turkish Kurdistan, it demonstrates that, just as the postcolonial exists in the era of colonial rule, so does the struggle for liberation continue long after the withdrawal of the colonizer. This urge to keep fighting is partly driven by an effort to combat the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural remnants of colonization that often endure despite the “official” end of colonial rule. But far more critically, this urge persists because the nature (and experience) of the colonial enterprise is such that despite the (formerly) colonized's enthusiastic search for a decolonized, postcolonial sense of self, they lack any significant memory of a past unadulterated by colonization. This dilemma is further acute for those under settler colonial rule, since the very endeavor of settler colonialism is often to erase the signature of indigenous presence. The result is that liberation cannot be achieved following the single moment when the colonizer withdraws. Instead, the postcolonial and the anticolonial coexist irrespective of the presence or absence of the colonizer, as the (formerly) colonized are compelled to perpetually search for their decolonized sense of self, thereby generating a long and often protracted moment of liberation.
History in Wood
Authors: Golubev Alexey
Published: May 2021

This chapter turns to other types of material objects that were capable of performing history: timber buildings associated with cultural heritage and historical ship replicas. The last three decades of the Soviet Union evidenced a fast growth in the number of heritage sites related to traditional wooden architecture. The chapter examines the museumification of old architecture as a process that was similar to the scale modeling hobby in its politics, but stimulated the nationalist understanding of Soviet history in its Romantic, rather than Techno-Utopian, interpretation. In particular, the chapter shows how wood, a traditional building material, became a symbol that objectified the “deep cultural roots” of Soviet society and served, because of its texture, as a living witness of its authentic history.
Ordinary and Paranormal
Authors: Golubev Alexey
Published: May 2021

This chapter investigates how the television set as a material object changed the Soviet domestic space and Soviet selfhood. The chapter brings together most of the topics discussed in the book. It looks at the social conflict between the educated class and marginalized groups in Soviet society, which found its manifestation in public debates over the presumably healing or harmful effects of the television set. The chapter focuses on the material form in addition to the content of television to argue that its inclusion in the Soviet home instigated new forms of identity performances that cannot be reduced to the content of television programs but can rather be traced to the physical nature of television as a medium of mass communication. Focusing on the phenomenon of paranormal seances broadcast on Soviet television in 1989, the chapter explores the various ways in which Soviet television audiences discovered that the television set had power over their bodies and selves, as well as looks at different forms of social reaction that this discovery caused in late Soviet culture.
Introduction
Authors: Gagné Nana Okura
Published: May 2021

This chapter focuses on Japanese men who are working men, family men, aging men, and complex individual men in twenty-first-century Japan. It examines Japanese employees' life stories as they are interwoven with work, family, and leisure spaces in order to shed light on the complexity of employees' lives and on the shifting meanings of various interconnected contexts that are obscured by the economic logic of twenty-first-century Japan. It also analyses how oppositional ideological systems and different individuals clash, operate, and create new meanings. The chapter reveals the restructuring and resilience that marks the ways Japanese employees wrestle with, navigate through, and manipulate dominant ideologies operating in the local and global economies. It discusses the salarymen's shifting identities since the 1990s and the relationship between gender roles, employment structures, and the neoliberal restructuring of the Japanese economy.
Working in and Working on Neoliberalism
Authors: Gagné Nana Okura
Published: May 2021

This chapter explores how globalization and neoliberal economic reforms operate and are operationalized on the ground by companies. It discusses how Japanese workers responded to large-scale economic restructurings since the 1990s. It also reveals that the ideology of neoliberalism has been co-opted by Japanese corporations and management to reengineer older corporate practices in ways that were not possible before. The chapter describes key technologies of neoliberal restructuring in the form of the performance-based merit system and massive corporate restructuring that have destabilized the older corporate governance. It examines economic reforms on the ground level through the experiences and voices of employees and managers who have been on the front line of restructuring in postbubble Japan.
Weathering the Storms of Corporate Restructuring
Authors: Gagné Nana Okura
Published: May 2021

This chapter concentrates on the individuals whose lives could be described as “weathering the storms of corporate restructuring,” such as the lives of salarymen, Matsuda-san and Takagi-san, that were full of unexpected struggles with corporate changes. It introduces three individuals whose lives coincided and collided directly with Japan's corporate reforms. It also draws attention to the struggles and circumstances that highlight the individuals' tensions and desires as they struggled with recent corporate restructuring amid the changing global economy and Japanese society. The chapter talks about Fukuyama-san who became jobless late in his career after an unexpected layoff due to corporate restructuring and spent years looking for jobs and trying to make ends meet. It mentions Tanaka-san, who turned sixty years old and retired from his company in the spring of 2007 and Ōtsuka-san, who described himself as a “crushed person” when asked about his job.
Crusoe’s Babel, Missionaries’ Mistakes
Authors: Johnson Rebecca C.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses Robinson Crusoe, the differences between the original and its Arabic translation, and how it was used as a tool for conversion by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) to guide Eastern Christians to the right path of Protestantism by emulating Crusoe's direct and individual spiritual awakening. CMS missionaries took active steps to discourage cultural hybridity, even monitoring the translators in their employment for signs of the Catholic influence. The fantasy of purity and process of purification were part of the foundation of the missionary movement, making Crusoe's own myth of individualism and fantasy of autonomy its perfect ideological surrogate. The CMS hoped they would find inspiration in Crusoe's spiritual trials and error, as he moves from rebellion to punishment, repentance, and eventually religious conversion. The observations that emerge from setting these two versions of Crusoe's eating habits side by side might amount to a minor point but for the fact that observing Crusoe's autonomous actions on the island have played an important role in theorizing what have been called the formal and cultural institutions of the novel: individual subjectivity, formal realism, colonial accumulation, the labor theory of value, national identity, to name a few. Many translators of this period adapted or changed the source material. Regardless of the radical changes, translators praised importance of the original version and often lamented their inability to do justice to it. As the earliest surviving translation of a novel into Arabic, Qiṣṣat Rūbinṣun Kurūzī stands as an ideal starting point from which to understand the origins of the Arabic novel as they emerge from translation.
The Melodramatic State
Authors: Johnson Rebecca C.
Published: May 2021

This chapter talks about what were considered bad books for bad readers. At the turn of the century, it was certainly not high-minded literary works that predominated in the Arabic literary marketplace. Rather, the market privileged thrilling and emotional works, the vast majority of which were in translation and which prioritized titillation and “scandal” over moral, civic, or religious progress. The new popular novels were accused of more than just portraying unrealistic foreign situations; more dangerously, they were seen as promoting unhealthy reading practices and cultivating excessive, nonrational emotions. Commentators worried about the prominent place of “bad books for bad readers” in the national literary market, and bad readers were above all figured as women readers. Bad books spoke to and — more frequently — about women. Translations redeployed excess popular emotion as political, and they do so in such a way as to test gendered national discourses, complicating some of the very New Woman ideas that elite writers were putting forth. The chapter reinserts these popular translated novels and their major figures — the oppressed wife, the bad female example, and the good criminal — into the national conversation and shows how they make social and political claims.
Invader Fictions: National Literature after Translation
Authors: Johnson Rebecca C.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses how translation has affected literature. When we assess criticism of translated literature as part of the larger national conversation about the novel's purpose, the formation of the national literary canon comes to resemble a process of negotiating the foreignness that lies within it and not solely a process of casting the foreign out. In doing so, we ascribe historicity to the formation of national literary history itself, reformulating not just the position of Arabic in an imagined world literary canon but also the modern Arabic literary canon. Translation helped to shape a category of national literature that belonged in turn to a comparative process. Reading the history of the novel in translation forces us to recast national literary histories, to read the nation in translation. To locate foreign literature within national literary history at the moment of its formation is only possible if one uncovers the impact that translations had on “original” writing, discourses and institutions of modernity, and reading practices. Understanding that history challenges us to read novels' depiction of even national environments or characters in the comparative critical context in which they were written and to see “national realism” as a mode that was canonized through comparative and translational methodologies and as perhaps the culmination of a history of translation.
Lost Games
Authors: Frost Dennis J.
Published: May 2021

This chapter highlights the FESPIC Movement's place in Japan's history of disability sports. It explores FESPIC's relationship with the Paralympic Movement and the FESPIC Federation's absorption by the new Asian Paralympic Committee (APC), which serves as an important reminder that the development of the Paralympic organizations was never a forgone conclusion. It also talks about how FESPIC Games posed challenges to the larger Paralympic Movement that fostered important changes in the process. The chapter analyzes the establishment of the APC, which offered a case study of regional efforts to come to terms with the emerging International Olympic Committee/International Paralympic Committee (IOC/IPC) juggernaut in international sports. It cites the formal integration with the IPC that proved increasingly unavoidable for organizations like FESPIC.
Japan’s “Cradle of Disability Sports”
Authors: Frost Dennis J.
Published: May 2021

This chapter investigates how Ōita's seemingly anomalous prominence in the world of wheelchair marathons came about and what it has meant to Ōita, its people, and athletes with disabilities. It elaborates how the Ōita Prefecture had become known as Japan's “cradle of disability sports,” a reputation that was attained through Dr. Nakamura Yutaka's work with the Paralympics and FESPIC. It also explains how Nakamura played an important role in the establishment of Ōita's marathon, considering his motivations and methods for launching another international sports event for those with disabilities. The chapter talks about the marathon and how it was established in response to intersecting international, local, and personal forces. It reviews how the marathon has benefited from sustained local government support, which made it an ideal site for exploring how and why disability sports have been leveraged for local gains in Ōita.
Arab Others Abroad and at Home
Authors: Lücking Mirjam
Published: May 2021

This chapter tackles ambivalence in the representations of Indonesian selves and Arab Others, drawing on migrants' and pilgrims' narrations on Arab Others and on the more general media representations of Arab Others in Indonesia. It discusses an excursion into popular culture, which reveals how cultural boundaries provide orientation and guide identity formation in contemporary Indonesian Islamization trends. The chapter also examines lessons from the collective mobilities of migrants and pilgrims that take preference over their individual biographies. It then highlights current inner-Indonesian controversies about “Arabization” and competing religious lifestyles. The chapter then explains how migrants and pilgrims relate to general discourses in society through the perspective of non-Muslim groups and popular media representations.
The Detroit of Paper
Authors: Hillard Michael G.
Published: May 2021

This chapter covers stories of how workers accommodated and rebelled against their employers, showing how the broader forces of capitalism were at work in changing the character of Maine's companies. It presents an understanding of the nature and ultimate fate of one of U.S. capitalism's lesser-chronicled industries, paper. It also examines profound changes in corporate governance in terms of the institutional forms of ownership and management. The chapter uses Maine companies as examples of the managerial era of corporate governance, where company leaders shared profits with stakeholder constituencies, their workforces, and paper mill communities. It refers to paper mill managers who directed resources into capital and technology investments to sustain the competitive strength of their companies over the longer term.
The Paradoxes of Paper Mill Employment
Authors: Hillard Michael G.
Published: May 2021

This chapter depicts and unpacks the nature of production and work, the special skill profile that made paper mills distinct if not unique, and how over time owners and workers forged a mutually acceptable paternalism. It describes paternalism as the glue that made Maine's paper mills both successful businesses and durable communities during the paper industry's halcyon years from the late nineteenth century through the 1970s. It also looks at the situation in the S. D. Warren Company to understand the critical role of skill and the paradox of suffering and success that marked the paper workers' lives. The chapter highlights that paper mill work delivered high wages and benefits, and offered remarkable jobs and economic security with few parallels in Maine's generally lower-wage, blue-collar sectors. It reveals how the lives of paper mill workers demonstrate the crucial place of skills, craft pride, and membership in a high-status industrial community.
The Fall of Mother Warren
Authors: Hillard Michael G.
Published: May 2021

This chapter highlights Mother Warren's profligate paternalism and century-long bond between local owners and its loyal workforce that came to an end with the mill's surprising unionization in 1967. It reviews Scott Paper's purchase of the S. D. Warren Company, which was a shocking end to the mill's local identity. It also discusses how Warren and its workers were swept by national currents that changed the economic and labor landscape throughout the United States when the mill's paternalism broke down. The chapter talks about Howard Reiche Jr., who worked cooperatively with the new unions and embraced their constructive role in rectifying Warren's outdated pay and supervisory practices. It examines the conflict in Westbrook that led to two strikes as more socially and geographically distant corporate leaders narrowed the space for any continued paternalism.
Memory, Enterprise Consciousness, and Historical Perspective among Maine’s Paper Workers
Authors: Hillard Michael G.
Published: May 2021

This chapter recounts how Maine's once-great mills lost jobs as the 1990s and 2000s wore on, and demonstrates how frequent layoffs hollowed out once-great institutions and ways of life. It mentions the historic Westbrook Mill, which contracted from over two thousand jobs to only several hundred in the early 2000s and the Great Northern Paper Company's employment at three mills, which shrank by two-thirds over the same period. It also talks about historic mills that hung on after 2000 as private equity companies swooped in and bought the mills using highly leveraged sources of credit. The chapter cites the well-established influx of paper imports from advanced mills subsidized by governments and the shrinking markets for publication papers as the digital reading became widespread. It elaborates how the loss of the well-paid source of rural employment sparked a progressive depopulation of rural towns in Maine.
Paper Workers’ Folk Political Economy Versus Neoliberalism
Authors: Hillard Michael G.
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews that the class resistance in Maine's paper industry has waned since the 1990s, including the movement culture which shaped and sustained it. It looks at the folk political economy and economic imagination that has resonance for Mainers and is considered a cultural artifact that can be joined in a critique of neoliberal capitalism. It also explores the widespread antipathy to key features of the neoliberal era. The chapter discusses the loss of local ownership and control of enterprises and the replacement of Chandlerian stability with the fierce and ugly rationalization imposed by financial investors. It refers to antipathy that is aimed at neoliberalism's assumption that only unfettered private markets provide good economic outcomes.
Nested Nationalism
Authors: Goff Krista A.
Published: May 2021

This book is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of “their” republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, the book argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR. The book pays particular attention to how these asymmetries of power played out in minority communities, following them from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Dagestan, and Iran in pursuit of the national ideas, identifications, and histories that were layered across internal and international borders. What mechanisms supported cultural development and minority identifications in communities subjected to assimilationist politics? How did separatist movements coalesce among nontitular minority activists? And how does this historicization help us to understand the tenuous space occupied by minorities in nationalizing states across contemporary Eurasia? Ranging from the early days of Soviet power to post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, the book explains how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.
Introduction
Authors: Goff Krista A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter seeks to explain why history writing about nontitular minorities in the Soviet Union and in Azerbaijan has proven to be problematic. It looks at the variety of nontitular communities that live in Azerbaijan and the many ethnic conflicts that emerged during its transition to independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It also focuses on the state structures and the people living within Soviet Union and Azerbaijan, as well as their geographical range that intersects with the history of Iran, Turkey, and neighboring republics in the Soviet Caucasus. The chapter describes a regional world that extended beyond Soviet borders and argues that uncovering nontitular histories helps to better understand both Soviet and post-Soviet ethnic conflicts. It mentions the Soviet state that supported the development of minorities to counter the colonial legacy of Great Russian chauvinism.
Conclusion
Authors: Goff Krista A.
Published: May 2021

This chapter recovers a historical experience of how Soviet nationality policies and practices promoted and erased the memory of a dynamic, interwoven experience of community building, rebuilding, trauma, erasure, and activism among people in the hopes of creating a communist world. It traces the people on the local level who actively participated in bringing several communist events about. It also assesses today's post-Soviet world as a direct consequence of experiences and how they were processed. The chapter looks at the 1962 petition that asked Nikita Khrushchev why the greater community could not love the Georgian-Ingilo language and culture. It addresses the issue of who belonged in the Soviet republics, who belonged in the Soviet future, and who had the power to determine that belonging.
Interlude
Authors: Goff Krista A.
Published: May 2021

When Stalin died on March 5, 1953, Soviet society plunged into an existential crisis. As Jan Plamper has noted, “With the passing of the leader, the force that held their lives together suddenly was no more … ​His cult and its alchemy of power had made him seem larger than life.”...
Swords and Documents in the Sixteenth Century
Authors: Neuschel Kristen B.
Published: May 2021

This chapter studies the documentation of swords in the sixteenth century. The relative silence concerning swords existed in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources too, but it persists in sixteenth-century records, when more and more family records survive. The fact of this silence always reflects lacunae: a document is missing, such as an inventory after death; some documents are created only for limited and immediate purpose. Another reason for the information missing, now, was confusion about what category of goods swords constituted at the time. “Arms,” however that was understood, can appear in multiple places. Armor for man and horse can be found in trunks within a chateau or, as the century wears on, in rooms labeled “armory,” though the contents are not always detailed in an inventory of the residence. Swords, in short, were a category unto themselves, consistently neither furnishings nor clothing nor arms nor ornaments; even their mere presence, much less any detail of their appearance or value, can elude written records.
Function and Form
Authors: Smith Trudi Lynn , Hennessy Kate , Takaragawa Stephanie , McDonald Fiona P. , Campbell Craig
Published: May 2021

This chapter refers to the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective (ETC), which has staged projects in North American cities exploring intersections between art and anthropology. It analyzes the work that has been manifested in the organization and curation of exhibits alongside the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and inspired by emergent interdisciplinary art practices. It also illustrates projects that have been “para-sites,” which are used to draw anthropologists from the conference venue into arts and cultural spaces in local host cities. The chapter examines a curatorial mode that builds upon critique and argues for the potential of a more experimental anthropology that activates creative practice. It looks at the core of the experimental curatorial model that engaged with multiple modes of collaboration.
Limn
Authors: Collier Stephen J. , Høyem Martin , Kelty Christopher , Lakoff Andrew
Published: May 2021

This chapter centers on Limn, a scholarly magazine that focuses on tensions arising at the intersection of politics, expertise, and collective life. It describes Limn as an experiment in scholarly publishing in the interpretive human sciences that aims to make possible new kinds of communication and collective work. It also mentions Martin Høyem, who custom designed Limn with a range of imagery and graphic material related to the contributions, including a featured graphic that links diverse contributions in a common conceptual problem-space. The chapter discusses Limn as a vehicle for exploring new forms of collaboration in the interpretive human sciences. It recounts the changing field of American anthropology during the 1990s and 2000s in which discipline encouraged individualized work and valorized virtuosic interpretation and writing, with little space for collaborative inquiry.
Hypernormalization, Collaborative Analytics, and the Making of “American Stiob”
Authors: Yurchak Alexei , Boyer Dominic
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews a collaboration that chronicles how an article project comes into being. It provides an analysis of how a collaborative process impacts the conceptual tools and analytical process that have been developed. It also mentions anthropological insight that often has meager beginnings — a hunch, a slight puzzling, an observation or moment of recognition that happens to ramify. The chapter cites that Jon Stewart's The Daily Show had emerged as a rare channel of political insight and sincerity despite being broadcast on the Comedy Central channel and was becoming a go-to news source, especially for many younger Americans. It discusses academic scholarship on The Colbert Report, which revealed that viewers from across the political spectrum found the show funny and thought that Colbert's political sympathies corresponded to their own.
­Blue mussel (Mytilus spp.) cultivation in mesohaline eutrophied inner coastal waters: mitigation potential, threats and cost effectiveness
Authors: Ritzenhofen Lukas , Buer Anna-Lucia , Gyraite Greta , Dahlke Sven , Klemmstein Annemarie , Schernewski Gerald
Published: May 2021

The EU-water framework directive (WFD) focuses on nutrient reductions to return coastal waters to the good ecological status. As of today, many coastal waters have reached a steady state of insufficient water quality due to continuous external nutrient inputs and internal loadings. This study focuses first on the current environmental status of mesohaline inner coastal waters to illustrate their needs of internal measures to reach demanded nutrient reductions and secondly, if mussel cultivation can be a suitable strategy to improve water quality. Therefore, nitrogen, phosphorus, chlorophyll a, and Secchi depth of nine mesohaline inner coastal waters in north east Germany were analyzed from 1990 to 2018. Two pilot mussel farms were used to evaluate their effectiveness as a mitigation measure and to estimate potential environmental risks, including the interactions with pathogenic vibrio bacteria. Further, estimated production and mitigation potential were used to assess economic profitability based on the sale of small sized mussels for animal feed and a compensation for nutrient mitigation. The compensation costs were derived from nutrient removal costs of a waste water treatment plant (WWTP). Results show that currently all nine water bodies do not reach the nutrient thresholds demanded by the WFD. However, coastal waters differ in nutrient pollution, indicating that some can reach the desired threshold values if internal measures are applied. The mitigation potential of mussel cultivation depends on the amount of biomass that is cultivated and harvested. However, since mussel growth is closely coupled to the salinity level, mussel cultivation in low saline environments leads to lower biomass production and inevitably to larger cultivation areas. If 50% of the case study area Greifswald Bay was covered with mussel farms the resulting nitrogen reduction would increase Secchi depth by 7.8 cm. However, high chlorophyll a values can hamper clearance rates (<20 mg m−3 = 0.43 l h−1 dry weight g−1) and therefore the mitigation potential. Also, the risk of mussel stock loss due to high summer water temperatures might affect the mitigation potential. The pilot farms had no significant effect on the total organic content of sediments beneath. However, increased values of Vibrio spp. in bio deposits within the pilot farm (1.43 106 ± 1.10 106CFU 100 ml−1 (reference site: 1.04 106 ± 1.45 106 CFU 100 ml−1) were measured with sediment traps. Hence, mussel farms might act as a sink for Vibrio spp. in systems with already high vibrio concentrations. However, more research is required to investigate the risks of Vibrio occurrence coupled to mussel farming. The economic model showed that mussel cultivation in environments below 12 PSU cannot be economic at current market prices for small size mussels and compensations based on nutrient removal cost of WWTPs.
A Branching Process Model for the Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) Spread in Greece
Authors:   University of the Aegean, Greece, A. Mitrofani Ioanna , P. Koutras Vasilis
Published: May 2021

The novel coronavirus (covid-19) was initially identified at the end of 2019 and caused a global health care crisis. The increased transmissibility of the virus, that led to high mortality, raises the interest of scientists worldwide. Thus, various methods and models have been extensively discussed, so to study and control covid-19 transmission. Mathematical modeling constitutes an important tool to estimate key parameters of the transmission and predict the dynamic of the virus. More precisely, in the relevant literature, epidemiology is considered as a classical application area of branching processes, which are stochastic individual-based processes. In this paper, we develop a classical Galton-Watson branching process approach for the covid-19 spread in Greece at the early stage. This approach is structured in two parts, initial and latter transmission stages, so to provide a comprehensive view of the virus spread through basic and effective reproduction numbers respectively, along with the probability of an outbreak. Additionally, the effectiveness of control measures is discussed, based on a simple exponential smoothing model, which is used to build a non-mitigation scenario. Finally, our primary aim is to model all transmission stages through branching processes in order to analyze the first semiannual spread of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic in the region of Greece.
Web Application for Statistical Tracking and Predicting the Evolution of Active Cases with the Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)
Authors:   Automation Department, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Clitan Iulia , Puscasiu Adela , Muresan Vlad , Ligia Unguresan Mihaela , Abrudean Mihail
Published: May 2021

Since February 2020, when the first case of infection with SARS COV-2 virus appeared in Romania, the evolution of COVID-19 pandemic continues to have an ascending allure, reaching in September 2020 a second wave of infections as expected. In order to understand the evolution and spread of this disease over time and space, more and more research is focused on obtaining mathematical models that are able to predict the evolution of active cases based on different scenarios and taking into account the numerous inputs that influence the spread of this infection. This paper presents a web responsive application that allows the end user to analyze the evolution of the pandemic in Romania, graphically, and that incorporates, unlike other COVID-19 statistical applications, a prediction of active cases evolution. The prediction is based on a neural network mathematical model, described from the architectural point of view.
Modeling and Controlling the Cooling System of an IC Vehicle
Authors:   Automation Department, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Cluj, Romania, Mureșan C. , Harja G.
Published: May 2021

The performance and efficiency of internal combustion (IC) engines can be greatly improved by using a high-performance cooling system. This can be achieved by implementing robust control strategies and, also by building the cooling system with high-performance elements. The mechanical execution elements can be replaced with electrically controllable elements such as the pump and the thermostat valve. This will have a positive influence on the degree of controllability of the system. In order to develop high-performance control algorithms, it is necessary to have a model that best reflects the behaviors of the physical system. Thus, this paper presents a mathematical modeling approach for the cooling system using the principles of heat exchangers and the physical phenomena present in them.
Research on the Technology of Mass Customization of Clothing
Authors:   Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing100029, China, Sun Qianqian , Sun Xiaodong
Published: May 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the garment industry dramatically which will accelerate the garment industry to turn to technology of mass customization for it offers digital online options. This paper reviews the mass customization technology of clothing from the aspects of intelligent pattern-making technology, virtual garment prototype technology and the evaluation of apparel fitness. By surveying the technologies in order to establish a ground true rules for the mass customization platform so that suitable for all clothing categories, and the pattern-making standards which could fit different body types. And finally, by experiments of different digital garment prototype on different body types to establish the rules for generating virtual prototype and evaluated fitness of virtual garment on different body types.
Parallel Scheduling of Grid Jobs on Quadcore Systems using Grouping Methods
Authors: Abraham Goodhead T. , Osaisai Evans F. , Dienagha Nicholas S.
Published: May 2021

As Grid computing continues to make inroads into different spheres of our lives and multicore computers become ubiquitous, the need to leverage the gains of multicore computers for the scheduling of Grid jobs becomes a necessity. Most Grid schedulers remain sequential in nature and are inadequate in meeting up with the growing data and processing need of the Grid. Also, the leakage of Moore’s dividend continues as most computing platforms still depend on the underlying hardware for increased performance. Leveraging the Grid for the data challenge of the future requires a shift away from the traditional sequential method. This work extends the work of [1] on a quadcore system. A random method was used to group machines and the total processing power of machines in each group was computed, a size proportional to speed method is then used to estimates the size of jobs for allocation to machine groups. The MinMin scheduling algorithm was implemented within the groups to schedule a range of jobs while varying the number of groups and threads. The experiment was executed on a single processor system and on a quadcore system. Significant improvement was achieved using the group method on the quadcore system compared to the ordinary MinMin on the quadcore. We also find significant performance improvement with increasing groups. Thirdly, we find that the MinMin algorithm also gained marginally from the quadcore system meaning that it is also scalable.
Population Dynamics of Pratylenchus brachyurus in Maize Treated with Inorganic Fertilizer
Authors: Adesuyi Ayoola Abiodun , Adewumi Adedotun Daniel , Elufisan Tobi Susan
Published: May 2021

Field studies were conducted in the early and late season of 2010 in the tropical rainforest zone of Nigeria to investigate the effects of NPK fertilizer as an inorganic soil amendment at 75 kg/ha and 150 kg/ha in four replications on population densities of Pratylenchus brachyurus and on crop yield of maize. Seeds of maize variety, DMR LSR-Y were collected from Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Ibadan. The experimental field was naturally infested with Pratylenchus spp. due to subsequent continuous cultivation of susceptible crop on the field. Seeds were planted and NPK was applied around the roots of maize plants 3 weeks after seedling emergence. Soil samples were taken on treatment plots at planting and harvest to determine the percentage change in nematode population. At the end of experiment, NPK application resulted in the increase in the nematode population. However, the grain yield of maize was not reduced by the increased nematode densities. The results of this study suggests that the usage of NPK caused a surge in the nematode reproduction on the field due to the availability of more feeding sites on the actively growing root system of the crop.
The Phytochemical Constituents, Hypoglycemic, and Antioxidant Activities of Senna occidentalis (L.) Ethanolic Leaf Extract in High Sucrose Diet Fed Drosophila melanogaster
Authors: Tochukwu Okoye Clifford , Abigail Ogbonna , Alexander Etuh Monday , Ugbedeojo Sani Peter
Published: May 2021

Aim: This study was aimed at evaluating the phytochemical constituents,hypoglycemic, and antioxidant activities of Senna occidentalis ethanolic leaf extract in diabetic Drosophila melanogaster with emphasis on survival, phytochemical, biochemical and fecundity assays as well as locomotor activities.

Methodology:S. occidentalisleaves was collected and prepared for extraction using 70% ethanol as solvent. The extract was subjected to phytochemical screening and the lethal dose(LD50) was carried out on D. melanogasterfor 7 days. Survival study was conducted by treating fruit flies with different concentration of the extracts for 28 days. Hyperglycemia was induced by feeding the flies with food containing 30% of sucrose for 10 days, and thereafter treated with different concentration of the extract and metformin (positive control) for 7 days.Diabetic flies were used for the negative geotaxis and fecundity assays. The homogenates of flies from the different groups of the treatment and control were prepared and used to quantify the glucose content and the antioxidant activities which included the thiol content, glutathione-s-transferase and catalase activities.

Results: The phytochemical screening revealed the presence 8 different phytochemicals. The LD50 was determined to be 277.8 mg/10 g fly food of S. occidentalis. Supplementation with S. occidentalis ethanolic extracts showed a non-significant increase (P> 0.05) in the survival of D melanogaster when compared to the baseline group.Diabetic flies treated withthe extract showed a dose-dependent decrease in serum glucose which was significant (P< 0.05) at 100 mg when compared to the negative control group(untreated). Negative geotaxis, fecundity and catalase activitiesof treated fliesshowed no significant difference (P> 0.05) when compared toflies in the negative control group. S. occidentalis ethanolic leaf extract significantly elevated (P< 0.05) the total thiol content and glutathione-s-transferase activities at certain concentration in a non-linear manner.

Conclusion: From the findings, S. occidentalis ethanolic leaf extract contained several phytochemicals and it is relatively safe; possessing hypoglycemic and antioxidant properties when administered to diabeticD. melanogaster.
imPlatelet classifier: image‐converted RNA biomarker profiles enable blood‐based cancer diagnostics
Authors: Pastuszak Krzysztof , Supernat Anna , Best Myron G. , In 't Veld Sjors G.J.G. , Łapińska‐Szumczyk Sylwia , Łojkowska Anna , Różański Robert , Żaczek Anna J. , Jassem Jacek , Würdinger Thomas , Stokowy Tomasz
Published: May 2021

Liquid biopsies offer a minimally invasive sample collection, outperforming traditional biopsies employed for cancer evaluation. The widely used material is blood, which is the source of tumor‐educated platelets. Here, we developed the imPlatelet classifier, which converts RNA‐sequenced platelet data into images in which each pixel corresponds to the expression level of a certain gene. Biological knowledge from the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes was also implemented to improve accuracy. Images obtained from samples can then be compared against standard images for specific cancers to determine a diagnosis. We tested imPlatelet on a cohort of 401 non‐small cell lung cancer patients, 62 sarcoma patients, and 28 ovarian cancer patients. imPlatelet provided excellent discrimination between lung cancer cases and healthy controls, with accuracy equal to 1 in the independent dataset. When discriminating between noncancer cases and sarcoma or ovarian cancer patients, accuracy equaled 0.91 or 0.95, respectively, in the independent datasets. According to our knowledge, this is the first study implementing an image‐based deep‐learning approach combined with biological knowledge to classify human samples. The performance of imPlatelet considerably exceeds previously published methods and our own alternative attempts of sample discrimination. We show that the deep‐learning image‐based classifier accurately identifies cancer, even when a limited number of samples are available.
The usual suspects: How psychological motives and thinking styles predict the endorsement of well‐known and COVID‐19 conspiracy beliefs
Authors: Gligorić Vukašin , da Silva Margarida Moreira , Eker Selin , van Hoek Nieke , Nieuwenhuijzen Ella , Popova Uljana , Zeighami Golnar
Published: May 2021

Research on belief in conspiracy theories identified many predictors but often failed to investigate them together. In the present study, we tested how the most important predictors of beliefs in conspiracy theories explain endorsing COVID‐19 and non‐COVID‐19 conspiracy theories and conspiracy mentality. Apart from these three measures of conspiratorial thinking, participants (N = 354) completed several measures of epistemic, existential, and social psychological motives, as well as cognitive processing variables. While many predictors had significant correlations, only three consistently explained conspiratorial beliefs when included in one model: higher spirituality (specifically eco‐awareness factor), higher narcissism, and lower analytical thinking. Compared to the other two conspiratorial measures, predictors less explained belief in COVID‐19 conspiracy theories, but this depended on items' content. We conclude that the same predictors apply to belief in both COVID and non‐COVID conspiracies and identify New Age spirituality as an important contributor to such beliefs.
Synthesis, Assembly, Optical Properties, and Sensing Applications of Plasmonic Gap Nanostructures
Authors: Kim Jae‐Myoung , Lee Chungyeon , Lee Yeonhee , Lee Jinhaeng , Park So‐Jung , Park Sungho , Nam Jwa‐Min
Published: May 2021

Plasmonic gap nanostructures (PGNs) have been extensively investigated mainly because of their strongly enhanced optical responses, which stem from the high intensity of the localized field in the nanogap. The recently developed methods for the preparation of versatile nanogap structures open new avenues for the exploration of unprecedented optical properties and development of sensing applications relying on the amplification of various optical signals. However, the reproducible and controlled preparation of highly uniform plasmonic nanogaps and the prediction, understanding, and control of their optical properties, especially for nanogaps in the nanometer or sub‐nanometer range, remain challenging. This is because subtle changes in the nanogap significantly affect the plasmonic response and are of paramount importance to the desired optical performance and further applications. Here, recent advances in the synthesis, assembly, and fabrication strategies, prediction and control of optical properties, and sensing applications of PGNs are discussed, and perspectives toward addressing these challenging issues and the future research directions are presented.
Ultrafast Growth of Large‐Area Uniform, Millimeter‐Size MoSe2 Single Crystals on Low‐Cost Soda‐Lime Glass
Authors: Zhang Zhaoqian , Zhu Lijie , Wang Dan , Tang Bin , Yang Pengfei , Shi Yuping , Zhou Fan , Fu Jiatian , Huan Yahuan , Cui Fangfang , Li Ning , Chen Qing , Zou Xiaolong , Chen Fenghua , Zhang Yanfeng
Published: May 2021

2D semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have emerged as essential building blocks for engineering next‐generation integrated electronics. To achieve this, the controllable synthesis of monolayer TMDCs with high crystal quality, low cost, and high yield is crucial, while it remains challenging. Herein, the direct synthesis of large‐area uniform, millimeter‐size monolayer MoSe2 single crystals on a 6‐centimeter‐long soda‐lime glass template, by using a designed “beam‐bridge” assisted metal oxide precursor feeding strategy via chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is reported. Notably, several tenths of millimeter‐scale, triangular‐shaped monolayer MoSe2 single crystals are obtained in one batch within 25 s’ growth, affording so far the fastest growth rate (≈50 µm s−1). This ultrafast growth behavior is proposed to be mediated by the sufficient, homogeneous release of Mo‐based precursor, the catalytic property of sodium atoms on soda‐lime glass substrate, as well as the improved surface kinetics on the molten glass surface. Moreover, the thickness‐controlled growth from monolayer to bilayers is also realized. This work provides brand new insights for the batch production of large single‐crystal TMDCs, which should propel its practical applications in versatile fields.