bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Review of trap-and-haul for managing Pacific salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) in impounded river systems
Authors: Kock Tobias J. , Ferguson John W. , Keefer Matthew L. , Schreck Carl B.
Published: November 2020

High-head dams are migration barriers for Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. in many river systems and recovery measures for impacted stocks are limited. Trap-and-haul has been widely used in attempts to facilitate recovery but information from existing programs has not been synthesized to inform improvements to aid recovery of salmonids in systems with high-head dams. We reviewed 17 trap-and-haul programs regarding Pacific salmon to: (1) summarize information about facility design, operation and biological effects; (2) identify critical knowledge gaps; and (3) evaluate trap-and-haul as a current and future management tool. Existing programs are operated to address a range of management goals including restoring access to historical habitats, temporarily reducing exposure to dangerous in-river conditions, and reintroducing ecological processes upstream from dams. Information gathered from decades of operation on facility design criteria and fish handling protocols, and robust literature on fish collection and passage are available. While many aspects of trap-and-haul have been evaluated, effects on population productivity and sustainability remain poorly understood. Long-term and systematic studies of trap-and-haul outcomes are rare, and assessments can be confounded by concurrent management actions and broad ecological and climatic effects. Existing data suggest that performance and effectiveness vary among programs and over various time scales within programs. Although critical information gaps exist, trap-and-haul is an important management and conservation tool for providing Pacific salmonids access to historical habitats. Successful application of trap-and-haul programs requires long-term commitment and an adaptive management approach by dam owners and stakeholders, and careful planning of new programs.
Review on the Relationship Between Liquid Aerospace Fuel Composition and Their Physicochemical Properties
Authors: Wang Xiaoyu , Jia Tinghao , Pan Lun , Liu Qing , Fang Yunming , Zou Ji-Jun , Zhang Xiangwen
Published: November 2020

The development of advanced air transportation has raised new demands for high-performance liquid hydrocarbon fuels. However, the measurement of fuel properties is time-consuming, cost-intensive, and limited to the operating conditions. The physicochemical properties of aerospace fuels are directly influenced by chemical composition. Thus, a thorough investigation should be conducted on the inherent relationship between fuel properties and composition for the design and synthesis of high-grade fuels and the prediction of fuel properties in the future. This work summarized the effects of fuel composition and hydrocarbon molecular structure on the fuel physicochemical properties, including density, net heat of combustion (NHOC), low-temperature fluidity (viscosity and freezing point), flash point, and thermal-oxidative stability. Several correlations and predictions of fuel properties from chemical composition were reviewed. Additionally, we correlated the fuel properties with hydrogen/carbon molar ratios (nH/C) and molecular weight (M). The results from the least-square method implicate that the coupling of H/C molar ratio and M is suitable for the estimation of density, NHOC, viscosity and effectiveness for the design, manufacture, and evaluation of aviation hydrocarbon fuels.
Study of bio-materials for removal of the oil spill
Authors: Wolok Eduart , Barafi Jamal , Joshi Navneet , Girimonte Rossella , Chakraborty Sudip
Published: November 2020

The major battle that the human civilization is facing in the present era is regarding pollution; one of a serious threat among these pollutions is the contamination of water bodies due to oil spills. Oil spills from ships, tankers, or leaks in marine oil pipes are something that is needed to deal with to make the earth a better place. To protect the water and the environment, this oil should be removed from the water or the surface. The chances for oil spills have reduced as we have observed there is a significant change in the pattern with the decrease of the use of tankers and pipelines for oil and petroleum derivatives. The point should be that according to the researchers, the marine ecosystem is damaged even more by the other sources of pollution even though the event of oil spills is certainly much sensational. There is an urgent requirement of advanced eco-friendly tools to eliminate spilled oil. Some studies suggest that the use of organic matter may be an effective step in such an oil spilled scenario. Organic matter acts as a sorbent, a surfactant, and a separator and can make using a variety of ingredients such as organic, inorganic, synthetic, or different, but they must interact with the biological system. Some organic materials can contaminate the water more than the oil that is spread, so eco-friendly, non-toxic, low-cost organic matter should be used for oil removal and recovery. If the oil is recovered from the environmental surface, then after the successful removal of that oil, it can be conducive to sustainable development. This review summarizes the overall perspective on the potential of different biomaterials for the removal of accidentally spilled oils.
Enriched Galerkin method for the shallow-water equations
Authors: Hauck Moritz , Aizinger Vadym , Frank Florian , Hajduk Hennes , Rupp Andreas
Published: November 2020

This work presents an enriched Galerkin (EG) discretization for the two-dimensional shallow-water equations. The EG finite element spaces are obtained by extending the approximation spaces of the classical finite elements by discontinuous functions supported on elements. The simplest EG space is constructed by enriching the piecewise linear continuous Galerkin space with discontinuous, element-wise constant functions. Similar to discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretizations, the EG scheme is locally conservative, while, in multiple space dimensions, the EG space is significantly smaller than that of the DG method. This implies a lower number of degrees of freedom compared to the DG method. The EG discretization presented for the shallow-water equations is well-balanced, in the sense that it preserves lake-at-rest configurations. We evaluate the method’s robustness and accuracy using various analytical and realistic problems and compare the results to those obtained using the DG method. Finally, we briefly discuss implementation aspects of the EG method within our MATLAB / GNU Octave framework FESTUNG.
Comparative analysis of genomic- and EST-SSRs in European plum (Prunus domestica L.): implications for the diversity analysis of polyploids
Authors: Manco Rosanna , Chiaiese Pasquale , Basile Boris , Corrado Giandomenico
Published: November 2020

Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are among the most useful DNA markers in plant science. The aim of this study was to compare the features and usefulness of genomic SSR (gSSR) and EST-SSRs in European plum (Prunus domesticaL.), an economically important, hexaploid stone fruit crop globally cultivated to produce fleshy fruits and derived foodstuff. The analysis of an ample set of morphologically diverse varieties indicated that gSSRs and EST-SSRs provide different estimates of some of the locus-based indicators of diversity. Moreover, the two classes of SSRs gave different, weakly correlated, estimations of distance-based parameters with gSSRs being more powerful for discriminating purposes. The two SSR classes provide complementary information in European plum, making the contribution of EST-SSRs useful not only as non-neutral markers. The differences between SSR classes are discussed considering the neutral and non-neutral evolution, and the polyploidy and asexual propagation of the cultivated tree varieties.
Combined approach for optimal sensor placement and experimental verification in the context of tower-like structures
Authors: Reichert Ina , Olney Peter , Lahmer Tom
Published: November 2020

When it comes to monitoring of huge structures, main issues are limited time, high costs and how to deal with the big amount of data. In order to reduce and manage them, respectively, methods from the field of optimal design of experiments are useful and supportive. Having optimal experimental designs at hand before conducting any measurements is leading to a highly informative measurement concept, where the sensor positions are optimized according to minimal errors in the structures’ models. For the reduction of computational time a combined approach using Fisher Information Matrix and mean-squared error in a two-step procedure is proposed under the consideration of different error types. The error descriptions contain random/aleatoric and systematic/epistemic portions. Applying this combined approach on a finite element model using artificial acceleration time measurement data with artificially added errors leads to the optimized sensor positions. These findings are compared to results from laboratory experiments on the modeled structure, which is a tower-like structure represented by a hollow pipe as the cantilever beam. Conclusively, the combined approach is leading to a sound experimental design that leads to a good estimate of the structure’s behavior and model parameters without the need of preliminary measurements for model updating.
A hybrid AI approach for supporting clinical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults
Authors: Tachmazidis Ilias , Chen Tianhua , Adamou Marios , Antoniou Grigoris
Published: November 2020

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that includes symptoms such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. It is considered as an important public health issue and prevalence of, as well as demand for diagnosis, has increased as awareness of the disease grew over the past years. Supply of specialist medical experts has not kept pace with the increasing demand for assessment, both due to financial pressures on health systems and the difficulty to train new experts, resulting in growing waiting lists. Patients are not being treated quickly enough causing problems in other areas of health systems (e.g. increased GP visits, increased risk of self-harm and accidents) and more broadly (e.g. time off work, relationship problems). Advances in AI make it possible to support the clinical diagnosis of ADHD based on the analysis of relevant data. This paper reports on findings related to the mental health services of a specialist Trust within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). The analysis studied data of adult patients who underwent diagnosis over the past few years, and developed a hybrid approach, consisting of two different models: a machine learning model obtained by training on data of past cases; and a knowledge model capturing the expertise of medical experts through knowledge engineering. The resulting algorithm has an accuracy of 95% on data currently available, and is currently being tested in a clinical environment.
On a class of Kirchhoff equations involving an anisotropic operator and potential
Authors: Massar Mohammed
Published: November 2020

In this work, we are concerned with a class of fractional equations of Kirchhoff type with potential. Using variational methods and a variant of quantitative deformation lemma, we prove the existence of a least energy sign-changing solution. Moreover, the existence of infinitely many solution is established.
Design, characterization and in vitro evaluation of thin films enriched by tannic acid complexed by Fe(III) ions
Authors: Kaczmarek B. , Mazur O. , Miłek O. , Michalska-Sionkowska M. , Das A. , Jaiswal A. , Vishnu J. , Tiwari K. , Sionkowska A. , Osyczka A. M. , Manivasagam G.
Published: November 2020

Materials based on carbohydrate polymers may be used for biomedical application. However, materials based on natural polymers have weak physicochemical properties. Thereby, there is a challenge to improve their properties without initiation of toxicity. The alternative method compared to toxic chemical agents’ addition is the use of metal complexation method. In this study, chitosan/tannic acid mixtures modified by Fe(III) complexation are proposed and tested for potential applications as wound dressings. Thereby, surface properties, blood compatibility as well as platelet adhesion was tested. In addition, the periodontal ligament stromal cells compatibility studies were carried out. The results showed that the iron(III) addition to chitosan/tannic acid mixture improves properties due to a decrease in the surface free energy and exhibited a reduction in the hemolysis rate (below 5%). Moreover, cells cultured on the surface of films with Fe(III) showed higher metabolic activity. The current findings allow for the medical application of the proposed materials as wound dressings.
Use of petrological and organic geochemical data in determining hydrocarbon generation potential of coals: miocene coals of Malatya Basin (Eastern Anatolia-Turkey)
Authors: Yalcin Erik Nazan , Ay Faruk
Published: November 2020

With this study, the hydrocarbon generation potential of Miocene aged coals around Arguvan-Parçikan in the northern district of Malatya province was evaluated with the aid of petrological and organic geochemical data. According to organic petrography, coal quality data, and low thermal maturity, the Arguvan-Parçikan coals are of high-ash, high-sulfur subbituminous B/C rank. The organic fraction of the coals is mostly comprised of humic group macerals, with small percentages derived from the inertinite and liptinite groups. The mineral matter of the coals is comprised mainly of calcite and clay minerals. The total organic carbon (TOC, wt%) values of the shale and coal samples are between 2.61 wt% and 43.02 wt%, and the hydrogen index values are between 73 and 229 mg HC/g TOC. Pyrolysis (Tmax, PI), huminite/vitrinite reflectance (Ro, %), and biomarker ratios (CPI, Pr/Ph ratio, Ts/(Ts + Tm) ratio, C32 homohopane ratio (22S/22S + 22R) and C29ββ/(ββ + αα sterane ratio) indicate that the organic matter of the studied coals is thermally immature. When all these data are taken together, Miocene aged coals around Arguvan are suitable for hydrocarbon generation, especially gas, in terms of organic matter type (Type III and Type II/III mixed), organic matter amount (> 10 wt% TOC), however, low liptinitic macerals (< 15%–20%), low hydrogen index (< 200 mg HC/g TOC) and low thermal maturity values inhibit the hyrocarbon generation.
Human Rights in Chilean Social Work: Lessons from Chile to Prepare Social Work Students for Human Rights Practice
Authors: Donoso Gabriela Rubilar , Valderrama Caterine Galaz , LaBrenz Catherine A.
Published: November 2020

This article presents findings from two studies conducted in Chile to examine the link between human rights and social work practice. The focus of this paper was to explore the role of undergraduate education in preparing future social work practitioners for human rights practice. Data from a qualitative longitudinal study to understand the role of social workers during the dictatorship in Chile (1973–1989) were used; then, in October 2019, as civil unrest and police and military brutality erupted across the country, the authors created a commission to register and document narratives and testimonies of current human rights violations in Chile. The research team utilized a qualitative approach to analyze data from the in-depth interviews that were conducted in the longitudinal study and from the 2019 commission. Findings suggest a need to cover more in-depth human rights content in social work education and to teach students to create community collaborations in the field. Implications for social work education and practice in the current political climate are explored.
A European Research Agenda for Geriatric Emergency Medicine: a modified Delphi study
Authors: Mooijaart Simon P. , Nickel Christian H. , Conroy Simon P. , Lucke Jacinta A. , van Tol Lisa S. , Olthof Mareline , Blomaard Laura C. , Buurman Bianca M. , Dundar Zerrin D. , de Groot Bas , Gasperini Beatrice , Heeren Pieter , Karamercan Mehmet A. , McNamara Rosa , Mitchell Aine , van Oppen James D. , Martin Sanchez F. Javier , Schoon Yvonne , Singler Katrin , Spode Renan , Skúldóttir Sigrun , Thorrsteindottir Thordis , van der Velde Marije , Wallace James
Published: November 2020

Purpose

Geriatric Emergency Medicine (GEM) focuses on delivering optimal care to (sub)acutely ill older people. This involves a multidisciplinary approach throughout the whole healthcare chain. However, the underpinning evidence base is weak and it is unclear which research questions have the highest priority. The aim of this study was to provide an inventory and prioritisation of research questions among GEM professionals throughout Europe.

Methods

A two-stage modified Delphi approach was used. In stage 1, an online survey was administered to various professionals working in GEM both in the Emergency Department (ED) and other healthcare settings throughout Europe to make an inventory of potential research questions. In the processing phase, research questions were screened, categorised, and validated by an expert panel. Subsequently, in stage 2, remaining research questions were ranked based on relevance using a second online survey administered to the same target population, to identify the top 10 prioritised research questions.

Results

In response to the first survey, 145 respondents submitted 233 potential research questions. A total of 61 research questions were included in the second stage, which was completed by 176 respondents. The question with the highest priority was: Is implementation of elements of CGA (comprehensive geriatric assessment), such as screening for frailty and geriatric interventions, effective in improving outcomes for older patients in the ED?

Conclusion

This study presents a top 10 of high-priority research questions for a European Research Agenda for Geriatric Emergency Medicine. The list of research questions may serve as guidance for researchers, policymakers and funding bodies in prioritising future research projects.
A Sub-100 mg Electromagnetically Driven Insect-inspired Flapping-wing Micro Robot Capable of Liftoff and Control Torques Modulation
Authors: Wang Chenyang , Zhang Weiping , Zou Yang , Meng Ran , Zhao Jiaxin , Wei Mingchen
Published: November 2020

Inspired by the unique, agile and efficient flapping flight of insects, we present a novel sub-100 mg, electromagnetically driven, tailless, flapping-wing micro robot. This robot utilizes two optimized electromagnetic actuators placed back to back to drive two wings separately, then kinematics of each wing can be independently controlled, which gives the robot the ability to generate all three control torques of pitch, roll and yaw for steering. To quantify the performance of the robot, a simplified aerodynamic model is used to estimate the generated lift and torques, and two customized test platforms for lift and torque measurement are built for this robot. The mean lift generated by the robot is measured to be proportional to the square of the input voltage amplitude. The three control torques are measured to be respectively proportional to three decoupled parameters of the control voltages, therefore the modulation of three control torques for the robot is independent, which is helpful for the further controlled flight. All these measured results fit well with the calculated results of the aerodynamic model. Furthermore, with a total weight of 96 mg and a wingspan of 3.5 cm, this robot can generate sufficient lift to take off.
Thinking Through Television
Authors: Engell Lorenz
Published: November 2020

Media philosophy can only be found and revealed in media themselves. The essays collected in this volume thus approach television as a medium both of thought and of action in its own right. Through its specific forms and practices, television implements and reflects on aspects of time, such as synchronicity and succession, seriality and event, history and memory. Additionally, television stages new forms of thinking causality and agency, subject-object relations, tactility, choice, and other founding concepts of everyday experience as well as of outstanding philosophical relevance. In the course of media evolution, television organizes the transition from the analogue to the digital. Last not least, by conceiving of itself, television offers a source of finally thinking through television.
Movie Circuits
Authors: Menotti Gabriel
Published: November 2020

Movie Circuits: Curatorial Approaches to Cinema Technology attempts to grasp media in the making. It delves into the underbelly of cinema in order to explore how images circulate and apparatus crystallize across different material formations. The indisciplinary experience of curators and projectionists provides a means to suspend traditional film studies and engage with the medium as it happens, as a continuing, self-differing mess. From contemporary art exhibitions to pirate screenings, research and practice come together in a vibrant form of media scholarship, built from the angle of cinema's functionaries — a call to reinvent the medium from within.
Minting, State, and Economy in the Visigothic Kingdom
Authors: Kurt Andrew
Published: November 2020

This study of the Visigothic kingdom monetary system in southern Gaul and Hispania from the fifth century through the Muslim invasion of Spain fills a major gap in the scholarship of late antiquity. Examining all aspects of the making of currency, it sets minting in relation to questions of state - monarchical power, administration and apparatus, motives for money production - and economy. In the context of the later Roman Empire and its successor states in the west, the minting and currency of the Visigoths reveal shared patterns as well as originality. The analysis brings both economic life and the needs of the state into sharper focus, with significant implications for the study of an essential element in daily life and government. This study combines an appreciation for the surprising level of sophistication in the Visigothic minting system with an accessible approach to a subject which can seem complex and abstruse.
The Cultural Legacy of the Royal Game of the Goose
Authors: Seville Adrian
Published: November 2020

The Game of the Goose is one of the oldest printed board games, dating back 400 years. It has spawned thousands of derivatives: simple race games, played with dice, on themes that mirror much of human activity. Its legacy can be traced in games of education, advertising and polemic, as well as in those of amusement and gambling - and games on new themes are still being developed. This book, by the leading international collector of the genre, is devoted to showing why the Game of the Goose is special and why it can lay claim to being the most influential of any printed game in the cultural history of Europe. Detailed study of the games reveals their historical provenance and - reversing the process - gives unusual insights into the cultures which produced them. They therefore provide rich sources for the cultural historian. This book is beautifully illustrated with more than 90 illustrations, many in color, which are integrated throughout the text.
Trading Caterpillar Fungus in Tibet
Authors: Sulek Emilia Roza
Published: November 2020

When the demand for, and prices of caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis, ‘the Himalayan Viagra’, long a part of traditional Chinese medicine) soared, the pastoralists of Golok on the Tibetan plateau where the fungus is endemic dug up, dried and sold the fungus to traders. In the process, these yak and sheep farmers, used to living on the edge of subsistence, became wealthy beyond their imagination. Trading Caterpillar Fungus in Tibet: When Economic Boom Hits Rural Area tells the story of what they do with the money they earned from gathering and trading caterpillar fungus, and what this money does to them, revealing a sophistication few outsiders would credit them for.
The Symbolism of Marriage in Early Christianity and the Latin Middle Ages
Authors: Engh Line Cecilie
Published: November 2020

In the Middle Ages everyone, it seems, entered into some form of marriage. Nuns - and even some monks - married the bridegroom Christ. Bishops married their sees. The popes, as vicars of Christ, married the universal Church. And lay people, high and low, married each other. What united these marriages was their common reference to the union of Christ and Church. Christ's marriage to the Church was the paradigmatic symbol in which all the other forms of union participated, in superior or inferior ways. This book grapples with questions of the impact of marriage symbolism on both ideas and practice in the early Christian and medieval period. In what ways did marriage symbolism - with its embedded concepts of gender, reproduction, household, and hierarchy - shape people's thought about other things, such as celibacy, ecclesial and political relations, and devotional relations? How did symbolic cognition shape marriage itself? And how, if at all, were these two directions of thinking symbolically about marriage related?
Cleopatra in Italian and English Renaissance Drama
Authors: Maria Montanari Anna
Published: November 2020

This book considers some of the main adaptations of the character of Cleopatra for the Renaissance stage, travelling from Italy to England to arrive finally to Shakespeare. It shows how each reading of the story of Cleopatra is unique to and expressive of the culture which produced it, even as writers drew from the same sources from Antiquity. For the first time texts belonging to different cultures, rigorously presented, are brought into dialogue on such questions as moral standpoint, gender and the representation of the exotic. Moreover, through the fascinating figure of Cleopatra, the reader is able to explore the development of Renaissance tragedy, in its commercial and non-commercial versions. Ultimately both questions at the heart of this study - concerning Cleopatra's identity and her translation into theatre - converge to be (dis)solved by Shakespeare.
Two Centuries of English Language Teaching and Learning in Spain
Authors: Lombardero Caparrós Alberto
Published: November 2020

This book provides an exhaustive historical account of how the English language was taught and learnt in Spain over two centuries. Since its origins back in 1769 with the publication of San Joaquín de Pedro's 'Gramática inglesa' until 1970, a key year in European and World affairs. A period of time ample enough to accurately gauge the impact of this social phenomenon against the backdrop of social and political unrest which looms over the whole period but also with scientific breakthroughs that shaped our modern world. The history of ELT runs parallel to those events adopting diffferent mainstrem trends ranging from the Traditional or Latin-like approach to foreign language teaching to the so-called Grammar-Translation Method and the Direct or Oral Method. However, special attention is also given to 'minor' trends such as Ecclecticism which constantly overlaps the mainstream trends. This book is the first to take a close look at how the English language was taught and learnt in Spain for a two-century period when the French language was the Spaniard's first choice when it came to learning a foreign language.
The Power of Religious Societies in Shaping Early Modern Society and Identities
Authors: Peake Rose-Marie
Published: November 2020

The Power of Religious Societies in Shaping Early Modern Society and Identities studies the value system of the French Catholic community the Filles de la Charité, or the Daughters of Charity, in the first half of the seventeenth century. An analysis of the activities aimed at edifying morality in the different strata of society revealed a Christian anthropology with strong links to medieval traditions. The book argues that this was an important survival strategy for the Company with a disconcerting religious identity: the non-cloistered lifestyle of its members engaged in charity work had been made unlawful in the Council of Trent. Moreover, the directors Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul also had to find ways to curtail internal resistance as the sisters rebelled in quest of a more contemplative and enclosed vocation.
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England
Authors: Billingham Josephine
Published: November 2020

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England explores one of society’s darkest crimes using archival sources and discussing its representation in the drama, pamphlets and broadside ballads of the early modern period. It takes the reader on a journey through the streets and taverns where street literature was hawked, to the playhouses where the crime was dramatized, and the courts where it was tried and punished. Using a regional microstudy of coroners’ inquests and churchwardens’ presentments, coupled with theories of liminality, marginality and rites of passage, it reveals complex and contradictory attitudes to infants, women and the crime. As well as considering unwed women, the most common perpetrators of infanticide, the study shows that married women, men and the local community were also culpable, and the many reasons for this. Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England is set in its European and historical contexts, revealing surprising continuities across time.
Cross-border Marriages and Mobility
Authors: Binah-Pollak Avital
Published: November 2020

Cross-border Marriages and Mobility: Female Chinese Migrants and Hong Kong Men focuses on cross-border marriages between mainland Chinese women and Hong Kong men, a phenomenon which is of critical importance to the transformation of Hong Kong. By examining the women’s motivations for migration and lived experiences in relation to the discursive, political, economic, and social circumstances of mainland China and Hong Kong, Avital Binah-Pollak demonstrates how these marital practices are causing the expanding and blurring of borders, so that there is a much wider strip of border in which the dichotomies of the rural/urban, periphery/center, and hybrid/national identities become more complex and negotiable. While this is particularly interesting and valid in the case of the border between mainland China and Hong Kong because of the particular nature of the relationship between these two societies, it may also apply to borders between many other societies worldwide.
Urbanization in Viking Age and Medieval Denmark
Authors: Corsi Maria
Published: November 2020

This study traces the history of urbanization in Denmark from c. 500-1350 and explores how interconnected political, religious, economic factors were instrumental in bringing about the growth of towns. Prior to urban development, certain specialized sites such as elite residences and coastal landing places performed many of the functions that would later be taken over by medieval towns. Fundamental changes in political power, the coming of Christianity, and economic development over the course of the Viking and Middle Ages led to the abandonment of these sites in favour of new urban settlements that would come to form the political, religious, and economic centres of the medieval kingdom. Bringing together both archaeological and historical sources, this study illustrates not only how certain cultural and economic shifts were crucial to the development of towns, but also the important role urbanization had in the transition from Viking to medieval Denmark.
Masculinity, Identity, and Power Politics in the Age of Justinian
Authors: Stewart Michael Edward
Published: November 2020

A generation of historians has been captivated by the notorious views on gender found in the mid-sixth century Secret History by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea. Yet the notable but subtler ways in which gender coloured Procopius' most significant work, the Wars, have received far less attention. This monograph examines how gender shaped the presentation of not only key personalities such as the seminal power-couples Theodora/ Justinian and Antonina/ Belisarius, but also the Persians, Vandals, Goths, Eastern Romans, and Italo-Romans, in both the Wars and the Secret History. By analysing the purpose and rationale behind Procopius' gendered depictions and ethnicizing worldview, this investigation unpicks his knotty agenda. Despite Procopius's reliance on classical antecedents, the gendered discourse that undergirds both texts under investigation must be understood within the broader context of contemporary political debates at a time when control of Italy and North Africa from Constantinople was contested.
Minor Platforms in Videogame History
Authors: Nicoll Benjamin
Published: November 2020

Videogame history is not just a history of one successful technology replacing the next. It is also a history of platforms and communities that never quite made it; that struggled to make their voices heard; that aggravated against the conventions of the day; and that never enjoyed the commercial success or recognition of their major counterparts. In Minor Platforms in Videogame History, Benjamin Nicoll argues that 'minor' videogame histories are anything but insignificant. Through an analysis of transitional, decolonial, imaginary, residual, and minor videogame platforms, Nicoll highlights moments of difference and discontinuity in videogame history. From the domestication of vector graphics in the early years of videogame consoles to the 'cloning' of Japanese computer games in South Korea in the 1980s, this book explores case studies that challenge taken-for-granted approaches to videogames, platforms, and their histories.
Thousand and One Nights and Orientalism in the Dutch Republic, 1700–1800
Authors: Vrolijk Arnoud , van Leeuwen Richard
Published: November 2020

Antoine Galland’s French translation of the Thousand and One Nights appeared in 1704. One year later a pirate edition was printed in The Hague, followed by many others. Galland entertained a lively correspondence on the subject with the Dutch intellectual and statesman Gisbert Cuper (1644–1716). Dutch orientalists privately owned editions of the Nights and discreetly collected manuscripts of Arabic fairy tales. In 1719 the Nights were first retranslated into Dutch by the wealthy Amsterdam silk merchant and financier Gilbert de Flines (Amsterdam 1690-London 1739). The Thousand and One Nights and Orientalism in the Dutch Republic, 1700–1800: Antoine Galland, Ghisbert Cuper and Gilbert de Flines explores not only the trail of the French and Dutch editions from the eighteenth century Dutch Republic and the role of the printers and illustrators, but also the mixed sentiments of embarrassment and appreciation, and the overall literary impact of the Nights on a Protestant nation in a century when French cultural influence ruled supreme.
The Pictorial Art of El Greco
Authors: Stoenescu Livia
Published: November 2020

The Pictorial Art of El Greco: Transmaterialities, Temporalities, and Media investigates El Greco’s pictorial art as foundational to the globalising trends manifested in the visual culture of early modernity. It also exposes the figurative, semantic, and allegorical senses that El Greco created to challenge an Italian Renaissance-centered discourse. Even though he was guided by the unprecedented burgeoning of devotional art in the post-Tridentine decades and by the expressive possibilities of earlier religious artifacts, especially those inherited from the apostolic past, the author demonstrates that El Greco forged his own independent trajectory. While his paintings have been studied in relation to the Italian and Spanish school traditions, his pictorial art in a global Mediterranean context continues to receive scant attention. Taking a global perspective as its focus, the book sheds new light on El Greco’s highly original contribution to early Mediterranean and multi-institutional configurations of the Christian faith in Byzantium, Venice, Rome, Toledo, and Madrid.
The Work of Terrence Malick
Authors: Blasi Gabriella
Published: November 2020

The Work of Terrence Malick: Time-Based Ecocinema develops a timely ecocinema approach to film analysis illuminated by Benjamin's notion of the turn of time. Current work on Malick's films emphasizes the spatial dynamics of his cinema, particularly as it pertains, from within a phenomenological framework, to the viewer's experience of films. This book redirects scholarly attention to the way Malick's directorial work shapes time and duration, laying new groundwork for the analysis of how films unsettle nature-culture binaries in modernity. The study performs this intervention through a rigorous engagement with Walter Benjamin's work on time, violence and technologies and the emergent figural approach to aesthetics in film studies. Each of these methods has important precedents in film studies and other fields. The combination of methods performed in this book contributes to understanding the relevance of a time-based approach to Malick's films and the practical implications of a time-based relation to history in contemporary ecocinema discourses.
Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas
Authors: Walters Holly
Published: November 2020

For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called Shaligrams, has been an important part of Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice throughout South Asia and among the global Diaspora. Originating from a single remote region of Himalayan Nepal, called Mustang, Shaligrams are all at once fossils, divine beings, and intimate kin with families and worshippers. Through their lives, movements, and materiality, Shaligrams then reveal fascinating new dimensions of religious practice, pilgrimage, and politics. But as social, environmental, and national conflicts in the politically-contentious region of Mustang continue to escalate, the geologic, mythic, and religious movements of Shaligrams have come to act as parallels to the mobility of people through both space and time. Shaligram mobility therefore traverses through multiple social worlds, multiple religions, and multiple nations revealing Shaligram practitioners as a distinct, alternative, community struggling for a place in a world on the edge.
Pope Paul III and the Cultural Politics of Reform
Authors: Cussen Bryan
Published: November 2020

When Paul III was elected in 1534, hopes arose across Christendom that this pope would at last reform and reunite the Church. During his fifteen-year reign, though, Paul's engagement with reform was complex and contentious. A work of cultural history, this book explores how cultural narratives of honour and tradition, including how honour played out in politics, significantly constrained Pope Paul and his chosen reformers in framing strategies for change. Indeed, the reformers' programme would have undermined the culture of honour and weakened Rome's capacity to ward off current threats of invasion. The study makes a provocative case that Paul called the Council of Trent to contain reform rather than promote it. Nevertheless, Paul and the Council did sow seeds of reform that eventually became central to the Counter-Reformation. This book thus sheds new light on a pope whose relationship to reform has long been regarded as an enigma.
Theoterrorism v. Freedom of Speech
Authors: Cliteur Paul
Published: November 2020

The Rushdie Affair, the Danish Cartoon Affair, the assault on Charlie Hebdo, and the earlier Carrell Affair, are examples of religious fanatics' extreme reactions to religious satire and criticism. Perpetrators of these actions consider themselves as true believers. This book aims to understand their motives by means of the concept of theoterrorism: terrorism grounded in religious zealotry.
Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism
Authors: Szymanski Adam
Published: November 2020

The hegemonic meaning of depression as a universal mental illness embodied by an individualized subject is propped up by psychiatry's clinical gaze. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism turns to the work of contemporary filmmakers who express a shared concern for mental health under global capitalism to explore how else depression can be perceived. In taking their critical visions as intercessors for thought, Adam Szymanski proposes a thoroughly relational understanding of depression attentive to eventful, collective and contingent qualities of subjectivity. What emerges is a melancholy aesthetics attuned to the existential contours and political stakes of health. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism adventurously builds affinities across the lines of national, linguistic and cultural difference. The films of Angela Schanelec, Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kanakan Balintagos are grouped together for the first time, constituting a polystylistic common front of artist-physicians who live, work, and create on the belief that life can be more liveable.
Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland
Authors: Rose Michael
Published: November 2020

Over the past 40 years, life in Timor-Leste has changed radically. Before 1975 most of the population lived in highland villages, spoke local languages, and rarely used money. Today many have moved to peri-urban lowland settlements, and even those whose lives remain dominated by customary ways understand that those of their children will not. For the Atoni Pah Meto of Timor-Leste's remote Oecussi Enclave, the world was neatly divided into two distinct categories: the meto (indigenous), and the kase (foreign). Now matters are less clear; the good things of the globalised world are pursued not through rejecting the meto ways of the village, or collapsing them into the kase, but through continual crossing between them. In this way, the people of Oecussi are able to identify in the struggles of lowland life, the comforting and often decisive presence of familiar highland spirits.
Museum Processes in China
Authors: Chui-fun Selina Ho
Published: November 2020

This book challenges the museum enterprise in China as a state monopoly and considers it as a new cultural agency that has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Following a constructive and multi-perspectival approach, it discusses the roles of political and cultural-economic agents, museum intermediaries, and museum publics in the interlinked processes of regulation, cultural production and consumption, and the issues of identity and representation faced by the art museums in the Greater Pearl River Delta Region. It broadly traces the art museum from its origin as a tool of nationalism and adoption as a vehicle of modernization in both nationalist and early communist periods, until its role in the present, as it reflects the contested and alternative representations, diverse publics, and fissured identities of the post-economic reform period of China.
Transregional Lordship and the Italian Renaissance
Authors: Vester Matthew
Published: November 2020

René de Challant, whose holdings ranged from northwestern Italy to the Alps and over the mountains into what is today western Switzerland and eastern France, was an Italian and transregional dynast. The spatially-dispersed kind of lordship that he practiced and his lifetime of service to the house of Savoy, especially in the context of the Italian Wars, show how the Sabaudian lands, neighboring Alpine states, and even regions further afield were tied to the history of the Italian Renaissance. Situating René de Challant on the edge of the Italian Renaissance helps us to understand noble kin relations, political networks, finances, and lordship with more precision. A spatially inflected analysis of René's life brings to light several themes related to transregional lordship that have been obscured due to the traditional tendencies of Renaissance studies. It uncovers an 'Italy' whose boundaries extend not just into the Mediterranean, but into regions beyond the Alps.
Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture
Authors: Waller Gary
Published: November 2020

The Female Baroque is a contribution to the revival since the 1980s of early modern women's writings and cultural production in English. Its originality is twofold: it links women's writing in English with the wider context of Baroque culture, and it introduces the issue of gender into discussion of the Baroque. The title comes from Julia Kristeva's study of Teresa of Avila, that 'the secrets of Baroque civilization are female'. The book is built on a schema of recurring Baroque characteristics - narrativity, hyperbole, melancholia, kitsch, and plateauing, pointing less to surface manifestations and more to underlying ideological tensions. The crucial concept of the Female Baroque is developed in detail. Attention is then given particularly to Gertrude More, Mary Ward, Aemilia Lanyer, The Ferrar/Collet women, Mary Wroth, the Cavendish sisters, Hester Pulter, Anne Hutchinson, Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn, the latter two whose lives and writings point to the developing cultural transition to the Enlightenment.
Evaluation of the Large EURO‐CORDEX Regional Climate Model Ensemble
Authors: Vautard Robert , Kadygrov Nikolay , Iles Carley , Boberg Fredrik , Buonomo Erasmo , Bülow Katharina , Coppola Erika , Corre Lola , van Meijgaard Erik , Nogherotto Rita , Sandstad Marit , Schwingshackl Clemens , Somot Samuel , Aalbers Emma , Christensen Ole B. , Ciarlo James M. , Demory Marie‐Estelle , Giorgi Filippo , Jacob Daniela , Jones Richard G. , Keuler Klaus , Kjellström Erik , Lenderink Geert , Levavasseur Guillaume , Nikulin Grigory , Sillmann Jana , Solidoro Cosimo , Sørland Silje Lund , Steger Christian , Teichmann Claas , Warrach‐Sagi Kirsten , Wulfmeyer Volker
Published: November 2020

The use of regional climate model (RCM)‐based projections for providing regional climate information in a research and climate service contexts is currently expanding very fast. This has been possible thanks to a considerable effort in developing comprehensive ensembles of RCM projections, especially for Europe, in the EURO‐CORDEX community (Jacob et al., 2014, 2020). As of end of 2019, EURO‐CORDEX has developed a set of 55 historical and scenario projections (RCP8.5) using 8 driving global climate models (GCMs) and 11 RCMs. This article presents the ensemble including its design. We target the analysis to better characterize the quality of the RCMs by providing an evaluation of these RCM simulations over a number of classical climate variables and extreme and impact‐oriented indices for the period 1981–2010. For the main variables, the model simulations generally agree with observations and reanalyses. However, several systematic biases are found as well, with shared responsibilities among RCMs and GCMs: Simulations are overall too cold, too wet, and too windy compared to available observations or reanalyses. Some simulations show strong systematic biases on temperature, others on precipitation or dynamical variables, but none of the models/simulations can be defined as the best or the worst on all criteria. The article aims at supporting a proper use of these simulations within a climate services context.